Rex
As was tradition when a brother had an Old Lady, she was the one who sewed his patches onto his cut.
For Cruz, next time he earned a patch, I thought I’d have to get Giulia to sew it on the sly because Indy was definitely not a seamstress.
My lips twitched at the sight of the Reaper patch that was kinda skewed, and a lot in danger of falling off. Still, Cruz kept peering down at it on his chest before he’d beam a grin at the room.
It was hard not to grin back when he was so fucking happy to be promoted onto the council.
When he’d shrugged into his cut, the MC had roared its approval by stomping their feet and hauling him into a crowd surf which had the potential to go disastrously wrong.
At my side, baby Samael, who was strapped onto Nyx’s chest in a carrier that had a skull and crossbones print, cooed, proving that he lived up to his name. Somehow, Rach and I were his godparents—God help us.
“Thanks, man,” Cruz told me as he was returned to the bar. “Can’t fucking tell you what this means.”
Oh, I knew what it meant.
His mom was a goddamn FBI agent, a crooked one, and we were bringing him onto the council anyway?
It was a testament to the faith we had in him, the trust we felt.
Cruz more than deserved his place on the council, and the Sinners would be so much better for it.
Rachel, the only Old Lady this close to the bar, was leaning against the counter at my side. Her belly was getting bigger, and it was getting harder every fucking day not to stroke it and touch it. It still freaked her out, but she was doing well, apart from backache that crippled her some days.
As I turned to her, she handed me the cut she’d sewn—I got my confirmation Giulia was gonna be the club seamstress—and I shouted to the crowd, “We got a brother who’s been walking around without a cut or a hog.
Today, we rectify that. His hog’s finally outside, and now, his cut’s here, in my hands, just waiting for him. ”
Cheers from the crowd had me grinning as Nyx called out, “Harlow, where the fuck are you? Get your ass over here!”
Becoming a brother hadn’t made Harlow more popular.
People still floated around him, and he drifted through the club like a ghost. But he’d started helping Maverick and he was brilliant with the ledgers, and mostly, he hung with the council which was A, unusual, and B, surprisingly not all that annoying.
Even if Wynter’s googly eyes on him were starting to piss me off.
Harlow, his shoulders hunched, trudged over to the bar. Raising the cut, I saw his eyes widen at the letters on the back.
I knew he’d hate it, and that was my confirmation, but Nyx had chosen his road name, and I couldn’t deny—he was Priest.
When I handed it to him, I joked, “You’ll always be our priest now.”
“You want me to watch over your souls?” he mocked, with more ease than he’d shown since the last hunt—the eve of Sam’s birth. Proof that he felt more settled now he had his hands on something tangible that told the world he was a brother?
I’d done him dirty by not arranging for him to get patched in sooner, but shit had been so crazy in the run up to today that he was fucking lucky we were celebrating at all.
“Nah, our souls were fucked a long time ago,” Link boomed, which earned him a laugh from the crowd.
As Priest shrugged into his cut, I announced, “The past has shaped us, the present inspires us, and the future will see us soar—we’re the goddamn Satan’s Sinners and here’s to reigning over West Orange for the next fifty years!”
As the cheers were overtaken by loud rock, and a party stirred into being, I drifted over to Rachel and asked, “You wanna go home?”
“No. I’m pregnant not decrepit.”
I grinned. “You’re going to stay even though you don’t want to be here because my question was an affront to females everywhere, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly,” she grumbled.
Laughing, I shook my head as I slung my arm around her shoulders and took a moment to peer around the room.
Indy was currently being carried away to only God knew where with Cruz’s hands all over her ass in a way that told me he wasn’t reading the room, because Nyx might have turned into a cinnamon roll for Havoc—I was calling Sam that because he was a pain in the fucking ass—but when it came down to his sister, he was as protective as ever.
So, yeah, Cruz was definitely feeling brave.
Either that or fucking lucky.
Catching sight of Priest, with his head tipped back how it was, I could see he was on the brink of tears, and I knew they were more emotion than the fucker had displayed in months.
After a few, Rain showed up, and I watched him trace the gleaming neon skull patch on the front of his cut while Rain chewed his ear off until, out of nowhere, Wynter turned up too. He jerked in surprise when she cried, “Harlow!”
The tears were a distant memory, soon to be replaced with a gleam as Wynter oohed and aahed about his patches.
“What’s she doing here?” I groused.
“I told her she could come. She’s nearly eighteen, Rex.”
I scowled. “‘Nearly' is the keyword in that sentence. You know what goes down at these parties. Why the fuck would you let her come?”
“I attended them when I was younger than she was,” she pointed out.
Splitting my scowl between her and Priest, I muttered, “And I didn’t like that either.”
Rachel snorted. “Leave them alone. You can’t stop her from liking him.”
My growl had her chuckling. “I can stop him from liking her.”
“Leave them alone,” she repeated. “Maybe he’ll keep her in the tristate area. Let’s not encourage her to leave for Stanford, huh?”
“She wants to go to Juilliard.”
“She won’t if we try to break them up. She’ll run from us too,” she commented, making me huff.
On the brink of arguing with her, I watched as her eyes lit up when the Old Ladies arrived and started clustering around her, so I decided I’d be a good Old Man and would let her have her fun. Especially when MC parties weren’t her thing.
Letting her go with a kiss that had the MC hollering and hooting at us, with Lily and Giulia shepherding her over to the smaller den just off this one that the women had claimed, I leaned back against the bar.
Nyx had stormed over to the stereo and turned it down because of Havoc, and anyone who grumbled about it getting quieter in here received a death stare in return.
“Nobody fucking smoke while Sam’s around,” he snarled when a brother tried to light up a cig. “I’ll be leaving soon. You can give yourselves cancer when he ain’t in the bar.”
Ignoring the scowls, he moved over to my side and gave me the reason I was putting up with having Havoc here all the fucking time—he stared down at the kid like he was his savior.
Maybe he was.
Maybe Havoc was what it’d take to get him off the path he’d been on for so long.
I knew Wynter had changed me, and I knew having her around was shaping the man I was becoming, never mind what the baby would do.
Why wouldn’t Havoc do that for Nyx?
Neither of us said anything as we stood together, that powerful bond of solidarity which existed between us, linking us as always, coming into being.
In silence, we watched over the crowds, me trying not to stare at what Priest and Wynter were getting up to, until, gradually, most of the council moved around us.
Nyx sniping at Cruz when he showed up, wiping his mouth, Link shooting the breeze with Maverick, Steel snapping at Sin because he’d confiscated the ever-present deck of cards…
Good times.
The best.
I was on the brink of relaxing, finally having accepted an overlarge measure of JD that Quin had handed me because I’d started growling when Wynter and Priest began dancing together, when I saw lights in the window, coming from the gates.
Nyx immediately tensed up. “What’s going on? Who’s at the gates?” he snapped. “Everyone’s already here. Nobody should be showing up at this time.”
“Sin, go and check,” I ordered, but I wasn’t worried. The lights weren’t flashing red and blue, so that was all that mattered.
Sin didn’t need me to prompt him though; he was already on his way. Five minutes later, he returned, dragging a scrawny kid by the back of his collar.
Straightening up, my eyes widened in surprise. “Drew? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Who the hell’s Drew?” I heard Link mutter behind me.
Maverick heaved a sigh. “It’s a long, fucking story and it starts in New Mexico.”