Love and Punishment

by Sorcha Mowbray

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Love and Punishment

  Copyright 2015 by Sorcha Mowbray

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-911-4

  Cover art by Tibbs Designs

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Mergers and Acquisitions by Sorcha Mowbray

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for choosing to spend your precious reading time with me.

  Epsilon is a dark and gritty place where surviving is a day to day task and only those close to you can be trusted...most of the time.

  Liam and Nate are the very definition of alpha, and while they have found a deep connection, they have been focused on seeing to the needs of their followers and those who live in their district.

  Bel is haunted by her past. And all her focus is on righting the wrongs done to her and her family, any way necessary. With three such strong people trying to find their way, it’s not hard to imagine a bumpy road ahead.

  But even in a post-apocalyptic world fairytales can come true, and that is the story I want to share with you. I hope you enjoy Bel, Liam, and Nate’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you do, taking a moment to tell other readers with a review would be greatly appreciated.

  I so enjoy hearing from readers, so please look for me on Facebook, Twitter, or send me an email at sorcha.mowbray@gmail.com.

  Happy Reading,

  Sorcha Mowbray

  P.S. To learn more about Epsilon and The Beasts, please be sure to visit http://talesfromepsilon.sorchamowbray.com/

  .

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  Blurb

  Once upon a time…

  Bel was a happy girl with loving parents. Now she lives for revenge. At her father’s urging a plan is set in motion, which quickly spins out of control. Expecting to be used and abused by The Beasts MC, who are known for their orgiastic ways, she is prepared to accept her fate in order to execute her mission.

  The time has come to even the score with the men responsible for her mother’s death.

  Nate and Liam, leaders of The Beasts, have their hands full ensuring the survival of their people as they sell Beast Brew to survive in a city crumbling around them. When a Rose MC member is plucked from their care, the laws of Epsilon demand the perpetrator forfeit his life. But then the leader of The Devil’s Disciples’ daughter offers herself in exchange for his life, and they can’t refuse the beauty’s plea.

  Once she’s pressed between them they know their keeping her for their own, but first they must figure out why she’s there.

  Love and Punishment

  Tales from Epsilon Book 1

  By

  Sorcha Mowbray

  Chapter One

  Once upon a time…

  “You must kill them. I’m counting on you, Beauty.” Marcus Priestly, leader of the Devil’s Disciples held her face in both hands and forced her to meet his intense gaze.

  How many women could say they’d ever heard those words from their father? Annabel drew a deep breath and let the familiar anger flow out of the dark corners of her soul to flood her body. “I know what must be done. The ones responsible for Mother’s death will die. You both will be avenged.”

  “Don’t let me down. You alone stand between death and me. Justice lies in your hands.” He let go of her face and walked away.

  A moment of weakness swept through her. Reminiscent of the young girl she had been, the sudden need to be held and reassured swamped her. “Daddy?” But that little girl had existed before the electromagnetic pulse from a secret government weapon had been unleashed by a goddamn coding error. Before she’d learned about loss. Before The Wave. BTW.

  Her father stopped, looked back at her, and repeated the words she’d heard a thousand times over the last few years. “I’m counting on you, Beauty.”

  It shouldn’t have hurt so much when he strode over to his bike, swung a denim-clad leg over the seat, and cranked the engine to life. But it did. Life after The Wave sucked. A lot.

  Get a grip. I’ve trained ten years for this moment. Shaking the strange nostalgia off, she climbed into the back of the pieced-together vehicle. The driver wove through the streets of what used to be San Diego in a silence punctuated by the occasional sputter of the car’s engine. Now known as Epsilon, her father led one of the tribes, motorcycle clubs really, who controlled the southern part of the city.

  The long, slow drive passed burned-out husks of buildings, overgrown stretches of what might once have been greenery, and along pothole-dotted roads gave her plenty of time to think. For ten lonely years, she’d been obsessed with revenge. The need to make the men who killed her mother pay drove her to the ends of endurance and left her shaking with exhaustion from training to become a lethal weapon. Hate-fueled righteousness numbed her emotions until her soul resembled Epsilon’s crumbling facades and blackened streets.

