Characters:: Rhett, Arcadia, Jeff Word Count:: 1,726 @xdirtywingsx
It was a call Cadi had never thought she was going to get. One of her litter mates was still alive. More than that, he seemed to be relatively okay, all things considered.
Her hands were shaking as she waited for the sound of the car. Most of them didn’t do well with shadow travel at first so cars were easier. Sudden changes in scenery could trigger bad episodes for the first few months.
It was one of the neutral places, an unoccupied house that was mostly used when other members of the extended family were in town. It had been Cadi’s idea, a way to ease her brother into things. Jeff had agreed but made it clear that he would be outside the entire time. It was a fair compromise and it made her feel a little better too.
Rhett remembered her. He remembered the way she cried when they split them up, the way she had tried to cling to him. He remembered the first time he had ever wanted to kill anyone. One of the men had grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise and he had seen red.
The last thing he had heard of her had been when they were maybe eight. She had been sick. His handler had found it funny, kept telling him that his sister was going to die from infection.
He had stopped caring about anything after that. It had been easier not to feel. But that hadn’t been better. The hole had been filled, plugged with blood and gore and rage. The only thing he enjoyed anymore was smell of fear and the way others begged him not to hurt them.
Truth be told, Rhett hadn’t even believed Jeff when he had said Cadi was still alive. But the photo the man had showed him matched up well enough to what she would look like now and he had grown curious. Enough so to agree to meeting with her before any decisions were made on housing for him. Mostly because it sounded like they wanted to place him with Jeff’s grandparents with his sister and some of the others.
The car parked, the door unlocked and Rhett got out silently, his head tipped to the side ever so slightly as he scented the air. There was no one else there, just the girl inside the house. She smelled anxious but beneath that, she smelled like him.
The sound of the door opening made her jump, nerves getting the best of her. The last time one of her litter had been found, she never got the chance to see them. Eden had been too broken, beyond reach. But Rhett had survived, made it longer than most of them ever had. Survived it all longer than she thought she could have.
“H-hi,” she stammered, staring at him as if he were a ghost. It wasn’t a far fetched idea, not with the sort of people they were around. After all, their dad had been dead for years before Chance and Sera’s mother literally brought him back. Nothing was impossible to her anymore.
There was something off in his scent, but Cadi tried to ignore it, to tell herself that the lack of emotional signature should be expected. He probably didn’t remember her. Trauma had a way of fucking with memory, she had seen it first hand with Salem.
“Hey Cade.” Saying any part of her name felt foreign on her tongue, like he didn’t know what he was saying. Her emotions were all over the place and there was a tension in her that made him think of the fight or flight impulse. She seemed more flight than fight and it hit the switch too easily for him.
He knew he should be able to look at her and not see a victim, but he couldn’t. All he saw was a toy to play with, something to break and bleed. But if he made her bleed too quickly, the fun would be over before it could start and no one wanted that.
“What happened to everyone else? Eden? Cargo? Whiskey?” Each name made her flinch and it drove him to close the distance step by step. The fact that their names hurt her let him know they were all dead. They were the last two. He knew Whiskey had died on a hunt, the idiot had tried to run and they had triggered the fail safe.
As for Cargo, well, they had to make sure Rhett wasn’t going to turn on them. Their brother had put up a good fight, he had been bigger, but Rhett had been faster and had no sense of holding back.
“Dead,” she mumbled, her gaze dropping to the floor. “They had found Eden but she...” The blonde shook her head, not wanting to say it. It hurt too much still.
“Jeff said he doesn’t know the details for Cargo or Whiskey, just that they were both dead.” She had a feeling that had been a lie, but Cadi never pressed. She didn’t want to know the details when they might give her more nightmares.
“So, it’s just us left.” His words were soft but flat and he found he enjoyed the way his sister flinched when he touched her chin. He wanted her to look at him. “How did you survive, Cade? You were never exactly strong.”
It was sort of impressive, really, but he figured she had found something to live for.
She went to step out of his touch, his words making her uneasy. But the moment she tried, his grip on her chin shifted from gentle to bruising with the barest of effort on his part.
The spike in fear had him closing his eyes for a moment and breathing deeply before tugging her closer. “Do not try to run from me, Arcadia.”
If that wasn’t warning enough, his hand moved from her face to her neck and she stilled, immediately falling into passive habits. Fighting back had only ever made things worse when they were young and it was a behavior she knew she wasn’t going to break.
Rhett turned her slowly, amused at how much stiffened when he was behind her. His free hand moved to her stomach, chin resting on her shoulder. “Good girl,” he cooed, breath hot on her ear. “Now, did they tell you what they made me do when they split us up, hmm?”
Cadi shook her head, a faint whimper escaping her as she tried to force herself to stay calm. Her pulse was rapid against his fingers and she hated herself for it.
“They made me kill Cargo. He didn’t want to fight me, kept trying to push me back. All the while the handlers cheered and took bets.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she whined, trying to find some hint of a lie in his words and growing more distressed over it.
He smirked as he nuzzled into her hair. “You should know the truth. There were no weapons, they had taken the implants out. Only one of us was going to survive. They were all betting I’d die. I blinded him first, Cade. Dislocated his arm before going for his stomach. He was alive for most of it, screaming in pain.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as her knees buckled. A pained sob caught in her throat and the only thing keeping her upright was Rhett’s grip on her. “Please, please stop,” she begged, hating just how calm and content he sounded.
“Whiskey tried to run. I got to see how the implants worked up close when his was triggered. The pain he was in, the way he struggled to breathe. It was not a quick death. They wanted to make sure we felt that pain. Watching him convulse and claw at his own neck until he hit an artery was better than what I assume Christmas is supposed to be like.”
“Why are you telling me this? Why?” This was not how she had wanted things to go. She had wanted more of her family back, not to have her brother delight in telling her the gory details of their siblings deaths. Worse was the fact that he had enjoyed their deaths.
Rhett didn’t answer right away, his nose brushing against her neck as he smelled her. “You’re afraid of me,” he murmured, pressing her against him a little more firmly. “Good.”
She struggled a little at that, panic kicking into high gear as she tried to elbow him.
“I could break you, sister. I’d take my time too, make it last. I want to hear you cry for me, beg me to stop. I want to break you until there’s nothing left,” he breathed, his lips grazing her skin as he spoke. His fingers flexed against her stomach and he was honestly tempted to nip at her, to see if he could make her fear spike further.
Rhett hadn’t even heard the door open but he stiffened when Cadi suddenly relaxed. There was almost no time to process before he was on the floor and his sister was out of his line of sight. It was enough to make him lunge, but Jeff was stronger than he was.
“We have rules here, kid,” the elder male stated, nodding at Cadi in a silent permission to make her escape. He knew Chance would be there to pick her up. It was one of the few things he could count on completely. “We don’t torment our own.”
“She’s mine, not yours,” he snarled, eyes shfiting over as he tried to keep Arcadia in sight.
The laughter annoyed the mutt more and he couldn’t help but snarl at it. Not that it had any affect on Jeff. “Is she? I do feel her mate would beg to differ. Now, this just puts a wrench in things. I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable leaving you in my home with Ollie or the other kids, but I hardly have any other options since I cannot let you stay in the same house as Arcadia.” He shook his head, annoyed but only slightly.
When Rhett went to lunge again, Jeff merely hit him, eyes rolling when the hybrid crumpled to the floor. At least it would buy him some time to think.
