Chapter 11 The Iron Giant #2
People laughed softly; it wasn’t joy, not really, it was that strange laughter that happened when people weren’t sure how to react.
The sound bounced off the metal walls, brittle and unnerving, the echo almost musical.
Zane seemed to flinch at the noise, like feedback from a speaker too close to the mic.
The bull itself gleamed dully under the overhead light.
Its curved haunches caught the glow, skin polished to a mirror finish that reflected back distorted versions of everyone in the room, twisted halos of gold and shadow.
Heat still hadn’t touched it, but the promise of it seemed to pulse in the air.
Bev licked her split lip and tried for contrite, her breaths coming out through her nose in heavy pants, much like the bull before her. “Zane, sweetheart…this is…dramatic. We can fix this. I’ll get help. I’ll call a lawyer. I didn’t mean—”
“Stop. Talking. To. Him,” Thomas said, letting as much menace as possible leech into his tone. He stepped forward, his signet ring glinting. The light caught on the family crest, a subtle reminder of where true power lived. “Talk to me.”
She blinked, recalculating, the oldest trick in her arsenal. Thomas almost admired the reflex, it was pure predator instinct, even when cornered. “Thomas, we can settle—”
“There’s no deal left to make,” Thomas said mildly, and somehow that was worse than shouting.
“You had money. You had a way out. You burned it down and came back for more. I’ve warned you again and again that you’re not wanted here, yet you couldn’t resist the chance to keep tormenting your own son.
” He looked to Zane, then back to Bev. “So he’s my son now.
You were given a gift that you never appreciated, but we do. Now you can leave him to me…to us.”
The words settled like ash in the still air.
Bev’s mouth opened and closed. No sound escaped. Her jaw trembled once, a fish gasping for air. The flickering light caught the wet sheen on her split lips, making her look less like a woman and more like a cracked porcelain doll someone had decided to melt.
Archer leaned toward Mac. “Now that was dramatic.”
Mac’s quiet chuckle was out of place, but not unwelcome. Even now, levity was their armor.
The room’s temperature seemed to tilt. Beneath the animal was a metal brazier, fire-safe, the perfect amount of kindling just waiting for a spark.
Thomas could already smell the faint trace of accelerant, a ghost of smoke and oil, that familiar promise of combustion.
Asa’s hands never left Zane, one braced across his chest, the other cupping his hip, a human barricade.
Aiden snapped on heavy gloves and tested a hatch along the bull’s flank. The hinges groaned, a deep, resonant sound that echoed off the steel walls like something alive.
August drifted closer, eyes incandescent. “Airflow inlets here?” he asked, delighted. “You compensated for thermal expansion along the hinges?”
Aiden gave him a bland look. “Always.”
Mal crouched, fascinated by the ventwork along the jaw. “And the bellowing, acoustic chambers?”
“Precisely measured,” Aiden said. “The pitch will modulate as the temperature rises.”
“God, that’s beautiful,” Mal breathed, not about the math, but the art.
Thomas couldn’t disagree. There was a kind of perverse beauty in precision. The same meticulous devotion Aiden poured into engineering, now channeled into something ancient and terrible.
“So, is this a thing you guys do a lot?” Jordan asked the other boys.
Arsen arched a brow. “Roast the elderly?”
Jordan snorted. “I meant gathering the family to kill people, but yeah, I guess that too?”
“We don’t really discriminate by age,” Cree said, studying Jordan. “You don’t seem very disturbed by this.”
“I don’t know her. Why should I be upset?” he asked.
Levi frowned. “’Cause she’s a human?”
Nico scoffed. “Debatable.”
“She seems like a super shitty person. Thomas and Aiden are cool. I can’t see them doing this for fun. They must have their reasons.”
That simple faith settled somewhere deep in Thomas’s chest, a small, surprising ache. Jordan’s matter-of-fact acceptance was a strange kind of validation that bringing Matty—and by extension, Jordan—into the fold was the right thing to do.
Jordan was a good kid. He and Matty had grown up together.
Matty didn’t think he and Aiden knew about his and Jordan’s extracurricular activities…
the ones that had occurred before they moved to be closer to them.
Thomas was content to let him think that.
Aiden was happy to have his brother close by even if he was twice Matty’s age.
