by Callie Hart
“Nervous?” she asks, reminding me of Pasha asking me the same thing about an hour ago.
I repeat the same thing I told him, then. “Pasha’s going to be the center of attention. I’m just along for the ride, right?”
Shireen snorts. “If you believe that, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means the other clans are here today. The entire West Coast familia. And every single one of them has heard about the redheaded gadje who’s bewitched the boy about to sit his ass down on our throne. They all know who Pasha is. None of them have caught sight of you yet. Who do you think they’re all gonna be looking at?”
Oh…shitting…fuck.
She’s right. I haven’t thought this through properly. I can already feel my skin creeping with embarrassment under the weight of so many curious eyes. “It’s all right. I’ll be with you and the kids.”
“Sorry, my love.” Shireen takes me by the hand and leads me out of the Winnebago. “You’re gonna be right up there, standing next to him I’m afraid.”
“What?” I try and pull my hand free, horrified, but Shireen’s a ninja. Far too used to her kids trying to give her the slip. She only holds tighter as she hurries me out of the encampment toward the ridgeline to our left. We begin to climb up the steep incline of the hill, and I can hardly think around the chorus of objections all clamoring for my attention in my head. “I’m not gonna be next to him. No way. This has nothing to do with me, Shireen.”
“Hah! I’ve given you more credit, love, but if you believe that, then you really must be as stupid as that dark-haired lug. Of course, it has everything to do with you.”
“He’s your king, Shireen. I’m just...”
“You’re just the woman he’s gonna be spending the rest of his life with?”
My cheeks feel like they’re about to burst into flames. “Now let’s not get a little ahead of ourselves…”
Huffing from the climb, Shireen halts, wild-eyed, and spins on me, dropping my hand. “What? You don’t want to spend the rest of your life with him?” she asks incredulously.
Awkward. Oh god, this is damned awkward. “Of course I do. But…Pasha and I have hardly spoken about any of that yet. He hasn’t brought it up. Who’s to say he wants to spend the rest of his life with me?”
The sound of Shireen’s belly laugh echoes around the glen. She looks like she’s going to piss herself, she’s laughing so hard. “Ahhh, Ves ‘tacha. You are so fucking blind, it’s funny. He’s committed. He’s locked in. I’ve never seen a Rom man so fucking ready to get married in all my life. And trust me…once these morons get the idea into their heads, they are the marrying types. It’s been a part of his culture and his up-bringing his whole life, Zara. And even if it wasn’t, Pasha isn’t the type of guy to screw around and play games. He loves you more than anything else on the face of this earth. He worships you, and everybody knows it. There won’t be a single person gathered on the other side of this ridgeline who’ll look at him and not know that his ass belongs to you, woman. For better or worse. So when they look at you, they’re not going to be seeing some…what did Cleo call you that first night? They’re not gonna be seeing some honored guest, who’s just come along to celebrate her boyfriend’s fucking promotion. They’re going to be seeing the woman their king has chosen to stand by his side until the day he dies. They’re going to be seeing their future queen. You do understand that, right?”
Oh…
Fuck.
Slowly, I sink down into a crouch, aware that I probably look a little weird, but I need to take a minute to catch my breath. If I don’t, I’m going to keel over. “Uhhhhh….”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Shireen says, laughing. “Didn’t you play dress-up when you were a kid? Although, you don’t even really get to dress up all that much in this role,” she adds absently. “It’s gonna be fine. From what I understand, Pasha’s going to be a part-timer anyway. You two are going to be staying here in Spokane for a good chunk of the year, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what…what we decided.” I feel numb, like my whole body is made out of rubber.
Shireen seems to realize that I’m actually freaking out for real and sinks down, crouching in front of me. “Shit.” She huffs. “In all seriousness, Zara. These last few months have been awesome. You’re amazing, and I think of you as a sister already, but Pasha is important. I call him dumb names all the time, and I give him hell as often as I can, but the guy standing on the other side of this ridge represents the future of our people. We don’t have much. Being Roma is fucking hard in this country. It’s hard whatever country our people find themselves in. We’re going to be trying to figure out where we belong in this world for a long time yet, and Pasha’s signing up to be our flag bearer today. Our advocate, and our voice.
“Honestly, there are gonna be times when that’s gonna be a really shitty job for him. If you don’t think you can stand by his side and hold his hand through those days…if you don’t think you can be there for him and be his equal, be his strength and his light no matter fucking what? Then I’m begging you…please don’t walk down the other side of this hill. Because it will fucking break him if you walk away further down the line. And I can’t allow that to happen.”
Wow. Well, shit just got real, apparently. I meet Shireen’s gaze, and I see kindness there. She’s not trying to be cruel. She’s just laying it out and telling it like it is, and…well, I appreciate her honesty. I swallow down the lump in my throat and take a deep breath. “I love him every bit as much as he loves me. He’s a part of my soul. I’m never going to walk away from him, Shireen. That was never even a possibility. It just came out of the left field is all. The whole…Queen thing.”