  The driver stopped b
efore the crumbling amphitheater where concerts and plays were once staged. Tonight’s performance featured her as the star. Her own personal tragedy would play out in living shades of black and gray before the High Council. In the years since The Wave, a civilization-crushing electromagnetic pulse, and the riots after, the council, consisting of a member from each surviving territory, sat in judgment over their EpiCenter. Tonight they judged her father.

  Something stank. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with the charges against her father and everything to do with the pungent chemical smell of the rancid fuel used to power the patchwork-metal car she’d climbed out of. The entrance loomed ahead, the embodiment of things to come, and drew her forward until the rumble of bikes announced more arrivals. Damn, she had hoped to be the last to arrive so she could slip inside to wait for what she expected to unfold. Instead, she found herself transfixed by two men who sat astride their sleds as though the engines rumbled for them alone. The matte-black beasts were harsh and angular, yet beautiful. From the sleek elongated fronts to the extra-wide tire in the rear, the bikes were designed to draw attention. And still, the men commanded every eye in the parking lot.

  Of course, as the only person left, her eyes answered their call. One dark and one fair. She saw little actual skin, yet she would have said with absolute certainty both men were packed with muscle. Something about them made any other notion laughable.

  Blood thrummed through her veins while her pulse raced. Breath harsh with some unnamed reaction, she could only compare the sensation to having spent two hours sparring with an unbeatable opponent. The air wheezed from her lungs in painful gasps, her muscles trembled, and a fine sweat broke out across her skin. The dampness between her thighs? Not something she would discuss with anyone. Not even her sisters, Briana and Charlene.

  Then the emblems sewn on the back of their jackets caught her eye, drawing a curse from her that would have gotten her smacked across the face by her father. Their jackets proudly displayed a grinning skull with a barbed-wire halo and black wings. A snarling wolf in red and black appeared in the boney head where eyes should have been and the words The Beasts MC were emblazoned over the top and bottom of the image. Once she knew they were the enemy their appeal dulled, though did not die. With a sigh of regret, she turned and strolled through the gates of the venue. They were affiliated with the wrong club. Lived in the wrong territory. Answered to the wrong man.

  She eased into the terraced bowl, hiding in the shadows for the moment. And there were a great many shadows despite the giant torches jutting from the walls. The men from outside mostly forgotten, she focused on the task at hand. Maybe if her luck held she might have an opportunity to meet one of the men she’d seen earlier before she exacted her revenge. Then again, it wouldn’t matter because after she did her job she would be branded Beast Enemy Number One.

  Assuming she got to live.

  A bear of a man stood at the foot of the flame-edged stage and spread his arms wide in welcome.

  “Citizens of Epsilon!” Joseph Weston, head of The Sin Eaters, easily intimidated those before him with his presence. At least until they figured out he served the spiritual needs of Epsilon and not enforcement.

  Since the Sin Eaters didn’t own a piece of Epsilon, he lived in the High Council Headquarters and his people stayed where spiritual guidance was needed, or they were otherwise welcomed. He had come to her father’s territory to save souls and forgive sins many times over the years. Though she never spoke to him, she had always tried to be near when he orated. His words of forgiveness, peace, and happiness drew her. But, inevitably reality would intrude in the form of one of her sisters or her father, who reinforced how futile such ideas were in the face of surviving in a slowly decaying world. Everyone cheered the respected man until he finally lowered his arms.

  “We gather today in outrage. To express our contempt for the actions of one of our brethren.” The crowd rumbled with disquiet as Joseph clenched his fist and thrust it into the air. “I know the distress one man’s actions have caused. And in the face of such brutality….” He paused, gazed over at her father, and continued in a scathing tone. “Such utter disregard for humanity, law and order must be upheld. There is no question of guilt in the case before the High Council. Instead, we face a question of punishment. What should the penance be for the crime?”

  Lord the man had a flare for the dramatic. Bel wanted to roll her eyes, but she refused to be disrespectful. Especially since she knew the accused man was, in fact, guilty.

  “The Devils Disciples’ leader, Marcus Priestly, has been found in possession of stolen property. Not just any property, but”—the man whipped the crowd into a damned frenzy—“a Rose.”

  And the gathering went wild. Similar to a bike with no muffler, the roar of anger rolled through the amphitheater and reverberated off the walls.

  Bel tried to remember her father had stolen the Rose for her. All so she could sacrifice herself in exchange for her father’s life. For her dream. For her revenge.

  She would kill the leaders of The Beasts MC.

