They’re using me as a battleground between them.
It was what I intended all along. The moment I realized how deep the emotions ran between those two, how determined they were to avoid stepping on that particular landmine, I planned to dance all over their buttons.
What I didn’t intend?
To feel…strange while doing it.
Neither of them really want me. They want each other, and I’m the inciting event that will end with them fucking. I’ll go down at the footnote in their relationship, assuming they both survive what comes next. Sabine Valley is not a peaceful city, and the forced truce between the Raiders and the other two factions will only hold the year.
If that.
There are no guarantees in this life, especially in this city.
I just… I didn’t expect to like Shiloh so much. I meant every word I said to her about being the conductor of justice for the harms committed against her as a child. Even thinking about it has anger simmering inside me. I have few lines—one can’t be precious when they’re going to be the next queen of the Amazons—but harming children is an unforgivable offense. Shiloh was right; we’ve had our share of predators in the Amazon faction. But we do not victim-blame, and we do not make excuses for them so they can harm more innocents.
We make fucking examples of them.
Obviously I know the greater world isn’t like that. I can’t say the rest of Sabine Valley conducts itself in the same way. But knowing that Shiloh experienced torture at her parents’ hands…
I clench my fists. I want to see them burn.
“Monroe?”
I give myself a mental shake and have my expression under control by the time I turn to face Broderick. “Yes, husband?”
He searches my face. I’ve never seen a person so conflicted with themself. His identity seems to be so wrapped up in being the calm Paine, the rational brother, that he doesn’t seem to realize that he loves being harsh and brutal. No one can fake how he is with me. Especially when he seems to hate it so.
Right now, he’s feeling irrational guilt and wondering if he pushed me too far in the hallway. I should leave him hanging, should twist the knife every chance I get and use that guilt to manipulate him. It’s what my mother would do, what I’d advise any other Amazon to do in this situation. I am not without weapons, but I’d be a fool to turn away from one so potentially lucrative.
I don’t know why I open my mouth and say, “We’re good, Broderick.”
Instantly, his expression shuts down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh? You weren’t just whipping yourself for being a big, bad villain and forcing yourself on poor, defenseless me?”
He flinches. “That’s nothing to joke about.”
“You’re right. It’s not.” I can’t quite help myself. I close the distance between us and run my hands up his chest. I lower my voice, until he has to lean down to catch my words. “Broderick, if I didn’t want what you do to me, I would gut you and leave you to bleed out in the hallway. No one, not any of your brothers, not a single Raider in this faction, not even Shiloh, could stop me.”
He doesn’t relax. “I’m bigger than you. Stronger.”
Gods, this man’s respectable streak is tiresome.
Even knowing it will give away my edge, I bend down, dip my hand into the open edge of my boot and draw the long knife I lifted off Shiloh when she wasn’t paying attention the other day. “I would have gutted you,” I repeat.
Broderick blinks. “You have a knife.”
“Yes.” Nothing more to say to that. With a sigh, I turn the knife around and offer it to him, hilt first. “I suppose you’ll be taking this, since it’s a prohibited item for a Bride to have and all that.”
He gets a strange look on his face. “Keep it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Promise me you won’t stab someone without cause, and you can keep it.”
Now it’s my turn to blink. Surely he’s not going to actually let me keep the knife. It’s a weapon, and Broderick isn’t the kind of fool who hands his enemies weapons without a fight. “Define cause.”
“Monroe.”
I sigh. “Okay, fine. I won’t stab someone unless I feel directly threatened. Is that good enough?”
This is where he crushes my fledgling hope, dim though it is, and tells me that no way will he allow me to keep it, promise or no. What good is the word of an Amazon to a Raider, after all? But he simply nods. “Good enough. Now put that away before your uncle and sister get here.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll wait outside while we talk.”
He gives me the look that question deserves. “I will give you the relative privacy of reading a book over there while you talk.” He points at a short chair tucked back within the bookshelves.