For the Blood of a Crow

by T. S. Joyce

  Chest heaving, she rolled her eyes closed as her body settled into his rhythm again.

  Rike leaned down and rumbled against her ear, “I could be inside you all night. You feel so fucking good, gripping my dick when I make you come. You wanna come for me again?”

  She dug hear nails into the muscles at his hips and nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good Little Wolf.”

  Something about his approval made her pleasure even more intense. He was calling to something inside of her. Calling to her wolf to obey him, and she wanted to. He was telling her what to do, but not for control. He was doing it because he somehow knew exactly what her animal would respond to. Dominant, sexy man. She wasn’t submissive by any means, and she could rip a wolf to shreds, but it felt good to please her mate. Her mate?

  Stay lost.

  His lips were on hers again, moving with the steady thrusts of his dick. She touched him, rubbing her hands up and down the curves of his muscles, memorizing his body. This was everything. She could breathe again. She inhaled deeply as her next orgasm came easy, throbbing hard around his shaft.

  He smiled against her lips and murmured, “So good.”

  He bucked into her harder, gripping her hair at the back. With his other arm, he hooked it around her lower back and held her tight as he stayed deep, pounding her faster and harder until he was grunting. Now her orgasm was coming again. Again? Her body loved his.

  “Rike, Rike,” she chanted, digging her nails into his back.

  He let off a long moan as he pushed into her, his thick shaft throbbing inside of her. It was enough to bring on another orgasm. God, it was sexy that he could let himself get lost, too. He pushed into her slower as their releases faded away, dragging them out as long as he could. Oh, what this man did to her.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered, full weight on her, stroking her cheek with his knuckles.

  “Yes, that was amazing.”

  “No…I mean…the other stuff. Your old Clan. Are you okay?”

  Such worry pooled in those black eyes of his. He cared. Deeply. The relief that washed over her was overwhelming. Sex hadn’t been casual for him. He was taking care of her in the only way that made sense to him.

  He might be an outlaw, but he was a good man.

  She stretched up and kissed his lips, then relaxed back again. Rike didn’t even realize what he’d just done for her. He’d given her confidence and reset her panicked mind. He’d turned her around with his touch. Made her strong again.

  Are you okay?

  “Not yet, but I will be.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  This was the second worst day of her life.

  Rike had disappeared on her. He’d fallen asleep by her last night but then disappeared. It was terrifying facing the same feelings of his abandonment all over again.

  Bailey couldn’t focus.

  So much had changed over the past couple of days, and now she was in the kitchen at the Darby Community Center trying to pretend like everything was okay.

  Lone wolf.

  God, she’d always been so scared of those two words because of what Mom had gone through. Bailey had watched her endure such loneliness. Mom’s wolf had revolted against not being part of a pack. She was okay now, but how many years of heartache had Mom been through to get to a happy place in her life? And now that struggle was Bailey’s future.

  She was sprinkling powdered sugar on lemon bars. Outside the kitchen doors, the interview area sounded like a mess.

  Rike had destroyed and fixed and destroyed and fixed and destroyed everything. She needed to process all that had happened, but her body was still singing happy songs over their time together last night. Nothing had ever been like that. Nothing.

  But then he’d left without a word. Just…disappeared like a ghost.

  He hadn’t shown up to the community center either. She knew because she watched for him every time she went out to the serving area. She sniffed for him and listened for him and looked for him. He’d really run from her. There was a hole the size of a cannon ball inside Bailey’s chest.

  With a sigh, she yanked the tray of lemon bars off the stainless-steel counter and made her way numbly out the swinging kitchen doors toward the buffet tables, set up just to the side of the interview stations.

  “You,” a man said from in front of her.

  She gasped and nearly ran into the cement wall of his frame. She looked up into the bright blue eyes of none other than the Alpha of Red Dead Mayhem, Ramsey Hunt. Yesterday, she would’ve avoided him like the plague because he was a crow and she couldn’t be caught talking to them. But today…well…today everything was different.

