by T. S. Joyce
“Brandon! I mean…Rike!” She grabbed a tray and started putting the drinks on it just to avoid looking at him. She was a tough girl, and she didn’t want him to see how red her cheeks were.
“Come on, wife,” he murmured through a baiting grin. “Let’s go fuck with the boys.”
She’d frozen like a log in winter at the word, “wife.” Bad boy. “Rike, you shouldn’t say that. If any of my people ever heard you call me that, they would kill you.”
His smile turned empty. “They could try. Lots of people have. So far, no success. Sorry, but a few dogs don’t scare me. I’ve seen actual evil, but I have a feeling you already know that. Wife.”
Anger sizzled through her. “You throw that word around on purpose, but it hurts like a lash every time you use it. You probably don’t care, though, Blackwood.” Evil. Oh, he could tell what she meant by the venomous look that roiled in his black eyes.
She’d said it on purpose. Said it to hurt him. Instantly, she felt bad. His eyes had softened, and he looked like he wanted to puke. That was the second time today he’d looked that way. The first was when she’d said he was like his dad. What was wrong with her? Desperate to fix his smile, she offered him a Band Aid. Quietly she murmured, “I see your mother in you, too.”
Rike ran his hands down his beard and stood from the barstool. “I don’t know if I like being around you, Little Wolf. You’re fun and then you cut me and then you’re fun and then you cut me. It’s hard to keep up with.”
“Don’t you see?” she asked, gripping the sides of the tray. “You’re doing the same. Don’t worry, though, after today you never have to see me again.”
But as she walked away, she could’ve sworn she heard him whisper, “Cut.”
He followed, carrying in his hands the last three margaritas she couldn’t fit on the tray. A true professional, while she had to walk very slow and stare at the drinks in order not to spill them.
“You fuckin’ kidding me?” Dante asked. “Those are chick drinks.”
Bailey grinned. “We’re out of beer.”
“What about whiskey?” Dante asked louder as she set one in front of him. “And is that a purple dick straw?”
“Yep,” she said through a megawatt smile.
Kasey uncrossed his arms and pointed to the tray she was about to put in front of the boys. “I call that one. Yellow is my favorite color.”
“Okay, the yellow dick straw is claimed,” she announced, putting that margarita in front of Kasey, who started drinking immediately with his focus back on the interviews.
“Purple! That’s the one you give me?” Dante said. His voice had lost some of its venom. Muttering low, he said, “Mine’s got fuckin’ venereal disease.”
Bailey laughed and nearly spilled the drink with the green dick straw one of the crows, whose name patch on his leather vest read Tristan, had claimed. The other boys began to drink them politely, and one even tinked his glass with hers in a silent cheers. Another said, “Thanks beer wench, you don’t suck.” And that was compliment enough for her, coming from a crow. Notoriously, they had horrid manners. Maybe Ramsey was a good Alpha who actually socialized these brutes.
She turned to Rike to offer him the last one, but he wasn’t looking at the drink. Instead, he was leaned against the wall with his muscular tatted-up beefy arms crossed over his broad chest, his already empty beer bottle dangling from his hand. He was staring at her lips. “You gotta great smile.”
“You two should bone already,” Dante said.
“Christ, I hate you,” Rike said, pulling the dick straw from Bailey’s margarita in her hand. He chucked a bright pink plastic penis at the heckler that bounced off his forehead and onto the table with a soft clack.
Dante scrunched up his face. “Today is the worst day of my life.”
“That was my straw,” she complained.
“You can have mine,” Rike muttered, walking out the door.
“But I didn’t want a purple one,” she murmured, frowning down at the drink. It did look a little gross.
“Well, now you know how I feel!” Dante said, but he directly followed it with sucking loudly from his straw as he glared at her, so she couldn’t find pity for him anywhere.
