If God’d give her back to me, I’d never let ’er go. Not to violence, wrath or greed. Not to vice or virtue. Not even to death.
I’d keep her safe, I promised the Almighty, and I’d do it keeping ’er at my side and guardin’ her ’til my last fuckin’ breath.
Still, I didn’t need fuckin’ B.J. remindin’ me of the dark voices in my head sayin’ I was no good for her and where the fuck did he get off thinkin’ that shit himself?
“You got a problem with me, Blackjack?” I asked low.
Somethin’ dark flashed in his eyes then fled like prey. “Sorry, brother, you don’t need my shit.”
“Damn right, he doesn’t.” Buck hit him again, this time hard in the shoulder. “Shut your mouth ’til I tell you to fuckin’ open it again.”
“Prez, there’s someone here you need to see,” Axe-Man said as he came up the steps.
“Who?”
“Lysander Garrison.”
Immediately, I was tearin’ down the steps to the front gates. The fuck stood there talkin’ to a mean lookin’ Nova.
“What the fuck are you doin’ here? It better be to fuckin’ explain why you were with those fuckers who killed my brother and got my girl wastin’ away in the hospital,” I roared as I picked the six-foot-two motherfucker up by the neck and shoulder and shoved him into the chain-link fence.
He blinked at me, calm as could fuckin’ be. “It is.”
“Start talkin’ then.”
“After you let me go and told me to get lost forever, Officer Danner picked me up as I was hightailin’ it outta town. Told me he needed my help puttin’ the Nightstalkers down for good.”
Buck snorted behind me. “Like the cops could take down an operation like that. Fuckin’ pigs.”
Blackjack laughed his nervous, yippy laugh.
I turned to glare at him and found him sweatin’, lookin’ back and forth between Lysander and me like we were puttin’ on a tennis match.
He was high as a fuckin’ kite and somethin’ about havin’ a high brother involved with club business had always seemed like a bad fuckin’ idea.
“Get him in a cold fuckin’ shower ’fore he keels over and dies,” I ordered Priest who immediately acted, his face twisted with disgust as he dragged the tweaker away.
“You gonna tell me where those motherfucking Nightstalkers are hidin’?” I asked, turnin’ back to Lysander.
“No,” he said. “But mostly ’cause they don’t have a base of operations here. They have a clubhouse down in Vancouver right now, but they won’t relocate ’til they flush you out. Like I said, I’m workin’ with Danner and even the cops can’t get a location on ’em.”
“Why the fuck would you help Danner? You think I was lyin’ when I told you I’d put you in the ground if you showed your face again in Entrance?”
“Wanted to be able to look my sister in the eye again and tell ’er I’d made things right.”
“And how are you makin’ things right? Far as I can tell, my brother is dead ’cause of you,” I snarled in his face.
“I know. I’m so fuckin’ sorry. But Ace is a maniac and no matter how long I ride with him, I can’t predict what that high motherfucker is gonna do. Someone told him your girls were up at that cabin. One of The Fallen.”
“Fuck,” I roared into his face and squeezed his neck tighter. “Who!?”
“Don’t know. All I came ’ere to tell you was that Danner’s a good cop and between the two of us we’re this fuckin’ close to nailin’ ’em.”
“And what the fuck do you want me to do about it?”
I stared at his neck to center the anger threatenin’ to overwhelm me. I stared at the pulse in his throat thumping up against my thumb and I thought about how easy it would be to snap his neck. I’d done it before; it wasn’t as hard as you’d think.
“One of the players, Warren, he has a thing for Louise—” His voice cut off with a garble because I now had my hand pressed to his windpipe.
“You dare to fuckin’ mention her name when she’s barely fuckin’ breathin’?” I said quiet. “Don’t think you understand that I’m a fuckin’ monster, Sander, and I ain’t afraid to kill a man. Not even one that’s kin to my son’s woman or one in bed with the fuckin’ police. I’ll snap your neck and have you with the pigs in record time. You know it takes pigs eight minutes to eat a full-grown body?”
Finally, there was fear in his eyes and his body stank of it, of sweat and somethin’ more metallic.
“You go back to Danner and you tell him to get his glory on his fuckin’ own. The Fallen is not helpin’ anyone but their own,” I growled then shoved off him before I throttled ’im and stalked off to take my frustrations out on a fuckin’ punchin’ bag instead of Garrison’s motherfuckin’ face.
I woke up crying.
There was no gap between unconsciousness and waking.
I knew the second I opened my eyes that Mute wouldn’t be there because Mute was dead.
I couldn’t remember any other details of that night, which the doctors would later inform me was normal after a traumatic event, but I remembered immediately and brutally that Mute was dead.
The tears fell hotly down my face, burning so badly I thought they’d leave scars. A part of me wanted them to. I felt mutilated by the pain of his loss.
It took me a few minutes of deep, thready breathing to open my eyes and take in the hospital room around me.
Everyone was there.
My entire family.
Harleigh Rose was curled up on a sofa with her bandaged calf in King’s lap and her head in Cressida’s.
Bea sat in the cradle of Nova’s arms against the wall in a long line of bikers—Cy, Lab-Rat, Curtains, Bat, Priest and Boner—that extended out the open door and into the corridor.
Ruby lay on the ground beside my bed wrapped in a thin hospital blanket with Lila curled up behind her for warmth and comfort. Maja was curled up in Buck’s lap in a huge chair someone had dragged in from another room, and Hannah, Cleo and Tayline lay curled up liked kittens against the sofa at King’s feet.
They were all asleep.
Even my guardian monster.
He sat in chair that was too small for his enormous frame, the upper half of his torso collapsed on the bed at my side with one of his big hands curled around my thigh and the other tangled tightly with one of my own.
Even in sleep, his handsome face was tense with worry. I pressed my fingers to the crease between his thick brows and over the fan of wrinkles beside his eyes but he didn’t wake up.
I wondered how long they’d been there.
“You’ve been out for days, honey,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.
I couldn’t have been more shocked to see my mother standing there, not only because she was there but because she wasn’t wearing makeup—something I couldn’t ever remember happening—and she was wearing a tracksuit. It was a designer one but still, my mother didn’t wear anything more casual than slacks on her worst day.
“Mum?” I croaked through a painfully dry throat.