“So this is our secret, our thing?” he asked, a little too eagerly, and I tilted my head, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Why are you so excited about that?”
He folded his lips together and looked away, his eyes darting everywhere. I waited, staring at him with the silent intensity Spider used so frequently, and effectively, and didn’t release his arms or anything. He shifted his weight and rolled his eyes.
“You have gaming with Sev,” he said, pink staining his cheeks. “And you’re always having these deep conversations with Spider. You talk about all kinds of shit with Tai, like medical stuff and where he’s travelled, and I’ve heard you talking to Sasha about art and movies and shit. We goof around a lot but… I don’t know— I want a thing, you know? I want a thing that you only talk about with me. And it would be awesome if it was books because I love to read, I actually read a lot. I mean, we all do, but I think I read more than either of them and I always loved English class best.”
I stared at him, a little stunned. First off, I’d never realized that I did have certain things that I talked about with each of them until he said it, and also that he and I didn’t really have something like that. And secondly, I had no idea about the reading stuff. I’m a terrible girlfriend.
“I’m a terrible girlfriend—” I started saying, but he shook his head wildly.
“You are not,” he growled, his hands cupping my face. “It’s all really new and we’re still figuring shit out, and learning about each other. It isn’t like we’ve had an opportunity to sit down and discuss starting a book club or whatever, right? So how would you know this stuff if I didn’t tell you, and there really hasn’t been a reason to talk about it until now.”
“True,” I mused, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy it. I’m not completely terrible at this. But give me time, I’ll drive you away eventually,” I promised, only half kidding.
He shook his head again, just as violently. “You will not. Not me, not them. And this isn’t—“
“Challenge accepted!” I crowed softly.
“—a challenge, you brat.” He leaned in, looming over me, and stared deeply into my eyes. “You’re stuck with us, Azzie. Get used to it.”
I peered up at him, biting my lip, and nodded slowly. He was not fucking around anymore, this felt momentous somehow, and it had been days since we’d been together and I was desperate for him to kiss me—
“Seriously?” A very cranky Sasha appeared out of nowhere — or from in front of us, but it had felt like we were in a zone of truth, and having him just wander into it was a little disconcerting. “You two just fucking disappear — we thought Azzie fell or something happened, and you’re just standing back here chatting?”
“Sorry,” we both mumbled and started walking again. He glared back at us a few times then drifted ahead again. When we got close, the others picked all their stuff back up. Sev smirked at us, Spider shook his head, totally stone-faced per usual. Tai rolled his eyes and huffed out a breath.
Good thing we hadn’t been making out, I’m not sure they’d be as forgiving.
Also, Sasha was full of shit. This might all be new, but if they really thought I fell or hurt myself, or something happened, I knew damn well that all of them would’ve been racing to get to me. They knew we just got distracted, but he was grumpy and wanted to make a point.
“Do we need to take a break?” Tai asked, almost hesitantly because I’ve been a bit of a B about him hovering. I made a point of going to him, and I kissed him on the cheek. I didn’t say I’m sorry or anything, because it was totally getting on my last nerve and I didn’t want to encourage future smothering, but I could let him know I appreciated the thought at least.
“No, I’m good,” I chirped, and he smiled at me, a few of the wrinkles in his brow smoothing out. Okay, maybe I really wasn’t so terrible at this after all.
We resumed walking, and Luka and I naturally drifted back again — which wasn’t suspicious at all since I walked a lot slower than they did, and whoever wasn’t on Azzie-sitting duties tended to spread out down the line in front of me. One of them was always the Ranger or Rogue, getting pretty far ahead and scouting the trail or checking for traps, while the other three would space out to make sure line of sight was maintained. I’d be in the back with my guardian, ready to swoop me up and get me away if any threat was detected.
Standard D&D marching order maintained.
“So are we in agreement?” Luka asked, almost nervously.
Since all I could remember about the last five minutes was the look on his face when he told me they were stuck with me, and how badly I wanted to kiss him, it took me a second to catch up.
“About the book thing? And the information sharing?”
He nodded, eyes wide.
“Yes, of course,” I reassured him, grinning. “I love it, actually. I have so many questions, and I can talk about books all day—“
He let out a long breath and smiled. “Me too, sweetpea.”
I veered, crashing against him, and he wrapped a long arm around me and my pack, ducking down to give me a quick peck on the temple.
“So what do you know about motorcycle clubs?” he asked, and I shrugged.
“Probably be easier for you to just tell me what you wanted to tell me,” I said, not wanting to make a fool of myself if everything I thought I knew was totally wrong. “And it will confirm or refute any prior knowledge I think I have.”
“Chicken,” he taunted. “Coward.”
“I sure the fuck am,” I agreed. “Now start talking, biker man.”