  She was a lone wolf.

  “H-hi. Would you like a lemon bar?” she murmured lamely.

  He shocked her to her bones when he took the tray from her. “You forgot to cut them up. I’ll help.”

  She followed him to the buffet table like she was in a dream and watched as he pulled a huge knife from the sheath at his hip. He cut them into perfect squares. Unsanitary, but whatever. She had bigger shit on her mind.

  “You’re Rike’s mate,” he said, turning toward her slowly.

  “No.” She lowered her chin to her chest. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”

  “Ah, none of that. You’re a fuckin’ wolf. You’re a badass. You can growl and maim and kill, and don’t drop that chin like you’re submissive because I can tell you aren’t. Rike wouldn’t fall for a submissive. You wouldn’t be able to handle him, and from what he told me this morning, you handle him just fine.”

  “He…he talked to you about me?”

  Ramsey dipped his chin once, his bright blue eyes never leaving hers. “I hate this. The interviewing.”

  Bailey snorted. “I think the entire world can tell you hate it.”

  “I want to kill half the people in this building.”

  Now she was smiling in earnest. “You’re doing good, though. Keep going.”

  “Vina is the reason I haven’t,” he said suddenly. “She’s the reason everyone here is still alive.”

  Bailey frowned. “Your mate?” She looked over at the long-legged sandy-haired woman with the pink business suit, clutching a clipboard and talking to a man two inches shorter than her. She looked like she was telling him off.

  “Yeah. And you know…she’s soft when she needs to be. Hard when she needs to be, too. She keeps me steady.”

  Bailey frowned up at Ramsey. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you’re going to be that for Rike.”

  She twitched her attention back to the King of Crows. “What do you mean?”

  “When I left him, he was in Ethan’s old room, curled up on the floor, gripping his hair and screaming about the pain in his head. He’s mind-sick today, Bailey Wulfe.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” she breathed, turning to run out the door and go to him. That’s why he’d left her this morning. Hang this job, Rike was hurting.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Ramsey said, gripping her arm before she could bolt. “He needs time alone. You leaving your job here won’t make him better. Some things, a man’s got to do on his own before you can help. You brought back his memories, and he is going through Hell.” Ramsey swallowed hard and lifted his chin. “I think he needs to do this, but it will cost him. Stick around. When he lets you back in, make him strong again.”

  “But…”

  “Trust me. He doesn’t want to see anyone while he is in this state right now. He’ll try to be tough for you, and it’ll stop the memories. He needs to go through it.” Ramsey released her arm and gave her a sympathetic smile. “I used to think love was poison, but it’s not. Pasts are poison, and he’s fucking drinking the stuff right now. You have the power to bring him back. I was there right after he killed Lucian. I saw both him and Ethan in the deepest part of their spiral, and it was rough, Wolf. The only thing that sated his crow was blood. I wanted to fix him and Ethan, but I could only do so much. Ethan is lost, but you c
an save Rike. So do it, Wolf, and I’ll owe you my protection and my fealty. You can have a place with us. You can have anything you want, just…” He swallowed hard, and she saw it there. Saw the emotion in his eyes for just a moment before his face turned to stone once more. “Just save him.”

  As she watched the King of Crows walk away, she swallowed over and over, trying not to cry. She couldn’t get the vision of Rike writhing on the floor out of her head. Lucian had been a horrible, abusive father and had tried his best to destroy his sons. While Rike was remembering how much that man had broken him from birth until the age of sixteen, she was here worrying about the amount of powdered sugar on lemon bars.

  Blinking hard, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and sent him a text. As much as she wanted to be tough and make it look like he didn’t affect her, that wouldn’t help him now. Honesty would.

  Just so you know, I love you. Always have, always will. You are adored, Rike Blackwood. You are loved and accepted. Not just the good parts either. I love your good and bad parts, and you can’t tell me a single thing about the man you have become that will make me run. You are my Clan now. Ramsey says to give you space while you go through this, but I wish I could fix this for you. Please, be okay. For me. Send.

