“Watch it, boy! You may not like to acknowledge authority figures, but I can have this whole outfit shut down like that,” he snapped his fingers at me. That was all I could take of the arrogant prick. I laughed at him openly.
“I’m not afraid of your reach. You attempted to kidnap a woman, which led to serious and irreparable damage to her animal. That type of damage comes with a penalty of death, if I’m not mistaken.” Anger radiated off of Chantal in such permeable waves that I was being effected by the residual emotions.
“Okay, how about we take this inside, before things get too heated. You never know who might be nearby attempting to listen in,” Knox informed everyone. It didn’t take long for all of us to move into the common area of the clubhouse. When we did, Raven the Dick picked right up where I’d left off before Knox interceded to move us to a private space.
“I did not stage a kidnapping attempt. I sent my steward to inform Miss. Piper that her sisters would be joining the Council soon and that she was welcome there and would be safe. I can’t speak for what he did or how he approached the situation.” The bastard spat those words out, attempting to look contrite, though he didn’t bother masking the smirk that teased the corner of his mouth upward. “Where is my panther? I’d like to have a few words about what exactly led to the string of events that brought Miss Piper to you, especially since you’re attempting to stake a claim on her that you cannot keep.”
“We are mated, by my choice,” Chantal informed him as she continued to grasp onto my arm. “You cannot break that bond.” The knowing grin on his face said he thought differently. I’d be damned or dead if I allowed it though. More importantly, he’d be dead before it happened.
Before anyone else could speak, loud banging from the trunk of the car that the leopard was shoved into caught everyone’s attention. “What is that?” Raven asked as he turned to the sound.
“That would be one of the assholes your man hired to kidnap Chantal,” Knox informed him. “We were just getting a positive ID on him when you showed up.”
“Positive ID?” Raven asked.
“I could smell him and the other man who held me captive and hurt me. I could also smell your man. That’s how I identified them even though I wasn’t able to see anyone at the time.”
“Remarkable,” Raven muttered while unable to take his eyes off my woman. I stepped up a bit so that I blocked his view of her, which pissed him off all over again. “I pose no threat to the female,” he demanded.
“You also have no claim on her. If I don’t want you to eyeball my woman, I’ll see to it that you don’t.”
“Why don’t you go back to Gray’s room and wait for just a bit while we sort this?” Knox was speaking to Chantal, and I was about to argue that she didn’t need to be sent anywhere out of my sight while the asshole was here, but my woman beat me to it.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she disagreed.
“Why is that?”
“Because then I won’t be able to hear the excuses he has for sending some asshole to come kidnap me, and damn near have my pelt stripped from my flesh. I’m missing pieces of me. At the very least, I should be able to hear what they have to say in the defense of their careless actions that caused me great pain and permanent disfigurement.” I watched as Raven snarled and curled his nose up in distaste as she mentioned being disfigured in a way which wouldn’t heal.
“I already explained that I sent a steward to collect you, not to kidnap you.”
“Well, your plan was an epic failure!” Chantal turned to offer the man her back while still holding onto my arm with her hand. She glanced back over her shoulder and sneered at Raven. “I don’t know why you’re still here. I want nothing more from you. Explanations and excuses will pale in comparison to what I endured because of your actions. I think maybe the council needs to rethink which members are sitting on its glorious throne. If your handling of me is any indication of the way you handle the rest of your affairs, the feline shifters of the world are in dire straits.” Raven desperately tried and failed to hide his anger. He may not have said anything immediately, but I could almost see steam coming from his ears.
“Damn, sis!” Brace hooted out. “You tell ‘em!”
“Brace!” Knox’s reprimand was only half-hearted considering he couldn’t curtail the humor in his voice.
“We need to discuss a few things, and it should only be done with the leaders of this,” Raven glanced around the dirty garage entrance of our clubhouse, not realizing this was the business and the nicer interior was on the floors above. “What do you call your little group? Obviously, you are not a leap since you have others here beyond leopards.”
“It’s a fuckin’ motorcycle club,” someone called out.
“You choose to belong to a group of men who ride motorcycles instead of being with those of your own kind?” Raven asked incredulously.
“We prefer to be around other shifters we can tolerate rather than some groups out there, in your world, who do unspeakable things, like kidnapping women and attempting to skin them for their pelts.” I insisted.
“Come, we’ll go to my office.” Knox ordered. “Brace, Bomber you’re on Chantal while we have our little chat.”
Chantal leaned up to place a kiss on my lips, squeezed my bicep one good time, and then she moved to go stand with Brace and Bomber who took her upstairs. The rest of the men dispersed with the exception of Knox, Snow, and myself. We took Raven and the two men he had with him to Knox’s office upstairs and settled in for a conversation that I didn’t think I was going to like one bit.
We weren’t in the office long when Knox received a call on our emergency line. A package had been dropped at the gates and we were both required to come see to it. “I’d like to speak to Chantal alone while you two are busy,” Raven demanded.
“That is not fuckin’ happening,” I happily informed him.
“You don’t get a say in the matter,” he countered.
