The room was silent as I stared around it, seeing the same look on every man’s face.
Agreement.
Knowledge.
Intent.
I looked back at Shooter, a sickness hitting my gut. The asshole didn’t even bother to look ashamed of himself. I tried to take a deep breath but found my own anger was strangling me, squashing my lungs and stopping me from taking a calming breath.
“Shooter?” I asked, my tone cold. Hard. Full of hurt and anger. “Is that true?”
Gauge and Balls were watching me, and I wasn’t too blind to see that Gauge had his hand on the gun at his hip. I didn’t realize I had taken any steps forward until O’Donnell reached behind her and grabbed my hand, squeezing it, stilling me.
I hated her for that, but I needed it too. Because that touch woke me up from the daze I had fallen into. I finally took a steadying breath and spoke again, and that time my voice was calm.
“Shooter? Is that true?” I asked again, my features softening, my voice foreign to my ears. Hurt and betrayal were slick on my skin as I stared at him.
He leaned forward in his chair and dragged a hand down his chin and over his beard. “Every woman there wants to be there, Nina. They know why they’re there, and they agreed to it. They’re happy for it. They want to be a part of the future, to bring us back from extinction.”
I felt sick. Dizzy with shock and hate for him. But I swallowed it all down, burying my disgust in the chasm he’d just made in my heart.
“No one is forced to do anything they don’t want to. And it’s not quite like Scar so eloquently motherfucking put it.” He glared at Scar, who smiled back. “We’ll talk about it later. Right now we need to focus on this mission. We’ll go in with the men we have. O’Donnell, take two men to go with you—get this Aiken and your people to come and help if you can. Gauge, get the nomads. And the rest of you, we need to pool as many weapons as we can get. So make them, borrow them, steal them, I don’t give a shit. I’m going to do recon with Butcher and Balls on the Savages’ hideout—we need to find another way into that place. We have until O’Donnell gets back and then we’re taking them down one way or another.”
“One way or another?” Balls asked.
“I’ll blow them all to hell if I have to. I’ve got the stuff to do it. And from what I know of Drag, he’d rather go down in flames than die at the hands of those psychos, taken apart piece by piece.” Shooter picked up his gavel and slammed it against the table and then everyone started to file out of the room.
Scar still looked pissed off and there was no way he agreed with waiting one or two days, but just like Balls had said: he fell into line once Butcher gave him the order to get on with it.
O’Donnell squeezed my hand again and let go before leaving the room, and then there was just Shooter, Gauge, and me.
“Want me to get her out of here?” Gauge asked, and all but snarled when he looked my way.
“Leave us,” Shooter said to Gauge, though his gaze stayed locked on me.
“Your fuckin’ funeral. This bitch is crazy,” Gauge replied, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Oh, he had no idea just how crazy I could be. At least not yet.
The blinds were shut, the door closed, and the air humid and making me feel practically suffocated. Each breath in was strangling me. Each pound of my heart another nail in the coffin. And the same words going round and round in my head the entire time.
How could he?
“I get that that sounded bad to you,” Shooter finally said, breaking the silent staring contest between us. “Scar had no right to tell you those things—not in that way.”
In my head I was diving over the ornate table and slitting his throat as my anger bubbled over. In reality though, tears leaked from my eyes as I continued to stare at the beautiful and wonderful man who had somehow sucked me into his world. Michael was right after all: I was weak.
“We’re not forcing anyone to do something they don’t want to do, Nina,” he said, standing up and moving around the table. “The women that join us, they want to be there. They want to be protected. They want the simpler life, when things were black and white and they didn’t have to worry about living or dying every day. When they could put their lives in their husband’s hands and get on with things. Where they could make babies and look after their home without worrying about meat sacks breaking through the front door and killing them. It’s the way the world has been since the dawn of time. Women stayed at home taking care of the house and the men went out to work or to bring home food. This ain’t nothin’ new.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to train them?” I asked slowly as he got closer. “Because you didn’t want them to feel too empowered in case they realized that they didn’t need to be your babymakers?” Another tear slipped out. Every word out of his beautiful mouth was a betrayal of what I believed in. “IN case they decided they wanted to be more than that.”
Shooter slammed his hand on the table. “It’s not that simple, Nina! Women are the future! Without you, we’re just a group of men running around with our dicks in our hands, living until we don’t live no more. Without women, there ain’t no point in anything. Surely you can see that!”
“All I can see is a man who thinks he can control the future by controlling people.”
Shooter shook his head. “Shit ain’t that simple, but yeah, I think we can control the future—change it, even.”
I thought of the women that the Rejects had brought with them, and how happy they had seemed. And I thought of all the things Shooter had told me about the Rejects, how they supposedly treated their women.
“What happened between the Rejects and the Highwaymen?” I asked.
“That’s history.”
I shook my head. “Tell me.” But I already knew. It was obvious, if I thought about it.
