average human’s Reviews > All Hail > Status Update

Does he have bolt cutters handy? I want both his trigger fingers, Illi can pickle them for me.
Again, I gag except this time Aodhan hears and takes notice. “How are you doing over there, Queenie? We can go get some air if you want.”
I shake my head but keep my eyes where they are. “Lips is being gross, she wants his trigger fingers and she wants him to feel them come off. Apparently bolt cutters are the most efficient method of removal, do we have any spare or should I call Illi?”
The squeaking of the boots comes to an abrupt halt.
Clearly the Irish shooter still thought there was a chance of his making it out of here alive but there’s no way he’d be able to function without being able to work.
No fingers, no sniper.
“I’ve got it covered. Don’t you worry about it, Queenie, just keep your eyes on your work.”
I nod my head and thumb my way through some of Amanda Donnelley’s financial records that I’ve been sent by one of my contacts. He’s not as good as the Coyote but I’m conscious of the fact that Jackson lied to us all about Nate and I don’t want to start relying on him for absolutely everything.
I zone out as I read the files over and over again to find something, anything, that is a clue for what the hell her deal is… where she gets her power, what it is about her that makes Atticus sweat.
I’ll admit his reaction to her has made the entire endeavor personal.
I hear the muffled screaming and the crunching noise of the bolt cutters but, after swallowing the bile back down my throat, I push it all away and use the time wisely. I have a phone full of pressing issues that need my attention and there are never enough hours in the day to get through it all.
I’m so focused on what I’m doing, and so trusting of Aodhan, that I don’t know exactly when Diarmuid dies, only that the thumping sound his body makes when Aodhan unties it from the chair startles me out of my work.
“Sorry, Queenie, I didn’t mean to scare you. Rigor mortis makes it a bitch to move them if I left him up there while I got you home,” he murmurs and I shrug.
I carefully repack my purse and stand up, keeping my back to what I’m sure is a blood-soaked mess behind me.
There’s some movement and grunting behind me and then Aodhan walks up beside me with his jacket zipped all the way up. His hands are a little bloody as are his jeans but the jacket is clean.
“I’ll get you home and then I’ll call Illi to help me get rid of the body… he had some suggestions for the disposal.”
I roll my eyes because of course the Butcher wants to get creative with Diarmuid’s final resting place, just to make sure it isn’t all that restful. It’s exactly what the traitor deserves too, after what he did to betray Lips and Harley, but I don’t really need to know about it.
I just need to know he got the job done. “He’s definitely dead? Where are the fingers? If you say you have them on you I’m probably going to need at least a month before you attempt to touch me again. How do you feel about sitting in a bathtub of bleach for an hour or so?”
He smirks at me and gestures for me to follow him out. I appreciate the distance he puts between us both because there is no fucking way I want to touch him right now.
I’ve hit my limit.
I’m confident enough in myself and the value I bring to any table to admit that. I don’t need to kill things just to stay relevant and keep my place as the Queen Aodhan and Illi keep insisting I am.
Aodhan seals the shipping container back up, snapping on a series of padlocks just to be sure we don’t get a missing body on our books, and then I follow him out into the sunlight.
I know as soon as we see the car that something is wrong. Aodhan pauses, his back stiff, and then he growls out a stream of vicious curses under his breath. I glance around him to find another photo of me with my eyes crossed out pinned to the side of the Impala, a knife sticking out from between my eyes in a clear threat.
Jesus H. Christ.
I glance around at the docks but there aren’t any security cameras in sight and Aodhan had been careful to make sure that we didn’t go in there until there was no one around so I can’t remember having seen any cars or homeless people.
Aodhan grabs the knife by the handle and yanks it out with a terrible screeching noise that only lasts a second but sends shivers down my spine regardless. He hands me the photo and then opens the car door, pausing for a second and then says, “Step back, Queenie. Lemme check there isn’t a fucking bomb on board before you get in.”
A bomb.
For fuck’s sake. I should have thought of that, especially after what happened to Harley’s Mustang back in junior year at Hannaford, but it’s as though my brain is still rattled from the entire mess of a day and I’m not thinking how I normally would be.
