Salvation: Saving Setora Book Seven

by Dark, Raven

We collapsed on the mat and Hawk rolled over onto his back beside me. I didn’t wait for him to pull me to him like he always did, instead, lying across him, spent and reeling. I draped my arm over his stomach, my leg over his, and pressed my head against his chest.

  Hawk hummed in approval. His hand drove into my hair, and he kissed the top of my head, settling comfortably under me. Without the bliss of him fucking me, the worries of the day seeped in, and I pushed them away, shutting the world out so that there would be only the two of us for a little while longer.

  I wanted to say something, anything to fill the silence.

  “Master. I know how you are about sleeping with me. If you want me to leave so you can—”

  “Shush, woman.” He held me tighter. “I’m not done with you yet. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be all over you again.”

  “And then?”

  He gave an uncertain chuckle. “Tonight, I’ll have to make an exception to my rule. The drugs have been keeping Julian away, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Good, then I’m not leaving you. I wouldn’t even if they hadn’t been.”

  I turned my head and dropped kisses on his chest, hoping he felt my love for him in the warmth of my lips.

  “I still can’t believe you walked out on your master for me,” I whispered.

  “It wasn’t difficult, unfortunately. He forced me to attack you.”

  “A feigned attack, Hawk, one I’m sure he knew the outcome to.” I could hear the guilt in his tone, and I didn’t like it.

  “Doesn’t matter. He crossed the line. I wouldn’t have done it at all, but the alternative would have been for him to do it, and that, I would not have permitted.”

  I lifted my head, worry working its way through my lethargy. “You’ve avoided talking about this, but I need to know. Your walking away…does that mean you aren’t Yantu anymore?”

  His chest rose and fell heavily. His eyes fixated on the ceiling. “I don’t know.” His voice was quiet with uncertainty.

  I furrowed my brow at him. Then I moved up along his body until I was looking down at him. “Do you still want to be Yantu after what he did?”

  His eyes settled on mine. “If I had a choice, I don’t know if I would drop out of the Order. Master Leif crossed the line, but his actions are his own. They are not a reflection of the entire Order. I have been Yantu for so long… You don’t just walk away from something like that.”

  Unsure what to say, I bit my lip and squeezed his waist, trying to give him my strength, hating the lost look in his eyes. I could just imagine how adrift he felt. Being a warrior of the Yantu Order wasn’t just what Hawk was, it was who he was. It was as much a part of him as sight was to Sheriff. Asking Hawk to give that up felt the same as asking me to give up a limb.

  “I may not have a choice, you know,” Hawk whispered.

  “What?” When I lifted my head, he was back to staring at the ceiling, a crease between his brows. “What do you mean?”

  His chest rose and fell before his eyes turned to me once again. “The rules are different for me now. The General of an MC may not belong to any other order or organization.”

  The words rang of a quoted phrase, His loyalty is to the club alone.

  His arm tightened around me, the muscles taut. “If Sheriff doesn’t get his sight back…”

  My chest squeezed. “You’d have to leave the Order.”

  He gave a nod.

  I dropped my forehead to his chest, devastation rolling over me. “This is such a mess, Master.”

  “I know.”

  Until that moment, at least part of me wanted him to leave the Order, knowing they would never help Sheriff. But now that he might have to, the notion cut at me.

  I jerked my head up. “Wait. Hawk, you don’t have to give up the Order if you don’t want to.”

  “What?”

  “Give the gavel to Pretty Boy.”

  Hawk snorted. With disgust, I thought. “Even if I wanted to, no.”

  “Why not?” I snapped, thinking he was just reacting to the animosity currently boiling between them. “Would he be that bad a general?”

  “The Legion is enough of a mess without him running it.”

  “Hawk.” I drawled, ignoring the muted amusement in his eyes. I wanted to be annoyed, but instead, I suppressed the broken laugh that threatened to slip out. I’d seen Pretty Boy take charge and get us out of scrapes more than once, and he was a hell of a fighter. But I had to admit, he was impulsive and reckless, and sometimes his wildness unsettled me. He liked to upset the status quo and challenge the rules, even those of the club when he didn’t agree with Sheriff.