Shooter sighed but nodded, agreeing to tell me. “Drag wanted to force the women into servitude. I didn’t. He wanted the women all lined up like cattle, ready to be mounted by anyone. I didn’t. I have more respect. I wanted relationships, marriage. I wanted families for the kids brought into this world, not babies spat out with no clue who their daddy was. I wanted—” His voice broke and I almost felt sorry for him. He rounded the table and finally stood in front of me. Reaching over, he placed his hands on my arms and looked into my eyes. “I wanted a kid to call me ‘Daddy’ again. I wanted an old lady that was mine, not some clubslut that worked all the boys. I wanted life to have some meaning again. I wanted a family. Drag didn’t agree. He thought the process was too long. Didn’t see the point in family. Thought that women should be on their backs and doing as they were told. A couple of the brothers agreed, so they were given the choice to leave or I’d end them. They started the Rejects and ran their club their way, and we became the Highwaymen and started to build a future. Women are too important to this world to let die—that part wasn’t a lie, Nina. And the women are happy—you’ve seen it for yourself. They’ll all choose their own mate. Nothing is forced. Amara and Gunner already chose each other, right?”
“That was different,” I replied.
“Was it? Because the way I see it, they fell in love and now they’re going to live happily ever after.” He cocked an eyebrow at me like that proved his point.
“You arranged for him to be murdered because he chose Amara,” I replied obstinately.
Shooter shook his head. “No, I arranged that because I thought he’d taken what he wanted. I didn’t know that they wanted to be together. Gunner came to us for help. The things he’d done…” Shooter shook his head again. “It sickened even himself. He wanted to be cured and then he wanted to find a life mate. And I helped him do both.”
I hated that I couldn’t argue with him on that point. In fact, I couldn’t argue with him on any of it—not really. Yet in my heart I knew that it was all wrong—so very wrong.
He pulled me in, his face at my neck as I absorbed his words. Tears still sl
id down my face. I felt lied to and cheated. Because even though I knew what he was saying was wrong on so many levels, there was also some beautiful naïveté to it all. What he was trying to build, what he wanted for the future, was something we all wanted. Was it really so wrong? His intention was good on the surface, but there was also something gross about it all.
“And what about the Reject women now? They all seem happy. They don’t look like the broken, abused women you just described,” I said, trying not to choke on the bubble of sadness clawing up my throat.
Shooter shrugged. “Never said they weren’t happy, just that I didn’t agree with the way he wants it.”
We fell silent, my body full of pent-up hate, sadness dragging itself through my body.
“I chose you, Nina,” he hummed against my neck.
“Me?”
“For my mate. I chose you.” He kissed along my jawline. His words terrified me in ways I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and yet there was something so beautiful about them too. “You know swans mate for life. Even when one of them dies, they won’t take another mate. They just mourn their loss, waiting to die and meet them again.” He stopped kissing my neck and looked me in the eye. “We don’t have that luxury anymore. We’re dying. The world is dyin’, and there isn’t enough of us to sustain it. Dead sacks outnumber us ten to one, and if we don’t do something about it, they’ll kill us off—full-on extinction of the human race.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, swallowing my pride.
“I’m saying that I loved my wife. Loved her with every drop of blood in my body. My son even more so. If I could mourn them forever and never take another woman as my own, I would. But I can’t do that. Life is too important—it’s too precious—and she made me promise to fall in love again, to meet someone, and when I left this world to go to her that I’d leave it in a better way than I found it. I never wanted to take another mate as my own. Not until I met you.”
Shooter held my face in his hands and he kissed away the tears on my cheeks before kissing my mouth. I could taste the saltiness of my tears, and the bitterness in each one of them, and I wanted to push him away because his kisses felt like betrayal and lies.
“I don’t want a baby, Shooter. I don’t want to be a mother,” I said, the words painful to my ears. But it was true.
He carried on like he wasn’t listening to me. His body pressing closer to me. “You’re my everything now, and I’m doing all of this for you, for us, for everyone here. Together we’ll make this world a better place, darlin’.”
I opened to him despite myself, letting him in and kissing him back with all I was worth. What Shooter was trying to do was beautiful and impossible, but I couldn’t blame him for trying. His words hurt as much as they embraced me, until my emotions were in a whirlwind, dazed and confused over how I was supposed to feel about any of it. It was so wrong, yet a part of me knew it was right too.
His hands gripped my hair and he tipped my head back, exposing my throat to him, where he kissed along it. My hands moved to his waist, to the thick wall of muscles on his stomach and chest.
“I wanted you from the first moment I saw you,” he mumbled, grabbing my waist and lifting me up to sit on the table. He spread my legs and filled the gap as he kissed my mouth again. “Wanted you like I’ve wanted no other woman for a helluva long time.”
His hands were working the buttons on my jeans and I found my own hands moving to his, unbuckling his jeans and pushing them down, going along with his crazy plan because that man, that beautiful angry man engulfed my soul and set my world on fire. With Shooter I wasn’t sure which way was up anymore. What was right or wrong, what made sense or didn’t. With Shooter all I could think about was that moment.
