WOUNDED SOULS MC
His Lady
LEAH SHARELLE
Copyright © 2018 Leah Sharelle
His Lady (Wounded Souls MC Series – Book 4)
By Leah Sharelle
All Rights Reserved.
Chief Editor: Colleen Snibson of Colleen Snibson Editing
Co-editor: Rogena Mitchell-Jones of RMJ Manuscript Service LLC
Both of Two Red Pens Editing www.tworedpens.com
Photography: Christy Van Elsen, Chic Professional Photography
Cover Design: Mayhem Cover Creations
Models: Katrina Leckie and Matthew Chapman
This book may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. All characters and storylines are the properties of the author, and your support and respect are appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
This author writes in both American English and Australian English and may include Australian diction.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Julie Pfeiffer, this one is for you. Xo
Prologue
MANNIX
“What are these, Alannah?” I asked my wife as I looked at the large yellow envelope sitting on the table in front of me. I was not in the mood for any shit from Alannah today. I had been back in the country for less than a week, and I missed my team. The minute I walked back into my home after more than a year away on my latest deployment, I felt out of place and like an intruder.
When we arrived at the base airport, wives and kids were waiting for their spouses and fathers to disembark from the plane. My wife? She was sitting in the car in the car park, talking on the phone, and her look of annoyance was the first thing that welcomed me home. I really felt the love. Not.
Then we had a week of arguing and shitty moods from the both of us, and I didn’t see my kids because they were at their grandparents’ house. They should have been at home with their dad, catching up on ball tossing and discussions about school and boys. I should have been buried deep inside my wife, catching up on three hundred and sixty-five days of no sex. Instead, I wished like hell I was back in the FOB. The Forward Operating Base felt more like a home than where I was now. Fuck me! I was tired. Tired of fighting the enemy. Tired of fighting with Alannah.
“If you opened them yesterday when I gave them to you, you would know, Mannix.”
God, her voice was grating on my last nerve. She once spoke to me with love and softness, but something happened during my last two deployments, and all of a sudden, my loving wife had become a nagging shrew.
“Just tell me, Alannah. I am tired and worn out. This hasn’t exactly been the welcome home I was expecting.” I couldn’t keep the snark out of my tone. It was immature and probably wouldn’t help us to a better future, but fuck me, was it too much to ask for a bit of happiness that I made it home alive? The woman didn’t even have the decency to look me in the face. I knew my missing eye was a shock and seeing me with an eye patch was different, but I was fucking alive, for Christ’s sake. Couldn’t she be happy about that?
I spoke to Alannah after the clusterfuck that went down in Afghanistan, wanting her to know I was hurt but alive. Though when I said I talked to her, I really meant I left a message on her voicemail. She hadn’t bothered to pick up any of my calls for the last few months. I would get a brief text message from her hours later saying nothing more than ‘’kay, talk later’ or ‘that’s good, then.’
To tell the truth, I was mighty pissed off.
“Divorce papers. I filed three months ago, but Cade thought it would be better not to tell you while you were working. You needed your full concentration over there,” she told me.
Yeah, like she gave a crap. Who fucking did this? Gave you divorce papers after returning from a double tour in absolute hell. My whole team was hit, some worse than others, and we lost one of our own in horrific circumstances. My own fucking twin brother got his leg blown off, for fuck’s sake, and I lost my eye. Then she pulled this shit?
Wow. Just what the fuck? Divorce. She wanted a divorce? I closed my eyes and tried to summon the part of me that could detach because that was what I needed—to find my cool, my control.
So many questions whirled around in my brain. Such as what did my cousin Cade have to do with this? Why had Alannah discussed the papers with him and not me? I ran my fingers through my hair. I had let it grow over the last couple of months, which wasn’t my typical MO. Like the rest of my team, I kept it short while in the desert. It was easier to deal with under a combat helmet and a hell of a lot cooler in all that miserable fucking heat.
But after the last few frustrating calls from home, keeping my hair trimmed was the last thing on my mind. Then the firefight from hell happened, and I guess I started resenting the hold the military had on me.
“Fuck me, Alannah. There has to be something that can fix this. You’re my wife, the mother of my kids. We have been married for thirteen years, for Christ’s sakes. Is this something you really want to throw away? I love you.” The last three words tasted bitter on my tongue. The truth was I’d started feeling differently about my wife a few years ago. At one stage, I suspected she had cheated on me. I had no real proof, just a gut feeling, but my gut had served me well over the years, keeping my brothers and me alive. But instead of going with it, I pulled back from her a bit, even stopped telling her I loved her.
I honestly believed she would call me on it and get upset or something, but she hadn’t. Instead, she stopped telling me, too. All of a sudden, my extra tours didn’t bother her or set off an emotional crying display where she would beg me to come home safe.