Aodhan crawls around the car on his belly until he's sure there’s nothing there and then he checks every possible crevice and corner of the interior before he lets me take my seat, a grim look on his face.
“I’ll call Illi once I’ve got you home safe. Are you sure the security there is legit? Nothing getting through it? Because this asshole is persistent, I’ll give the creepy fuck that,” he says as he pulls out of the parking lot and cuts through the slums to get me home through the quickest route.
I nod and pick the photo back up to look it over, swallowing down the bile in my throat. “Jackson redid the entire property this time, there’s no way anyone can get through it. Aodhan… this photo is from the gala.”
His jaw is tense like he’s grinding his teeth. “I know, Queenie. Whoever is doing is fucking stalking you and I’m not gonna let that shit fly. I’ll check over that mansion of yours and then I’ll go hunting. There’re a few leads I can try and I’m sure Illi will have an idea of where to go next. Have you told the Wolf about this yet?”
It’s strange that he always reverts to calling her by her street name but I nod. “I’ve been keeping her updated. I… gloss over it a bit more with the guys. Harley has already commented on how hard it’s been to keep Ash on the tour and if he found out that the photos are new ones and not just high school?”
Aodhan nods. “You’d be wrapped up in bubble wrap the moment he got back.”
I nod and fuss with my purse, just little soothing movements that settle my nerves down enough that the need to scream doesn’t overwhelm me. “The whole point of me staying behind was to find myself… and to prove to myself that I don’t need to hide behind my brother. If he comes running back here now then it’s all been for nothing.”
When we get back to the mansion Aodhan pulls up outside the front gate while I call the Coyote to review the security cameras before we go in. We’re both being extra cautious because the Jackal certainly taught us that lesson in the worst way and there’s no way I’m being kidnapped by some psycho again.
Once we have the all clear I direct him to park right at the front door in the spot Illi usually uses. With the electric gate shut and the sensors all on I should feel safe but when Aodhan helps me out of the car the hole from the stalker’s knife is like a morbid reminder that someone really has set their sights on me.
I just don’t know if they want me dead or just scared but neither are happening anytime soon.
Aodhan goes straight upstairs to call Illi and shower in my bathroom to clean his uncle’s blood from his body.
I don’t think about it at all.
I know that I’m the only one who hasn’t cleaned the blood of my victims off of myself here, Lips and the guys have all cleaned themselves up wherever the last couple of years, but I’ve only scrubbed myself raw from my own blood. It makes some kind of cosmic sense that Aodhan would be up there in my ensuite using my soaps and shampoos to scrub away the mess he’d made of Diarmuid on my behalf.
I go down to the studio and get changed into my ballet gear. My leotard and tights are a little looser than they should be and I make a note to get back to eating more regularly now I’m not keeping to the guys’ eating schedule. Harley never failed to keep me eating every three or so hours thanks to his high metabolism. It takes a lot of calories to be as jacked as he is.
I wince as I put my feet into the pointe shoes, cursing under my breath as useless tears fill my eyes. They hurt more than they should to go in and there’s a good chance I’m not going to be able to dance as well as I could before the Jackal burned me.
I stretch out for twice as long as I would normally just to be sure I’m ready to move my body without risking my body any more than necessary. I run through one of my old routines slowly, testing to see which of my muscles feel tight and which are more sore than they were previously.

BEFORE THE JACKAL had taken me and damaged my feet, I was working through the routines required to dance as Aurora in ‘Sleeping Beauty’. I didn’t have any grand plans of becoming a professional dancer, I don’t want to be some pretty thing for rich men to covet, but the idea of never being able to push my body like this again is terrifying.
I need to dance and feel the burning of my muscles the same way that Ash needs to run until he loses feeling in his legs. We need to push our bodies into feeling something so we don’t drown in the overwhelmingly crushing doom of our lives.
I take a deep breath and I start.
It hurts but I push on, holding my core and watching my form, counting in my brain to shift my focus away from the pain. Lips taught me all about that. There are three different languages that I can work through if I need to although it’s been a while since I had to use Russian.
I make it through the first act before I pause and find Aodhan sitting on the floor, leaning against the mirror there with one leg bent up and his arm resting on top like this is just a regular occurrence for him.
