AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I know that’s not true, but I’ll pretend to believe you.”
“After what I just did in honor of our friendship? You don’t have a choice,” I joked.
She smoothed down her long, dark ponytail, and adjusted her boobs inside her tank top. “How do I look?” she asked when finished, holding her henna covered arms out to the side.
I batted my lashes and smiled. “You look gorgeous. Like you just got fucked against a shelf in a storage warehouse.”
Laughing, she flicked me off and pulled the door closed behind her.
“So what was Butcher’s problem?” I asked her as we started up the path my brother had just gone down.
“I heard what Luce was about to say.”
“Hmm,” I hummed. “And what did he say in response to that?”
“Nothing,” she sighed. “And that’s the problem.”
“Nyx…” I trailed off.
In times like these, I found it was best not to say anything at all. She and I had been over this a hundred times.
I didn’t understand the dynamics of their relationship and no longer tried to. Nyx wasn’t just my cousin. She was my best friend, my sin-sister. The private diary no one would ever be able to crack, the strength I needed when I felt I wasn’t strong enough.
After growing up inseparable, I knew her. She kept her feelings safe-guarded when it came to Butcher. On countless occasions, I’d told her she could do, and deserved, so much better than what he was offering.
This had to be a negative side effect of first love because she was far from a doormat and Uncle Grimm and Aunt Arlen adored her, as did her baby brother.
We rounded the bend in the path and came up behind
Luce, Butcher himself, and Annie.
Her I expected to see, I was the one who told her to wait here. The other two should have been farther than this by now.
“What’s going on?” I asked, wedging myself between Luce and Butcher so I could see.
“We don’t know yet,” Luce answered.
I followed his stare to where Mom was talking to one of the acolytes who had removed their mask.
A few porch lights from acolyte dwellings shined into the clearing they were standing in, illuminating them perfectly.
“She looks….worried,” I noted.
“And like she’s about to murder someone,” Nyx added from behind me.
Only one of those was normal for her. Mom wasn’t a worrier, not often anyway.
“Cali!” Dad called her name, his voice booming across the space.
At his approach the acolyte Mom was speaking to, respectively bowed her head. Dad ignored the woman completely, focusing solely on Mom. He wrapped his arms around her middle and forced her to turn into him.
She protested for a solid five seconds before he said something that had her putting her hands on his shoulders.
This wasn’t anything new. They had never hidden their oddly endearing way of loving each other. I’d moved into one of the cabins on the compound for that reason alone. Hearing your mom and dad go at it like jackrabbits nearly every night was traumatizing.
I squeezed past Luce and Butch to go find out what was going on since none of them seemed inclined to do so.
Nyx followed only after Butcher tried to take hold of her hand.