He snorted. “Okay, fine. But at least tell me when it’s something you’re familiar with—” I nodded, I could agree to that, “—so I don’t get all pedantic and lecture you. Still smarting a little over all the goddamn assumptions we made and how many times you fucking put us in our place…”
My turn to huff out a laugh. “It was pretty frustrating at the time, but I wouldn’t be here with you now if I thought it was always going to be like that — all of you made some effort to stop second-guessing me on every damn thing, and I realized I needed to cut you some slack too. You all walked into a pretty bizarre and fucked up situation without any preparation, and I basically asked you to put your lives in the hands of a sevent— eighteen year old girl that you barely knew.” I shrugged. “I get it. It pissed me off, but I get it. I’m just glad you ended up trusting me, and you recognize I’m a pretty capable person.”
“Yeah…” he rubbed a hand over his face. “About that… so motorcycle clubs aren’t exactly, umm, feminist organizations—” he trailed off, glancing over at me. I nodded and he let out a breath. “And both your age and your gender are going to be, uhh… how do I say this?”
“Problems? Issues? Points of contention?”
“All anyone sees.”
“At first, right? Not, like, forever…”
He sighed. “I don’t know. There’s a very strict hierarchy and code of conduct—”
“Are the Hellspawn one-percenters?” I asked, shuffling through my mind palace storage areas, looking for the right file cabinets. “That’s a legit term, right?”
“It is,” his head bobbed and he smiled down at me. “And yes, at least we were, pre-pandemic. Things have changed in the last couple years, those kinds of distinctions are less significant these days. In a way, we’re all outlaws now, or rather, we’re all the law now. At least in our specific territories, but that’s a totally different conversation. Why do you ask?”
“Keeping in mind most of my knowledge is from pre-pandemic sources,” I said, and he nodded, “I know that all clubs, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, are about brotherhood. But the degree of that varies, with the outlaw clubs being the most, well, rabid about loyalty and devotion to the club, right?” He nodded again, and I don’t think I was imagining the look of pride, but I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or about his club. “And therein lies the rub, right? Brotherhood. Peen required.”
He snorted out a surprised laugh, grinning at me. “That’s certainly a unique way of describing it, but yeah. Bros before hos, most def.”
“Loyalty is to club, then family, then God, country, whatever,” I mumbled, mostly to myself, as I processed through what this was going to mean to me. “And respect is paramount. But women are basically accessories, club property unless they’re claimed by a brother, at which point their behavior reflects on the member, but never really on the woman. Because unless they’re property, they’re for making food and fucking. Maybe cleaning. So if they fuck up, you just discard them and find another. But old ladies aren’t as disposable, so there needs to be repercussions, but those get directed at the club member who is then expected to control his woman and keep it from happening again.”
“Uhh… yeah? That’s— I guess I never thought of it like that, it kinda sounds terrible,” he interrupted my monologue right before I connected the right pieces in my head and I grimaced. “I mean, from our perspective, the old ladies are all highly valued and treated with respect, and the club sluts are under our protection, we take care of them and make sure they’re safe and healthy and—”
“Fed and watered?” I asked sarcastically. “Do you take them to the vet when they’re sick too?”
He stopped dead and glared down at me. “It’s not like that.”
“No? Because it sounds like you’re describing a pet. Even the old ladies— you value them? Because they’re useful?”
“No. Because their man loves them.”
I sucked in a breath. Something about this was bugging me — I mean, besides the obvious — but it was like a big knot in my head and no matter how many strings I was trying to follow and untangle, I wasn’t making much progress. And Luka was still glaring at me.
“This is why I wanted to talk to you,” he pointed out, “because we,” he gestured in a circle with his hand and I knew that meant him, Sev, and Sasha, “might recognize this is different, but to the rest of our family, it’s just how it is. And I’m not saying you have to change who you are to fit in, but you need to be aware of how it might be perceived.”
And then things clicked.
“And how it’s going to reflect on you,” I stated, softly. “That’s the issue, right? You’re worried— what? I might embarrass you?”
“No!” He hissed, pretty loudly, and I glanced around. Sasha had stopped — fuck, all of them had — and was watching us with a grim expression. Like he knew.
“You were chosen to have this talk with me, weren’t you?” I quirked up the side of my mouth, studying him as he winced, running a hand over his face.
“No,” he sighed. “Whoever had an opportunity was going to talk to you about this. I had the opportunity.”
“Lucky you,” I mused, feeling… so much that I wasn’t feeling anything at all. “So if not embarrass you, then what?”
“Offend someone,” he muttered, looking pissed and miserable and so unlike my goofy Cocoa Dragon. “Alienate them before they get to really know you. Force us—” he broke off, suddenly, and looked away.
I got it. I understood exactly what he was saying: force them to choose.
Because loyalty was to the club first. Always. This wasn’t just something they were indoctrinated into, this was how they were raised.
A million things passed through me in those few seconds of silence, a million thoughts and feelings, and very few of them were positive, but this was a moment of great clarity. This was a moment where I had to make a choice, and there was no going back.
So I asked myself WWMD? What would Mouse do?
I could let pride and stubbornness rule the day, because this mindset was wrong and encouraging it or even just accepting it went against everything I believed in; or I could compromise and try to enact change from within an oppressive system of gender-based privilege. That was one perspective. The other was that I could be nice to my boyfriends’ family even though I felt they were a little backwards in their thinking, or I could be an intolerant, judgmental bitch to people who he just admitted didn’t know any better — which also allowed me to feel slightly superior and enlightened compared to them.
