Page 30 of Tethered

I snort because we both know the answer to that.

“I’m not saying women can’t be evil. Of course they can. But from the first moment when Eve was cast as the villain and Adam the unfortunate soul she corrupted, women have always been less worthy somehow. I like to think this was Mother Nature’s way of answering the insult.”

“Men were killed in the witch trials,” I point out.

“Some. Not many, though.” He concedes my point. “More in Europe, I believe. But even then, it was only ten to fifteen percent. The rest were women.”

“And of those women, I wonder how many were witches and not innocent women who were scorned by men.”

To that, he has no answer. I rein in my temper and move back to the original topic. “You were talking about your family dynamic and how it changed, but you didn’t mention what changed it.”

“For me, it was high school. Kids in our circle were usually homeschooled, but my mom was too sick to teach, and my dadwas too busy. So I went to mainstream high school with my peers and realized something was really fucking wrong with my homelife and that of my dad’s friends.”

I wait for him to give me more, but he takes a few deep breaths first.

“I didn’t know how subservient my mom was to my dad until I saw other family dynamics. Parents arguing, laughing, the mom calling the shots and making decisions, things like that. I never saw anyone hit their spouse for saying something embarrassing.”

I look up at him sharply, but his focus is a million miles away. “He beat her every day of her life for a multitude of reasons. She was too pretty, too ugly, too loud, too quiet—you name it, it was a reason to beat her. And because she accepted it so readily, and all the families they surrounded themselves with did too, I didn’t question it.”

He sounds cut up about it now, like he can’t believe he ever thought it was normal.

“You were a kid who didn’t know any better. This whole town knew what was happening to me. Do you know how many people stepped in to stop it?”

He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. We both already know the answer to that.

“What happened to your mom?”

“She was sick for a long time. Nobody told us what, but I guessed it was cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t the cancer that took her in the end, it was my dad. She couldn’t perform her wifely duties, so he strangled her for it.”

“Shit.”

“I think that’s the root of the hatred, you know. It had nothing to do with your line having gifts. It was that they werebestowed upon women, and that was seen as unforgivable to the men in my family.”

“I’m guessing in the same vein that only women could be witches, only men could be hunters.”

“Except your line had no control over producing sons without powers or daughters with them. My line only accepted men as hunters because they were deemed stronger.”

“And now? If it weren’t for what you told me, I wouldn’t even know hunters existed around these parts.”

“They don’t anymore. I took care of that.”

I rear back and look at him harder then. The darkness swirls in his eyes, washing away the vulnerability from before, showing me a glimpse of the man who rules a criminal empire.

He blanks his expression, his tone empty. “They stood by him when she died. They blamed her for getting sick, even started whispers that perhaps she had some witch in her bloodline somewhere.”

I close my eyes and huff at the irony, thinking of all those innocent women during the trials who had been accused and found guilty of practicing witchcraft. All because a man said it was true. Clearly, history taught us nothing. But something tells me this man taught them a lesson none of them will forget anytime soon.

“You killed him? Your dad, I mean?”

“My father was a complicated man who liked to decompress by hunting, not just witches, but animals too. Such a shame that he and his friends stayed in a cabin where the gas fireplace hadn’t been serviced in so long. If it had been, they might all still be here. They don’t call carbon monoxide poisoning the silent killer for nothing.”

I bite my lip, believing with every fiber of my being that those men died because Austin made it so. And knowing what I do, I can’t wrangle up a sliver of pity for them.

“Most of the other wives and children moved away once their shackles of bondage were severed. But I guess I will always be a cowboy at heart. I didn’t want to leave the only memories I had of my mother, so I stayed—not in the same house, but in the same town. I renounced everything I knew about hunting witches and…turned my life in a different direction.”