“As her mate, I get the ultimate say in what happens with my woman. The only person whose opinion will supersede mine, where she is concerned, is her own.”
“This is ridiculous. She was meant to be mine!” The admission finally rolling off of his tongue was both satisfaction inducing and tipping the scale of my over protective anger issues.
“Too bad you fucked it up and left her to someone else’s care then. She’s no longer a possibility for you, and that was entirely your fault. You want something that precious, you collect it yourself.”
“We can undo the bond you formed,” he laid the threat down at my feet.
“Over your dead body,” I explained in simple terms. His henchmen both shot to their feet, ready to fight.
“Calm yourselves!” The order from Knox was heeded immediately, even by the henchmen. Interesting. That meant Knox was the most alpha animal in the room, not this Raven, the self-important council member. “We have some business to tend to before we can move forward, and we won’t be leaving the three of you alone here. Let’s go!” He turned and walked out of the office and headed back to the stairs that would take us down and out to the gate once more.
When we got to the gate, it was immediately clear what type of package had been left. The one in the form of a mangled female body that had obviously been removed of its pelt. Once we were closer, Thian informed me, “She has your name written on her, Gray.”
I moved to get a closer look. They left her face intact and tacked a note to her chest. “You took something of ours, Gray, we will continue taking from you until we get her back.”
“Why would they think this woman meant anything to you?” That was Raven, the fucking hemorrhoid who had been rashing my ass over the past couple hours.
“Because this woman was going into heat and came on to Gray in public before he met his mate. She didn’t want to mate with a shifter who wasn’t a panther, but something about the panthers of her claw made it more appealing to go outside looking for any other type of cat rathe
r than mate or breed with one of them.” Knox was the one to explain as I just continued staring at the woman. I still didn’t remember her name. I felt sick for her and what she had to endure though. I had turned her away, even knowing there was an underlying element of fear beneath all of her horny, heated senses firing off.
“Seems you might have a bigger problem than you originally thought with the local panther claw.” I turned to Raven then. “Might want to use all that authority you keep trying to throw around on the people who need it most. Women are disappearing, pelts are being stolen, and if they aren’t dead when they’re found, they’re broken and their animal caged. Your people are doing this.”
“We’ll set them straight, even if that means wiping out the claw completely. This is unacceptable,” Raven told me as he glanced down at the decimated woman lying there. There was no life left in her. She died of her injuries as her pelt was stolen, or maybe as a result of something they did to her afterward. Either way, she was gone, so was her pelt, and she had been used to send a message that was received by more than just my club.
I turned my back on the corpse and started to head back inside when Raven called out to me. “When we get back from handling this unfortunate business, we will be dealing with the fact that you stole my mate out from under me.”
“She offered herself to me, didn’t know who you were, and we’ve already completed the bond. There’s not a damn thing to say. You snooze, you lose, pal.”
I didn’t wait around for his response and didn’t care what it was anyway. I needed to go hold my woman, because if I had gotten to her any later than I did, she might have suffered the same fate as this panther female did.
17
That bastard had the audacity to insinuate I was meant for him. I could taste it in the air, all around him, the false claim he thought he had. I growled in sheer disgust before Bomber tapped me on the shoulder. “Tell me, Silver Goddess, what is eating you?”
I snickered at his ‘silver goddess’ name for me even as his purple-hued gaze also left me feeling cared for. “I’m just frustrated. I’ve spent most of my life on the run, away from my family, and always looking over my shoulder because of men like that insufferable Raven who think they can dictate who I belong to. It makes me feel all stabby,” I answered him honestly as I made the crude motion in the air of stabbing someone with a knife.
“I love the way little miss kitty cat used a knife to stab the bastard instead of her claws,” Brace teased.
I huffed a breath across my nails and laughed. “Don’t want to get blood under my nails,” I intoned emotionlessly after I managed to get the laughter under control.
Brace shook his head at me. “I say stab away, no matter which weapon you choose. That prick couldn’t hold the alpha chair around here if he tried. There are at least four other men in this chapter of our MC alone who outrank him.” Brace tapped a finger to his chin, mockingly, as if he were in deep thought about the situation.
“How is he a member of the Council of Cats then?” Both men turned to me as I asked, and a knowing look passed between them before Bomber answered.
“That’s a mighty fine question, lovely. I think one of us should definitely bring it up with Knox.
“Already done,” Brace responded as his fingers flew over the keys on his phone screen. He was obviously sending text messages out.
“Do you think his seat on the throne will be so easily removed?”
“No,” both men said at once. Their eyes locked and something passed between them that I wasn’t supposed to see. Then Bomber turned toward me again. “Likely, he will retain his throne – as you say, for a little while longer.”
I grinned when he added that last little bit. “I smell a takeover coming,” I sing-songed into the air as I did a happy little dance that involved bending low, several swiveling pops of my ankles, and allowing my booty to bounce in the air.
“Please, don’t ever let Gray catch you doing that shit around us,” Brace requested as he turned his back to me.
