“I can get you out. I can help,” Mae offered.
“No one can help me but myself. I learned that before I ever came here.” Sophia gently pulled her wrist away. “You’ll thank me for this later.” Without another word, Sophia turned and headed straight toward Solomon.
Mae swore under her breath, uncertain whether the other woman was friend or foe. “Damn it.” Mae trailed after her, making a beeline straight for Rogue. He was watching her as she approached. From the dark look in his eyes, he already suspected something was amiss.
Mae gave him a pointed stare. They needed to get out of here—and fast.
Immediately, Rogue pushed back his chair. “This has all been lots of fun, Solomon, but I’m needed back at Black Hollow.” The ranch name was the code word Rogue had given Murtagh in case things went south. Mae had had the idea to put a wiretap in one of Rogue’s boots. It was a move that was more in line with what the Grey Wolf warriors would do during a raid, rather than Rogue and his men, but Rogue had been open to it.
Sophia was already bent over and whispering in Solomon’s ear. “Now hold on just a second there, Roguey boy.” The casino owner held up a finger.
Rogue and Mae moved to step away from the table, but within seconds, several of Solomon’s men had surrounded them, the threatening looks in their eyes and their intentions clear. If Mae or Rogue took so much as another step, they’d be in for a fight. At that moment, Murtagh, Sterling, Boone, and Yuri appeared, slipping in from the depths of one of the back entrances, so quiet and stealthy that Mae wouldn’t have noticed them had it not been for the flash of the blade in Murtagh’s grip as he passed one of the slot machines.
“Sophia here just told me something very interesting.” Solomon’s eyes took on a dark, wild look, the same look they’d held when he’d threatened Sophia earlier. “I don’t like to be taken for a fool.” He trained his gaze on Rogue. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a cheat, old boy, but luckily, there’s still honor in this world—loyalists—like Sophia here.”
“I’m not loyal to you.” The words were spoken so quietly, Mae almost didn’t hear them over the sound of the country music thumping throughout the casino’s speakers.
Solomon’s features crinkled into a look of confusion. He glanced over his shoulder toward Sophia. From the look on his face, he looked more alarmed that she’d spoken at all than at her words. He growled, low and foreboding. “Come now, Sophia. Can you not see I’m speaking, love?” The words dripped with underlying violence and threat.
“I said, I’m not loyal to you,” Sophia repeated, her voice louder and more confident this time. “I didn’t do this for you.”
She held Solomon’s full attention now. Every eye was on her.
Sophia swallowed—hard. “I did it for me.”
Mae sucked in a harsh breath. It was at that moment that she saw the small penknife clutched in the other woman’s fist. Without warning, Sophia lunged toward Solomon, stabbing the penknife into his spine and allowing all hell to break loose.
Solomon’s guards lunged for her.
Mae froze. She didn’t know what to do. She’d only experienced this kind of violence once before. As the melee raged, she was back there again. She was the terrified little girl who’d suffered far too much abuse at the hands of an uncle who was supposed to care for her and love her but who instead had taken advantage of that trust and used it to silence and abuse her… And then there was Jared, diving from the closet, attacking Buck as he tried to rape her yet again. Buck’s hands were quickly around Jared’s throat. She was screaming.
Jared’s blue eyes had bulged as he’d struggled for air.
And then she was standing there. Buck lying bloody on the floor as she held the knife.
From a distance, someone was shouting her name. The shouting ripped her from the horrible nightmare her traumatic stress trapped her in.
“Mae!” A pair of strong hands gripped her, hauling her sideways and into a pair of arms until they were hidden behind the bar top.
She was vaguely aware of a flying chair hitting the wall somewhere beside them. Piercing cerulean eyes came into focus. Not Jared’s but Rogue’s, except that the fog of her memory made them one and the same.
She traced over his features. The scarred side of his face, while not deformed as he said it was, had been badly injured enough that it made some of his features hard to recognize. The sharp, cutting cheekbones of the intact side were too masculine and harsh to remind her of the soft face of a young teen boy, but now that she thought of it, the color of his eyes and the hue of his fur when he was in wolf form were so familiar that when she accounted for the passage of twenty years, she could almost convince herself that…
No, it couldn’t be. Her father had told her himself. She’d never understood why the Grey Wolf’s elite warriors of the time had chosen to hold a boy as young as fifteen to such strict standards of their law—and for saving the packmaster’s daughter from a man who’d abused her. But Buck had been her father’s brother, a respected alpha and warrior among the pack. She’d always assumed none of the other alpha warriors had believed her or her father—or at least they hadn’t wanted to admit it—because Buck had been their friend, someone they’d trusted, better liked than her father himself, a man who’d ruled the pack with an iron fist. She knew alphas didn’t often want to admit they were wrong, but she’d always secretly suspected her father hadn’t believed her either, even though he’d said he did.