  “On second thought, never mind,” I said. I meant it. Sort of.

  “It wouldn’t matter even if he managed to do a decent job. He wouldn’t want it anyway. Pretty Boy likes to be where the action is, but he would stalk off in disgust if I even asked him, and not just because he’d be taking something he still thinks belongs to Sheriff.”

  I thought I understood. I knew Pretty Boy could lead—I’d seen him do it. But the idea of such responsibility wasn’t his style. He liked to be wild and free, content to let others make the decisions, knowing exactly who was and what he was capable of. I envied him in that, sometimes.

  I sighed. “You shouldn’t have to give up who you are. All right, enough of this. Tomorrow, I’m going to see Sheriff and give him a piece off my mind.”

  Hawk grabbed my shoulders, holding me in place as if he thought I meant to spring up and march off to Sheriff’s hut right then and there. “No, you will not.”

  “Master, I have to. Everything is falling apart. If I didn’t think he was asleep and it wasn’t pitch black out, I’d be on my way over there now.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Hawk growled.

  “Yes, I would. Look at what’s happened here. If what you and the others have said is true, Sheriff is slowly killing himself. He won’t take care of himself, and he’s pushing everyone away. You told me yourself, he punched Doc. Pretty Boy is drinking himself silly again. Both of you are at each other’s throats. Again. And now you might have to leave the Order. Sheriff is wallowing in his self pity so much he can’t see what he’s doing to this club. The Legion needs him, and he’s turned his back on it. Someone has to put a stop to it.”

  “Well, that someone is not going to be you.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Hawk rolled me swiftly onto my back and captured my wrists above my head. I made an angry sound. “Hawk.”

  He shook his head. “No, Setora, don’t argue with me on this. You aren’t going near him.”

  “I have to try.”

  “The rest of us already have.”

  I stared at him. There was a closed off look on his face I didn’t like. “Hawk, what aren’t you telling me?”

  His lips became a hard, stubborn line.

  “What is it?”

  Hawk released one of my wrists, opened his mouth, then closed it. His fingers captured my jaw almost gently, and his chest rose and fell against mine. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “You haven’t seen what he’s been like. He’s erratic and irrational, even violent. He’s dangerous, Kitten.”

  Dangerous? Maker, I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what he was like right now. I swallowed.

  Honestly, I didn’t think Sheriff would attack me, not the way he’d apparently done with Hawk to get him to take the gavel, but I’d seen what he was like when he was angry. He wouldn’t be violent with me. He wouldn’t. But Sheriff was a master at hurting those around him in ways that went beyond the physical. He knew how to get into people’s heads and turn his words into blades of pain, to strike where they were weakest. I’ve witnessed his roles of Bully, Beast, and Tyrant.

  My heart battered my ribs at the thought of facing him. I closed my eyes for a moment, steeling my courage, ready to put aside my fear and tell Hawk that getting Sheriff back on his feet and doing what was best for the club was more important than any danger he pose
d to me. But when I opened them, the look on Hawk’s face made that impossible. Protectiveness, and command as unyielding as any steel chain, shattered any hope of defying him.

  As if for good measure, his fingers on my jaw tightened just a little, enough to tell me he meant business. “You aren’t to go near him, Setora. Not until one of us says so. Do you understand me?”

  Something close to anger with him and a bizarre kind of adoration swirled around inside me. I hated that he was being such a… a Master. But I also loved that he did what he had to in order to protect me.

  Feeling stubborn and obstinate, I put my head back and pressed my lips together, holding in the urge to surrender to the dominance that pulled me in like a tether.

  Hawk’s other hand seized my hip, inches from my ass. “Setora, understand me. All of us know you’ve become much more than a slave in these past few months. I don’t know how it happened, but nothing’s been the same since you came to us. There aren’t words for what you are to this club, there hasn’t been words for that used in centuries, if there ever was. But the rules of the club and the laws of this world are still in play, here. If you set foot near Sheriff’s hut without my permission, I will tan your ass so red you won’t sit comfortably for a week.”