“Did she just twerk?” Bomber asked of his friend.
“I really wish I could unsee that. Gray is going to know the minute he is near one of us.”
Bomber just chuckled in response and then moved closer to me. “Can you teach me?” The fact that he asked if I could teach him how to twerk made me bust out in more laughter.
“Only if you do it in your dragon form for me,” I answered which finally pulled Brace out of his stupor.
“Oh! This I have to see!”
Bomber huffed and walked away, apparently no longer willing to learn. “Come on! That would be the best thing ever! A giant dragon, twerking his ass and swinging that tail around… I’ve had a really bad week,” I attempted to use my feminine pouting abilities to get my way.
“Nope! That lip wobble doesn’t work on me. I already know you’re resilient as all hell. You’ll be just fine having never seen my dragon booty bumping like that.”
“Fine,” I huffed at him before I glanced around. “Well, what are we going to do now?”
Bomber shrugged his shoulders and we both looked to Brace who held up a game controller. “Want to play something?”
My whole body lit up with the challenge. The one thing I had over the years to keep myself entertained had been video games. It wasn’t something I told many people about, simply because there was never anyone I trusted with any aspect of my life, but it was the one place where I could pretend to be normal while interacting with others. “Yes! Let’s do this! I’m about to go town on your asses!”
“Oh shit! She thinks she’s challenging us!” Brace’s gleeful retort had me quaking inside. I’d never been able to play with someone in person before, and I was beyond excited to be able to finally have that experience. Being around Bomber and Brace in general had made me feel a fullness in my soul that I hadn’t felt since being torn away from my siblings. Meeting Gray brought me a bond unlike any other, but it also brought me a family.
18
Walking in on my woman giving Bomber and Brace hell in a zombie-killing video game wasn’t exactly what I expected after what had just gone down with Raven, the body left at the gates, and the fact that we currently had two prisoners held in various parts of the clubhouse. It was a shot of normalcy in the newest fucking normal there could be and I loved it. A part of me secretly hoped the Raven fucker would go get himself killed off by the pelt-thieving ring, but I didn’t think we’d get that lucky.
“Who’s winning?” I waited to pose the question until I got my fill of watching my woman interacting with my brothers. It was like she was meant to be here with me, with us, all of us, this whole time. Chantal grinned back at me from over her shoulder.
“I am, of course. These girls need some lessons in how to shoot and get creative with weapons.”
“W-w-what? No! You take that back, right now!” Brace scoffed at her as a zombie took a chunk out of him. Chantal didn’t even respond beyond cocking an ‘I told you so’ eyebrow up at him and laughing.
“Your woman is vicious!” Bomber declared as his eyes kept shifting to the closet in the room we all knew he kept his little hoard of shiny shit in. He was nervous having so many people in his personal space and it showed. It didn’t matter if he trusted us or not, it was a dragon thing.
“You guys can move the game to my room, if you’d like,” I told him.
Chantal, who had her tongue poked out, and the controller held up close to her as if it was going to run while she told it to attack the zombies, pushed a button to pause the game. Then she turned to face me. “I told him that. I think he would be a much better player if he wasn’t worried about whatever skeletons he has about to pop out of that closet over there.” She tipped her head toward where Bomber stashed his shit. He paled. Bombers room was actually a two-room suite, a rarity in the clubhouse, but a requirement for him to be a part of the club. The dragon didn’t need us. He wanted to be here. We did, however, need his skills from time to time so Knox had a
ccommodated his request. The other room, I knew, held Bomber’s prize possessions. He didn’t just allow anyone to see them either as they were under lock and key, several locks and a biometric scanner, to be exact.
“It’s not a problem,” he denied. “I don’t have a problem.”
“Sure you don’t, you hoarding bastard. Just this morning I saw you stash another fork in there. We’re going to run out!” A pillow sailed across the room and smacked Brace in the face. I knew he allowed it to happen just to make Chantal laugh, because he normally had superb reflexes.
Her laughter was a balm on my weary soul. “You guys are too much!” Her declaration was panted out amidst the chuckles she couldn’t contain. I moved into the room and shut the door behind me, then took a seat with my legs spread around Chantal’s where she was sitting on the floor in front of the television. She leaned back into me as she continued to whoop ass in the game and I just sat there content as fuck and soaking it all in. I’m not sure how long I watched them play before I ended up dozing off, but I was startled awake a little later as a knock rasped on the door.
“Gray, we need you back downstairs,” Knox called through the door. We all knew better than to open the door without Bomber’s express permission, no matter who was already on the other side. It showed how much he meant to all of us that we respected his quirks and his privacy the way we did, because the brothers had no qualms about just barging into anyone else’s room as they saw fit. Granted, I hadn’t knocked and waited for an answer because he something in his room more precious than his treasure. He had my woman in there, and he seemed to understand that and didn’t get too upset when I broke his knock and wait rule, just that there were too many people close to his pretty things.
I leaned in and kissed Chantal before lifting myself from the floor. “Stay with Bomber and Brace, Moonbeam. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Ridden by Darkness Page 9