Chaos's Hidden Lioness

Chaos Prologue- One Month Ago

The ride from Cherokee, North Carolina, back home to Lake Oconee, Georgia, wasn’t terrible. People who drive cars would probably think it was too far, at around two hundred and thirty miles, give or take a few. That equaled almost four and a half hours of riding without delays or stops.

However, for a dedicated biker who loved to ride, with the wind in my face, the sun beating down to warm my body, and the road whipping by beneath me, it was a perfect trip.

It was long enough to get to the relaxation stage where I blew off tension, yet short enough that I wasn’t exhausted and my ass wasn’t numb when I got there.

I’d gone to Cherokee for a three-day weekend.

My club brother, Forge, had gone with me.

I had gone because it had been too long since I’d seen my cousin, Joli, and her family.

It had been pure luck six years ago, when Joli, needing protection, was claimed by Dare, the VP of our Cherokee sister chapter of the Pagan Souls. He’d basically done it at first sight.

Joli had a stalker problem back then, and my club wanted her away from Oconee so we could find and deal with whoever was stalking her. Well, that eventually happened, but not without major roadblocks along the way. One of them almost ended their relationship and Dare’s access to his unborn child.

Luckily, in the end, Dare and Joli had formed a happy marriage.

Now, they had two sons—Branson, or Bran, as we called him, who was just over five years old, and Marcus Jr., who was a year-and-a-half old.

Both were balls of energy, but a joy to be with even though they left you exhausted at the end of the day.

They were curious about everything and constantly wanted to explore.

Marcus mimicked everything his big brother did. They were daredevils.

Despite the distance between Cherokee and Lake Oconee, Joli and I remained close.

In our family, she and I were the ones with our shit together and the least drama.

We both accepted long ago that our family members were worthless.

Yes, that included our parents. Both sets were hopeless as parents and not much better as human beings.

We’d cut ties with all our family years ago.

I was six years older than Joli, so I had always looked out for her. She was the little sister I never had, and I was the big brother she had wished for. Neither of us had siblings. It was a good thing. I basically raised myself, then helped Joli so she wouldn’t have to grow up alone like I had.

I couldn’t wait to turn eighteen and get away from my parents.

As soon as I did, I moved out and joined the Pagans as a prospect.

I’d seen them around our town for years, and I knew I wanted to live as they did.

I saw them as my path to freedom. They were, but it turned out that living the biker lifestyle was different in many ways from what I had pictured.

It wasn’t in a bad way, just different. But I was a pro at adjusting.

You had to be if you had any hope of surviving our family and coming out even half normal.

Both Joli and I agreed that, aside from each other, our family was filled with con artists, thieves, liars, lowlifes, drug users, and criminals.

They weren’t worth the air they breathed.

When we told people that, they gave us censorious looks, but it was the truth.

Our fathers were brothers, with my dad being the oldest.

Her parents and mine had wandered away after we became adults.

We ignored their demands for money, housing, and everything else until they finally accepted that we wouldn’t support their lifestyles.

Their cries that we were family and were obligated to help fell on deaf ears.

When that happened, they disappeared. Hell, we had no clue whether they were still alive.

And we didn’t care enough to ask the computer whizzes in our clubs, Wire in Cherokee and Shadow in Oconee, to find out.

No news was good news as far as we were concerned.

Even before I joined the Pagan Souls, I did my best to ensure Joli had a roof over her head and didn’t starve.

When she graduated high school and wanted to go to college, Joli thought it was an impossible dream.

Her parents had no money to pay for it, and even if they did, they wouldn’t.

The thought of taking out loans to earn an architecture degree was daunting.

Joli had gotten a grant and a couple of academic scholarships, but they wouldn’t cover everything.

I made decent money and didn’t need to spend much, so I insisted on paying for her room and board and part of her tuition.

She refused. I countered by telling her she either let me help, or I’d drag her ass to Lake Oconee to live with me.

I knew she didn’t want that because she wanted to go to school, so in the end, she caved.

However, after she finished her degree, Joli voluntarily moved to Lake Oconee, but not to live with me.

We wanted to be close, but Joli warned me that if I tried to take over her life, she’d move to another state.

I believed her. I promised the only way I’d interfere, as she called it, was if her life was in danger.

Acquiring a stalker had fallen into that category.

During this weekend’s visit, we talked about those days and when we were growing up.

Forge, a friend of Joli’s who spent four years in the Army, had joined my club after he got out.

She had recommended that he check out the Pagans, whether in Georgia or North Carolina.

He chose Georgia and, after his prospecting days, was patched in as Forge.

He had been happy to ride with me to see Joli and her family.

They remained friends. At first, Dare hadn’t liked their closeness, thinking there had once been a closer relationship between them, but he discovered that wasn’t the case.

They were truly only ever platonic friends. Now, Dare was a friend to Forge.

Damn, every time I saw the boys, I couldn’t believe how much they had grown and how much smarter they were.

We video chatted once a month, but it wasn’t the same.

During the visit, Forge and I had been human jungle gyms and walking encyclopedias for them.

Dare and Joli warned their boys to stop climbing all over us and asking so many questions, but Forge and I enjoyed it.

Refocusing on the ride, I noticed that we were approaching home.

I loved my home and life in Oconee, but I found that despite having my club brothers, their old ladies, and kids so close, I was still lonely.

It had been a thought that had surfaced more and more over the past two years.

I wondered if the fact that I had turned thirty-six this year had anything to do with it.

Was it the male equivalent of a biological clock ticking?

I knew a lot of my club brothers had gotten the itch to settle down when they were in their thirties.

A couple who hadn’t settled down yet were forty and vocal about not being opposed to monogamy if the right person came along.

But until then, they continued living the single-biker life.

I wondered if they were as tired of that as I had become.

My younger years of partying and having wild sex with whichever woman caught my eye had grown old.

I’d rather go home, watch a movie, or get uninterrupted sleep. Christ, I sounded ancient.

Checking the mile markers and road signs, I noted we were about fifty miles from home.

Suddenly, an urgency hit me. The need to be at our compound, that I was needed there, hit me.

There had been no calls about anything happening with our club, but I still kicked it up a notch.

Forge, noting I was pulling away from him, glanced over and raised an eyebrow.

I shrugged so he would know there was no real reason to do it.

He nodded and sped up to match me. As the last miles flew by, I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that being home in Lake Oconee was where I had to be. That my very life depended on it.