But he’d told her the other alphas of the pack had voted on it. He might have been packmaster, but he’d been outnumbered. At least, that’d been the story.
But Maverick had confirmed it. Jared was dead.
Wasn’t he?
She focused on Rogue’s gaze. There was understanding in his eyes, a knowledge of exactly what she was seeing that confused her. She couldn’t possibly be seeing straight.
“Don’t allow yourself to go back there, Mae. Not now,” he growled. His features were twisted with battle-worn rage, but his gaze was filled with an odd depth of understanding. As if he’d been there. As if he knew.
But he couldn’t.
Jared was dead.
“Run,” he growled, giving a slight shake to her shoulders to bring her to her senses. The fighting continued around them. He must have engaged in it at some point, because there was a trickle of blood running from the scarred side of his lip.
“Escape through the emergency door down the back hall and wait for Murtagh around the back entrance,” he hissed.
Mae was still too caught up in the fog of her own head that was making her see things in his eyes, hear things in his voice that weren’t there. “You can’t leave her,” she answered, thinking of Sophia. The question about Austin had significance. She knew it. “I think she might be on our side.”
Rogue’s words were rushed with adrenaline. “You heard me outside the Midnight Coyote. No women or children. That’s my rule.” He shot a glance over his shoulder as a loud crash sounded, followed by a sharp yelp of someone injured while in wolf form.
Whether his men or Solomon’s, he likely didn’t know.
He turned back toward her. “Our side or not, I won’t stand by and allow Solomon or his cronies to tear any woman to shreds. Now, go.” Shoving her toward the emergency exit door, he rushed into the melee.
This time, she listened. Mae shifted into her wolf form and raced toward the exit, barreling around the thick of the fighting. She darted under tables and dodged flying debris as she ran. She ran, because she knew if she didn’t, she’d start seeing things that weren’t there again, thinking there was a possibility that a dark criminal like the Rogue was somehow Jared, her childhood love, risen from the dead, and she couldn’t allow herself to go down that line of thinking.
It isn’t true, she told herself as she burst through the casino’s back exit and into the night. She didn’t stop until she wa
s safely hidden in the darkness of the alley.
It can’t be true, she repeated to herself again.
Chapter 22
With Mae finally headed toward safety, Rogue dove back into the melee. Sterling, Boone, Daisy, and Yuri had managed to hold off Solomon’s men as Murtagh extricated Sophia from the wolf’s clutches. She was still alive, thanks to the Scot.
Rogue couldn’t say the same for Solomon. At least not for long.
Not with what Rogue was about to do to him.
Rogue prowled toward Solomon’s office. He had watched the bastard escape there, bloodied and wounded, after his men had joined the brawl.
It’d take more than a penknife to kill a wolf like him, and Rogue wouldn’t hesitate.
Rogue prowled into the office. As he entered, Solomon’s back was turned toward him, his massive shoulders heaving with the excitement of battle. Blood trickled from his neck, but it was a second knife wound at his side that Solomon clutched. A pool of blood grew beneath his hand. But not enough to kill the bastard. From the look of it, Murtagh had left his mark but unfortunately just missed the other rogue wolf’s vital organs. Solomon was like a damn cockroach, impossible to kill.
Upon Rogue’s entrance, Solomon cast a glance over his shoulder and stiffened. For a tension-filled beat, they held each other’s gaze. The scuffle of metal against leather holster broke the silence. Solomon turned toward Rogue, each man cocking back the hammer on his revolver simultaneously.
“You were always a fast draw, but never faster than me.” Solomon chuckled, flashing his disgusting rotting teeth. “Come now, Roguey. You don’t want the secrets you came for to die with ol’ Sully now, do you? And all over that worthless, fecking bitch of yours?”
Rogue didn’t bother to react. The repeated and less-than-subtle use of his old nickname brought back too many memories Rogue would rather forget. Solomon had been taunting him with it all night. He’d trusted Sully. Like so many others had. And while he might not have been the sole reason Rogue had become who he was—a monster no longer worthy of a Grey Wolf princess like Maeve Grey—Solomon was still an unfortunate part of that.
Another scar on Rogue’s already deformed soul.