Though they had different moms, Thomas could see Aiden in Matty’s personality.
He remembered the hostile, beautiful boy Aiden had been when they’d first met, ready to fight the world.
He found it fascinating that both of the Kendrick children had taken whatever twisted genetics given to them by Marshall Kendrick and used it for good instead of evil.
Thomas also held a bit of smug satisfaction knowing that Matty had agreed to change his last name from Kendrick to Mulvaney.
Each time one of them claimed the name, it felt less like expansion and more like evolution.
His family was growing bigger by the day.
He absently wondered about the possibilities of having Matty and Lake as a couple, further solidifying the bond between Jericho’s boys and the rest of the Mulvaneys.
It was probably best to stay out of it. He was far too old to concern himself with college romances.
Still, he couldn’t help picturing the quiet stability of Lake beside Matty’s volatility—the kind of symmetry that made sense in his world.
Though he couldn’t deny that Jordan and Cree also made a striking couple. Maybe there was something to that as well.
“I can practically hear you scheming,” Aiden murmured softly. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Thomas promised.
Nico hovered beside Arsen and Levi. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” he whispered.
Thomas turned slightly, catching the whisper in the charged quiet. He believed it. This was what came of cruelty. Justice wasn’t always poetic. Sometimes it was crude, violent, grotesque even.
Arsen shrugged, his accent thickening with fatigue. “Zane deserves to feel safe, and sometimes the only way that happens is if the person threatening that safety is dead.”
Levi nodded once, jaw tight, eyes soft. The gesture was small but absolute, same as their decision.
Jericho stood with hands in his pockets, the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Been a long time coming,” he said. “Zane deserves some peace.”
Bev began shaking her head, small at first, then violently. “Zane, baby, please, be reasonable. You were always too sensitive. I said things I shouldn’t have. It was stress—grief—Gage—”
Zane’s voice flickered up from somewhere far away. “You blamed me for him killing himself. You said it should have been me. You said you wished I’d never been born. You called me a parasite; you said it made you sick to look at me…”
He craned his head back to look at Asa, who kissed his forehead. Thomas had never been more proud of Asa. He’d come so far and he truly loved Zane.
Out of all his children, Asa had been the most worrisome, reckless in ways that made the rest of them proud and terrified in equal measure.
He was the one most likely to break rules, to give it all up for the thrill of the hunt.
But that had been before Zane. Thomas didn’t quite understand Zane’s need to be hurt as much as he understood Asa’s need to hurt him, but it was clear they recognized something in each other.
He had no doubt Asa would die for Zane, and that was something he’d never thought possible—not for anyone other than Avi.
Bev seized on the moment. “I was hurting. I lost my child. I didn’t mean—”
“He’s your child too,” Felix snapped. “Jesus, even when begging for your life you can’t seem to accept that.”
Her eyes went wide like she couldn’t believe she’d made such an error. “You—you’re right. You’re right. He is my child. I’m your mother, Zaney—”
“Don’t call me that,” Zane said flatly. “Only Gage and my family get to call me that. You’re not my family.”
“I gave birth to you,” she screeched. “You wouldn’t have any of this if not for me.”
“You’re a horrible fucking person,” Noah said, incredulous, both disgusted and baffled at her refusal to perform the most basic human instinct: self-preservation.
Bev turned wild eyes on Noah. “You don’t know—”
“Stop.” Asa’s voice was quiet but everyone obeyed. He slowly turned Zane in his arms and lowered his head until his mouth was nearly at Zane’s ear. “I’m going to handle this. Okay? You trust me, right?”
“You know I do,” Zane breathed.
Thomas felt the strain line Asa’s face. His palm was warm and hard against Zane’s ribs, counting out a rhythm like a small drum. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything. Soon this will be over. You don’t owe her anything.”
Avi stared at Bev like she was something stuck to his shoe. “Can we kill this bitch now? We owe Zane a cuddle puddle and I’m honestly tired of looking at her.”
“How long will it take?” Zane asked, voice dull and far away.
“Varies,” Atticus said, professional and bored. “There’s factors—”
“Like?” Zane asked.
Atticus hesitated, looking from Thomas to Aiden to Asa, who gave a slow nod. He returned his attention to Zane. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Zane flicked his gaze to his mother. “I want her to know.”