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Chapter 11:
Hunter was quiet.
He’d been like that for a while, ever since last night when he’d discovered what Odin had done to his father. If he were less confident, Odin may even be worried that the silence was out of disgust and an attempt to work through that, but he had a hunch it was for a different reason.
All this time together and he was finally starting to understand who Hunter Thorn was at his core. If only he’d paid more attention in the past, most of this could have been avoided, yet they’d allowed themselves to be played by the people around them and had turned a blind eye to their true feelings for one another.
Recalling how the Huntsman had repeatedly told him he loved him, warmth bloomed in the center of Odin’s chest, despite where they were currently.
The Storeroom was packed, at least a dozen of Frost’s men held prisoner, some undergoing questioning already, others left there to rot. Their offenses varied, but the important ones, the ones Odin actually cared about, were already in various states of being, having been subjected to Yule’s machinations.
It’d been a debate about whether or not to bring Hunter here. There was a big difference between knowing something and experiencing it firsthand, and while he’d spent his younger days as part of the Brumal, and had no doubt heard sordid tales from his father, he’d never been privy to these sorts of things himself before. Back then, that had been by design, Odin having ordered that he never be asked to attend or participate in anything that took place at the Storeroom.
He almost chuckled out loud thinking about that, seeing just how naïve he’d been to not have realized back then that he had feelings for the man now standing at his side.
“This one seems the most likely to crack,” Yule was telling them, waving toward one of the men who had his face tucked into the corner of the room like a scared child or a wounded animal. He’d spent the most time with these people, trying to uncover all of their secrets.
Ensuring that they hurt as much as possible while he did.
“Do you recognize them?” Odin asked Hunter, but the Huntsman merely nodded his head in the affirmative once, eyes still scoping out the medium-sized room.
There was blood and piss in pools on the cement ground, sprayed over the wooden walls. They hadn’t bothered with a tarp, not worried about the police finding their secret location, or even caring if they did. Odin had enough people in his pocket for that not to be a fear, something he’d been blatantly taking advantage of this past month as he’d waged war with the Frost family.
There were only two men alive in the room they were viewing from the wide, heavily guarded entrance. A third, dead when they’d arrived, had been left to rot on the other side, either as a warning to the others to cooperate or simply because Yule hadn’t bothered to care enough about removing it. With him, there was no telling which way it leaned.
“Anything you’d like done, Mr. Thorn?” Yule was keeping himself uncharacteristically polite in front of Hunter, whom he was meeting for the first time. Since he was Odin’s number one butcher, he didn’t spend much time at Club Cherry and was typically busy working on other…proclivities. “Or anything you’d like to do?”
Hunter shook his head. “I just want to know what happened to my sister. What she’s been through that made her this way.”
“No problem.” He grinned at him, coughing when Odin sent him a warning glare for being overly friendly. “I’ll get those answers for you right away.”
“Do you want to watch?” Odin asked when Yule headed toward the corner to retrieve the terrified man he’d pointed out a moment ago. “We don’t have to.”
“I do,” Hunter said, sliding his hands into the pockets of the leather jacket Odin had given him earlier. Typically this would be where he also tacked on mention that he wasn’t weak and could handle something like this, but he remained silent after delivering those two words.
“You don’t have to feel bad.”
He scrunched up his face just as Yule yanked the trembling man into the center of the room. “I don’t.”
“Not for him,” Odin corrected, waving dismissively toward the man who was now trying to plead with Yule not to hurt him. “For me.”
Hunter kept his eyes locked on the scene before them, watching as Yule hauled the man up and mentioned Meg. If he was bothered by the sound of the beating that followed, he didn’t show it. But then, he’d also confirmed he recognized him, that this man was one of the ones who’d tortured him near death at Isa’s behest.
Not exactly the type of person worthy of remorse.
“We can talk about this later,” the Huntsman finally told him, but Odin wasn’t a fan of his deadpan tone.
“Discussing it now won’t interrupt anything Yule is doing.”
“Except,” Hunter finally tore his gaze away from them and rested it on Odin. “I don’t want to get into it now. Here.”
He pretended not to understand, glancing around them. “What’s wrong with here?”
As if summoned by his words, a piercing wail sliced across the warehouse, coming from the other side where a different Frost soldier was being questioned about Isa’s possible whereabouts.
To his credit, Hunter merely lifted a brow as if to say, “That”, and then turned back to the bloodied man before them.
Yule was still demanding answers, and though the man was bawling, snot and tears leaking down his face, he kept repeating over and over again that he didn’t know.