She had even stopped coming to the base to see me off. My mum and dad would bring my kids instead so they could wave their dad off. At least she didn’t stop that.
“Is that what you want? Because I don’t, Mannix. We aren’t in love anymore, haven’t been for a long time,” she said, lowering herself to a kitchen chair as she pushed another business-sized manila envelope towards me. Jesus, fuck, what now?
“What’s that?”
“Cade wanted you to see these as soon as possible,” Alannah whispered, her eyes not able to meet mine, which was her tell that she was hiding something more from me. More than just wanting a divorce.
“What the fuck has Cade got to do with this? You keep mentioning him,” I asked her with a menacing growl. Surely, she wouldn’t stoop that low.
“He has everything to do wit
h this.” She pointed to the envelope and finally looked at me. In her eyes, I saw determination and something else I couldn’t understand.
“In there are the results of the DNA tests I had done on Ebony and James.”
I felt my heart plummet at that very moment. Without Alannah saying another word, I knew she was about to rock my world. I desperately tried to moisten my parched mouth. I needed to ask the question but fuck if I could get the words out.
“You aren’t their biological father. Cade is,” Alannah whispered, and with that one sentence, my soon-to-be ex-wife did not only rock my world, but she also tore my fucking heart out and stomped on it.
No fucking way.
Chapter 1
MANNIX
I watched as Shiloh danced around the compound with Darth while her dogs jumped around his legs trying to get to their favourite person in the world. Not that I could blame them. Shiloh Johnston had everyone wrapped around her little finger—both humans and dogs.
I loved her fiercely, just like every one of my club brothers, and protecting her and the women was number one on all our priority lists. Well, there was one woman I couldn’t protect because she had fucking disappeared on me two weeks ago after Rogue killed Tori and my brother Steel was forced to shoot that punk Shifty at the Bar and Grill. She just slipped out the back door and left with no fucking detail, completely unprotected from the arsehole who was out to get her. The fear that Rainn was somewhere out there and in danger crippled me.
I tossed the empty beer bottle hard into the bin and got no joy from the sound of the smashing glass. It felt too much like the smashing of my heart. A heart I thought I no longer had. My ex made sure of that a few years back when she told me of her ongoing affair with my fucking cousin. Behind my back, they had both led a double life. Cade’s wife had no clue, either. I remembered the look on her face when Cade and Alannah came clean to the rest of the family. Hearing of the affair had been hard for her. But for me? As I’d listened to their tale of deceit, the lies, and the hiding the fact that my kids were not mine, my heart froze over and became a solid block of ice.
I endured the pain of telling Ebony and James and hearing their heartbreaking sobs as they screamed for me not to leave them. But I had to because they weren’t mine. The solicitor I engaged flat out told me there was nothing I could do about custody since they were another man’s children. Ironically, they shared my DNA because Cade and I were blood relatives. The only thing the solicitor could do was to sue Alannah for fraud or some shit, but I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t have been fair to the kids.
I did the only thing left for me to do. I packed my belongings into my 1970 electric blue Mustang and left the home I’d made for a family that wasn’t even mine. I made sure Cade felt my anger when I knocked the shit out of him on the front lawn in front of the whole neighbourhood. My brother Cooper had been there to pull me off when he heard the woman from next door scream that she had called the cops. Cooper got into my car while I straddled my bike and said a big ‘fuck you’ to the woman I hated more than anything else before I took off.
Booth and Deck came up with the idea to start the Wounded Souls not long after that. We had missed the camaraderie of our team, and we all felt that loss. The club was a true family, a brotherhood that had integrity, pride, and a deep sense of loyalty.
Five years later, the pain of Alannah’s betrayal had diminished, but I felt the loss of my children every single day. My mum, who suffered as I had, kept me updated with pictures of them. One minute, she was a grandmother, and then the next, she was relegated to Great Aunt. Alannah also made sure that Mum and Dad were not invited to the family gatherings Ebony and James attended. Fucking bitch. They hadn’t asked for that to happen, their only grandchildren ripped from them. It’s been a tough time for the family. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I had been their dad but was now just the absent, not-talked-about second cousin. The ugly secret no one discussed.
I spent years shedding the good soldier image and gaining another. The guy who fucks, then leaves, the guy without a heart. It was cathartic changing my image. My hair was longer and more unruly, and I covered nearly every inch of my body in tattoos—dark ones, which some might think are disturbing, but I didn’t. I liked my ink, the story behind each and every one, and why I had chosen them. Most of it stemmed from my hatred of my ex-wife. The only two with colour and life were the two I got for my kids, which weren’t mine, but I didn’t give a fuck what a piece of paper said. I was there at their births, and I raised them for eleven years. I held them at night after a nightmare woke them and soothed them when they had to watch me leave for another deployment.