She was grinning to herself as she toted both her and Rike’s margaritas toward a stairwell he was approaching. She sucked hers down before they got to the bottom step and then set it down before switching her ugly straw to the other full one. Might as well have fun here. She didn’t have to drive, and she had the distinct feeling Rike was completely trustworthy to take care of her if she got tipsy.
He climbed the stairs and led her straight to the first room on the right. “Ethan’s room,” he murmured.
Bailey frowned at the tidy room. There was barely anything in here other than a neatly made bed with brown sheets and an end table with the simplest black lamp she’d ever seen. “Where is he?”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“Lie,” she called him out. She could sense false notes in a voice, too.
Rike heaved a breath and leaned against the open doorframe. With the toe of his boot, he poked at a line in the carpet at the entrance of the room, as if he didn’t want even the smallest part of him to enter. Like there was an invisible barrier that kept him out.
He was chewing on the corner of his lip and staring at that beige carpet when she bumped his side and asked, “What happened?”
“He betrayed the Clan. Betrayed his Alpha.” Rike swallowed hard. “He betrayed me. We picked this Clan together. We owe Ramsey a huge debt.”
“For what?”
“For pulling us off the path we were on. He gave us a family and a reason to stay good. And trust me when I tell you, Little Wolf. This is me good. You want to talk about evil? About that Blackwood blood that runs through my veins? If you would’ve seen me at eighteen, nineteen, twenty, you’d be singing my praises for the half decent man I turned out to be. You don’t turn your own father into a ghost and then get away free. My soul died that night. Ramsey taught me how to pretend I still have one.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Bailey whispered, feeling gutted at his admissions.
“Ethan tried to take the Clan. He reached for Ramsey’s crown and missed, but then he took half of the crows of Red Dead Mayhem and started his own Clan. Right in the middle of this media shitstorm. Have you seen the footage of that Alpha fight last week?”
“Yes, but it’s blurry. You crows are fast.”
“Well, the one right in the middle of it…the one trading hits with Ramsey? That’s Ethan.”
“Holy shit.” She’d hadn’t even recognized her childhood friend on that footage. He wasn’t the clean-cut kid from her youth anymore. Ethan was a demon-eyed, long-haired, tatted-up, muscle-bound monster who had landed blow after blow like he wanted the kill. That wasn’t the Ethan she remembered. Not at all.
“Have you talked to him since he left?”
“No. I’m loyal to Ramsey.”
“But he’s your brother.”
Rike closed the door to Ethan’s bedroom. “He’s acting more like Lucian. He deserves silence.”
“But—”
“You think it’s easy?” he cut in. “My brother was all I had, Bailey. He was it. He saw me at my worst and didn’t leave. He had my back, and I had his. It was us against the whole world. But I watched him go dark and crave power. I tried to stop it. I did my call-outs, kept talking to him, tried to get him steady again. You think the Blackwood blood is strong in me? You haven’t seen anything until you meet Ethan. Which you won’t. Because you said it yourself, I won’t see you after today. Come on. I think it’s time to get you home. I’m feeling…” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was warding off a headache. “I’m feeling…”
“You’re feeling what?”
Rike gritted his teeth. “I’m feeling. I don’t want this. I do best when I’m numb, and you’re ma
king Lucian’s ghost restless.”
But as he strode toward the stairwell, she knew what he really meant.
She was making Rike restless.
Chapter Seven
Bailey had asked him to drop her off at a little bakery on the edge of Stevensville. A wicked piece of him had wanted to blast through town, revving his engine so everyone would see her on the back of his bike, and whatever fuckface she was promised to would get wind of it.
Rike was itching for a fight.
But for Bailey, he’d been well-mannered and behaved, and said a goodnight with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. And then he’d ridden the whole way back to the clubhouse wishing he would’ve been a monster and kissed her.
He pulled out his phone because it didn’t feel right going through Ethan’s shit without letting him know he was being evicted. And yep, it was three in the morning, and nope, he didn’t care. He hoped his text woke up his asshole brother and gave him a horrible night of sleep.
