I Will Revel in Glory

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Sure thing, cowboy,” I whisper back, and then he’s rolling me over and mounting me yet again. Our fingers are intertwined against the mattress, our mouths brushing with heat and steam and affection.

  Yep. Cade and I are making love. Finally. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  He takes me over the edge more than once. Even when we hear the other guys return, their footsteps loud in the house, the sound of the front door echoing down the hallway.

  Grainger even digs out some of those sex toys—the dildo and the vibrator specifically—that I put in his nightstand drawer. He uses them on me until I’m climaxing around the toy, and then he tosses it aside and mounts me again.

  By the time we’re finished, I’m shaking and boneless, exhaustion sweeping over me in a wave. He curves his body around me, enveloping me completely, and tucks me against him.

  “Do not die tomorrow,” he growls into my ear, and I smile.

  I’d love to promise him that.

  But I don’t know.

  Someone—probably a lot of someones—are going to die tomorrow.

  We both know that we have no control over the outcome, much as we might like to.

  Our fate … is in the hands of the universe.

  Don’t do me wrong, you crazy bitch. Don’t you dare. Don’t you goddamn dare.

  Much as I want to believe that I’m prepared for the inevitable heartbreak that’s about to come, I’m not.

  I’m really, really not.

  Gidget, the unbreakable? Guess we’ll see about that.

  Outside, the winds pick up, a tempestuous howling swirl that rattles the windows and snaps smaller trees like twigs. In here, wrapped in my lover’s arms, it feels safe.

  But it won’t be, not for long.

  Grainger and I doze off for a few, precious hours before Crown is opening the door and light is bleeding across our tangled legs. Oh yeah, Cade is a cuddler. He very quickly pushes away from me and sits up, unwilling to present vulnerability of any kind to anyone but me.

  I’m okay with that.

  Actually, I like it.

  His tender side, it’s mine and mine alone. Nobody else’s.

  “I need the two of you up and dressed. We’re meeting Cat at the clubhouse.” Crown gives me such a long, searching look that I feel it in my bones. This is it, I think, swallowing hard. It’s time. “Even you, Gidge.” He curses slightly and lets out a heavy breath. “Though I wish I could send you away from all of this. It’s not going to end well.”

  I know that. I do. But I’m not leaving.

  I’m a part of this just as much as anyone else, and I refuse to live my life inside a cage.

  Cade curses and rubs at his forehead, flinging his legs out of bed and moving over to dig through his mess of clothes piled on the surface of the dresser. As for me, I slip out and head down the hall, ignoring the low murmur of Sin, Beast, and Crown in the kitchen.

  I lock myself in the upstairs bathroom and make one, last call to Grey Wolfe.

  He answers right away, fully dressed in black jeans and a pullover sweater. He’s armed to the teeth, too.

  “Good morning, Gidge,” he says, his voice this strange, detached thing. I can see it in his face, that heavy resolve. He knows what he has to do, and so do I.

  “My father wants to know your location,” I say, tapping my fingers against my thigh. I’m wearing one of Grainger’s t-shirts and that’s it, but Grey and I are past that now. At least, I am. Whether he is or not doesn’t matter at this point. “I agreed to find out in exchange for him letting Reba leave safely.”

  Grey nods and offers up a reassuring smile that doesn’t quite reach his pretty gray eyes.

  “She arrived at her destination unharmed and settled in nicely. Don’t worry about her. Worry about this.” He gestures between himself and the screen. “Me and you.”

  “Where are you?” I ask as my phone buzzes and a message pops up on the top of my screen.

  Ironically enough, when I see the message, my blood goes cold. It’s an odd response considering that the world … it’s on fire.

  Lane County Emergency System - this is an automated message. Your area has been upgraded to a Level 3 - Go - Alert. Do not collect belongings. Leave immediately. Fire danger to your area is imminent. If you choose to stay, understand that emergency services will not be able to assist you any further. Re-entry into evacuated areas may be prohibited until fire danger passes.

  Shit.

