Chapter Thirty
Firestride
The room, once filled with the cacophony of the club, suddenly felt eerily silent, the only sound being the frantic pounding of my own heart.
The scent of something familiar, something heavenly, had me looking up, and my eyes locked with hers—my kitten.
Her once erotic scent now wrapped around me like a heavy cloak, a reminder of my betrayal.
The guttural rasp of Kiki’s pleasure was usually a symphony to my ears, a testament to the power I wielded.
But now, it was a sickening counterpoint to the silent accusation in my kitten’s wide, damning eyes.
She stood framed in the doorway, a small, trembling silhouette against the harsh glare of the clubhouse lights.
The sight of her, my kitten, the one creature I’d vowed to tame but failed, standing there, unmoving, as she witnessed my folly into hell.
My body, a machine built for the primal pursuit of dominance and release, felt suddenly sluggish, heavy.
Kiki’s soft cries turned from a victory anthem to a grating accusation, each gasp a stab at the fragile dam I’d built around my humanity.
The man I’d honed over years of malice and brutality—that was the truth, the real me I’d buried deep, or so I thought.
But seeing the pure, virtuous disgust in her gaze curdling into shame and horror ripped through my carefully constructed facade.
She walked away.
She left me.
She failed to submit.
A thousand justifications screamed in my head, the well-worn arguments of a man who’d long ago shed his conscience, but the raw pain in her eyes, the quiet, devastating judgment, silenced them all.
It was a choice I was being forced to make, a choice between the savage pleasure that had defined my existence and the burgeoning, terrifying flicker of something else, something that recognized the monstrousness of my current act.
I wanted to tear myself away, to shield her from my filth, to pretend this moment hadn’t happened.
But the brute instinct, the ingrained habit of never showing weakness, of never backing down, held me captive as I continued to pump my dick into Kiki’s ass.
To stop now, to pull away from Kiki, would be an admission of defeat, an unraveling of the persona I’d painstakingly crafted.
And then, the worst of it: the dawning realization that no matter what I did, no matter how I tried to spin it, I had failed.
I had failed her, the one person I desperately wanted to be worthy of.
Regret was already a cold knot in my gut, a foretaste of the desolation that awaited me.
So, in the end, I did what I always did. I stayed true to my nature and when I was ready to nut, I pulled my dick from Kiki’s ass and shot streams of cum all over her back, never taking my eyes off the one woman who held the power to bring me to my knees.
My gaze remained locked on her, daring her to look away, to flee, to do anything but witness my degradation.
But she stood there, a statue carved from ice.
Her eyes, once pools of defiance, now held a chilling emptiness.
The silence stretched, a gaping maw swallowing the remnants of my pride, and in that profound quiet, I knew I had lost.
I was a Bastard to the core, but she had chipped away at the granite, revealing a raw, untamed landscape beneath—a landscape I was now condemned to navigate alone. I had tried to break her, to tame her, but in the end, she had broken me.
“Who’s next?” I roared, reaching for my whiskey bottle as Pinky rushed over, dropping to her knees, wasting no time before swallowing my dick whole.
I couldn’t move, refusing to take my eyes off my kitten as Cerberus greeted her, then ushered her out of the room and into Morpheus’ office.
The second she was out of my sight, I pushed Pinky off me and roared, launching my whiskey bottle across the room.
Picking up a chair, I threw it across the room while Carver walked over to me.
Then, Morpheus’ door opened and out walked a grim-looking Wanderer.
“Carver, you’re with me. Let’s go.”
Not even seconds later, Inferno walked out, carrying his daughter, Karter, disappearing toward the back of the clubhouse.
“What the fuck is going on?” I seethed, glaring at my brother.
Wanderer shook his head as Carver quickly checked his guns before the two of them left the clubhouse. As I stood there, my eyes locked once more on Morpheus’ office door, the front doors to the clubhouse opened again and in walked a person who should not be here.
Nano rushed over. “What is she doing here?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered, then I heard Zephyr shout, “Thank fuck. Fresh pussy!”
Growling, I ordered, “Watch that motherfucker and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere near her. I’ll go get Morpheus.”
“Hurry.”
Not bothering to knock, I walked right into Morpheus’ office, my eyes once more locked on my kitten, who glared angrily at me. Leaning close to Morpheus, I whispered, “Family just walked in the front door. Our family.”
Morpheus looked at Cerberus, who quickly left, then turned to Kitten and said, “Firestride, it seems your old lady has returned home. Please show her to a room.” He smiled before he stormed out of his office, leaving me alone with one pissed-off pussycat.
Her eyes, those turquoise pools that had once held a flicker of shared cynicism and something far more dangerous, were now chips of flint, hard and unforgiving. Her fire that had drawn me in, the one I’d so desperately tried to extinguish, now blazed with righteous fury.
I thought I had shattered her, broken her, and in doing so, broke myself.
A hollow victory, if it could even be called that; one which tasted a lot like regret.
She was my old lady, Morpheus had said, and now, standing before her, the confirmation of that claim was a heavy, suffocating burden.
My own brothers’ crude jeers, their knowing smiles, felt like salt in a wound that was still raw and bleeding.
They saw a conquered man, a brother finally claimed.
They didn’t see the shattered spirit, the shattered man, standing before her.
“If you so much as touch me,” she seethed, stiffening as she readied herself for a fight, “I will rip your balls off and shove them up your ass.”
