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I look up at Bishop. Trigger happy?
Hector steps forward, putting his hands into his pockets. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the initiation process of a King?” he questions, looking at me. I nod. “Very good. So you know…” He gestures behind him, and Khales reemerges from the shadows. Bishop freezes, his grip turning to steel. “…That Khales was Bishop’s…” My head spins and my stomach recoils. Someone else steps out of the shadows. “…As was your adopted ‘mother.’”
“Lost is not a place. It’s a soul in paralysis…
Waiting to feel moved.”
-Atticus
Bishop
Ten-Years-Old
“I want you to think of a wall, a bulletproof one that no matter how hard any weapon hounds on it, it could never break.” Rob had said, pacing up and down in front of the seven of us. We had been close all our lives, whether by family or by choice, they were my brothers. I chose to care for them, no amount of family influence could have forced the kind of brotherhood we shared—which made us the most lethal Kings created. The generations before us, my father had said they always fought or struggled to get along sometimes. Whether it be by girl or just by personalities not being compatible, it never happened. They never had a generation that flowed fluidly like we did, so they had big plans for us.
“A wall?” Nate snickered. “You brought us here to teach us about a wall?”
Rob waved him off diffusely and continued his army march backward and forward in front of us. “I want you to start building this wall inside of your brain, but before you do so, I want you to make sure there are six seats there beside you. Not eight, not two, not any other number but seven total,” he paused, looking down at me. I wasn’t a short kid. For a ten-year-old, I was pretty tall, but staring up at Rob in this moment, I felt two-feet. “I want you to start building this wall today. Work on it, I mean really train your brain to build it, because by the time you initiate in, I need that wall to be solid. To be unfuckwithable. This”—Rob gestured around—“was who you trusted. No one else.”
“What about my dad?” I argued, looking at the guys who all glared at me like “shut the fuck up.” Rob was scary, but I didn’t scare easily.
“Even your dad. He went through the same when he was your age, and so will the next ones who come after you.”
“What, as in we have to have kids?” Hunter scrunched up his face.
“Yes.” Dad interrupted, walking around the back of the cabin dressed in one of his fine suits. “You will have kids one day.”
“No, I’m good. I don’t want kids.” I knew at a very young age that children didn’t appeal to me, and I doubted that would change in the future. Call it the only-child curse.
“Oh I bet you will, I bet you and Khales will have kids by the time you’re sixteen,” Eli snorted, only no one joined him.
“No. I don’t want them.”
My dad kneeled down in front of me, searching my eyes. “You will, son, and lucky for you, I have someone lined up.”
My eyebrows pinched together. “What? Who?” I was still not having kids, but I’d ask him who he thought I could be matched with anyway.
He reached into his front jacket pocket and pulled out a small photograph, flipping it around to show me. It was a little girl, had to be around the same age as me or younger—unless she was just really small. She had brown wavy hair, chubby cheeks, a bright smile and blue eyes. A couple of freckles were scattered over her cheeks and she was holding a hunting rifle. “This girl.”
“That girl?” I questioned, obviously my dad was off his meds. That girl wasn’t anything great, I had seen better at my school, but she had something contrastive about her, an imbalance if you will, but her eyes. Her eyes ate up the distance between us, even if it was a photo that she was staring at me from. “Who is she?”
Dad looked sideways at me, noticing the other guys trying to get a look. He folded it and pushed it back into his pocket, shooting them all a warning glare. “Someone who is going to arrive in your life at the exact moment you need her to.”
“Like fate?” I asked. I didn’t really know what that word meant, but I had heard it be thrown around a lot with the adults.
He laughed. “Not fate—karma. Your wake-up call.”
“What the fuck!” I gasped, stepping backward until I’m colliding against a hard body. Spinning around, my eyes shot straight to Bishop. I searched him for more answers, but as per usual, he guarded his emotions with a wall that was probably built from all the people who died at his hands. His eyes were always evasively beckoning, and could summon me within seconds, but he had kept too much from me for too long. Now I was internally battling with myself on whether I trusted him or not. I tilted my head, scanning his features for something. A simple flick of light to pass over his face—but I got nothing. My shoulders slacked in defeat. I didn’t trust him anymore. I could no longer trust any of them. My mother, who was actually my adoptive mother, was alive. She didn’t shoot herself, and all my brain could manage to think was: well, shit, I got bullied all those years for fucking nothing! That could have something to do with the fact that she had fucked Bishop, though. And then I remembered who else just arrived back from the dead along with her. Khales. Nothing was making sense to me—as per usual. My body hummed with a numbness so bleak that the only thing I could feel was the trembling of my fingers and the sweating of my palms. You will not look weak right now. Through all the revelations that had been laid out tonight, and between the bloodshed, I could feel myself slowly slipping again. Losing touch with what was happening in front of me. Was it possible to have a mental break from the people around you driving you so fucking crazy? If not, I was probably going to be the first one to have it happen to.
