Chapter Seven
Trent
“Why is the dog bleeding, and why is everyone naked?”
Too many thoughts were ping-ponging around in my head.
What kind of biker club was this? Had I been somehow indoctrinated into some freaky brotherhood?
If this was their idea of protection, I was tapping out.
Nope. Not happening. My brain would explode if I had to watch over a dozen swinging freely around me.
And where in the hell was Preacher? The prick could’ve warned me he was part of a nudist biker club.
“Get dressed,” Crowbar said as he stepped through the door. Some of the naked men filed passed me. I covered my eyes with both hands, praying I’d fallen into a food coma and this was just some carb-fueled fever dream.
“Tell me I’m still unconscious.” I peeked through my fingers, making sure all the swinging dongs were gone, then lowered my hands.
The dog was still there, staring right at me.
“You’re still unconscious,” Crowbar said, setting his weapons aside. “Now do you want the truth, or should I leave you clinging to the lie?”
“That was supposed to be the truth!” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the animal. My brain was trying to tell me something, but the pieces wouldn’t snap into place.
The dog—wolf, because that was not a dog, no matter how hard I wanted it to be—was the size of a damn pony.
Black fur tipped in silver, broad chest heaving, one shoulder slick with blood that matted the fur into dark spikes.
Its head was lowered, ears pinned flat, body stretched out across the hardwood like it was trying to look smaller than it was.
It wasn’t working. You couldn’t shrink something that big by lying down. You just got a really big animal closer to the floor.
I pulled Preacher’s jacket tighter around my shoulders. The leather smelled like him, like smoke and engine grease and that clean undertone I was becoming very fond of, and I clung to that scent like it was a rope thrown to a drowning man.
“Crowbar.” My voice came out too high. “Where’s Preacher?”
Crowbar’s eyes flicked to the wolf then back to me. His toothpick was gone. That was the part that scared me the most. The man had not been without that toothpick once since I’d met him, and now it was nowhere to be seen, like he’d swallowed it in the chaos and hadn’t bothered to fish out another.
“He’s right here, Trent.”
“No, he’s not.” I swept my hand around the room, pointing at empty spaces where Preacher very obviously was not. “He ran with you guys, and now you’re all back, and he’s not here, and there’s a wolf in the living room, and—”
I stopped. My mouth kept moving for a second without sound, like the gears were stripped.
The wolf made a small noise. Not a growl. More like a chuff, soft, almost apologetic, and the amber eyes that lifted to mine were not the eyes of any animal I’d ever seen on Animal Planet.
They were the color of frozen whiskey.
My butt slid off the couch and onto the floor in a controlled collapse, the leather jacket pooling around my hips. The hardwood was cold through my jeans, but I barely felt it.
“No.” The word came out flat. “No, no, no. Absolutely not. I’m not doing this. I’m tapping out.”
“Trent.” Crowbar’s voice was the one you’d use on a kid standing too close to the edge of a roof.
“Don’t Trent me.” I pointed at the wolf without looking at it, because looking at it was the problem.
“That is a fucking wolf. That is a wolf, Crowbar, in your clubhouse, bleeding on the floor, and you all walked in here without clothes, and nobody is screaming, which means either I hit my head harder than I thought when I got punched or—”
Or what? The wolf was really Preacher?
I made myself look at the animal again. It looked back but hadn’t moved a muscle since I’d slid off the couch. It was holding so still I could count the rise and fall of its ribs, and I could see the shudder that went through its flank when it breathed in too deep.
The cut on its shoulder. Right where Preacher’s tattoos crawled down his arm. The careful way it was holding its head low, eyes on me, like it was waiting to see whether I’d bolt.
I was sitting on the floor of a clubhouse full of bare-assed bikers, and not a single one of them was looking at the wolf like it didn’t belong here.
Maybe I was the one who didn’t belong here. Was this even real? Was I real?
“Crowbar.” My voice had gone very small. “I asked you a question in the truck.”
He crouched down a few feet from me, forearms on his knees, careful to keep his hands visible. “You did.”
“I asked if you guys were actual mechanics.”
“I remember.”
“That’s not the question I should’ve asked, is it?”
His smile was soft. Crowbar didn’t do soft smiles. Evil, smirking, mischievous, but not soft. “No, princess. Probably not.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said on autopilot, my eyes back on the wolf.
It hadn’t moved. The blood on its shoulder was thickening, going tacky in the fur, and I watched a single drop slide down its leg and land on the hardwood. Plop.
Somebody, somewhere, was going to have to mop that up, hopefully doing a better job than Mike.
The thought was so stupid and horrifyingly domestic that I felt the laugh climb up my throat and I couldn’t hold it in. It came out shaky and half-broken, and once it started, I couldn’t get it to stop. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. The bruise on my jaw twinged. I laughed harder.
“Oh god.” I dragged in a breath that didn’t go all the way down. “Oh god, oh god. You are staring at Preacher.”
Crowbar’s eyebrow ticked up. “Come again?”
“I don’t fucking know.” I waved my free hand at him, the laugh still trying to crawl out around my words. “You think my brain is functioning properly? Images are jumbling in my head, and my thoughts have completely collapsed.” I gestured wildly at the wolf. “That should not be—”
“Trent.” His voice was infuriatingly gentle. “Breathe.”
