Dane’s War (Spiked Raiders MC #3)

Prologue

Raine

Do you ever wonder what your life was going to turn out to be? I never thought twice about it until now. I guess you can say I was naive in thinking that everything in my life would work out perfectly as it was supposed to.

I grew up knowing I was different from the rest of my family. It didn’t matter to me, though. I had the life I was meant to have. My parents and brother, well, they’re shifters. And well, I’m not. I’m human. Nothing strange about me when it comes to supernatural gifts. I’m just an ordinary human who just so happened to have been abandoned as a baby.

The way my mom and dad tell me, my brother was out in the woods, heard the cries of an infant, and found me alone, abandoned in the middle of nowhere. He scooped me up in his arms and took me home to his parents. They took me in, adopted me, and claimed me as their daughter. They gave me the name they did. Mostly, that part was my big brother. He likes to say it was because it was raining outside when he found me, and our parents went with it.

I wouldn’t have changed anything about growing up in a shifter household. Granted, sometimes I felt at odds with myself because of my being different, but my parents and brother never treated me differently. To them, I was Raine.

I left for college after high school and hated being away from my family. I much preferred being close to them. I wasn’t used to not having the safety of them being there for me right when I needed one or the other of them.

To say my brother didn’t like the fact that I left town for college was an understatement. He wanted me to stay close where he could keep his eye on me. My first year away, he’d come nearly every weekend to check on me. To make sure I didn’t need anything. The times he couldn’t, he’d send someone from his club to check on me and make sure I wasn’t being harassed by anyone .

I thought after I graduated, I’d move back home. I didn’t. I want to say my big brother and even my dad lost it. They wanted me back home. Mom was the one to tell them to give me a chance to live on my own.

It was all going great. I’d gotten an awesome job working at a hospital as a radiology technician right after finishing college. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine, but I enjoyed what I did. Bonus, I made pretty good money. In the four years I’d been working at Edgecross General Hospital, I had never hated my job.

Honestly, it wasn’t my job that made things bad for me. But rather the man I’d met.

Brady.

At first, I thought he was the best guy ever. He was kind. Sweet even. Brady asked me out a year ago. I said yes, and he took me to this little restaurant where we had a candlelight dinner.

From then on, he made sure he was in my everyday life. I didn’t even know it until it started happening. I realized I was losing who I was—my independence. I wasn’t even talking to my family as much as I used to. Sure, when they came to visit, Brady was charming. My brother didn’t like him, though he kept his mouth shut, he made it apparent.

It was six months ago, though, things started to change even more. He wasn’t just isolating me anymore. Brady began yelling at me. Stealing my confidence until I didn’t have any left. Then he’d hit me. I didn’t think I would be the type of woman who would bow down and not fight back. I knew never to let a man put a hand on me. Still, I didn’t fight him.

I hadn’t even been able to voice my pleas for him to stop when he’d take me in his bed. Or in front of his friends. I think that was the very worst of it. When he’d force himself on me in front of them to leer at me. I don’t even have to think about it to know he had other women, but I wasn’t just a lay. I was his property.

This past week, I came up with the game plan that I was going to leave. I told my boss at work what was going on. She’d seen the latest of the bruises. I told her I needed to leave. That I was going home to my family. I knew once I got home, I’d be safe. Brady couldn’t get to me. I’d be protected.

What I didn’t want to do was explain to them the reasons for my coming home. But I can’t lie to them. They’d know if I were to do so. I also don’t want them to get in trouble for going after Brady.

So, I decided to put together my plans to get away. I didn’t think about the repercussions of my decisions. Only that if I were to stay, I’d never get out. It was now or never. Going to my parents was the only place I knew for certain that if he tried to come after me, he wouldn’t be able to.

The only thing left to do is get in my car and go. Leave everything I own behind. I’m sure to have a good twelve hours before he figures out that I didn’t go to work, that I’d driven away.

I might even have a bit longer, considering I parked my car at the hospital and got in my boss’s. She said she’d get it later, that I needed to take it and go. That’s what I’ve done, and now, I’m driving over the county line right into the town of Redwich.