  Her phone stayed silent in her back pocket for an hour. An hour that felt like an eternity as she mindlessly worked and served people. She watched the TVs when she was bored, standing behind the buffet table waiting for interviewers and staff and crew to make their way through her line.

  Ramsey was doing good. Sometimes his mate sat with him. Sometimes the Two Claws Clan took over when Ramsey’s lips got a little too tight and his eyes a little too black.

  She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t tell if it was from sadness over losing her Clan, worry over Rike, or joy over those special moments he’d given her last night.

  “Hi,” a soft female voice said from right beside her as she stared up at the television mounted across the room.

  Bailey jumped. It was Vina, the moose shifter mate of Ramsey.

  Bailey licked her lips and uttered, “Hello,” in a hoarse voice.

  “Soooo, I have a confession.”

  “Shoot.”

  Vina laughed. “My dad used to say that.”

  Bailey couldn’t help her sad smile at the fond memory of her step dad. “Mine, too.”

  “I’m supposed to meet up with some girls tonight. Strangers. I’m pretty bad at first impressions. And also second and third and fourth impressions. All impressions, actually.”

  “Well, you’re doing great with this first impression,” Bailey teased.

  Vina’s face scrunched up with her giggle. “Admission, I’m really new to this life. And I’m trying to do the right things, and I’m terrible at it. Like…I’m mated to the King of Crows, and I barely know how to wear Harley Davidson clothes.”

  Okay, now Bailey was wearing a genuine grin. “I’m sure you do fine.”

  “Yeah, but like…the only girls in the clubhouse are Momma Crow, who isn’t around that much, and sometimes likes me and sometimes thinks I’m annoying. Oh, and Crow Chasers, who basically give blow jobs to any crow shifter in Red Dead Mayhem who will let them. We don’t have that much in common.”

  “Okay…”

  “So…I did something dumb.”

  “I do dumb shit all the time. Do tell.”

  Vina laughed and pulled one of the last lemon bars from the tray, munched it, and around the bite said, “I invited my mate’s ex-mate out for a girl’s night. Along with the girls in the Two Claws Clan. I’m pretty sure I’m going to reignite the war between the crows and the bears.”

  Bailey laughed really loud. “That’s a terrible idea to go drinking with them.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like tension between any of us. Ramsey took me to meet Tenlee, his ex, who never liked him, but his crow chose her, and then she found a mate named Kurt, who is a mountain lion shifter and the Alpha of the New Darby Clan, and I told her off in the woods for leaving Ramsey, but like…thank God she did because now I get to bone Ramsey for the rest of my life, so I was trying to make amends with Tenlee, who’s pregnant with a squirrel baby, so I invited her and the other females of the New Darby Clan and the Two Claws Clan out for drinks.. Water for her though. Because of the squirrel fetus.”

  “Oh…my God. I understood about half of that.”

  “See what I mean about the social awkwardness?”

  Bailey gave her a slow blink. “Okay, where are you meeting them?”

  “The GutShot in Darby, and two of them are polar bear shifters. I just thought you should know that part.”

  Bailey snorted and bit her lip. Vina was awesome.

  So all right, Bailey would help the girl out. “Okay, you need to get there early and take two shots of tequila before they show up. It’ll settle you down and make girls’ night easier on you.”

  “Well…”

  “Well what?”

  “Well…I was hoping you would come take those tequila shots with me and be my wing-woman.”

  Bailey frowned. “Wing-women are for getting you into a guy’s pants.”

  “No, I don’t need that. Ramsey needs sex every day. I’m full of inside-the-pants. I just wanted you to…I don’t know…be there so I’m not the only Red Dead Mayhem female.”

  “You want me to…have your back?”

  “Yeah. And I know! I know how weird this is because we don’t know each other, but it’s one of me and four of them, and I guess I wanted you to…”

  “Be your buffer?”

  Vina smiled big, but it looked more like a grimace when she said through clenched teeth, “Yes. That.”

