Chapter 45
SOREN
My ideal awakening didn’t used to include three other naked men with my scent match snuggled between us. But to be honest, I’ve never felt more at peace.
I’m healing from the parking lot fight faster than normal, and I wonder if that has something to do with the bond or not.
It’s probably because I actually try to take better care of myself. Anything good in my life though I can’t help but think it’s because of the bond. A bond I'm not alone in anymore.
We all wanted to be there to drop her off for her first day at her internship. So we woke up at her alarm and the bikes are back out, the guys more than happy to leave the truck at the Plaza for once.
I missed my black beauty.
Esper rides on the back of Neven’s, and we all pull up to the front of Fleur Interior Design office and watch my little troublemaker hop off and shake out her helmet hair.
Fuck, I wish I could’ve got that on camera.
Her little black skirt and lace tights do things to my head as she switches her bike boots for sexy heels she’d stowed in Asher’s backpack.
Fashion stops for one, I guess.
“Okay, I’ll call you when I need to be picked up!” Her smile is radiant as she strides inside the office, and I can’t help but stop her, yanking her by her arm and crashing my lips to hers in a quick kiss. Her lips immediately melt into mine. A tiny moan escaping her before I let her go.
“I needed a hit of you before you go, Trouble.”
She chuckles, sliding away from me. Waving her cute fingers as she pushes open the door and disappears from our view.
Today is the first day we’d spend without Esper since becoming an official bonded Pack. She’ll be safe here. We’ve got Midnight Wolves members watching the place, unbeknownst to Esper, so we can go handle the Eastern Outlaws and leave this shit behind us.
We have their President, so the club is pretty much over. Once they realize he’s not coming back, they’ll find someone else to follow, hopefully someone decent—as far as criminals like us tend to be—who will whip them into shape.
If not… Well, then we’ll find them and do it ourselves.
Red turns his bike around, pointing back toward the plaza. “Let’s go.”
We follow, heading straight to the Cage. The wind whips against my exposed skin, doing nothing to wipe out the fire simmering like a volcano ready to erupt.
These were once my brothers. The memories I have aren’t of monsters. They’re family dinners and trick-or-treating, Saturday morning cartoons, wrestling on the living room floor.
Too soon, though, good times faded to bad and never went back.
Now they are in a cell I put them in. Their fates in my hands.
They left me, then bullied me and even then I was never as angry as I am now. Through the threats and names and punches thrown, secret meetings and sneered slurs, it wasn’t enough that I wanted them dead.
But they tried to take my omega away.
They hurt her, and I can’t allow that to ever happen again.
We need a permanent solution.
I don’t waste time, going straight to my brothers’ Cages. They are weak, battered, and starving. Their eyes have bags their skin can hardly hold. For the first time in so long, they look broken to me.
My words will hit them like bullets.
I order the words in my mind, sending them to my tongue. Before any sort of lingering fury makes me shift to something worse.
My boots are heavy on the ground, and my Pack stands at my back like an army. Silent. Letting me decide the fates of the two people of my own blood (plus one).
“You have twelve hours to leave town,” I say. They try to speak. I speak over them. “If I catch you, I’ll kill you.”
I turn away, nodding towards the Cage with their President in it. “Applies to you too, buddy.”
The promise is simple. If they have to be put down like rabid dogs, then that's just what I have to do.
When I say I’d do anything for Esper, my Pack, I mean that shit.
The guys follow me back out and Neven places a hand on my shoulder, scrunching his brows. “That’s it?”
“If they were smart, that’d be it.”
“Are they? Smart?” Asher asks, and I shrug. My brothers aren't the brightest bulbs in the pack, but they aren't complete duds either.
Pulling out a cig, I light it and deeply inhale. “I hope so.”
“So we’d kill them?” Reed asks, his eyes filled with worry as he stares at me.
A slow, harsh stream of smoke betrays my exhale. I think over my words, for the millionth time since the night my omega nearly slipped through my fingers. Since she stood, so brave even through her fear, with a gun and drew blood.
A sight I never want to see again. A lash of fear I never want to feel coming from her again.
Midnight Wolves was built on handling business. Whether that's the people who attacked Ace’s mother, or the people now who threaten our omegas. We handle what we have to, to keep the ones we love safe.
“If I have to.”