Zeus’s rings dug into my skin around my wrist as he jerked me down to his level. His breath was whiskey soaked, and his tattoos looked faded and blown out from this distance, and yet his face was well preserved under the white beard.
“If I wanted you to know, you would, Rothschild. Remember who owns the Clave next time you raise your voice at me,” he practically snarled. All he was missing was the foam coating his lips and the bark to go with the bite.
When he let go of my wrist, I rubbed the skin, like that would be the remedy to scrubbing the marks away, while I walked back to Abigail who was sitting across from Khaos. Vic sat down on the other side of the bunny, Bo was next to Abigail, boxing her in, and our parents took the seats closest to Zeus.
They didn’t need to kneel to worship him. It was written all over their all-too-ready-to-please faces.
After the festivities finally died down, Abigail finally stopped shaking against me as we waited for the valet with my car to pull up. That was the moment Vic walked down the steps to my side with that look in his eye that seemed demanding.
“Handle your shit, and then we are having a meeting.”
“Nah, thanks though. Better shit to do than whatever the fuck you plan to say.”
His body sidestepped and his arms folded tightly. “You started this. The four of us are connected, and now you dragged us into this.”
“I’m not leaving her alone,” I insisted, still clutching onto a very stoic Abigail, who hadn’t said one word yet.
Vic’s car pulled up, and he rounded it to the driver’s side, still talking: “I’ll text the guys. We’ll meet at your place.”
It didn’t sound optional, because it wasn’t. The four of us were bound by the four bloodlines of power, and one bad decision to give the Clave a middle finger rippled into their peaceful lives.
Not by choice. Nothing was choice, fate, or happenstance. You either have control, or you don’t.
I don’t. Apparently.
I could hear their cars pull into my driveway without much paranoia sharpening my listening skills. They could wait. I didn’t care. I made it clear I had better things to do, like make sure Abigail wasn’t shaken up so hard it changed her.
Unzipping her dress in the back, I could see her scars up close, just like she had seen mine. There wasn’t much point in denying the fact that I loved her anymore. It was pretty fucking hard to ignore.
“I have to talk to the guys. I’m saying I don't want to.”
Spinning around in my arms and letting the dress pool at her feet, her fingertips touched my jaw. “I love you. All of you. I know it won’t be easy for you…”
Wrapping my arms around her, my hand pushed her closer to me. “You’re the easiest part of my whole life. They’ll be on our side.”
Nodding her head like she knew had a smile crack over my lips. Abigail was smarter than I wanted to admit. Fuck, Abigail was a lot of things I didn’t want to admit. She had power over me, and I didn’t give that shit to just anyone.
Letting her shower off Oscar and the whole night, I changed out of the suit I was forced into wearing for the ball. It felt like a straitjacket against my every impulse to be insane.
Comfortable in fitted joggers and a black plain shirt, I glanced into the bathroom, where I left the door open purposely, before heading downstairs to talk with the guys.
All three of them stood next to their cars, all undone from the polished look we all sported only a half hour ago.
Khaos had no shirt on, shocker, with his dress pants hanging low on his hips like a fucking Calvin Klein ad. He would walk around naked if people let him.
Bo threw a hoodie on in place of his weird-ass dress shirt he had been sporting.
Vic, well, he was perfectly comfortable with just the sleeves rolled up. Perfect cult member first, and everything else second.
Shrugging, I popped an eyebrow. “Well? You wanted this meeting.” I was staring right at Vic when I spoke.
Instead, Khaos sliced the tension the way he had a talent for. “Love? Pregnant? I mean, damn, man. You don’t even date. Really jumped in the deep end.”
Looking up through my eyebrows, I gave him a stern look. He was on my side already, but it sounded like he needed some winning over too.
“Shit happens. Can we move on now?”
Vic stood up taller, no longer leaning against his car, trying to stay quiet. “Shit doesn’t ever just happen to us. We’re above that excuse. It doesn’t matter how badly you fucked up. How are we fixing this?”
I could tell by the look in his eye that he meant Abigail needed to be shipped away or killed. He only worked in those two options.
“Not the way you’re thinking. No one is touching her.”
Khaos was fucking play fighting with Bo, while the grownups talked—distracting, as always.
“What other options do we have, Grimm? Run to our mommies and daddies, hoping they have some mercy? Not really hating breaking this to you, but they’re as merciful as fucking Satan.”
Khaos, being the chaotic mess he was, was in a headlock under Bo’s arm when he spoke up: “There’s always the blood oath. That’s what makes the Clave exclusive, our blood and the four families. Do a blood oath.”
Bo pushed him aside, and I looked to the other guys to tell me that wasn’t a solution, that they had a better idea, or how crazy that was. No one spoke. It was the only real solution to the humanity I stumbled upon.
“You owe me one,” Vic said before disappearing into his car and following the guys out.
GRIMM
A fucking blood oath? That was the solution to me loving Abigail.
It was the loophole I was searching for, hoping for, and nearly giving myself an anxiety attack over.
Of course Khaos couldn’t offer any real information beyond a crazy idea. He didn’t know any logistics or how to even perform the ceremony.
He was just an idea man, while Vic was all about the devil in the details. I was the fixer, and Bo was the kind of creep that made these ideas seem normal, because no one was as mentally scrambled as much as he was.
That's how we gauged ideas by his reaction. Normally everything was a safe bet. When he thought something was a bad idea, it normally was… if the psychopath in the room thinks so too.
We were all in my garage, plotting the rest of the night. We were dedicated to making this blood oath happen before Abigail confirmed the pregnancy and started showing all in the same time frame. I knew better than anyone this was time sensitive, and all around sensitive, when it came to breaking the rules.
I never parked my cars in the garage; it was simply a storage unit connected to my house. Plastic, guns, ammo, rope, trash bags… everything I thought I needed as death, but really all you needed was a bad attitude.
Khaos was putting on black latex gloves when he suggested, “We’re gonna need proof. The Clave isn’t going to lay off without proof she’s not their problem.”
“Proof? We aren’t killing her, Khaos.”
There was no real plan. This was the plan unfolding in front of us all, and it started with proof and moved to death pretty quickly. Getting the four of us to agree to anything would be the true apocalypse. Us charging into the unknown, all our own way of handling control, was the best we could do.