  “But I’m not Red Dead Mayhem,” Bailey pointed out.

  Vina frowned. “You are Rike’s. He showed me a picture this morning with a smile on his face and said you are his. I’ve never seen him smile like that. Like he was happy. Do you know how hard it is for the boys of my Clan to find that? Bailey, it doesn’t matter you are a wolf. You are Red Dead Mayhem. And I’m going to make you be my friend because I don’t have any of those here. You can fight it if you want, your choice, or you can just accept my annoying affection and back me up at the girls’ night. As mate of the Second of Red Dead Mayhem.”

  Bailey just stood there staring at Vina. What the hell? No, she was a lone wolf. She was value-less. She was nothing. She was replaceable by her father. She was air.

  But…

  Vina, the Queen of Crows, had just asked Bailey to back her up, and maybe Bailey needed a girlfriend, too.

  “Okay,” she murmured, stunned.

  Vina sighed heavily and threw her head back, looking heavenward. “Oh dear goodness, I thought you would for sure say no. If I start listing the presidents of the United States, can you cut me off the alcohol? That’s my limit.”

  “Of course,” Bailey said, her eyes so round they were drying out in the breeze from the AC.

  “What’s yours? I’ll take care of you, too.”

  “Uh, if I start singing ‘Friends in Low Places’ to myself, don’t let me take any more shots.”

  “I got it. I won’t let you down,” Vina said with the brightest grin on her face. “The GutShot is walking distance from here. We are supposed to meet them at midnight . I’ll get Ramsey to take us home so we don’t have to worry about driving tipsy! Okay, thank you thank you thank you! I was so nervous about this, but now I’m not because you will be there, and we are going to have so much fun. Oh! Ramsey looks mad. That interviewer might get punched in the face. I have to go. Thank you! Drink with you soon!” Vina walked off, leaving Bailey to stare after her.

  On the second worst day of her life, Bailey was pretty sure she had just made a friend.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I remember everything. Send.

  Rike sat on the floor leaned against Ethan’s old bed, now his bed, blackout curtains pulled closed because the light hurt his eyes. His crow was gone. For the first time in his life, Rike couldn’t fe
el his animal at all.

  Maybe he was dead.

  Exhausted, he leaned his head back against the side of the mattress and stared into the darkness.

  His phone vibrated, and the screen lit up.

  It was a text from Ethan. What have you done?

  Bailey, Rike typed out. Send.

  He didn’t know how much time passed before Ethan responded again.

  She’s ruined your whole future. Yours and hers both. You get that right?

  You’re wrong. She’s good. She can keep me good. Send.

  No, you’re wrong. Nothing can keep us good. We are Blackwoods. In those memories, did you see Dad’s face when he hurt us? When he hurt Mom? Every night he came back with blood on his hands. Every time he killed. Do you remember his face when he killed all those wolves? When he didn’t even try to protect us? When he brought them to our home just for an excuse to murder? Pure joy, brother. I taste the killer in me, and I wanted better for you. I wanted you to be the one of us that didn’t turn into Lucian. Now you’re just as fucked as me. Have a nice life with the wolf. Get Ramsey to kill you when you start getting the bloodlust. Bailey was always too good for you. She deserved for us to protect her memories.

  Rike frowned. Wait, what? He hadn’t been protecting Rike from the memories of all that abuse, of how horrible and evil his father really was. Ethan had been protecting Bailey. What the fuck?

  Who is us? Send.

  Your crow and I. The road to Hell is a rocky one, brother. We’ll go there together now. Hurt her on your way down, and I’ll kill you. All you had to do was let Lucian go.

  Rike closed his eyes against another building headache. The sound of Lucian’s laughter echoed through his head, but this one wasn’t a memory. This was his ghost standing in the corner of the room, haunting Rike.

  He’d never had a chance in Hell at letting his father go.

  “Now you see, boy,” Lucian rumbled in a snarling, creaky voice. “Now you see why I didn’t want to leave you. I had a good girl once too, and look what I did? You. Are. Me.”