Knot Without You: An Omegaverse Romance

Chapter 23

Chapter

Twenty-Three

“You’re in a cunt of a mood… Pres,” Joker mutters as he walks past, a sneer on his ugly mug. But he’s not fucking wrong.

To the rest of the world, I bet I look like an anxious father about to hand his baby girl over to her Alphas, because I am. But the mood Joker refers to comes from Tristan being targeted again by her fucking texter, along with a general sense of un-fucking-ease souring me more.

JFC, I’m seriously struggling from going feral and telling everyone to run. Raney’s not stupid, I see her watching me and I’m trying not to be a stick in the mud on her big day but obviously I’m not doing great if Joker is telling me to chill out.

There’s no disputing a lot of my current shit mood is due to Tristan’s fake smile. Each time Tris laughs, I can hear she’s not herself but no one else sees it. And that fucks me off too because how can’t her friends see it? So, all in all, Joker is being entirely spot on with his observation which also pisses me off.

Koz turns and looks at me, picking up on—not the man-to-man shit I got filling my head—but the Alpha-to-Alpha communication of our designations. With that, he reads my stress loud and fucking clear.

“We need to roll. We’re out in the fucking open and the people who live here ain’t the friendliest,” I roar at him, like a Grizzly Bear.

“Puck, get Raney,” Koz snaps in return. His eyes stay locked on my face as he tries to get a better read on what’s got me riled up.

It’s lucky me and him have a long history built on trust or I’d be up in his face telling him to watch himself. But he senses something feels not right too. I can see it on his face, plain as fucking day, much like he can see the worry on mine.

Part of me feels like a prick rushing Raney’s day but I’ve come too close to losing her once before. While today is most certainly about her and her pack, you’d have to be fucking dead not to look at the bigger picture of a man claiming the woman he loves, and to tie that to what’s going on in your own life. Well, that’s what I’m doing, arguing over all the little things that are stopping me from doing what Koz is: making a very public claiming of his Omega.

I want that. I want it so fucking much I spend hour after hour awake searching for the answers that are not fucking there. It’s hard to move past the facts—I royally bent over one relationship fucking it up a hundred different ways to hell until it broke. It nearly cost me my daughter and my fucking sanity. Maybe Jenn and I never should have tried to be together but the second she told me she was pregnant none of it mattered because she became my responsibility. With Raney’s birth, that deep seated primal culpability only intensified, and despite all the times I tried to put her first or I strived for a better life, once you’re in a MC club it’s not like you can just pull the pin. I thought we’d make it work as a strange family unit, but then she threw everything back in my face when she left.

The Fallen isn’t just a club, we’re a way of life and the people there have helped me as much as I’ve helped them. Asking Tris to stand up at the front with me at every fucking function and event at the club wearing a leather cut instead of her fancy designer shit until we die isn’t something that sits right. She’s young, got a life to fucking live and all I’ll be doing is shackling her to a man old enough to be her father. Add in my hang-up, she’d be living a life where the whole of society looks down their noses at everything we do. All I see is us packing as a no-win situation.

My girl is used to living a life where people look up to her on billboards and runways. People around the world admire and talk about her but if I take her as pack, I see it disappearing.

So yeah, I’m a right fucking treat to be around.

“Joker, do the rounds,” I bark out. “And call the boys and see if they’re picking up anything.”

He gives me a one finger salute before strolling away. And much like Koz, it’s fucking lucky I got nothing but mad respect for him, or I’d be kicking his ass for his obvious diss.

Swinging back to the entrance of Birdie, plans change when Raney comes rushing out with Hayes and Puck at her back. The girls follow after and their excitement at knowing what’s coming next, the actual bonding ceremony at the lake, has them nearly bouncing out their skin.

For one fucking moment, I think I’m over-reacting, reading bad shit into a good day. For one fucking moment I breathe a sigh of relief.

Raney dicks around with Koz, throws a handful of words at me before her joy bubbles up and she does the most un-Raney thing in the world—she runs past us all. She leaps into the waiting limo, her body turned to us as she yells something before cracking up laughing.

Because of the way she’s turned, my daughter does not see the events play out behind her, but that snaky feeling that had me acting a cunt, manifests into a real-life situation with ex-boyfriends abducting ex-girlfriends right in front of us.

We try to stop Reid, God how we try, but we get jumped ourselves. Koz, Puck, and Hayes fly towards the car. I seriously don’t know how they don’t get hit. It is nothing but gunfire and carnage, and at first it makes no sense the indiscriminate way they shoot. But our attackers are doing nothing but causing panic before taking aim.

Joker is one of the first to fall, next to him one of Koz’s men, then another of mine, another of Koz’s. I literally feel the scope of a gun taking aim, but my focus turns to Tristan as she stands in the eye of the violent storm.

I see nothing but her. I have to blink away the red sheen of rage. I have to lock out my Alpha to disassociate from his ferality like we’re two separate entities because I have to protect her, it is my sole purpose.

Shots whiz past me, and I take a leap crash tackling and rolling her until she is under me shielded.

“Go! Fucking get them,” I scream at Jasper and Twinkles, and anyone else around us.

Moving my head, Big Tom and Tonka take a stand shoulder to shoulder in front of me, to the left I see Heidi’s already surrounded, her team forming a wall no one will be able to get past. Further back Simona’s team race her away already.

“You okay, baby?” I ask between looking for where the shooters are.

Her lack of response is like acid through my veins, and I take my eyes off what’s happening around us, and she’s here with me unharmed physically but she’s already got shadows in her eyes.

There’s a shuffle of movement on the edge of my periphery and I see one of the shooters. There is no mistaking the President of the Death Riders nor the way his face lights up when he sees me already down.

“Get Tristan out of here,” I snarl, dropping my nose to her hair in case it’s the last time I get the chance. And this just proves my point about how much better she’d be without me. “Love you, killer. You remember that.”

I surge to my feet, not giving her the chance to respond. And boy she does. I get the gist of her screaming but miss the actual words she uses. I hear the moment she gets picked up and raced in the opposite direction too. But Rex Fucking Larking is in my sights.

Letting go of my designation, my Alpha side joins the hunt and the splinter inside me from earlier is long gone. I become an Alpha on a mission, ready to pull this fucking asshole’s asshole from his body before I shove it down his throat and strangle him with it.

“Behind you,” JB calls out, probably sensing he’d get a bullet in his forehead if he spooks me too much.

A fucking smile breaks over Rex’s face as even more shooters stream out of god knows where, while he disappears into the shadows. I fire indiscriminately but with learned accuracy, same as JB. We don’t stop to check if the people we hit are still breathing, it’s fucking irrelevant, all we do is clear a path to where Rex was standing before.

A rumble of a bike powering to life has us changing our direction, but by the time we make our way to where he is, we’re too fucking late and the only thing we’re left with is his, and someone else’s taillight fading in the distance.

The need to chase after him is strong, but the need to make sure my men, Tristan, and all the other people are okay is stronger.

“He’s a fucking dead man,” JB promises as we race back to the plaza.

“Let everyone know there’s a bounty on Larkin’s head, but I want him alive. And find out who the fuck was helping him because he’s dead too.”