Shadow’s Twilight (Pagan Souls of Oconee MC #2)

Prologue

Sitting with my beer in the common room of our clubhouse, I watched from the shadows as my brothers and our family relaxed and hung out for the night.

We all deserved it. The threat to our president’s old lady, Jalisa, was finally over.

Killer, the crazy-ass enforcer from the Black Outlaw’s MC in Greensboro, was dead, and those who sided with him were too.

It had been a shock when the national president of the Black Outlaws MC paid us an unexpected visit.

He claimed to be here to bring his own men to justice.

It was thanks to him and his national officers that the ones working with Killer were eliminated, and Killer was brought to us as a gift to deal with ourselves.

The Black Outlaws MC was headed in a new direction, according to Lion, the national president, and his top officers.

They were a one-percenter MC, meaning they dealt in various illegal activities.

The new direction wouldn’t involve them getting out of all those businesses.

But it would include demanding that all Black Outlaw chapters stop their human trafficking business.

It would take time, since it required them to vet every chapter of the Outlaws and remove those who refused to stop trafficking people.

It was a very lucrative business, and some didn’t want to give it up, even when ordered to do so by the head of their organization.

Hopefully, when others learned what had been done to Killer and his followers, the other chapters’ holdouts would either fall in line or get the fuck out.

It was made clear by Lion that if they didn’t do either of those things, they would be killed.

We warily agreed to assist them if necessary.

Our part would be the actual killing of those Outlaws who refused to stop.

Lion and his guys were still determining who within their chapters was trustworthy, so they didn’t want to rely on them.

Lion wasn’t asking us to do anything we didn’t already do from time to time when we encountered this type of situation.

He knew our secret. It was a precarious alliance.

Not everything was sunny and perfect in the club.

A few issues remained unresolved for Jalisa.

One was her dad, Psycho. He was the enforcer of the Hell’s Fiends MC, another one-percenter club like the Black Outlaws.

We typically didn’t have dealings with any of those kinds of clubs, but due to one of our prospects, Dylan, we’d become intertwined with them.

He happened to be the nephew of Psycho, though only Wrath had been aware of it.

It was Dylan’s hiding of Jalisa so she could lie low due to the threat of Killer that brought her to the notice of our club and our president.

Wrath had fallen for her pretty much at first sight.

And that was how we became involved with the Fiends.

We’d discovered not long before eliminating Killer that Psycho had unknowingly been an accomplice in the human trafficking with Killer.

It was due to Psycho taking on work behind his club’s back to prove he had what it took to take over as president of the Fiends.

He stopped as soon as he found out what he was transporting, but he kept it a secret from his club.

Psycho thought Killer would let it go, but instead, it made Jalisa—Lunatic, as we called her—Killer’s target.

The upcoming year would determine if Psycho would regain his club and his daughter’s trust and forgiveness.

Things were never smooth sailing around here. If it weren’t for something like the Jalisa issue, it was shit going down with one of the other clubs we were friends with. It sure kept us from becoming bored and stale. Sometimes, we wish it would give us more extended periods of calm.

One positive thing to celebrate was circulating through our club.

It was the fact that, for the current members, except Rage, our former president, one of us had found his old lady.

Our club, along with the Ruthless Marauders MC in Tennessee, in our circle of friends, were the holdouts on settling down.

It wasn’t due to a lack of desire. Many guys in both clubs wanted someone to share and build a life with.

The problem was that there were no women or men who evoked enough interest for any of us to pursue a relationship.

We worried we were destined to be alone.

But just in case we were wrong, all current members had already built themselves a house within the walls of the compound where our clubhouse resided.

Before our purchase, the land on which our compound was located had been owned by a recycling company.

They had built some structures on it that we converted or expanded to become the clubhouse, communal garage, and storage building.

Those were great things, but the most significant positive to purchasing it was the twelve-foot-tall steel wall that surrounded the property.

It had a reinforced steel gate with bulletproof glass.

That gate weighed so much that we had to have a motor to open and close it.