Hey traitor, your shit will be on my front porch tomorrow. I won’t be there, don’t want to see you. You have one day to come get it or it goes in the burn pile. Send.
And just because he was still full of fury for the disloyal asshat his brother had turned out to be, he typed out, I’ll never forgive you. Send.
Gritting his teeth, Rike tossed the phone onto the bed and pulled out the storage bins from underneath. It might look like Ethan Blackwood had no belongings on this earth, but he had been the same everywhere they’d lived. He always organized his things under the bed.
There was one single, shallow plastic bin. On one side were acrylic paints in black and white, no color. Next to them were vials of black ink and a container of black charcoal. There was one can of black spray paint. Ethan was an artist. He used to create in color, but as he’d grown darker, so had his artwork.
There was a stack of large papers. The top one had a crow on it, dripping with ink. The thing looked savage. It looked like Ethan’s tormented crow. Rike shouldn’t go through this stuff. He should just take the entire bin to his house and dump it, but when he went to close the lid, the top drawing slid to the side, and he could see the one underneath. The ink painting had a strange shape, so Rike knelt down beside it and pulled off the top page. And then he froze.
The painting was of a white wolf pup with a raven sitting in the tree above.
Gooseflesh covered his skin as he pulled the painting away to reveal a white wolf curled around a pitch black crow. The wolf’s lines were crisp and perfect, and there was no ink to her fur, only shadows around her, making her look even whiter. But the crow she was curled protectively around was rough with angry slashes of ink that created the form and splatters like blood all around the edges.
The next was his father’s face. It was eerily realistic, drawn in charcoal that smeared onto Rike’s fingers when he touched the corner. Lucian was looking right at him. Or perhaps right through him. His smile was as empty as his eyes.
Rike moved that one out of the way in a rush.
The next was a wood scene with wolves and crows rushing through the trees.
The next was the white wolf pup down on her front end, butt up in the air, tongue lolled out to the side as she tried to play with a splattered, jagged crow.
He didn’t understand. Was it Ethan who had loved her? Was it Ethan who had cared for Bailey all those years ago?
Rike had seen so much of his artwork, but the white wolf had never shown up until now.
“That he showed you,” Lucian rumbled.
“You shut the fuck up!” Rike yelled, pointing to his father’s ghost. He shook his head in warning and clenched his teeth against the awful feeling in his chest. Whispering, he repeated, “Shut the fuck up.”
Did he even know Ethan? Did he even know his brother at all? He’d hidden sixteen years from him, saying it was for his own good, but was it? He didn’t remember his childhood, and for what? What could possibly be so bad he couldn’t know?
The next was a grown white wolf running.
The next was an aerial view of a white wolf sitting on the porch of a house Rike didn’t recognize.
The next was the Wulfe clubhouse. What the fucking fuck?! It said Wulfe MC right across the front door.
Ethan had been watching Bailey.
But why?
Maybe her memories were confused.
The next was of two little boys sitting on porch stairs on either side of a grown white wolf. She stared right back at Rike with green eyes and a protective snarl on her face, lips curled back over dagger teeth. Bailey’s mom…Jo…Jo…Joanna…
Pain burned through his head but he ignored it and continued on.
The next painting was of three crows. Two were tiny and perfect, and one was huge. And that one one was splattered to hell and barely recognizable as a crow at all. Lucian.
Rike flipped through the pages faster and faster, his heart pounding until he got to the last one.
It was simple. Two hands held tight, and the first color he’d seen in Ethan’s artwork tonight. Red dripped from their hands and pooled along the bottom edge of the paper.
Rike dropped it in a rush as a memory seared across his mind.
