Chapter 1
One
Ike
He was so… quiet. Honestly, in the time we’d been watching him—or stalking him, as our youngest brother, Sabbath, liked to call it—he hadn’t ever said much. But I’d thought he might be a little more vocal once we rescued him.
Instead, he was just sitting on our couch, his hands folded primly on his lap.
His back was ramrod straight, shoulders rigid and set back, chin tilted down, his gaze focused on the floor.
In fact, now that I thought about it, the entire time he’d been in our house, he hadn’t met either of our gazes.
I cocked my head to the side, studying him more intently. Wraith, who’d been busy in the kitchen of our little apartment we kept in town when we needed a break from our family, appeared holding a sandwich and a bottle of water.
“Merit,” he called.
“Yes, sir?” our boy murmured, voice all demure and shy.
And I fucking hated it. Because he wasn’t either of those things.
Sure he knew how to fake it, but I’d been watching him long enough to know the fire that burned in his soul.
To see the anger burning in his eyes when he thought no one was looking.
Our boy wasn’t weak, and even if he did take anything his owner doled out to him, there was a hatred inside him that burned bright and strong.
I wanted to stoke that fire. To watch it blaze.
And then, I wanted to set him loose on every mother fucker who’d touched him in his life, starting with his most recent “owner”.
Then, we’d work our way down the list Wraith and I had put together, and we’d finally end with his parents, who put him in this predicament in the first place.
Or maybe we’d start there. Who the fuck knew.
So long as everyone who ever wronged him died slowly and painfully, I didn’t care what order it happened in.
I didn’t give a fuck if Pops agreed with my plan or not. I didn’t care that I was supposed to run every single kill by him before I ever made a move. None of us—not me and not a single one of my four brothers—did anything without Pops knowing about it first.
But this? I wasn’t letting Pops potentially take this from me. From Wraith.
From Merit.
Our boy deserved to have revenge. He needed to make everyone pay that’d ever hurt him, tortured him, touched him without his permission.
“Don’t call me sir,” Wraith grunted, his lips screwed in distaste before he smothered it. “Relax. I’m not your new owner. Neither is Ike. Just sit back please. You need to eat, and I’d like to check your wounds.”
I blinked at my brother. Was that why Merit had been so stiff and unmoving?
Why he wouldn’t look at me despite me staring at him nonstop since we’d sat down in the living room?
Did he really think we were his new owners?
That we’d helped him out of those woods and I’d broken Pops’s rules several times when I dropped body after body of the men who’d been prepared to shoot him with those mother fucking rubber bullets?
“Oh,” I finally muttered out loud.
Merit, who’d just sat back on the couch, raised his pretty grayish-green eyes to meet mine.
Fuck, he was so pretty. His dark hair was pin straight but still a mess on his head from running through the woods.
And though he was shirtless and barefoot, his feet all cut up and his body covered in bruises, he was still so damn good looking.
And fuck, I wanted to lick all those muscles.
Sink my teeth into his body to mark him as mine.
He was strong. Every time he moved, his muscles rolled beneath his skin.
“Why am I here?” he finally grumbled, taking the sandwich Wraith held out to him, then the bottle of water.
“We’ve been watching you,” I stated bluntly. “For weeks now, actually. We were supposed to go to my father to rescue you, but I grew impatient.”
“Your father?” Merit questioned before he bit into the sandwich, seemingly unbothered by the info dump.
Wraith took a seat on the floor and dragged the first aid kit he’d set on the coffee table when we’d gotten home onto the floor with him.
Wordlessly, he set to work on Merit’s torn, bleeding feet.
“Yes, our father,” I said, only slightly annoyed.
I hated repeating myself, but I’d do it for his sake.
I wasn’t sure there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for him, honestly, even if I didn’t particularly like it.
“He runs things. Tells me and my brothers what we can and cannot do, mostly in relation to killing people.”
Merit didn’t even seem phased by what I’d said, and that had pride swelling in my chest. He was strong, just as I knew he would be. He was going to be absolutely perfect for me and Wraith.
“What Ike is trying to say,” Wraith said, ever the more human of the two of us, “is that you crossed onto our parents’ property a few months ago during one of the…
games you played with your owner. Our dad was concerned and asked Ike and I to look into you.
We couldn’t find you or anything about you, which forced us to let it go.