  I snapped my gaze to his. I would have been more angry with him if not for the protective hardness in them. The desperation to keep me from pain that even I wasn’t sure I could handle.

  I heaved a sigh and made myself nod.

  “Promise me, woman,” he said. “Promise me you won’t see him.”

  My throat choked with something close to grief, as if I’d already lost Sheriff to something worse than his blindness. “I promise, Master.”

  Hawk nodded with satisfaction and rested his warm, calloused palm on my chest, between my breasts. “Trust me to keep this club together, all right? Somehow, I will fix this.”

  I made myself nod again. I had to give him time. Had to trust him. “What about your status in the Order, though?”

  “Right now, that doesn’t matter. I’ll worry about that after Sheriff has his sight back. And after Julian is dead and you’re safe. You and Sheriff, this club, are my priorities right now.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “Pretty Boy was wrong, you know.”

  “About?”

  “About you. About your loyalty to the Legion. You might be Yantu, but you are also one hundred percent a man of the Dark Legion. You’ll make a great General.”

  His lips twitched. One of his knees parted mine, and his cock pressed against my sex, hard and thick and ready, and making my pussy ache.

  “Are you saying that because I just threatened to spank you the way a biker’s woman gets spanked, or because I just pulled a Sheriff?”

  I grinned, some of my mood lifting as love for him filled me to bursting. “Both, Master.”

  He kissed me long and hard on the lips, then lifted his head and glanced at the window. Silvery dawn light cast glowing lines across the hut’s dirt floor. “You need to get some sleep.”

  “I will sleep better after you make love to me, Master.”

  “Then you will have the best sleep you have ever had today.”

  He was absolutely right.

  After an hour of slow, lazy lovemaking, I lay wrapped in my warrior master’s arms. The warmth of his body and the slow, calm beat of his heart lulling me into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  When the sun peaked the sky, I’d have to deal with a crumbling club, a fractured Four, and the painfully growing certainty that I was losing Sheriff. But for now, there was only Hawk and me, putting off the inevitable day that would bring so much heartache and the tomorrow I wished would never come.

  Chapter 13

  Sentencing

  I woke to what had to be the most fantastic feeling in the world—Setora’s heavenly body wrapped around me from head to toe.

  She had her arms around my middle, her legs tangled with mine. Her cheek was pressed to my chest. The heat of her seeped into me; she felt as hot as the sun, and yet it wasn’t enough. When it came to her, she’d never be close enough.

  A smile pulled at my lips and I lifted my head, looking down at her. Her eyes were closed, her lavender lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell with the slow rhythm of sleep, her breasts squashed against my chest.

  Completeness settled over me, and I tightened my arms around her. A shiver racked her frame. There was a draft, an early morning chill that probably blew in from the north. I pulled the blanket over us. She snuggled more comfortably into me.

  Voices drifted from outside, Pretty Boy and Steel whooping, loud and obnoxious over the distant sounds of several of the villagers. What were those clowns up to now?

  The concerns I’d shut out over the last week’s events permeated the world I’d let myself get lost in with Setora, shattering the sense of peace only she could bring these days. The club was on the verge of collapsing under the weight of its own turmoil. She was the only thing in my life that seemed to make complete sense.

  Thoughts of Sheriff and the future loomed. Instinctively, I reached inward and called up my Fortress—or I tried. The steel walls in my mind that usually insulated me from my emotions collapsed, any hope for peace gone. I wrapped Setora up tighter and rightness settled over me, a salve against the uncertainty that played havoc with my resolve.

  What kind of world were we in that this woman brought me more peace than my Fortress? Where I couldn’t focus unless I had her in my arms?

  It was up to me to fix the damage, to do a job that, for as long as the Legion had existed, rested on Sheriff’s shoulders. The thought made my heart feel as heavy as a stone in my chest.