Tears still slipped from my eyes. “I hate you, Shooter,” I whimpered as he tugged my jeans down and grabbed my ass, pulling me to the edge of the table. “I hate you for doing this, Shooter. For making me feel, and want. But most of all I hate you for making me care about you.”
“I know, baby, I know,” he soothed against my mouth.
I grabbed his hips as he grabbed mine, pulling our bodies together and connecting us in one hard thrust. He pressed his forehead to mine and our gazes collided, and he watched me as he moved, taking my body over and over, until my tears dried up and his name was spilling from my lips like venom.
I had fallen for Shooter, despite my best efforts not to.
And I hated myself for that, way more than I could ever hate him.
Shooter grunted, his calloused fingers pressing against my skin harshly as he pulled us both to the edge and we tumbled over it together, with scratching nails and heaving chests. He pressed a possessive kiss to my mouth and looked at me with unwavering adoration.
“I love you, Nina. Only ever said those words to one other woman before, and I made that woman my old lady and my wife.” He lifted a hand and stroked it along my cheek, his thumb moving across my lips. “You’re it for me now. I want to build a future with you, a life we can both be proud of. I want to spend the rest of my days making you happy.” He reached down and pressed a hand to my stomach, his gaze still on mine. I sucked in a breath, my heart pausing on a beat. “And one day, we’ll bring new life into this world too. And it will be a life worth living for them. Because you and me, babe, we’re going to rule this world.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mikey
I paced the small cell, sweat trickling down my forehead as I waited for Drag to come back. I didn’t trust him one lick, and placing my life in his hands wasn’t my finest moment. But right then, we were out of time and out of choices.
We’d been taking turns leaving the cell to try to find the way out of that hellhole, but it wasn’t going well. I’d gone the last time and somehow ended up getting lost on the way back. I’d stumbled across Aife’s bedroom, grateful that she wasn’t in it. God only knew how I would have explained that to the psycho bitch. I’d finally stumbled back to our cell to find Drag sleeping—again—instead of keeping watch, and we’d ended up fighting.
Now it was his turn to try and find the way out of that hellhole, and from my reckoning, he’d been gone over thirty minutes. Which was too damn long. It wouldn’t be long before more of the Savage women came back to either check on us or eat him, and I had no idea how I was going to explain where Drag was.
Dragging a hand down my face, I rolled my shoulders. My muscles were tight, tension running up my back and down my arms and making everything ache. It must have been daylight by then, I figured, because on my last trip through the place I could have sworn I’d heard a bird’s call. That damn bird was how I’d gotten myself turned around—searching for where its call was coming from. Never did find it.
I swiped a hand across my sweaty forehead. The room was a windowless oven and I was baking in it. The entire cavern system of the Savages’ hideout was insane: long stretches of corridors that seemed to go for miles and miles, twisting and turning and sending you back on yourself. How the Savages found their way around that place was beyond me. Every path and wall looked the same, barring some locked doors I had found. But beyond that it was just dusty paths through a dug-out mountain.
I wondered if that was what had happened to Drag. Perhaps he’d gotten himself lost in the rat maze. Somehow I didn’t think so, though. My heart told me that he had left me for dead.
I cracked the door open and looked back out, holding my breath as I listened intently for something, anything. But all I heard was silence. I clicked the door closed as quietly as possible again and sat down on the dusty ground, my back against the wall as I leaned on my knees. I stared into the blackness in front of me and let my thoughts drift to better times. Times when I wasn’t locked up, waiting to be eaten. Times when life was more than just surviving. I let out a bitter laugh and dragged a hand through my dirty hair. My life had always been hard. From the day I was born until the day I died, it would always be about survival, one way or another.
I wo
ndered about O’Donnell, and what she would be doing then, and I smiled. She’d probably be trying to think of some way to get me out of there. But O’Donnell was a fighter, just like me. A survivor that would do what it took to live. She’d have the good sense to know that the situation was hopeless. If the Rejects and all their resources couldn’t get Phil out of that place, then there was no way in hell I was getting out of there alive. Especially with Drag in there with me. No, we were doomed. Drag knew it and I knew it.
The only way we’d be getting out of that place alive was if we found our own way out. Though with every passing minute it seemed more and more likely that Drag had found his way out and had abandoned me there to suffer my fate.
I picked up a handful of dirt from the ground next to me, letting the dust and sand trail between my fingers as I thought of O’Donnell, of her stunning body and shy smile. She was my type of woman all right. And she could fight too. Nothing like a beautiful woman that could take care of herself. I could imagine that in another life, in another world, we would have been good together. But not in this one.
Something was missing, and I had avoided trying to find out what it was. But right then, there, faced with such uncertainty, it was time to face the truth.
O’Donnell wasn’t Nina.
And that was who my heart still belonged to: the woman with the shitty attitude, the heart of gold, and the beautiful smile.
Nina may have been gone from the world, but she was still alive in my heart, and nothing and no one could block her out.
The Dead Saga (Book 6): Odium VI Page 12
