The Rogues of Blackwood Book 3: Beau
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Amber Kuhlman
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After the fire, the Rogues fracture under the weight of secrets Blackwood refuses to bury. Keane's visions sharpen into something dangerous, Teague's temper spirals, and Beau's compulsions worsen as they uncover what's happening beneath the academy—illegal therapy sessions, hidden patients, and proof that Grant's influence never died. As Eve fights her own fear and the lies Sodder feeds her, the three boys close ranks around her, bound by obsession, love, and a shared vow to protect what they are together. But the deeper they dig into Blackwood's basement, the clearer it becomes: someone is still watching them… and they want Eve back.
Chapter 1
BEAU
The cliff still smelled like smoke. Three weeks had passed, and it was like the earth refused to forget. The wind off the water tasted of salt and ash, and when I breathed it in, it felt like inhaling memory: burned hair, scorched paint, the sound of her screaming my name.
The ocean below thrashed against the rocks, churning gray and endless, and somewhere under all that noise, I could still swear I heard the sirens. I counted the waves without meaning to. One. Two. Three. Then I started again when the rhythm broke.
My jaw tightened at the wrong count, the wrong crash, the wrong silence between the sounds. I tried to ignore it, but the rhythm drilled under my skin, demanding order where there wasn’t any.
Grant Warrick should have been dead. The fire should have erased him. That was what I kept telling myself as I picked my way across the blackened ground, my boots crunching over fragments of glass that glittered like dying stars.
Every piece of the old building was a tombstone now: charred bricks, twisted metal, the bones of what used to be safety.
Eve thought I came down here to find peace. What I was really looking for was proof. Proof that Grant Warrick was gone. Proof that the world was finished giving her reasons to flinch. Proof that the monster who branded himself on her life had finally burned with everything else.
I crouched where the foundation dropped into the cliff. The smell of oil hung heavy, thick, clinging, as if the fire’s ghost still seeped from the cracks. I reached out and pressed two fingers to the soot-stained rock. Not my whole palm. Just two. Always two.
I told myself it was because the rest of my hand was cold, but the truth was uglier, wired somewhere bone-deep and rigid.
The stone was freezing. The kind of cold that sank straight into marrow. I pulled my hand back, then, without thinking, pressed the exact same two fingers to the same spot again. Harder this time. Matching pressure. Evening it out.
My pulse spiked when the angle felt off, so I corrected it, pressing again. And again. One more. One last one. Three. Always three. Only then did I let my hand fall.
A whisper of movement brushed behind me.
“Beau.” Teague’s voice, low and rough from too many sleepless nights. He didn’t step closer. None of us did anymore. Ever since the fire, we moved around each other like ghosts that remembered being alive. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“I’m fine.” A lie. My throat tightened the second the words left it. I swallowed twice, once, then once again, evening it out, and the tension in my jaw loosened just enough to breathe.
Teague didn’t argue. That was how I knew he wasn’t fine either. I kept my gaze on the stone in front of me, following the jagged edge of the cliff until the fog blurred it into nothing.
The tide crashed hard enough to spray my face, cold water cutting through the smoke still trapped in the air. For a moment, I imagined a shape in the mist: tall, still, watching. Then it was gone.
Maybe I had lost it. Maybe we all had. The academy had been half shut down since the fire. Dr. Sodder’s “investigation” was just another performance. We knew she was as scared as the rest. The staff whispered like we were the ones who lit the match.
The other patients kept their distance, crossing themselves when we walked by.
Keane leaned into it. He always liked being the monster in their stories. But even he was quieter now. Sharper. Like he was saving his voice for something worse. And Eve… God, Eve. She smiled, but it never reached her eyes. She dreamed and screamed in the same breath.
Some nights she curled against me and shook until dawn. Other nights she didn’t come to any of us at all.
The three of us circled her like wolves guarding a flame already guttering. I dragged my hand along the rock, smearing soot across my fingers. It bothered me immediately. The smear was uneven, streaked on the left, lighter on the right. Wrong.
I rubbed my thumb across the opposite side to match it. Too much. I wiped again, lighter. Not enough. My breath caught.
I clenched my hand into a fist so hard my knuckles popped. The urge to fix it, to balance it, clawed at the back of my throat like a scream. But before I cracked, before I gave in, the wind shifted. And that was when I saw it.
A word carved deep into the stone: MINE. The letters were uneven, jagged, cut by something sharp. Soot filled the grooves, and when I pressed my fingers into one of the lines, it was still warm. Warm.
My heart stopped dead. Then kicked. Too fast. Too hard. Four beats in a row that didn’t line up. I gritted my teeth and tapped my thumb against my thigh. One. Two. Three. Four. Again. One. Two. Three. Four. It did nothing. The panic stayed.
Teague stepped up behind me. “What is it?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat locked, my chest too tight. I just pointed.
He stared at the mark, eyes narrowing, shoulders going rigid. “No,” he muttered. “No, that… He’s…”
“Dead?” I finished. My voice sounded foreign, dragged through gravel. “Tell me that again. Tell me he’s dead.”
Teague didn’t. We both knew what warmth meant. Someone had been here. Recently. The word sat between us like a heartbeat. MINE. Four letters that shouldn’t have meant anything and yet cut deeper than any blade.
My fingers wouldn’t stop twitching. I hid them in my pockets before Teague noticed.
I forced myself to stand. My knees cracked. My hands shook so violently I couldn’t tell if it was fear or fury. Or the pressing, intrusive need to go back and retrace each letter, to press my thumb into every groove evenly.
I turned toward the ruins of the building, staring at the blackened shell that used to be Blackwood Academy. A seagull screamed overhead, twisting into something almost human in the wind.
“He’s playing with us,” I said. “He wants us to know he’s alive.”
Teague swore under his breath, pacing backward, raking a hand through his hair. “Keane’s not gonna like this,” he said.
“No,” I murmured. “He’s gonna love it.”
Because Keane had been waiting for a reason. We all had. I brushed my hands on my jeans, but the soot spread, darker on the right leg than the left. Unequal. Off. I scrubbed harder until both legs looked the same. Only when the stains matched did I stop.
Grant’s message sat behind my eyes like a brand. MINE.
If he was alive, then everything we had done, everything we had built since that night, it meant nothing. A pause before the next blow.
“Go,” I told Teague quietly. “Get back before anyone notices we’re gone.”
“And you?”
“I’ll catch up.”
He hesitated, nodded once, and disappeared into the fog. When I was alone again, I crouched beside the word. My reflection shimmered in the damp stone, eyes too hollow, face too old.
I reached out and traced the final letter with the edge of my thumb until it bit. The cut bloomed red against the black soot, a perfect mirror of what the bastard had left behind.
“You made a mistake coming back,” I whispered.
The wind answered, carrying the scent of smoke and salt, of something ancient and angry. The ocean’s rhythm shifted. Wrong again. Off by a beat. My pulse stuttered to match it. I closed my eyes, breathing through the chaos.
When I opened them, the fog had thickened. But through it, I saw a flicker of movement at the tree line above the cliff.
A figure. Tall. Still. Watching.
By the time I blinked, it was gone. I stayed until my fingers went numb and the tide crept closer, swallowing the rocks.
Then I turned toward the path back to Blackwood, my boots leaving black footprints in the ash.
The academy rose ahead of me, looming like a ghost, windows boarded, walls scarred, still smelling of smoke and medicine. Somewhere inside, Eve slept, dreaming of peace she didn’t have. She would never see this mark. I would make sure of it.
Because if Grant wanted to claim her again, if he dared to touch what was ours, he would have to go through me first. And this time, I wouldn’t stop at blood.
