Page 15 of Outlawed

With a snarl, he pulls out a gun from his back and points it at his head. Fear punches me in the gut.

“You think I don’t know what kind of man I am? I’m my father’s son, right? Right?” he roars as Shepard slowly sits up, and Riggs tries to cover more of my body with his.

“That fucking book. You asked me how we had it? It arrived addressed to my mother a week after your grandparents died.”

“You think my mother sent it.”

He nods, tapping the gun against his temple. “She must have figured out what kind of man your father was and guessed the book would be safer in the hands of your enemies, the one place he wouldn’t look for it, than with him. It wasn’t until my mother died that my dad went through her shit and found it. Those missing pages were already torn from the book. I had no idea then that…” He swallows before he drops to his knees, the gun shaking.

“I didn’t know that your virgin blood would grant immunity to your powers or that it would make a link between you and whoever you gave it to, though I suspect my father knew all along.”

“A link?” Shepard asks, his eyes on the gun as he waits for Austin to drop his guard.

“Is that why she still feels something for you despite what you did?” Riggs asks. “And why she broke when she found out the truth, even though you guys had barely even begun?”

“Truthfully? I don’t know,” he chokes out as I pull free from Riggs’s arms.

I let my tears flow as I reach out a shaky hand and wrap it around the gun barrel. “I felt something for you before then. That day you scooped me up off the pavement, I somehow knew our lives would become entangled. I just didn’t know how.”

He resists for a second before he lets go, and I hand the gun off to Shepard. I cup his face, as I stare into the eyes of a man I both love and hate.

“Tell me the rest.”

His eyes slip closed as he leans into my hand. “I think my father planned to wait until you turned eighteen. Then he would steal your virginity and tie you to him the same way your father did to your mother.”

“But he hated witches.”

“But he loved the idea of being more powerful. And he hated your father with a passion. Not because of what he did or who he was⁠—”

“But because he succeeded where your father failed. He had almost complete control of this town. Almost…” I let my voice drift off as I tilt my head. “You killed him because of what he did to your mother, right? That’s what you said.”

“That was part of the reason, but she chose that life for her and for us. It was hard to feel sympathy for a woman who felt none when her sons were being beaten.”

“Fucking Jesus.” Shepard gets up and runs his fingers through his hair.

I look over at him. “You can’t be the sheriff in here. When you insisted you stay, you stayed as Shepard.”

“He just admitted to murder.”

“Not an uncommon factor in this group. Right now, Sheriff, you’re the odd man out.”

He snaps his mouth shut, and I see the irritation moving over his face. Eventually, he sits back on the end of the bed and waits for Austin to continue.

“He kept talking about you, making plans, and you were still a little fucking kid. I didn’t like the look in his eye…”

“You killed him for me.” The statement makes my head fill with static.

“I’d wake up in a cold sweat, convinced I’d find your little body chained in the basement. I wouldn’t have put it past him to keep you, to groom you until you came of age. By then, he’d have had you so convinced of your love for him you wouldn’t question any of it.”

“Just like your mother.”

He swallows and nods. “Once he was dead, I put the book in the safe and vowed to stay away from you. I made myself powerful so your father knew better than to fuck with me, and I thought that would be it. I ignored your name every time it was brought up, and did nothing when I heard how much of a dick Andy was to you because it was safer for you to be hated by him than hunted.”

“And then fate made our paths cross.”

He runs his fingers through his hair and nods. “I had no business feeling anything for you. I was twenty-six to your sixteen, and I had so much blood on my hands by that point, I felt like I was tainting you just carrying you into that clinic.”

“But you did feel something,” Riggs says. I see he’s not happy about it, yet he’s resigned to it.