  I’d fix this somehow, but it hurt like hell that I had to.

  Pretty Boy’s laugh rang out, wild and victorious. I sighed, pushing aside a rare bolt of savage rage toward him that made my stomach knot. He’d questioned my loyalty to the damned MC, to Sheriff. The little bastard had actually had the nerve to imply I’d robbed Sheriff of his position like some usurper swooping in when he was weakest and taking what belonged to him.

  Fucker.

  Another laugh from him. Someone from the village shouted at him to shut up, and he cursed at them.

  Shit. His mood stank of trouble, calamity in the making. I was going to have to go and deal with him, wasn’t I? Shut him up before he pissed the whole village off.

  I glanced over at the gavel, still lying on the dirt floor near where Kitten and I lay. Sheriff would have stomped out and bellowed at him, quickly setting order to the day. I growled and gently rolled Kitten onto her back. She gave a small groan in her sleep and groped for my hand.

  I settled her and kissed her forehead softly. Then I stood and threw on my pants, doing them up.

  The ruckus outside stopped. The door to a hut closed, the one to Pretty Boy’s and Steel’s, by the sound of it. I dropped my shoulders. Well, I was up now, I might as well get on with the day.

  I’d just sat and finished dressing and was tying up my boots when Setora’s warm hand settled on my back.

  “Master.”

  The sleepy, hoarse sound of her voice reminded me of the way I’d made her scream earlier that morning. My dick twitched in response. I turned on the mat to face her. Her soft, violet hair was splayed around her head, across my pillow. Soft adoration filled amethyst eyes that glittered like perfectly cut jewels in the rising sunlight.

  “Morning Kitten.” I let one finger swipe a stray lock of hair from her alabaster cheek.

  She sat up and rested her hand on my chest. Her eyes dropped to the General’s patch on the breast of my cut. Her fingers traced it, her eyes lowering sadly. I cupped her chin, making her look at me.

  “Things will work out, Setora. Don’t give up on us yet.”

  She nodded mutely.

  What a fucking mess this was. The moment I took the gavel was supposed to be a time of celebration. I wished the hell I could see pride in her eyes instead of pain.


  “Come here.” I drew her gently close. “Give me a kiss before I go.”

  She tipped her face up obediently and brushed her lips with mine, slipping her arms around my neck.

  “I love you, Master.” She buried her face in my neck.

  My shoulders shook on a sigh, and I breathed her in. The decision as to my next step insofar as the Yantu chewed at my gut. I’d never felt so tangled up inside, or so far away from my Order, so far from who I was in my life.

  Leaving the Yantu Order was not an option now. I still had to hope that I could somehow change Master Leif’s mind about Sheriff, and if I left, I’d sever the one reason he might still have to help him. Hell, I might kill the obligation he felt to help Setora, whatever he’d said about Julian being a matter the Order was meant to deal with. But I couldn’t be the general and still remain as part of the Order. Fuck, what a clusterfuck.

  I kissed her shoulder and let her love wash over me. The words hovered on my lips. Words that would expose an emotion for her that, in saying aloud, would bring me further away from a part of myself I dared not abandon. I settled for snatching a kiss from her lips, then stood up before I could change my mind and take so much more.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Church soon.”

  “You’re first time holding Church.” She smiled tearfully.

  I picked up the gavel from the floor and stowed it in my cut’s inner pocket, then touched her under the chin.

  She stood, letting the blanket fall away from her perfect, shapely form. Fuck, she was beautiful, like an angel in sunlight. My heart swelled near to bursting, and I spun, stalking to the door with a growl, refusing the temptation to lose myself in her all over again.

  Fat lot of good that would do, being late for my first time holding church. The men already doubted my leadership enough. Or Pretty Boy did, at least.

  Setora let out a soft chuckle, apparently realizing it took a Violet’s level of strength to turn away from her. The sound made my dick raging hard.

  “Have a good meeting, my love,” she said behind me.

  I stopped in the doorway, and my fists clenched with my own inner conflict.