The look in his eyes makes my breath catch in my throat.
Breath control is something a dancer always has to work on and I try to hide the effect he’s having on me but the smirk that stretches over his lips is telling.
“No one has ever looked that fucking good in a tutu before, Queenie. That shit should be illegal… I can’t believe your brother was okay with you dancing in it.”
I roll my eyes and walk over to him, slipping my shoes off before stretching. Okay, slipping isn’t the right word for describing the torture of pulling them off of my battered and scarred feet but I’m trying to look effortless and elegant. I don’t look down at the state they’re in and, thankfully, Aodhan doesn’t either.
He’s too busy eyeing off every inch of my body in the leotard. It’s tight enough that it fits like a second skin and if I weren’t wearing the tights with it there wouldn’t be all that much covering the apex of my thighs.
“He’s not my keeper. I listen to what he says about my safety but he doesn’t ever have a say on what I wear. He knows it and you better know it too.”
His smirk gets wider and his eyes finally land on mine as he grabs my hand and tugs me over to him until I’m straddling his lap. “Why would I complain? I get to see you in this and that’s something I’m not fucking around with.”
It was easier back in the Impala to be this close to him because my mind was so chaotic. Now that I’ve burned some of the energy off, I don’t know what the hell to do. Should I loop my arms around his neck and kiss me until we both forget about the photo and the corpse back in the shipping container and just fuck on the floor of my studio?
Shit.
“Aren’t you supposed to be going back to the docks with Illi? What are you doing back down here?”
He groans and pulls me in close. “I got distracted, I can see your nipples through this thing and fuck if it doesn’t make me hungry for you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how your skin might taste or how sweet your pussy must be. I’ve never spent so long obsessing over anything in my life and then I come down here to say goodbye and you’re twirling around like a wet dream. Game over, if you hadn’t stopped when you did, I was probably going to get started without you.”
His hips lift up and grind into me until I can feel every inch of his very interested dick sliding along my pussy through the layers of fabric between us. I choke back a moan, because I’ve messed around with guys before but none of them had shown any interest in eating me out and I’m very interested in trying it out.
Lips doesn’t tell me a thing about her sex life at my own request, because gross, but I’ve heard the screaming that comes out of her bedroom here and the guys’ room back at Hannaford and I want that.
I want to forget I’m supposed to be quiet.
I want to come so hard everyone knows it’s happening.
I want to feel that smug sort of satisfaction that you get when you’re wanted and loved and worshiped by the person you’re with.
I haven’t had that yet. Sure, I came both times I had sex, even when I wasn’t supposed to but there was no afterglow or worship happening. Only fear and jealousy and desperation.
Aodhan groans and pulls me forward more. I assume he’s going to kiss me and make good on his words, spread me out and give me the experience I want, but then his hand moves to fish around in his pocket until he has his phone in his fist.
He answers with a snarl, “I’m busy, I’ll call you back.”
I raise an eyebrow at him when he frowns and huffs down the line, “It can wait… fuck it, I’ll do time… this is worth it… fuck, fine. Fine, I’m on my way. I’d kill the cunt all over again if I could.”
Great.
I’m still not getting what I want or need. I might as well be a fucking pariah at how this is going. I slump down until my forehead is resting on his shoulder, inhaling low and slow, enjoying the smell of my soap on his skin mixing with the aftershave he uses.
Am I going to have to make it happen for myself? Am I going to have to sit him down and explain exactly what I want just to get a chance at it?
Christ.
I don’t have time in my life for that.
“I don’t want to go, Queenie, and if it weren't about your safety I wouldn’t. Just as soon as I find this fucking cunt coming after you, I’ll never leave again.”
I nod and stand up. I can get in some more practice, enough to burn the frustration out of me that I don’t want to admit is entirely sexual. He grabs my wrist and pulls me in to kiss me again, his tongue tangling with mine until that frustration is at an all-time high.
“Leave now, O’Cronin, before the Butcher comes down here and makes you his problem,” I mumble against his lips and he groans at me.
I’m saying it for me because if he doesn’t leave now, I might just beg and that’s not going to happen.
I’ve never been the type.