But then, Ike finally found you again. You were bloody and clearly in need of help, but before he could intercept, someone dragged you back to your owner’s house. ”
“I tried escaping,” Merit said quietly. Murderous rage bled through me on his behalf, but I managed to lock it down.
Doing so was like second nature. Pops had made sure of it.
“The window to my room had been left open to let fresh air in, and my owner forgot. My ankle was broken though, so it didn’t work.
He beat me pretty badly. I quickly learned not to try escaping again. ”
“He won’t touch you again,” I swore, my voice a mere growl.
Merit looked at me then and cocked his head to the side the slightest bit, like he was trying to figure me out. “What’s it to you?” he demanded.
Wraith answered before I could. “You are ours, Merit. You’ve been ours since the moment Ike saw you bleeding and in need of our help. But we are not your owners. We want you to have free will and be your own person. Make your own decisions. But that does not change that we have to have you.”
“We’re psychopaths,” I said, dropping the bomb like it was nothing. Figured he should probably know ahead of time, even if we had no plans of letting him go. “I’m more of a textbook psychopath than Wraith here. He’s more… human than I am. But I say that to say we cannot love.”
“We obsess,” Wraith informed him, picking up where I left off. It was second nature for us to finish each other’s sentences. Wraith could read me like a book. “And sometimes, those obsessions never go away.”
Merit scoffed and reached for his bottle of water. “I don’t see how this is any different, then. Clearly, you don’t plan to let me go.”
I smirked and licked my tongue over my front teeth. “You’ll see very soon, little killer.”
His brows furrowed. “Little killer?” He looked at Wraith for an answer, but Wraith was too focused on wrapping his foot in a bandage to meet his eyes. “You called me little killer earlier, too.”
“Because that’s what you’ll be soon enough,” I informed him.
Confusion bled onto his features as he lifted his gaze from my brother to stare up at me.
I rose from the coffee table, where I’d been perched since we got home, and leaned over the couch, over him, bracing my hands on either side of his head.
He swallowed thickly, lifting his chin to meet my eyes with his pretty ones.
“Wraith and I are going to find every person who ever violated you, whoever hurt you, and we’re going to deliver them to you—with pretty bows and flowers, if you wish—so you can have your revenge. ”
He shook his head, that anger I knew he held bleeding through his stoic expression. “I’m not them,” he growled.
I hummed. “You’re right, little killer. You’re not.
” I gripped his chin and tilted his head even further back so he could look nowhere but right at me.
“But you are ours. And our boy? He’s got a dark, burning anger inside him just begging to be released so he can obliterate everyone in his path. And we plan to help you.”
“So sure you know me?” he taunted, and fuck, it made my dick hard.
Merit was ready to meet me challenge for challenge.
To show me he wouldn’t just lay over and take what I was dishing out at him.
He was testing his boundaries. Trying to find where the lines were drawn.
But what he hadn’t realized yet was boundaries were nonexistent now. There were no lines to cross.
“I know you very well, little killer,” I rasped. “And I can’t wait to show you how much.”
Wraith appeared beside me, and Merit sucked in a sharp breath of surprise, his pupils dilating as his gaze flicked between the two of us. Wraith pushed me away before leaning in to scoop Merit off the couch. “What—” Merit spluttered, his fingers curling around Wraith’s shoulders.
“You need rest now,” Wraith told him, carrying him toward his room. I followed because like fuck was Wraith getting him all to himself tonight. “We will revisit all this in the morning.”
“I don’t get my own room?” Merit asked, a challenge in his voice.
I met his gaze over my brother’s shoulder.
“Turns out, there is a boundary,” I murmured.
He looked at me like I’d lost my marbles, but he’d get used to me speaking out loud without context soon enough.
“You won’t be sleeping alone, Merit. Not tonight.
Not ever again. Some nights, you might only be with one of us, but most nights, you’ll be sandwiched right between us. ”
“And if I don’t want that?” he argued, though there was no real heat behind it. Just like I knew he would, he was already starting to crave how we… cared about him.
“Tough,” Wraith told him before gently depositing him on the bed. “Get used to it, little killer. You’re stuck with us.”
He grunted. “Freedom, my ass,” he grumbled.
I chose not to respond. He’d soon realize he had plenty of freedom, so long as it meant he wasn’t separated from me and Wraith.
Soon, he’d crave the freedom he found in being with us both, where he was safe, protected, and could do whatever the fuck he wanted without fear of anyone ever violating him again.
Wraith and I would make sure of it.