Not wanting another slap to the face, I kept my mouth shut. Lincoln was a creep, that much I had already learned when he’d tried to force himself on me after we’d hooked up and he’d been unable to take no for an answer. But this? Why the fuck was heenforcing orders at all? Who the fuck were these people and why were they at the RV park?
“It was so easy for you, wasn’t it?” He scoffed, his stare lethal.
Lincoln began pacing in front of me as I steeled myself. I had the feeling I was in for a monologue. So many people were behind Lincoln, pacing and doing other things that I just wished I could see Arze on the other side. He was drowned out from my vision and that hurt more than any slap. I just needed to know that he was okay and not getting the same treatment that I was.
When I failed to produce an answer, he decided to go on with his speech. “You got what you wanted from me and tossed me out like I was yesterday’s trash.” He ended his pacing to bend down to my eye level, yet again bouncing on his legs to keep his balance. “You didn’t even try to see if there was something more between us.”
“Lincoln, I—”
“I’m stillfuckingspeaking.” There was a tremor of anger to his voice that honestly made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Where the hell had he gotten this scary persona from? Even though I’d seen a glimpse of it before when he’d accosted me, it was nothing like this. Where had that cute blond guy I’d shared an amazing night with gone? There wasn’t a single trace of that guy left in the eyes of the one standing in front of me. “I even tried to make you see that we could’ve been more than just a one time thing, but you refused. So I figured, okay, he isn’t looking for anything serious, I’ll have to get over it.” Then he gave me a stare that I feared would leave a physical mark on my skin. The animosity, the hatred, the undeniable want to see me hurt shone back through the usually cool blue of his eyes. I could feel fear pumping alongside the blood in my veins. “And then you found an Orb to fuck.”
Awe caused my eyebrows to upturn in confusion. This was because I’d been with Arze and not him? Oh God, wait. How hadhe known I was with Arze? There’s no way this reaction from Lincoln was because he’d seen Arze coming out of my RV this morning.
Was it even still the same day? I had to assume I hadn’t lost that much time between consciousness or else Myers was liable to lose her shit and have the entire RV park looking for me.
“This is about you being jealous?” I knew he didn’t want me to speak, but I couldn’t just keep my thoughts to myself, not when it was painfully obvious that I had a big role in causing Lincoln’s snap from reality that had Arze and I in this current predicament.
“No.” Lincoln answered honestly, giving me a half-smirk. “This is about you not wanting to see where things with us could go, but then doing the complete opposite with afuckingOrb.”
That was the second time he’d referred to Arze being an Orb with a weaponized hatred behind it. I was starting to get the sense that he wasn’t as accepting of Orbs as I had originally thought. He’d never mentioned as such during the bonfires at the RV park, but then again, humans loved living behind their masks. And if there was one thing I’d come to learn about Lincoln, it was that he had some serious real estate behind his.
I opened my mouth to counter what he was saying, to give some sort of excuse or explanation to why I’d felt more of a connection to Arze than I had with him without setting him off, but Lincoln spoke before I got the chance.
“I never really understood my family’s long history of hating Orbs until I overheard your conversation with him the other day,” He stabbed an obvious glare in Arze’s direction, turning back to me in an instant. “And I’ve been understanding it a lot more ever since.”
“That day at the picnic area?” He’d overheard us discussing whether or not we were going to try and spend more time together outside of work, to have sex again. I could, objectively,understand how that might have hurt Lincoln’s feelings, but how had him being upset about that turned to this? “You were eavesdropping.”
“Yes, I was fucking eavesdropping. I saw you two walk over to the picnic area and followed you. To hear you’d had sex with a monster like him didn’t shock me near as much as hearing you talk about how you wanted to do it again. That pissed me the fuck off.” He stood up just to rear his leg back, his heavy boot connecting with my stomach and making me fall on my side as he repeatedly kicked me while he spoke again. “Why him? What’s so fucking special about him? What’s wrong withme, Krueger?”
Chapter 27
I couldn’t have answered backif I wanted to, too busy trying to block his kicks and clutching my stomach when I failed to. I never would have thought after the night we had shared together that this was how Lincoln could treat me. Even though I wasn’t able to dodge most of his kicks, I’d clearly dodged a bullet in ending things with him.
He stopped kicking after his last sentence, and I was still reeling from the sudden influx of pain to speak back. Lincoln began to pace again, trying to keep his composure. I could tell from the way he tore his hands through his hair that he hadn’t meant to lose his temper and kick me, that he felt bad about it, but that didn’t make it okay.
At this point, I just wanted to see a glimpse of Arze to make sure he wasn’t getting kicked too. Knowing that he could grow his limbs wasn’t lost on me, thinking that the humans guarding him might even be holding guns or something to keep him from attacking outright.
Oh god. Lincoln had overheard us at the picnic area. Which mean he could have heard everything. Meaning he knew that if a tythwig and human sexual encounter were reported to the Triad, bad things would follow.
“How much did you overhear, Lincoln?” I had to know if that was why he’d gathered us together. If it was just because I’d been fucking Arze, then Arze wouldn’t be here with me, or worse. “What is the point of all of this?”
“I heard about the tythwig council or whatever, if that’s what you’re asking.” He beamed with pride over his discovery. “One call to any random fucking tythwig and I guess they’ll take care of both of you, won’t they?” Rage poured through me, and I went to stand but Lincoln produced a gun from the back of his ironed grey slacks. “Don’t even think about it, Krueger. Stay exactly where you are. On your knees, where you belong.”
A group of the people helping Lincoln came over, towing Arze with them. My heart lit up to see that he was okay, but that ended when they pushed him to the ground next to Lincoln, right in front of me. Two of them had guns similar to Lincoln, both of them pointed right at Arze’s head as he tried to balance himself on his knees.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, not caring that we were surrounded by Lincoln and his weird squad of idiots to voice my concern.
“Enough talking.” Lincoln waved the gun around while he spoke, making me nervous that he would accidentally fire it on a whim. “I haven’t even gotten to the best part. How lucky I got that this team is here to help me.”
Surveying the help in question, I kept my mouth shut. It wouldn’t help if I commented on how basic they looked, or how fucked up it was that they were playing into his jealousy.
“I tried so fucking hard to separate myself from the family.” He sighed, still waving the gun around like a goddamn maniac. Lincoln had mentioned that he had left Massachusetts because a lot of drama was going on with his family, needing a break. I kept my lips closed. Commenting on that not being a justifiable reason for his actions also wouldn’t do any good. “But when mybrother called saying he’d be coming to town, I took advantage of the new followers to the family.” He gestured wide toward the mass of people still milling about. “They’d do anything to make sure an Orb gets what’s coming to them.”
“Lincoln, what are you—”
“Don’t you get it, Krueger?” That was such a stupid fucking question. How the hell was I supposed to follow this spiteful journey he was on? “I couldn’t get away from the Rhodes family hatred of Orbs even if I wanted to.”
My mouth slacked. Did he just say theRhodesfamily? I’d heard about them, only through various headlines and news clips. They were gaining a lot of attention right now for their father, Senator Archibald Rhodes, and his decline in health. There’d also been the recent discovery that Aspen Rhodes, the senator’s daughter, had been behind a massive petrylle kidnapping ring in D.C. My eyes flared as I recalled another detail about her kidnapping. She had acquired a hate group of people calling themselves Hellgrammites. If Lincoln had some sway with the Rhodes family, that had to be who the group of thugs were. His other daughters, who’s names I couldn’t remember at the moment, had kidnapped a guy in Virginia after following the orders of the eldest Rhodes sibling, Warren, who was under fire for being the current Chief of Staff.
