The Fae Book 3: Butcher and Raine

Chapter 16 (Butcher): To Be Clear

When I left Raine's apartment, I shot off a text to Shadow to come back and watch the street side of the yoga studio and get the two doors I'd ripped off their hinges repaired within the hour. After seeing that flash of red in Raine's apartment, I'd run flat out to get to her, barely stopping for more than two seconds to tear down the doors that stood between Raine and me. 

The second I heard Shadow's bike coming down the street, I took off on mine.

I rode for hours, not understanding anything. Inside, I was...uncomfortable in a way I'd never felt before. Especially not understanding why Raine's words kept ringing in my ears.

This is on you. You should have helped Burr drive the moon fae underground. Lives were lost and Alexandre was in danger tonight because you wouldn't help Burr. You wouldn't do the right thing and that put my baby at risk. The sun fae had to sacrifice their lives to protect my baby and me because you failed to step up.

No matter how fast I rode, I couldn't stop her words from pounding in my brain. There was a strange sense of discomfort deep inside me whenever I thought about Raine's words and her extreme displeasure and fury. For some reason, that also unsettled me, and I increased my speed, as if I could outrun it. Whatever this bullshit was rolling around inside of me pissed me off.

I thought of the moments I held Raine on my lap and that seemed to calm the shit that was boiling inside my guts. I'd never in my life touched another person like that, or held someone in my arms, on my fucking lap. Touching people made me feel sick and disgusted, just like I had those first two times I'd had sex. I had barely tolerated the occasional hug from my mother. Fortunately, they were few and far between.

Touches that brought pain were much easier to handle. So I picked fights at school until no one would fight me because I always won, and I won because I held nothing back. My fury soared and I began going after boys who were bigger and older than I was, but they proved to be just as weak as the boys my age.

It wasn't until I established the Lords of Mayhem that I found an outlet. I wanted Mayhem territory to be safe, something easily controlled by my MC, so I set out to remove anyone from my borders who could present a challenge. They received a warning, telling them they could leave free and clear. If they chose to stay, they'd be dead within the week.

It only took four or five men disappearing before word got out that the Mayhem meant business. And those four or five that I took care of satisfied those dark urges in me, the urge to destroy, annihilate. For years, my men carried out my missions and we took care of our enemies in our guest rooms. Sometimes I watched, sometimes I let my men handle it on their own, but many times, I took the lead. And those dark urges would settle for a while until they'd push forward again.

But the urges I experienced with Raine were completely different. I didn't want to kill her, but I had wanted to kill Steve when I heard he'd shoulder bumped her. I also wanted to kill that man in the yoga studio, but had to settle for crushing his hand that touched her when I followed him out to the parking lot. The urges to hurt the men I could make sense of; what I couldn't understand was why I wanted to hurt them. Why should I give a flying fuck what they did to Raine? None of this made sense to me, and my world was ordered in such a way that it made sense. It had to make sense.

Raine brought a whole lot of doesn't make sense into my life. I liked fucking her. Her hands on my skin felt good, being inside of her felt...it was the best feeling I'd ever felt in my life. I kept going back to her because I wanted to keep experiencing that.

And when I saw her surrounded by the moon fae tonight? I'd wanted to kill every single one of those little red fuckers. For scaring her. For making her cry.