Or I could go full-on Mouse: call them all idiots to their faces, proposition the cute ones but tell them please not to talk because their attractiveness fades the longer they speak, and pirouette my way right out of Sevlukasha’s lives, trilling “Your loss!” as I go.
And I chose… God help me and please don’t revoke my girl-card, but I chose them.
If a small part of me did so because I wasn’t absolutely sure they would choose me when it came down to it, I punched that little bitch in the mouth. Then I told her to get back into the dark recesses of my brain, the closet under the stairs in my mind palace, and wait for her letter from Hogwarts because that’s the only way she’s getting out again. But we both knew better.
“I’ll behave,” I smirked, and his head whipped around, his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that, Luka. You made your point. I can play nice with people, it just takes a lot of effort and I usually don’t give enough fucks to make it. But if you all are asking me to try not to offend your family, at least not right away, well, that seems like a reasonable request.” He didn’t look at all reassured. “I said I’ll try, okay? I’ll make a sincere effort. Just… cut me some slack if I fail?”
He closed his eyes and chuckled, nodding. “Yeah, that’s fair.”
Chapter Seventeen
Azzie
We didn’t talk for awhile after that, both lost in our own thoughts. When we took a break, Luka had a short conversation with Sasha and Sev — who both glanced over in unison and it would’ve been funny if I wasn’t so annoyed and uncomfortable — and that was it. Nothing more was said.
“Before we get moving again,” Tai interrupted their little conclave, and my own dark thoughts, and spread out the map on the ground, gesturing to us to huddle up. “We should talk about what’s coming up. I’m pretty sure we’re right here,” he pointed at a spot in the middle of a large, pale green section representing the woods we’d been walking through for awhile. “If I’m right,” he continued, “we’ll be approaching a pretty deep crevasse soon, this right here.” He traced the line bisecting the green area with his finger, and I was momentarily distracted by staring at his hand. His large hand, with thick, blunt fingers and calluses on the palm and tips. I studied that hand, glancing over at Spider’s, then back, and realized that Spider had longer fingers. Huh.
“—houses here, I think,” he’d kept talking even when my mind wandered, so thank goodness the rest of them were paying attention. “We should be able to find an empty one, leave anything that will draw attention, like the long guns — do you think there will be a problem with getting a ride back here before we leave the area, to pick up whatever we have to stash?” He directed that at the triplets, who looked at each other and shrugged, indicating it probably wouldn’t be an issue.
“Cool,” Tai continued, “so right here, we’ll need to move to the road for the overpass, and on the other side, around this curve, we can pick up the woods again and they should back onto that subdivision; if there’s any traffic then we’re going to have to either wait until dark or take our chances with the crevasse. Either way, we’ll want to stay to the south once we’re beyond the overpass. After the houses, we’re going to have to cross this highway, which borders the eastern side of the city.”
Except there was no subdivision.
The road had been clear of traffic, and we’d been able to get past the crevasse without any issues, but as we trundled along and rounded the curve, we walked right into a silent protest — a good two hundred activists in pandemic masks, facing off against armed security guards in kevlar and face shields. Instead of abandoned houses surrounded by weed-filled yards, the trees actually backed onto a collection of sleek new buildings that made up a pharmaceutical company’s research complex.
It was shocking after so many days of
isolation, after nothing but empty houses and abandoned farms when there was anything at all. We’d suspected that they’d created a buffer zone around Salem, making sure there was no reason to approach unless you had business with the base, but after ten, twenty, thirty miles of no one, it just felt like the world was…empty. Like it was just us, and some nameless, faceless threat following from behind, and we’d be running and hiding forever.
To stumble into the back of a large group like this, standing silent with signs in opposition to grim men and women with weapons held ready, was surreal.
“Fuck!” A man hissed from behind us to the side, standing near what looked like a repurposed city bus painted matte black. We all turned toward him, the guys immediately going into protection mode. “You can’t have guns here, it’ll incite them — get the fuck on the bus!” The man wasn’t shouting but he was whispering adamantly, and my guys exchanged looks, then herded me onto the bus.
The man followed, shutting the door behind us. “Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?” he asked at normal volume.
I had to keep repositioning to get a good look at him, since my guys kept trying to block me from his view. “Cut it out!” I hissed, poking Spider in the back, but he didn’t budge, so I crawled up on one of the seats and looked over the top of them at the man.
He was mid-30s, at least, and either Middle Eastern or of southern European descent. Above his plain gray mask, he had deep olive skin, beautiful brown eyes, and thick, dark brows. His black hair was wavy, clubbed back into a short, tight ponytail on the back of his head, and a few pieces had slipped out to fall around his face. He was lanky, shorter than my guys but not by much, and carried himself with the confidence of someone used to being in charge. He was dressed pretty similarly to us, too, in cargo pants and heavy boots, with a beat-up canvas coat open over a ragged henley.
“Get down from there, you savage,” he growled at me. “I don’t get into your car and put my dirty feet on the seats.”
Book of the Lost: AAV-07d25-11: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 3) Page 20