Chapter 36
BILLY
The road back to Raven Ridge Hallow looks nothing like the one I dragged myself down to find her.
It’s the same path, same iron gates, same frosted fields, same moon wrung thin like a slit throat, but something in me has shifted.
I’m carrying her now, Nellie’s hand inside mine, her breath brushing shallow and uneven, her fear a pulse I can feel even when she tries to hide it.
Every step toward the place that hurt her feels like sacrilege.
Raven Ridge Manor looms ahead, a black wound carved into the earth. She hesitates before the threshold, her fingers tightening in mine in a way that makes me want to turn around and run with her into the night until our lungs give out.
But running won’t save her.
Not anymore.
“We do this my way,” I tell her, lowly, calmly, because I need her to think I’m steady. “No one touches you. No one comes near you. And Milus…” I stop, the name bitter in my mouth. “He doesn’t get to breathe in your direction unless I fucking permit it.”
Nellie nods, but fear flickers in her eyes like a candle fighting wind. I squeeze her hand, and then I let go, because walking her through the gate while holding her like that would get us both killed.
We haven’t yet shown our cards, our hand still face down on the table. It doesn’t matter what Milus thinks we feel or don’t feel for one another. I have the best poker face of all my brothers, I take after my father in that way, it’s why I always suffered for it.
The Obsidian wanted her brought back to stop her opening her mouth about us. My father wanted her back because as far as he’s concerned that baby belongs to him. And they think I wanted her back to dissect the child from her, and string her up with a noose for abandoning her Pair.
Penelope's hand slips from mine slowly, like the break of a final thread.
Inside, the halls smell like cold stone and old secrets. Sconces crackle against the walls as if hissing warnings. Nellie keeps her head down, but every pair of eyes we pass follows her.
My Pair.
My pregnant Pair.
I want to gouge out their eyes, stuff them down their throats, and rip out their teeth.
Instead, I force my breathing into something almost even and walk with the posture of a man who belongs here, because that is my camouflage, my prison, and right now, her only shield.
When we make it to our suite, I lock the door behind us, and she collapses onto the bed, shaking.
“I’ll fix this,” I whisper, kneeling in front of her. “I’ll fix all of it.”
Her voice is small. “How?”
By doing the only thing my father respects.
Violence.
I kiss her forehead once, softly.
Then I leave.
And the moment the door shuts behind me, Bram, Tolly and Rune, all guarding her, the mask I wore for her fractures into something far more dangerous.
Tonight, I won’t sleep, won’t wait.
I’ll do what should’ve been done months ago.
The manor sleeps like a great animal, breathing slow, dangerous breaths. Doors bolted, sconces guttering, the hallways humming with the silence of obedience. Every stone knows my father’s name. Every corridor bends to his shadow. But tonight that shadow will feel me stalking it.
I move without sound, years of training making it easy. The cold seeps into the metal of the pistol I carry, numbing my fingers. And I’m glad for it, because if emotion heats me, I will act on it, and acting on it means blood I can’t spill.
Not yet.
Mother’s story echoes like a wound in my skull.
‘He told me my baby died.’
Secrets within secrets.
Lies old enough to have roots embedded into the very walls.
The two guards who usually sleep on stools by my father’s door, lulled into carelessness by years of unchallenged authority, were summoned away by Gore. Leaving me to wander freely inside, the door creaking open just enough for me to slip in.
The room is enormous, gilded in obsidian shadows and stolen wealth.
Curtains drape, heavy and suffocating, and the fire has burned low, still flickering enough to paint the walls red.
Milus is asleep, lying on his back, mouth slightly open like a corpse, and the weapon in my hand feels like an extension of my heartbeat.
I stand at his bedside, staring down at the man who created me, who terrified my Pair, who lied to my mother, who built this empire on fear and blood.
He doesn’t stir, not even when I lean down, my breath brushing his cheek. But when the muzzle of the gun knocks into the front of his forehead, he finally twitches, just slightly, not enough that most people would notice, and his eyes open.
Icy blue eyes that match mine stare up at me, unblinking, unconcerned, and it makes me want to do it now. Splatter his brains all over the pale coloured sheets covering him.
His mouth curves into a smug smile. “Hello, Son-”
“Shut the fuck up.” I smack the gun against his skull. “Don’t speak.”
My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
He tries anyway, his lips parting, and I drag the gun down the length of his nose, applying pressure to his chin, forcing his mouth to open wider, and I shove the gun between his teeth.
He watches me with a strange mixture of fury and fascination, as though seeing me clearly for the very first time.
“My Pair,” I say, each word deliberate, clean, lethal, “is off limits.”
His brow arches slightly, amused, even with a loaded gun hitting the back of his throat, I shove it in further, making him gag around the barrel.
“Penelope is back.”
Something in his face shifts, cold ruthless calculation.
“Don’t,” I huff through my nose, “even think about touching her. If you harm her, if you come near her, if you so much as breathe her name, I will end you. Publicly. Quietly. I don’t care. I will fucking destroy the pedestal you built, shatter your throne, expose every secret you buried.”
He smiles wider, showing me his teeth biting the gun. I smile back, my face a mirror of his. It makes me feel sick; how physically similar we are. I lean closer until my lips brush his ear.
“I know who Penelope is.”
He lifts a brow again, curving it high on his forehead, mocking me. Misinterpreting my words, thinking I’m talking about feelings.
“Mother’s dead baby.”
He freezes. The air shifts. His Adam’s apple jumps in his throat. His pulse flying in the side of his neck.
I smile wider. “Did you think that secret would stay dead, too?”
He tries to move, his hands coming up, but I push the gun into the back of his throat harder still, and his arms flop back to the bed like dead weights.
“You will leave my Pair alone,” I whisper. “You will keep your distance. You will treat her like she is a queen, not a threat. And you will punish me for her running instead.”
His eyes narrow, his dark brows low over his bright eyes, his cheeks hollowed, spit dribbling from the corners of his overstretched mouth.
“Aww, don’t look at me like that,” I tut, still smiling.
“You need to make a show of it, make an example of her, of us,” I murmur.
“I’ll give you one. Lash me. Whip me. Parade me like sacrificial meat.
But if you touch her, I will end you. And it won’t be a show.
It won’t be a song and dance. It’ll be a straight bullet through your skull, an unmarked grave off property, somewhere far enough away even your ghost won’t find home.
And I’ll make sure that when Gore takes over, we eradicate any sign you ever even existed.
Give him the credit for starting this entire fucking cult. ”
It’s the first time I’ve ever used that term.
Blinded, willingly, to what The Obsidian really is.
Scolding Nellie for every time she said it.
Called it what it is. But I’m in. It’s my life.
My family. My world. Everything I know is this.
And I won’t change it. I’m no hero. I’m the thing that goes bump in the night. The horror that hides beneath the bed.
I’m what The Obsidian made me.
A monster.
And I don’t want to change that.
I let the threat hang in the air like the delicate string of a spider’s carefully woven web.
“What’ll it be?” I cant my head, wriggling the gun around inside of his mouth, clattering it against his perfect white teeth.
The silence stretches. My patience wearing thin. But I keep my expression blank.
Then he gives the slightest nod.
Agreement.
Cowardice.
Submission masked as strategy.
“And if you try anything. Anything at all that affects Penelope or our baby, I won’t spill your secrets, I’ll just kill you.”
I take my time removing the gun from his mouth, the barrel dripping saliva, I wipe it off on the bed, his blue eyes stay on me, watching as I finally take a step back from the bed, putting a few feet of distance between us.
“You get one warning,” I inform him quietly, weapon still steady in my hand, still raised, still aimed. “And this was it.”