Chapter 25 - Maeve
MAEVE
I caught up on Ethan Todd’s videos while Poe, Remy, and Bram were out dealing with the Ghosts, but my heart wasn’t in it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t still want Ethan Todd dead — I definitely did — but I couldn’t help wrestling with what I knew was happening to the Ghosts who’d given up their spots in the Hunt to another team without permission.
It shouldn’t have been a moral quandary: killing was bad.
The end.
But my moral boundaries had gotten a lot less clear in the year and a half since June’s murder. Was it wrong to kill someone who’d taken another life? Was it wrong to kill someone like Ethan Todd who had the potential to hurt hundreds more people?
Was it wrong for the Butchers to kill the Ghosts when the Ghosts had put all the women in the Hunt in danger, myself included, by allowing other men to take their place? Men who’d hurt me and would probably have done a lot worse if the Butchers hadn’t found me?
Two years earlier, I would have been horrified by the knowledge that the Butchers were, at that very moment, killing people. Now all I could think was good riddance.
That should have bothered me too — the moral slippery slope taking me for a ride — but it didn’t, and that just gave me more to think about.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t worried about the Butchers. They seemed invincible, like indestructible gods.
I almost felt sorry for the Ghosts in their path.
I hit play on one of Ethan Todd’s most recent videos and let it play while my mind spun. I should have checked in with the girls on our encrypted chat, but I didn’t have the social bandwidth.
In the video, Ethan was bro-ing out with another manosphere influencer, both of them talking about how they would divorce their future wives if said future wives “let themselves go.” The comments were as expected, a string of enthusiastic support for the message punctuated by the occasional objection, always by a woman, because men who called themselves good too often didn’t want to rock the boat by calling out dangerous misogyny.
The video was winding down when I heard voices downstairs on the second floor.
I shut my computer and stepped into the hall in time to see the Butchers coming up the stairs.
Bram looked no worse for wear, his face unreadable as he walked past me. He disappeared into his room without a word as Poe trudged up the stairs after him.
And Poe was covered in blood.
“Oh my god…” Rushing toward him was instinctual.
“It’s not mine,” he said.
Remy appeared next, a spatter of blood on his shirt. He held up his hands. “I’m good too.”
All the awkwardness that had been between us in the week that I’d been back at the loft dissipated as I held Poe’s face in my hands, studying him just to see for myself that he was okay.
I ran my hands over his shoulders and chest, like my fingers might find something my eyes didn’t.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I looked past him at Remy. “Both of you?”
I felt stupid thinking about how cavalier I’d been, assuming the Butchers would be okay, that nothing could hurt them. They were dangerous men doing dangerous things. Anything could have happened.
“I’ll be right as rain after a shower,” Poe said.
I grabbed his hand and tugged him toward my room without thinking.
He let me pull him along and I heard Remy’s voice behind us. “Is this an invite-only thing or…”
I crossed the threshold to my room. “Get in here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I could almost hear the grin on his face.
I dragged Poe to the bathroom and turned the shower on hot.
“Take off your clothes.” I looked at Remy who had appeared behind him. “Both of you.”
Poe stripped off his bloody shirt, then pulled off his jeans. It was like watching a masterpiece unveiled by the second: his muscled arms and broad shoulders giving way to the sculpted peaks of his chest, his washboard abs leading to his dick, long and wide and perfectly formed.
The tattoo on his chest told a story I couldn’t read: the bear merging with geometric shapes, a giant bird holding a fish in its claws, an animal skull — like the mask the Butchers wore in the Hunt — staring back at me with vacant eyes.
Remy was already naked by the time I pulled my attention away from Poe, and my breath caught in my throat at the sight of his lean, defined muscle.
The thorny vines of his ink crawled up his arms and over his shoulders, and I knew if he turned around, I’d see the skull staring back me, a mirror of the one on Poe’s chest.
I told myself I felt overheated because of the steam filling the room, but even I didn’t believe it.
I tested the water with my hand and adjusted it so it wasn’t too hot.
“Get in.” I tried to keep my voice businesslike but wasn’t sure I succeeded.
Poe stepped into the tiled walk-in shower. At the last minute, he reached for my hand and pulled me in with him.
The cognitive dissonance of being in the shower while fully clothed was real and I shrieked as the hot water hit my body.
Then Remy stepped in behind me. I was sandwiched between them and all my objections circled the drain like the bloody water at our feet.
Poe held my face in his hands while Remy moved in close enough that I felt the press of his hard dick against my ass.
Poe held my gaze as he rubbed his thumb along my lower lip. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you were worried about us, little bird.”
Remy reached for the hem of my T-shirt and pulled it over my head, then reached around my waist to cup my tits in his big hands.
“You have such perfect tits, killer.” He murmured the words against my neck as he rolled my hard nipples between his fingers.
Poe bent his head to murmur against my lips. “Everything about her is perfect.”
“I fucking second that,” Remy said against my neck.
Then Poe’s mouth was on mine, lighting my body on fire with every sweep of his tongue.