Shireen’s face is still serious, but her eyes are smiling now. She gets to her feet, holding out her hand. She helps me up, then links her arm with mine, taking off up the hill again. “Don’t worry,” she says, elbowing me playfully in the side. “You’ve got time. At least a month or so.”
“A month!”
Shireen cackles like a witch all the way down other side of the hill.
The sight, when we reach the bottom and cut through a narrow copse of trees, leaves me awestruck. I’ve definitely heard the gathering, but I haven’t seen it until now: a sea of people, stretching from one side of a massive clearing to the other. I begin to feel a little dizzy again. “I didn’t realize there were going to be so many.”
“Nearly ten thousand,” Shireen says. Ten thousand pairs of expectant eyes, that follow us with laser beam intensity as we make my way through the crowd toward the raised wooden platform that Archie and Leo constructed earlier in the week. I pinch myself, trying to remember to keep on inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, but it’s not fucking easy. Cleo’s already standing up there on the platform, but today her back is straight, and her staff is nowhere to be seen.
She’s wearing a dress much like the one Shireen is wearing, except hers is decorated with tiny golden medallions. I’ve never known her to wear anything but overalls, so to see her like this now is something of a shock. She smiles at me as I climb up onto the dais, holding out her hand to me. When I look back over my shoulder, Shireen’s disappeared into thin fucking air.
“Don’t worry about her,” Cleo says. “She needs to be with her family. You need to be right up here with yours.” She points over my shoulder, and there he is: Pasha, the only family I care about, or that truly means anything to me. He’s dressed in a loose-fitting shirt, completely different to his usual t-shirts, and his pants are suspiciously un-torn. As he makes his way through the clearing, heading toward the dais, people separate ahead of him, clearing a path.
Men and women alike touch their foreheads in a show of deference to him, and Pasha does the same back. From a distance, he looks calm. Serious. Confident. I know him better than I know myself, though. He’s as far from calm as it gets, and he’s tensed, just waiting for something to go
wrong.
It doesn’t, though. Every single face in the crowd is a happy one. The people closest to him reach out and touch his arm or his back, nodding their support as he moves past them. Then, he’s standing at the foot of the dais, and Patrin appears out of nowhere next to me, offering him a helping hand up onto the platform. Pasha grins childishly, pulling a face at the man as he accepts his hand.
It’s been interesting, watching them form their awkward friendship over the past few months; they still rile the shit out of each other, but more often than not I see them laughing rather than fighting. The smell of wood smoke and fresh citrus floods my nose as Pasha wraps his arms around me, kissing me on the forehead. “Talk about fucking overkill,” he murmurs. I laugh, squeezing him tight, Shireen’s words on the hill bouncing around inside of my head, and I realize, out of nowhere, that I’m not afraid of what the future might hold. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve known all along what I’m getting myself into, and I’ve run toward it, head on, with my arms open wide.
“All right, you two. Let’s get this show on the road. If we don’t bring the whiskey out soon, there’s going to be a riot,” Cleo hisses.
Pasha doesn’t release me, so I squeeze him even tighter. “You’re going to be fine,” I whisper into his ear. “Actually, you’re going to be more than fine. You’re going to be fucking phenomenal. Best king ever.”
He laughs as he lets me go. “If you say so, Firefly. If you say so.”
The ceremony itself is short and sweet. A lot of it I don’t understand, since it’s in a language I’m yet to master, but I do catch the odd phrase every now and then.
Cleo asks Pasha if he’s going to serve his people, and he swears that he will.
She asks him if he will always work in their best interests, and not his own fame, glory or riches. He promises that he will.
She asks him if he will sacrifice all for the people he loves. He swears that he will.
Soon, Cleo is turning to face the crowd, and she’s calling out across the clearing a loud, clear voice. “Here stands your king! Do you kneel?”
A roaring response echoes of the mountains as ten thousand people answer with cheers, and shouts, and applause. Every single member of the crowd sinks down onto their knees, and my heart soars at the sight. Pasha’s hands are shaking as Cleo stands firm on her tiptoes, trying to reach up to place a verdant, woven laurel crown on top of his head. In the end, he has to stoop down a little, bowing his head, so she can place it properly.
Another loud, wild storm of sound goes up when Pasha straightens, and Cleo sinks to her knees in front of him. To my horror, I see that even Patrin is on his knees next to me, and that, other than Pasha, I’m the only other person in the clearing not fucking kneeling.
I rectify the matter in a heartbeat. I might not be considered Roma. Not yet… But, in loving their king, I’ve already sworn to honor and respect them. And I have absolutely no problem honoring Pasha and giving him the respect he deserves right now.
I’d told him back in his Mustang, when he tried to tell me what to do, that he might have been a king to his people, but I wasn’t looking for him to be my king. Truthfully, he already was my king, just as he is my sun, and my moon, and my heart, and my soul.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Patrin looking at me, and he groans under his breath. “He’s going to be such an asshole now,” he grouses. “I’m probably gonna try and suffocate him in his sleep.”
“Not if I get there first,” I counter.
“I can hear you two, y’know. Can one of you please stand up? I think they’re all waiting for a cue or something. Fuck.”