Another man might have the title of father, but in my mind, I would always be their dad.
“Mannix? Pres wants us in the war room now.” Creed’s voice interrupted my deep, dark thoughts.
I looked over at my brother and couldn’t help noticing the tension radiating off him. I knew that seeing Mia marry Steel today was difficult for him to watch. The club’s favourite bartender finally got my twin brother to grow the fuck up and look past his ‘flaw’ to trust his heart. He had spent far too many years chasing his tail and that of Mia’s manipulative sister, Callie.
Giving him a chin lift, I glanced over at Shiloh, who was now playing with her ever-faithful dogs, her large chinchilla cat stuffed inside a hideous pink and sparkly carrier, sitting at her feet. Usually, one would feel sorry seeing that, but that fucking cat was a menace. The fucking thing hated everyone and hissed whenever you looked its way.
Except for Shiloh. And Rainn.
My heart lurched with want and fear at the thought of Body and Souls’ number one dancer.
I fucking missed her.
Apart from the fact that I had no fucking clue where she was or if she was safe, which in itself was unacceptable, I really just fucking missed her. Over the years, she had gone from being an employee and fuck buddy to a trusted member of my club and a confidant. My best friend.
Her feisty attitude and take-no-shit approach to life made her fun to be around. The way she could handle herself at the strip club with either a drunken idiot trying to get handsy with her or the way she pulled any of the other dancers into line was a sight to behold.
But her softer side was what I liked the most. Such as when she was with Shiloh, cuddled up on the couch in the main room of the compound, reading to the club princess and using different voices for the books’ characters. Rainn got herself so lost in her moments with Squirt that she probably didn’t even know she stroked her fingers through Shiloh’s long, raven hair and pressed her lips to the little girl’s head as she drifted off to sleep in Rainn’s arms.
I lived for those stolen moments when I would watch her with her guard completely down. I could watch her for hours when she was like that. Sweet natured, nurturing, caring, and soft. Don’t get me wrong, I love feisty Rainn. She takes no bullshit and calls anyone on theirs whether they wore a patch or not. It served her well on the job—dancing on a pole or lap for money wasn’t for everyone. We had seen many girls come and go over the years because they couldn’t handle the job.
But not Rainn Storm—which was her stage name. When she stormed into Body and Souls and demanded a job dancing, she had me hooked. The woman knew how to make her body her weapon. The way she used it to command the attention of the crowd was impressive. Her application said Rainn Louise Marcus, but it took me seeing just one dance from her to change that to Rainn Storm. What her body could do to a man was nothing short of a tropical storm—heating you up, making you wet with desire, then knocking you to your fucking knees, giving you no other option than to hang on and enjoy the fucking show.
Her last performance, or should I say disappearance, seriously had me on my knees and praying. The lady hadn’t been heard from in three weeks. Three weeks of fucking hell, if you asked me. I couldn’t understand why on earth she had taken off in the first place?
What went down at the Bar and Grill was a clusterfuck of epic
proportions. I was hiding in the supply closet waiting to come out after they got Tori to talk.
At first, she sprouted on about how she hated Mia and all sorts of vile crap that we all wished Mia had never had to hear. And Tori bringing Shifty with her was a complete surprise.
Of course, the biggest surprise of all came when that shot penetrated the quiet night and took out Tori before she could tell us anything about who was selling out the club.
None of us even had an inkling that Tori knew the strip club owner let alone was his girlfriend or something to that effect. Men like Shifty never had just one woman in his stable. Tori had to have had some kind of unique quality he needed. Fucked if I knew what, though. I despised the woman, and her being dead, tragic as it was, still didn’t tamp down my hatred of her.
I felt sorry for her young son. He lost a mother and now had to go through life without that comfort, but according to Callie, Mia’s bitch sister, his father was a decent bloke. He’d had sole custody of the boy for the last few months after winning in court, so at least the boy had some semblance of a good life in front of him.
Steel was the one to take out Shifty. I hated that he had to find himself doing that again. Steel vowed the day he lost his leg that he was giving up the sniper work, but he didn’t hesitate to go back to that person to protect the woman he loved. I just wished there had been some other way.
Damn, I was tired of this shit. Pushing to my feet, I let out a shrill whistle, getting Shiloh’s attention. “Come on, Squirt. Let’s go see what Stells has in her lolly cupboard.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Shiloh began jumping up and down, her long, black curls bouncing around her face.
“Yay. Let’s go, tattoo man. I gots me a hankering for some gummy bears,” she shouted as she ran past me, her dogs following on her heels. “Grabs my cat, would ya, Manny?”
Shaking my head, I turned and walked over to pick up the glittery pink cat carrier.
His Lady: The Wounded Souls Page 1