He was happy today. Dad was gone, and the green-eyed girl beside him was smiling up at him like he wasn’t a monster. Everyone in town scurried away from him, but never her. She stayed. He always felt full around her. He didn’t need to hurt things as long as Bailey was happy. His hand stung. She’d cut him deep, but that was okay. She’d warned him she would so he would always be reminded that she picked him. He’d cut her deep, too, for the same reason. She hadn’t even winced. His tough girl. Strong mate. His Little Wolf. She was saving him. He held her hand tighter so more warmth spilled out. He wanted their handfast scars to match…
Rike gasped and scrambled away from the paintings. They covered the floor now since he’d been tossing them as he’d rummaged through. The headache behind his eyes was blinding and felt like someone digging a blade into his skull. He rolled over on hands and knees and gritted his teeth against a scream. It hurt. It hurt. Everything hurt.
The phone on the bed dinged.
It was a text. That would be Ethan.
What had he done? What did he hide? Why?
Lucian’s ghost was laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing.
Rike dragged himself to the bed and checked the message.
I’ll never forgive myself either. Burn it all.
Chapter Eight
Bailey was covered in flour and smelled like the bakery. Usually, she changed clothes before she went to the clubhouse, but she was distracted and didn’t care too much about what everyone thought about her.
She was just her—Bailey, daughter to the Alpha, caterer, confused wolf, strolling down a dangerous memory lane that was making it really hard for her to focus on anything other than Rike.
She yanked open the door, determined to talk to Samuel. He was her friend, and out of everyone in her life, he might understand the most.
She walked past the display case of Wulfe Clan history, filled with old motorcycle models, leather vests of members who had died, and trophies and ribbons from when Dad and Samuel used to race motorcycles.
“Where is he?” she asked the prospect, Remy, as she walked into the main room. He was sitting on the couch in front of a ridiculously giant flat screen TV up on the wall, his legs spread out like a starfish and holding a half-empty beer.
Remy jumped as if he hadn’t heard her come in. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re a wolf. Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me coming.”
“I had my mind on other stuff,” he said, running his hand through his blond hair.
Hmmm. “Remy, where is Samuel?”
“Probably in the other room watching the news footage with the guys.”
“Lie,” she said, using the same call-out Rike had used with her.
“Uuuh…well, you weren’t supposed to come back this early…”
&n
bsp; Anger flashed through her, and she gave her tongue to the devil. “I already know about her, asshole. Tell him I’m here when he comes down.”
Bailey didn’t wait for his answer. She made her way to the back door and straight outside into the evening shadows. There was a pool in the back where she’d been to a hundred barbecues. She’d spent so much time with her Clan back here. Samuel had been her friend for the last ten years. Bailey had given her heart away when she was a pup, but that excuse didn’t hold for the Clan. Humans could fall in love and choose who they wanted, but she wasn’t human. Not anymore. Her dad had Turned her when she was little. Turned her mom, too, but she’d stayed out of the clubhouse. She’d been banished years ago for binding Bailey to Rike. Crows and wolves didn’t mix, and Mom had disobeyed all the rules. Dad had blamed that time on the leftover human parts of them. He’d thought them weak for giving into the notion of lasting love.
Mom deserved more than a life in an MC anyway. So had Rike’s mom. Did he even know she was still alive? Did he care?
Fucking Samuel.
He was bringing her here now? Parading a girlfriend in front of the entire Club? Disrespecting Bailey so completely? Was Dad really okay setting her up with a man who would never keep Bailey as his only mate? Was her value only to tie families? The Wulfes to the Daytons?
Could she blame Samuel?
That was the question of the evening.
She’d just spent the day with Rike, a complete stranger to her now, but the only one who had a shot at touching her heart. From childhood, he’d ruined her for everyone.
Wulfe and Blackwood. Their children would be monsters. No way would Dad ever be okay if she stepped out of the Clan to pair up with a crow.
She was sitting in a plastic pool chair, rubbing the scar on her hand when the screen door behind her slid open. Expecting Samuel to come out, she settled a glare over her shoulder, but it wasn’t her betrothed at all.