  A gust of wind caused the flames around the venue to dip and leap, drawing her back to the moment. On the stage, two familiar men dragged a girl out, half-naked and unable to stand on her own. George and Kalif from her father’s personal guard supported the poor thing. She wobbled on scrawny legs while her lank, greasy hair hung around her gaunt face, almost hiding her green-tinged skin from the audience.

  “Before you stands the stolen Rose. Damaged. Broken. The woman cannot be returned in the same state she was taken. Darby Rouletti, leader of the Roses, wishes to address the council.”

  Darby strode forward, hands fisted at her sides. Flame-red hair shimmered in the firelight, and yet the sparks in her green eyes easily outshone her tresses. “The Roses demand justice.” Her husky voice carried on the evening breeze. “Justice for Penelope. Justice for our Order. And justice for all women of Epsilon. If we allow this wrong to go unanswered, we all become the victims. It cannot stand.”

  She retreated back into the shadows to stand with the other High Council members, but offered a nod to one of the men next to her.

  Joseph picked up where he left off. “Since the Order of the Rose has always been protected by The Beasts, Liam Whelan will also speak.”

  Bel’s eyes widened when the tall man with broad shoulders swept by long blond hair strode to middle stage. No. Not him. She recognized him as one of the compelling men from the parking lot, as much from her body’s reaction as from his intense good looks. Ink snaked up his neck from beneath his shirt, but the rest of his body remained hidden by his clothing.

  “Fellow Epsilonians, I call on you to right the wrong perpetrated by the leader of the Devil’s Disciples. He violated our territory, took a helpless woman, and drugged her into an addiction she no longer wishes to be released from because she does not wish to remember what has befallen her. What he has done to her. An eye for an eye!” The sexy blond man’s voice crescendoed with a thunderous roar that sparked an answering cry from the crowd.

  Something she never before experienced slithered through her body, touched parts of her long left dormant. Hard on its heels, nausea rolled through her gut and threatened to eject what little food she managed to choke down earlier. Drugging the girl with Collar, the latest designer street drug, and raping her had not been part of the plan discussed. What the hell had he done? Her head spun.

  Bel bit her lip and focused on the part of the plan they had agreed to. Revenge was the order of the day. The despicable deed done, she waited for what she knew would come.

  Once the crowd settled, Joseph spoke again, “I entreat the High Council to cast your vote and decide this man’s fate.” He gestured to her father who stood in stoic silence off to the side.

  Each council member rose and in turn walked to where he stood. One after another sliced their hand, bleeding on his feet to demonstrate their willingness to shed his blood. Had they believed in his in
nocence, they would have approached, stared him in the eyes, and walked away unmarred. There could be only one possible outcome for the theft of a woman, let alone the atrocities he perpetrated. A unanimous vote.

  Women were scarce enough they were revered and respected. The Order of the Rose MC chose to go into sexual service to earn money and to help protect other women. If a subset of their population willingly eschewed themselves for the use of men, perhaps the others would be safer. Their sacrifice made this violation all the more offensive.

  The last council member, the sexy blond guy—no, the man she would kill—faced her father and slit his hand open. As he bled on her father’s boots, he said or did something to make her father laugh. In the blink of an eye, the leonine brute lunged for him. Joseph stepped between the men and forced the aggressive one away.

  The spiritual leader spun around and told everyone what they had all witnessed. “The High Council has decreed death for Marcus Priestly.”

  With the declaration, Bel found it easy to dig deep and weep for her parent. Emerging from the shadows, she stepped into the firelight and cried out, “No, stop.”

  Frantic to get to the raised platform before the moment passed, she pushed past startled men and women in the crush until she reached her father. Adrenalin coursed through her system and forced her to gulp air while she tried to stem her shockingly real tears. “We live by the law, but if this is truly an eye for an eye….” She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and faced the crowd. “The High Council would let me replace the Rose. Take me instead of my father.”

  Silence stretched through the crowded amphitheater. It slowly gave way to grumbling. Her father rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, causing a chill to snake down her spine. Together they stood and waited. Tense with nerves, Bel cast a glance to her right where the blond Beast stood, legs braced and arms crossed, gaze boring into her. Could he tell why she had done this? Did he already know her intent? A knot of fear took shape in her belly as the reality of what she had committed to took shape.