  I shove up from the edge of the bathtub and Grey waits patiently as I sprint into the hallway and across to the spare bedroom with a south-facing window. This was Reba’s room; I can still smell the scent of Posey’s old shampoo that she was using while she stayed here.

  I fling open the window and crawl partially onto the roof, rising to my knees for a better view. It’s still dark outside, so there’s no mistaking the vibrant orange glow in the distance. It lights up the ebony sky like a warning.

  “Oh my God,” I choke as Grey lets out a soft sigh of acknowledgement.

  “Ashbury is a ghost town, Gidge. There’s nobody there. Police were going door-to-door this morning and telling anyone that was left to leave.”

  The thought of that gives me chills.

  The regular citizens have evacuated. The club’s families have left. It’s just us now.

  Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club and Grey Wolfe Mafia.

  “You’re in town now?” I ask, and Grey gives a slight shake of his head.

  “Not yet, but I will be soon enough. My father and I were originally going to fly, but our estate—with his helicopter pad—is quite literally in flames. The winds changed so quickly last night, and the fire moved so fast, we had no choice but to drive instead. This is our chance to corner Alvise.” Grey pauses here, tapping the fingers of one hand against his leg as he holds his phone with the other. “The bulk of my father’s men are headed your way, toward the compound. If you hurry up, you can bypass them all and meet me, my father, and his bodyguards at the Artefact; there’s an intersection right in front of the house that splits off and leads to the highway. That’s the way we’re going.”

  “He’s still sending his men to war during a wildfire?” I ask, and Grey gives another nod. I don’t even know why I asked; Cat would do the same if he were in Alvise’s position. If the mafia lays siege to the compound, and the fire comes in from the south, it’ll force us out from behind our own walls and into their waiting arms.

  “Do you know where the Artefact is?” Grey asks, but of course I do. Not only did I pass out the mafia’s bad drugs there—at Cat and Crown’s request—but that’s where I found Queenie and Kian’s declaration of love scratched into the upstairs baseboard.

  “I do.” The words are short and clipped as I stare into the distance at the otherworldly glow of the fire. It’s burned over a hundred thousand acres, and I imagine it’s nowhere near done yet.

  “I’ll be there in about three hours; there are so many roads closed due to the fire, we have to take the old highway that skirts the national park. It’s going to take a while. Can you meet me there?”

  “I’ll bring the cavalry,” I promise, wondering what the fuck we’re even doing here.

  We both must be insane.

  We hang up, and I exhale, turning and scooting back inside the room. I return to Crown’s bedroom, dress myself up in head-to-toe leather, motorcycle boots, and a shoulder holster with my Magnum tucked inside of it as well as a spare pistol in a second holster. For luck, I add Queenie’s knife to my boot, and then I head downstairs.

  All four men are in the kitchen, waiting for me.

  “I just spoke to Grey,” I tell them, my nerves sparking and glittering with anticipation. I don’t know how today is going to go or how we’re going to work this out, but I know that there is no more time. Either Grey and I figure out what we’re doing here, or the club and the mafia are going to mow each other down until there’s only a few lone souls left standing on one side or the other. “He says his fathe
r’s men are on their way to the compound, but that he and the Don are fleeing the fires. They’ll pass by the Artefact in three hours.”

  “The Artefact?” Beast asks, and Sin’s mouth curves up at the edge. It isn’t a happy smile. Maybe he’s remembering that he picked me up on my way to party there, that he took me to the clubhouse when I was sixteen years old, and he really should’ve left me alone. It all worked out for the best though. I mean, I think it did.

  Guess we’ll see how today goes before I make my final judgement on that.

  “The house where Gidge passed out the mafia’s bad dope,” Crown explains, and Beast works his jaw in thought.

  “Sounds like another great place for a trap.” Grainger looks down at me, and then shakes his head. “What do we do? Pass the information to Cat?”

  “He asked for Grey’s location in exchange for letting Reba go. Let’s give it to him.” I pause as Sin hands me a Kevlar vest.

  “Put it on under your jacket,” he instructs, and I do, slipping off Beast’s leather for just a minute so that I can fit the vest underneath it. The guys are wearing them, too, I see.

