Page 77 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

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I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be in the back room, listening to the sound of another set of girls gathering in the holding room. I didn’t want to be holding my fucking mask, waiting to give the waiver speech for the hundredth time.

Most of all, I didn’t want to hunt a girl who wasn’t Maeve because I didn’t want to live with a girl who wasn’t Maeve.

Fuck.

I paced the concrete floor of the small room, the red bulb hanging from the ceiling casting its familiar eerie light.

I’d been in shock when we’d come home to find her gone. Then I’d been ashamed, an emotion I thought I’d banished to the trash can of useless emotions, along with romantic love, guilt, and concern.

She’d left early because of me. Because I’d ignored her at Cassie’s. And then, when she’d tried to reach me again, I’d pushed her away for a second time, and that had been worse because I’d been fucking her, something I’d dreamed of doing since she’d first stood across from me in the holding room.

The door opened and Poe and Remy walked in carrying their masks. “Room is filling up. It’s almost time.”

“I know.”

“We could skip it,” Poe said.

He didn’t want to be here any more than I did.

“No.” We were going to hunt, if only on principle.

If only to prove that Maeve hadn’t brought us to our knees.

Remy raked his hand through his hair. “I’m not really into it, to be honest.”

“And I don’t really care.”

The tension was thick and familiar between us. I wasn’t sure they’d forgiven me for driving Maeve away — not that I cared — and we’d spent the last six weeks alternating between giving each other the silent treatment and arguing.

The loft, once filled with Maeve’s smile and the smell of her amazing food, had become as morose as a tomb.

We’d made sure she was okay from afar. She’d gotten a new phone, so we couldn’t track her on the app anymore, but it had been easy enough to confirm she was back to living with Bailey and still working at the mall.

That was as far as we’d taken it. Remy and Poe had argued for contact, an apology, but I’d put my foot down because there was no point. Maeve was always going to leave. That she’d done it three weeks early hardly mattered.

Or that was what I told myself anyway.

The door opened and Titus stuck his head in. “We’re full.”

“We’ll be right there,” Poe said.

I put on my mask, tried to let it dissolve the real me, the person who’d let Maeve Haver get too close.

Remy put his on with a sigh and I waited for Poe to do the same to open the door.

The men were already there, a motley crew of hockey masks, skeleton masks, and Scream masks, and of course, the fucking Hawks. I knew who the men were behind the masks, but here we were nameless and faceless.

All the better to hunt.

I picked up the clipboard that held the waivers and turned my attention to the girls across the room, and that was when I saw her, standing at the front of the crowd with her head held high, a challenge in her fiery blue eyes.

It was Maeve.

And she was here for another Hunt.

Thanks so much for reading Rule the Night. Read Bleed the Shadows, book two in the Blackwell Butchers series, and find out what happens when Maeve joins another Hunt — and is hunted by more than just the Butchers.