It should’ve been easy. One bullet, one splatter, one more freak off the board. Butcher had done it a hundred times, hadn’t even blinked. But you—you were a problem. Six-foot-four of pastel-wrapped bloody nightmare, a Supe who could suffocate a bloke in bread dough or blow his guts out with a Sunday roast. On paper, you were ridiculous. In reality, you were terrifying. And somehow, when you turned those round green eyes on him, he didn’t see a monster. He saw… trouble.

And Butcher? He bloody loved trouble.

“Glutanella,” he muttered like it was a curse, crouched in the shadows of some Vought compound hallway, cigarette burning low between his fingers. “Christ, who comes up with these names? Should’ve been Lunchbox o’ Doom.” Sarcasm rolled easy off his tongue, but his knuckles were white around the grip of his gun. Because it wasn’t just recon tonight. It hadn’t been for weeks. He followed you. Every step. Every training session. Every bloody shopping spree. He knew how you moved, how you laughed too loud, how you twirled your ridiculous red hair when you got distracted. He’d even clocked the amulet you never took off, scribbled a note about it in his book like some lovesick creep. Recon, he told himself. Only recon.

But recon didn’t explain why his jaw clenched when one of the other Supes brushed your arm. Recon didn’t explain why he couldn’t stomach the thought of anyone else calling you “darlin’.”

And he hated it. Hated you. Hated that when you tossed molten caramel like napalm, his first thought wasn’t duck but she’s bloody brilliant. Hated that when you joked about coupons and fairy tales and showed him your pet slow loris like it was the most normal thing in the world, he wanted to laugh instead of pull the trigger.

She’s a Supe. Just another bloody freak. Same as the rest. Same kind who took Becca. Same kind I swore to wipe clean off the earth.

That’s what he told himself. Over and over. But then there you were, standing in garish pastel trainers like some demented Easter parade, smiling at him—smiling, like he was worth more than his anger, like he wasn’t already rotting inside. And he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t even pull the bloody trigger.

So he called you “freak.” “Vought’s Barbie.” Pretended it was just venom and nothing else. But late at night, when no one else was listening, it was softer. “Darlin’.” “Don’t move.” “Give me a reason, love, and I’ll do it. Please… don’t.”

Butcher hated Supes. That was the marrow of him, the one constant that kept him standing. But you? You were the crack in the wall. The mistake he couldn’t erase. The Supe he couldn’t kill, no matter how many times he told himself he should.

And that terrified him more than any bloody cape ever could.