Patrin howls with laughter as he gets to his feet. He hugs his cousin, now his king, and the two of them look out over their people with pride in their eyes. As one, the rest of the Roma stand, brushing themselves off, and a burst of music cuts above the instant sound of chatter and cheering—a band at the far end of the hidden valley, starting up, their music carrying across the clearing with ease.
“Get off me, you shite,” Pasha grumbles, jokingly shoving Patrin away, and then he’s in front of me, wrapping his arms around me, bringing his lips down to meet mine as he kisses me softly. Within the circle of his arms, it’s as though we’re suddenly safe inside our own little bubble. “This is a bit much, huh?” he whispers. “Not really what most girls expect at the start of a relationship.”
I can’t contain the grin I have plastered across my face. I bump the end of his nose with mine, shaking my head just a little. “Does this feel like the start of our relationship to you?” I whisper.
His eyes, so vibrant and green next to the laurel crown he’s wearing, become serious. “No. It feels like a song. A song I’ve always known the melody to, but am only just now remembering the words to…”
He kisses me again, and this time it feels as if the entire clearing has disappeared. I feel like I’m floating off the ground, walking on air, so swept away in him that we could both so easily be blown away on the breeze. When he surrenders me from the kiss, I find that my feet actually are off the ground, and Pasha’s holding me in the air, cradling me to his chest.
The man with starlight in his eyes and raven’s wing hair smiles a secret smile as he plants me back onto the ground. “You know, it’ll be ten times worse than this when we get married, right?”
My cheeks ache as my grin grows even wider. “Yeah, I know.”
An incredibly pleased, fleeting flash of surprise transforms him. “Oh, you do, do you?”
Shyly, I nod my assent, and Pasha places a gentle kiss against my lips. “My Firefly. God, you fucking amaze me.”
Patrin’s voice dispels our little bubble rather rudely. “Hey, asshole. You got ten thousand people waiting on you over here. There’ll be time for that later.”
Pasha rolls his eyes, takes a step back, a deep breath…and then he’s thumping Patrin in the arm. “All right,” he says, winking at me over the other man’s shoulder. “This whole crowning thing is seriously fucking stressful. Who could use a drink?”
WHO ARE THE WIDOW MAKERS MC, NEW MEXICO?
When Pasha and Zara found themselves winding their way up the mountain roads toward the Rivin encampment, they saw a guy on a motorcycle hurtling down the hill in the opposite direction. He was a member of the Widow Maker’s MC, and he was on a mission. If you love gritty, intense dark romance with a twist, then read on and meet Rebel, Alexis, Cade and the rest of the crew! But be warned… The Widow Makers are unlike any other MC on the face of the planet, and Rebel is a straight-up thief. He will steal your heart and have you questioning your morals in ten seconds flat. The man’s a triple threat: sexy, dangerous AND a genius to boot!
ALEXIS
A brief thought on death.
I never thought I’d die on the streets of Seattle. I never thought I’d be the kind of person to wish for death, either. You ask people what frightens them most in this world and nine times out of ten, you’ll get the same universal answer: Death.
The Great Unknown.
That one last wild ride.
I used to be one of those people, paralyzed by the mere thought of non-existence. Seems a lot has happened recently to adjust my outlook, though. Now, I’ve realized there are more frightening things than simply ceasing to be. Living, for example. Continuing to breathe, even though it feels like your heart is shattered into a million pieces and you can’t possibly go on another moment. Continuing to feel, even when your nerve endings are so frayed and overloaded from pain inflicted by others. Continuing to hope, despite the odds of rescue growing smaller and smaller each day.
I never thought I’d die on the streets of Seattle. I never thought I’d want to die. Beg for it. Wish for it constantly. I suppose my ingratitude for the great gift this life poses might be hard to comprehend. Perhaps if I started from the beginning, you might understand.
Here.
Let me explain…
CHAPTER ONE
ALEXIS
St. Peter�
��s hospital looms over the city, the building a crouched, disapproving sentinel blaring light and sound into the night. Fog blossoms on my breath. Curled around my takeaway coffee, my hands are finally beginning to thaw out. I’m listening to Led Zeppelin on my busted iPod with the cracked screen, watching people stream in and out of the hospital, and imagining their stories. Filling in the blanks from the expressions on their faces.
Broken leg.
Chest pain.
Only one more shift before the weekend, thank god.
New baby.
Lost loved one.
It never ceases to amaze me how a person’s face alone can convey so much of what they’re feeling, especially when they don’t know they’re being watched. I’ve seen the whole world crumble and be reborn at least five times before the cell phone, in the pocket of my thick Parka, rumbles against my stomach. It’s my dad.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Are you still on the bus?”
I smile. I smile because the old man is clueless. “No, I’m outside. I’ve been waiting for you for half an hour.”
He groans. In my mind I can see him pressing his fingertips into the creases of his brow, trying to figure out the problem he’s presented with. Because there’s a problem. There’s always a problem. “Ah, okay. All right, I’ll be out in a moment. A little girl just came in. She was in a car accident. Her whole leg’s shattered. They asked if I could stay behind and monitor her while they operate, but I’ll just tell them to—”
“Dad?”