The only thing we had done was put in the bulletproof glass.

It made for a very secure place for our club and any families.

With the arrival of Lunatic, hope had sprung up among the rest of the club that more women or men would appear.

It was the way it occurred in our friends’ clubs.

Finding I’d emptied my beer bottle while daydreaming, I moved over and rapped my knuckles on the bar to get our prospect, Keno’s, attention. He manned the bar at the moment. Hearing me, despite the noise, he hurried over to me.

“Another beer, Shadow?”

I wasn’t feeling the urge to go for harder stuff, so I nodded. Keno knew which brand I preferred, so no need to tell him when I nodded. He rushed over to the fridge to grab me one. While I waited, I heard Rage yell, “Goodnight.”

He had his arm hooked around his old lady, Betty.

They were the patriarch and matriarch of the club.

That wasn’t to say they were ancient. Rage was only sixty-one.

Betty was sixty. Over a decade ago, Rage had stepped down as president.

Wrath, his son, was nominated to replace him.

The club voted, and no one opposed the idea.

Wrath was only twenty-six at the time. Many clubs would say he was too young for the job, but he’d grown up in the biker life since birth.

He knew it inside and out. Rage had prepared him well.

Rage and Betty always made everyone smile and laugh. They were hilarious together. Rage had accidentally met Betty almost five years ago when we helped out our friends, the Archangel’s Warriors, in Hunters Creek. He took one look at her and was a goner.

Rage had pursued her relentlessly. Betty hadn’t had good experiences with men, so she resisted, or at least it appeared she had.

No one knew for sure when she agreed to become his old lady for real.

To this day, she still denies she was, even though she wore his property cut.

I thought she said that just to keep Rage on his toes and because she liked it when he went all alpha on her.

When she did that, he often carried her off.

“Thanks,” I told Keno as he handed me the open bottle of beer.

He gave me a chin lift, then went to wait on someone else.

I moved back into the shadows. I noticed Wrath was standing, and by the looks of it, he was about to call it a night and take Jalisa home.

Not that it was late-late. They’d be headed to bed, but not to sleep.

We knew that by the way he reacted when Lunatic raised on her toes and whispered something in Wrath’s ear.

Whatever it was, it made a wicked grin spread across his face, and he let out a loud whoop.

Then, he bent so he could toss her over his shoulder.

Her voice was audible as she mockingly ordered him to put her down.

All she got in response was a slap on the ass.

We all whistled and shouted racy comments as Pres carried out his laughing woman. Jalisa smiled and waved at us.

“Hey, you’ve stayed hidden back here long enough. Come to my table and sit with us. You stay in the dark too much, brother,” Nomad, our road captain, said.

Out of all the guys, I would say Nomad was the one to whom I was the closest. I tended to stay quiet and observe.

My road name came from my tendency to stick to the shadows.

I knew my habit of staying in the shadows was mainly due to my early teen years and how I grew up before I was found and taken in by Rage and the club.

They had been responsible for saving my life.

And I would work the rest of my days repaying them.

The Pagans had given me a true family I could rely on, no matter what.

I knew I had to join Nomad. If not, he’d drag me there. Sometimes his ass was too pushy, and if I weren’t feeling it, I’d tell him, and he’d back off. But this time, I knew he had a point. The time for mulling over the latest adventures of the Pagan Souls would have to wait.

“Sure, why not. What’re you guys talking about?” I asked.

He didn’t wait to begin heading to the table he had motioned to, where Stitch, Forge, and Fury sat.

Stitch was our club’s medic, and the other two were regular members.

We were all in our mid-thirties except Forge.

He was thirty-two. Forge was the youngest if you didn’t count the two prospects.

As we approached, Fury kicked out a chair.

I took it since there was already one pushed out that I assumed was Nomad’s.

“Glad to see Nomad got your ass out of the shadows, man. We haven’t seen you for days. What’ve you been up to?” Fury asked.

I shrugged. “You know, the usual. I’ve been working at the scrapyard and then doing my thing online.”