“You fucking breathe!” Another laugh, a little hysterical now. “I think I need a whole bag of caramels.” I waved again, my limbs taking on a life of its own. “You’re his sergeant of wolves arms or fur arms, tail wagging. Oh god.”
The wolf huffed this time, and I could’ve sworn it sounded offended.
I jerked my head toward it. “Don’t you start with me!”
The wolf’s ears flicked.
“I’m sitting on your floor having a breakdown,” I told it, “and you don’t get to have opinions until you have hands again.”
Somewhere behind Crowbar, Drift made a sound that might’ve been a laugh if he hadn’t tried to swallow it.
“Shut it,” I snapped at him.
Drift held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but the bastard was grinning while he walked away.
“Trent.” Crowbar’s voice was steady. “Breathe. In through your nose. You’re heading for another faint, and Prez can’t carry you right now.”
“He carried me earlier.” It came out thin. “He carried me inside. With his arms. Which were arms.”
“They’re still arms, sort of,” Crowbar said patiently. “He’s just got four of ’em at the moment, more or less.”
“That’s not how arms work.” I tried to push to my feet but slid back down, my legs too shaky to support me.
“It is for him.”
I dragged in a breath. It hitched halfway. I dragged in another one. The wolf was still watching me, still not moving, and the longer I looked at it, the harder it was to pretend I didn’t see what I was seeing.
The eyes. The way it was holding itself low. The cut on the shoulder.
My stomach hadn’t dropped the way it should’ve. Instead, my body was reading the giant predator on the hardwood and going, oh, that’s him, instead of run, you idiot!
That was the part that scared me more than the wolf did. I didn’t want to run. I wanted to take care of Preacher’s shoulder the way he’d taken care of my hunger.
“Shit.” I pressed heel of my hand over my eyes then dropped it. “Okay. Walk me through this, but I swear, if you break my already-broken brain, I will bite you.”
“You sure you want me to?” Crowbar tilted his head. “Once I say it out loud, princess, you don’t get to unhear it.”
“Don’t call me that.” It came out softer this time. “And yes. Say it. Because if I have to keep guessing, I’m going to throw up on Preacher’s leather jacket, and I think we both know that’s going to upset him later.”
The wolf’s tail thumped, exactly once.
I pointed at it without breaking eye contact with Crowbar. “See. He’s listening. He’s listening to me right now, isn’t he?”
“He hears and understands every word.” Crowbar’s voice had gone careful. “He’s been lying there bleeding on the floor for ten minutes because he’s afraid if he moves you’re gonna bolt.”
The laugh tried to come back. I bit down on the inside of my cheek to stop it.
“Why is he bleeding?” I forced the words out. “What happened in the woods?”
“Somebody took shots at the house.” Crowbar’s face went hard for a second, something underneath it that wasn’t gentle at all. “Prez and the boys ran ’em down. Got one. Other one rabbited.”
“With gunfire.”
“Yeah.” Crowbar nodded. “He took the motherfucker down but not before disarming him.”
“And he got cut.” My gaze darted to the blood still oozing from the wound. Preacher—there was no longer a doubt in my mind it was him in a fur coat—was in pain and bleeding because he didn’t want to frighten me.
“Knife. Caught him in the shoulder.”
“Who?” I glanced back at him. “Who hurt him?”
“Thought you wanted me to walk you through Candyland?”
“I am hanging onto my sanity by a very thin thread, Crowbar. We can discuss the mechanics of Candyland later. Right now, Preacher is my priority. He’s bleeding, and I want to make it stop.” I took a deep breath, slowly releasing it. “Who hurt him?”
He studied me, and I could tell he’d rather chew glass than give me a name, which meant I knew the person or he wouldn’t have clammed up.
This was because of me. Preacher was hurt because I’d stupidly named his garage in a moment of panic.
“Don’t, princess,” Crowbar said. “Ain’t worth the energy.”
A tear slid down my cheek, and I didn’t bother swiping it away. “I caused this, and you want me to just shrug it off? That’s not how I’m built. He stepped up and took on my fight, and this is how I repay him?”
I wanted a name, but didn’t. The way I was feeling right now, I might grab one of Crowbar’s weapons and end up sharing a cell with my father. That level of violence shook me to my core.
The wolf moved closer, blood smearing across the floor. Without thought, I met it halfway, hand hovering over the matted fur. “How do I help you? Tell me what to do. Right, you don’t have a mouth at the moment. Thump your tail once if I’m supposed to call a vet or something.”
Crowbar snorted.
The wolf eased his head onto my lap.
“This is scary. Not the wolf thing, not really. I mean, you’re Preacher Deluca. Intimidating biker/mechanic/president/wolf/badass.”
“That’s a mouthful.” Crowbar grinned.
“You, shut it.” I glared at him. “Where’s my caramel chews?”
“You’re not crashing.”
“That was a hint you clearly didn’t grasp.” I sighed, knowing this was my life now. “Scram. I want to be alone with Preacher.”
With a wink, Crowbar straightened and walked out of the room.
“How do you put up with him?” My hand lowered into soft fur, and I found myself gently stroking his head.
Amber eyes met mine.
“I need you to get human again. I’m not digging through fur to examine your cut.” More than once I’d had to stitch up Mike. Sadly, I’d gotten pretty good at it. If I could minimize Preacher’s scar, I wanted the chance.