  “I have a feeling that Grey is playing us a bit,” I admit, because I know him far too well at this point. He allowed Beast to see him at the Palm Motel with the dual purposes of giving me Reba and also granting his father a boon at the same time. He sold me out, but he also warned me. I suspect more of the same today. “If I were a betting woman, I’d guess that the Don isn’t breaking off from his men; he’d stay with the bulk of his army.”

  “At least until they engaged us, and he could take off,” Sin says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. His eyes, they sparkle like embers, that last flicker of violent heat before the coals turn gray and go silent … or spark into something new and start a secret inferno. He kicks a boot up as he leans against the wall, and he mulls the idea over for a minute. “Why come to the compound at all? Why not just wait for us to be pushed out by the fires, so they can hunt us in more neutral territory? I’m not saying the Don isn’t going to turn tail and run, but I bet Gidge is right: the whole of the mafia is going to be either in Ashbury proper or at the Artefact. There are only two ways out of here that avoid the fires.”

  “Shit,” I breathe, and chills spring out across my skin. It makes sense. We could hunker down in the compound, and maybe the winds will shift, but what if they don’t? Then we’ll be pushed out anyway and we’ll find ourselves running right into the mafia’s army in a place they’ve scouted in advance. They’d have plenty of time to set up at the Artefact or in the downtown area. Explosives, roadblocks, snipers, you name it.

  Yikes.

  “We need to get to Cat—now.” Crown moves toward the front door as Sin pauses next to the fridge, opening it and handing me a bottle of orange juice to drink.

  “You’ve got a long day ahead of you,” he says as I snatch it from his hand and unscrew the top. Sin grabs my wrist in tight fingers before I can lift the drink to my mouth, his eyes locking with mine. “Obey orders today, Gidge. If you love us, please God, listen to what you’re told and maybe we can all come back here alive at the end of this.”

  “I will,” I tell him, and he releases me, leaving me to down half the juice in one go.

  “Come on, wife,” Beast says as I set the bottle aside and follow him out to his bike.

  It’s … apocalyptic out here.

  And it turned so fast.

  The sky is dark and strange with charcoal swirls digging through silver clouds, and the ash that was falling yesterday is thicker, whiter, more like snow. There are downed branches everywhere from the windstorm, and one of them is even speared through the roof of the porch, sticking out like a javelin.

  Holy fuck.

  It’s excruciating, the air out here. It’s thicker and denser than air should ever be. Like, it has its own, menacing presence. It oozes into my lungs and makes my entire chest ache. There’s this physical quality to it that’s disturbing. It clings to my lips so that when I run my tongue across the dryness, I can taste the ash. It was okay inside, with the HVAC system filtering out some of the gunk, but out here, it’s unbearable.

  I yank my helmet on and climb up behind my husband, wrapping my arms around his huge, muscular form. The sound of four simultaneous engines whips through the air like the screeches of four warhorses signaling the beginning of battle.

  Our demon wings unfurl to catch the wind—and trust me, there’s plenty of it—and off we go.

  We end up parked at the front of a horde of bikes, many of them covered with the drifting ash, turning their shiny surfaces a grimy, muted color, like we’re all standing inside an old movie. Not black and white, of course, but shades of gray.

  The whole world is gray.

  Seems fitting considering everything that’s about to happen is hinged on a boy named Grey, on the crime syndicate that he’s named after.

  The boys park and remove their helmets before heading inside.

  Just yesterday, the clubhouse was a bustling mess of women and children. Now, it’s packed wall-to-wall with men in leather vests (and a few of the scrappier old ladies brave enough to stick by their husbands). Some are from the Ashbury chapter, others from Seattle, more from Los Gatos. There are three more chapters on the way from Bentonville, New Orleans, and Denver, but none of them are here yet.

  All eyes turn to us when we walk in.

  I can feel the collective weight of the room on me, but there’s less judgment in it than I expected. Because not only am I Cat’s daughter and Beast’s wife, I’m also shacking up with Crown and Sin and Grainger. More importantly than any of that, I cut the head off the alpha female wolf and killed the leader of Alvise’s tactical team.

