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Fuck. I look away, suddenly fascinated by the scattered tools on the workbench because the alternative is letting Sentinel see exactly how hard that hits. “So… what happened?”
“Earth happened.” I glance back. “He spent years bouncing around. Fighting pits, mercenary work, protection when somebody paid enough. He figured if everyone already saw a monster when they looked at him, he might as well make the monster useful,” Sentinel states.
“That’s how he got the name Carnage?”
Sentinel shakes his head. “No. He was still Rhett then.”
That catches me off guard. “Rhett?”
Sentinel smiles faintly. “Yeah, don’t tell him I told you.”
“What’s he gonna do… yell at me?”
Sentinel stares at me for half a second, then he laughs. “Fuck. You really are perfect for him.”
Heat creeps into my cheeks. “Keep talking, angel.”
“Raze found him eventually in an underground supernatural fight in Vermont. Rhett had been there three nights and apparently put six men in the hospital.”
“That sounds more like him.”
“Yeah, Raze had his eye on him.” Sentinel picks up the wrench again, turning it absently between his fingers. “Everybody else saw a dangerous hellhound who needed putting down before he caused trouble. Raze watched him fight and noticed something nobody else bothered paying attention to.”
“What?”
“He only hurt people once they stepped into the ring.”
That pulls me up short.
Sentinel nods. “Outside it, Rhett never touched anybody. Drunk asshole shoved him? He walked away. Someone called him a demon mutt? He walked away. Guy running the fights tried to send him after someone who owed money?”
I already know the answer. “He refused.”
“Exactly.” Sentinel’s mouth twitches. “Raze offered him a place with the Kings that night… Rhett told him to go fuck himself.”
I laugh. “Of course, he did.”
“Raze came back the next night.”
“And got told to fuck himself again?”
Sentinel smirks. “Pretty much.”
“How long did this go on for?”
“Three fucking weeks.” Sentinel grins. “Eventually Raze stopped asking and started showing up with beer instead. Rhett ignored those, too, right up until the night he finally sat down and drank one.”
Something about that gets me, maybe because I can picture it too easily. Carnage sitting there determined to want nothing from anybody while Raze quietly refuses to leave him alone.
“Couple of weeks later, he came to New Hampshire,” Sentinel continues. “Took him months before he stopped sleeping with a weapon under his pillow. Longer before he stopped waiting for Raze to prove there was a catch. Rhett had spent his whole life being useful to people because of what he could do, so he kept expecting the Kings to eventually ask the same thing of him.”
“Did they?”
Sentinel shakes his head. “Raze never asked him for anything he wouldn’t ask from every other brother wearing that patch.”
My gaze drifts toward Carnage’s bike. I can imagine what that must have done to someone who’d spent his entire existence waiting for the next order.
“He settled eventually,” Sentinel says. “Started believing maybe Raze actually meant it when he said he had a place here. Started letting some of the brothers close enough to become family.”