“Well, considering that’s where you put them the last time you were here, I’d say you need to find another place to store them.” I smirked right before I grabbed her and hauled her up and over my shoulder.
She twisted in my arms, a desperate, futile struggle against my iron grip as I held on to her.
Her words, laced with a potent mix of defiance and raw hatred, were equal parts balm and brand.
“You stupid, cock-sucking whore! You think you own me?” she spat, her voice a ragged whisper, yet each syllable a declaration of war.
The thought of her, the woman I’d so brutally claimed, now holding such power over my internal landscape, was a terrifying irony.
I had sought to break her, to prove my dominance, but instead, she had cracked the very foundations of my own carefully constructed world, exposing the raw, untamed earth beneath.
“You’re mine now, Kitten,” I growled, my voice a rough caress that did nothing to soften the raw power emanating from me.
My potent, volatile perfume of desire choked me, the scent of my damnation.
I had wanted to claim her, to make her understand the brutal realities of this life, but in claiming her, she’d irrevocably ripped open a part of me I thought long hidden and, in that darkness, I found an unwilling accomplice I knew I would never let go.
As I hauled her into the opulent prison of my room, I knew with a chilling certainty that a new game had just begun, and neither of us would ever be the same.
I had just walked back downstairs when I heard Morpheus sneer. “Well, if it isn’t the fucking bitch herself,” he growled as he closed in on the fucking whore, right before he grabbed her by the neck and lifted her off her feet. “Give me one fucking reason not to snap your fucking neck, cunt.”
Meredith fucking Doherty, the whore of the Nyght Nymphs.
Bitch had some enormous balls walking into this motherfucking clubhouse after what she did to Carver.
She was fucking lucky he wasn’t here, because I knew my brother.
He wouldn’t think twice before putting a bullet in her fucking brainpan. Bitch needed to die in the worst way.
“Go ahead, you son of a bitch. And I will take you straight to hell with me.”
And that was when we all heard the click of a gun.
The Brotherhood didn’t blink as we all drew our weapons, pointing them at the cunt, waiting for Morpheus to give us the word. Morpheus’ anger was palpable as he tightened his grip around the cunt’s neck. His knuckles turned white with rage as he applied more pressure.
For a moment, no one breathed.
The silence was deafening, a static charge thrumming through the room, as if the air itself was about to split open.
For a heartbeat, the world felt suspended—no sound but the creak of leather and the ragged breaths of my brothers poised on the edge of violence.
Morpheus’ eyes, wild and rimmed with red as he raged. “What the fuck is she doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Meredith.”
In the next instant, the young woman spoke up. “She’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know. I didn’t tell anyone. I just left.”
Refusing to move, Morpheus’ grip tightened, and the cunt’s face started turning blue. “Why?”
Walking over to him, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a patch and handed it to Morpheus.
I stiffened as my eyes saw what she’d given him.
Shaking my head, I silently cursed Massacre to hell and back.
That crazy, no good lying piece of shit was a dead man once Morpheus got his hands on him. What the fuck game was he playing?
Releasing the cunt, Morpheus turned to the young woman and growled, “Where did you get this patch?”
“It was given to me.”
“By whom?”
“Massacre.”
“GOD DAMN IT!” Morpheus roared as he stormed out of the room, and I followed closely, closing his office door behind us just in time to see him pick up his desk and throw it across the room. “I’m going to fucking kill him!”
“The brothers saw the patch, Morpheus. We are bound. We have to go.”
“I FUCKING KNOW THAT!”
Standing before the window, his shoulders slumped and he whispered, “She wasn’t supposed to be involved, Firestride. What am I going to do now? I can’t walk away from this. She’s family.”
It was a rare moment of compassion. I knew the pain, the horror that Morpheus suffered because of this life.
Because in a way, I was just like him. A carbon copy.
The same blood flowed through our veins, only I distanced myself from the truth, while Morpheus embraced it.
Not that he was given a choice. Still, he endured, survived, and now he wore the fucking crown.
Heavy is the head and all that shit.
“Brother, let’s just find the crazy motherfucker, save him, then you can kill him yourself.”
He turned toward me. “He gave her his patch, Firestride. She’s his. They are married. You know the fucking rules. We can’t touch her.”
“No, we can’t, but we can touch him. He still owes this club a debt. One way or another, everyone pays their debts. Call Reaper and find out what that fucker has done now. We don’t want to be wading into a war that isn’t ours.”
Morpheus took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to reign in his anger.
The silence between us was heavy, each of us deliberating what we had to do.
The air was thick with tension, but there was no room for hesitation.
Too much had happened. Too much was at stake.
We moved as one, driven by duty and blood, knowing this night might change everything—for all of us.
Placing the call, Morpheus put the phone on speaker when he heard the call connect. “What the fuck do you want?”
“What the fuck did he do?”
Growling, Reaper said, “You mean what didn’t he do?
That fucker took off to look for Yuri Nikitin because that son of a bitch put hands on Amber.
Fucker is going to get himself killed. To make matters worse, your fucking son went after him.
When I get my hands on the both of them, I’m going to kill them myself.
I’m done with this shit. You know what? I’ve got bigger problems. This is your fucking mess, Morpheus. You fucking deal with it.”
Then the line went dead.
“How do you want to play this, Morpheus? It won’t take Ravage long to find Massacre. That is, if Yuri hasn’t already killed him.”
“Let’s go find the bastard before he gets himself killed.”