  So maybe some of these men will never be able to see me as anything more than an extension of Cat or Beat, but there are plenty who’ve seen what I can do, what I’m willing to do, how far I’ll go.

  We ignore the crowd downstairs and head up to Cat’s office. He’s in there with René and a half-dozen other men, but he waves them all out when we come in. Once the door’s closed behind them, my father gives me a look from across the desk.

  “Well, your nun left. What do you have for me, girl?”

  There’s the undertone of a threat in his words, but there’s something else, too. He’s eager to hear what I have to say. Information is power in a world like ours, and mine is good. I’ve proven it not once, but twice now.

  “Grey is going to be at the Artefact,” I tell him, referring to the crumbling old party house, the one whose real name is the Jensen Manor and Inn, an Artefact of Historic Downtown Ashbury. Or so it says on the plate outside the front door. “In …” I check my phone to see the time. “About two and a half hours.”

  Cat stares me down, searching my face for lies. He won’t find any. How could he think that, after all the things I’ve done?

  He has to die.

  I tell myself that, letting the thought echo in my head. In order for this to really work, I know that to be the truth. Cat will never enter into a peaceful agreement with Grey. He really won’t like the idea of me being the liaison between the club and the mafia either.

  Yet … even as I stand here, even as I know that this is the conclusion Grey is hoping I’ll come to, I’m not sure that I can do it. Breathe, Gidget, breathe.

  “We think he’s bringing the whole of the mafia’s army to wait for us there,” I tell Cat as he mulls this over and glances at the silent forms of his four officers. “But they could also be on their way to the compound. That’s what Grey told me, but I’m not sure if I believe it. The Don and Grey, at the very least, will be passing by the Artefact on their way out of town.”

  “If we can take out the Don, it’ll cause a power struggle within the organization. We won’t have to kill ourselves trying to slaughter them,” Crown offers up, rubbing at his chin. That’s true. Grey isn’t going to automatically be able to step in and fill his father’s shoes. He’s going to have to fight for th
e privilege.

  “You want us to go to war today?” Cat asks with a bit of a dry laugh. “Sounds like a stupid ass fucking plan to me. I don’t know if you’ve looked outside, but the world is on fire.” He sits down in his chair and leans back, one elbow on the arm of it, his hand stroking his beard.

  “The compound may burn as well,” Crown continues, looking over at Sin. “Maybe we should take all of our men into town and deal with Alvise? Let the mafia have whatever’s here—if they show up at all. If it doesn’t catch fire, we’ll deal with it later. At least then we’ll have the Don’s head.”

  Cat doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

  I have no idea how to work out the logistics of this. All I know is that we need to be at the Artefact when Grey told us to be. That’s it. Everything else is unimportant.

  Besides, Crown is right: the compound might burn, too. We’re further north than Ashbury, but so what? That doesn’t mean it’s safe here.

  The thought of losing the yellow farmhouse makes me immeasurably sad, but my insistence that it belonged to me, that Crown accept my ownership over it, was never truly about the house itself. It was about the symbolism behind it. We belong together, me and him. Me and Beast. Me and Sin. Me and Grainger.

  This is it.

  It doesn’t matter where we live; that’s geography.

  “I’ve got men working on a firebreak on the southern side of the compound,” Cat muses aloud, his rust-red eyes dark as he thinks things through. “We have the hoses and the trucks. But is it enough? Is it worth our time to sit here and fuck around?”

  “There’s always a chance the wind could shift.” Crown turns and peers out the window at the dystopian landscape outside. He looks back to his president, acting as the voice of reason, as he’s always done. “But if we wait around, we’re off the compound anyway and the mafia has the upper hand. Leaving later gives them the chance to set up and anticipate us.”

  “They’re going to want to battle this out right here and now,” I agree, and all eyes turn to me. Not sure anyone expected me to speak up again. “They don’t want us to retreat and then return after the fire with reinforcements. The more this war escalates, the more chapters will pledge to help, the higher our numbers will grow. Alvise is going to push this today. It’s in his best interest.”