Murtagh slipped into the room behind Solomon, his blade in hand. But from the flick of Solomon’s gaze, he was all too aware of Murtagh’s presence, and he wouldn’t allow Murtagh to draw close enough to use his dagger. Murtagh snarled. The Scot had always hated Solomon, even though they’d fought in the same ring together. Long before Solomon had become their rival, Murtagh had seen right through him. He’d hated the psychotic bastard from the start. He’d told Rogue as much after he’d taken Rogue in, but Rogue had been too young and naive to listen, too hell-bent on earning enough petty change to help himself, Murtagh, and Cassidy survive while he worked to earn his revenge against the Grey Wolves.
One ruthless battle at a time.
Solomon wasn’t a friend, but he hadn’t always been Rogue’s enemy either. Thomas Grey might have maimed him and betrayed him and his family, but the wolf had died years ago. Rogue had never been able to seek retribution there, and he wasn’t even certain he could have—for Mae’s sake—but Solomon had destroyed him too. It’d been killing other wolves for sport, all for the sake of survival, for the money and power he earned from the bets he won and the adrenaline of winning that’d made him addicted to it, even as it’d torn him to pieces. It allowed the rage inside him for all he’d been through to become infected and fester, slowly turning him into a monster with each drop of blood that dripped from his fists, each champion ring he still wore.
And it’d been Solomon who had convinced him to do it.
Only to become even more of a monster than Rogue was himself.
Rogue leveled the barrel of his revolver at Solomon’s head. “You know my rules. No women. No children. The rogue wolves are my kingdom, and I’ve let you exist in it long enough.” His voice was calm, collected, because he’d been here dozens of times before—staring down another man he intended to kill.
His identity as the Rogue had been born of it.
“Tell me where to find the antidote, and I’ll let you live,” he threatened.
It was a lie, and Solomon knew it.
The Birmingham cowboy laughed. “We both know that ain’t true, old boy. That’s not how I taught you, is it?”
“Ye didn’t teach him anything,” Murtagh snarled. “He was brutal all on his own.”
Rogue frowned. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Murtagh.”
Murtagh’s wolf eyes blazed as he assessed Solomon with disgust. “He’s a right lavvy-heided wankstain is all he is.”
Solomon laughed, long and hearty. “I like that one. I like that one a real lot, Murtagh.”
“Appreciate it.” Murtagh nodded.
“How ’bout we try this one on for size, shall we?” Solomon said. “Go diddle yerself, ye cock-thumping trolly.”
Murtagh wrinkled his nose as he shook his head. “We Scots do it better,” he said.
“Bugger off,” Solomon scoffed, his gun still trained on Rogue. “We Brits should’ve done in all you bloody Highlanders when we ’ad the chance.”
Murtagh growled. “Ye daft—”
“Would you two idiots swear like some fucking American cowboys for once? Christ,” Rogue swore.
He had their attention again now. Solomon’s finger was already on the trigger, as was Rogue’s. Rogue’s grip tightened in threat. “Last chance,” he warned.
“Your ol’ antidote will die with me, Roguey.”
At the moment, Rogue couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d originally intended to do this without Solomon, so why the hell did it matter? He’d protect Mae for as long as it took and find another way. He’d made a mistake coming here.
As Murtagh closed in on Solomon from the side, Rogue came at him from the front, backing the casino owner into a corner. Rogue sensed the tension mounting. They all did.
“I was always faster in the ring, Jared,” Solomon hissed, using Rogue’s real name to throw him off, to try to make him remember the days when they’d been boys together, street urchins without a name or purpose.
Rogue shook his head. “We’re not in the ring, Sully.”
Solomon’s trigger finger twitched, but not fast enough. Rogue shot him in the forehead point-blank. Blood spattered as Solomon crumpled to the floor.
Murtagh didn’t so much as blink. He was used to the cleanup routine by now. He gestured to Solomon’s limp body. “It’s unlike you to shoot straight fer the head. I thought ye would have savored that more.”
Rogue holstered his gun. He crossed the room to where Solomon lay. He didn’t even bother to nudge the bastard with his foot. No one survived a bullet to the head. “He deserved to be put down like the damn dog that he was,” he growled. He glanced back up at Murtagh. “Plus, I didn’t feel like washing his blood off my boots.”
Daisy appeared in the doorway to interrupt. “There’s a brawl going on with Solomon’s men outside, and when they find out he’s dead and his power is up for grabs, all hell is going to break loose.”
Rogue didn’t hesitate. He strode out into the melee, firing shots into the casino’s ceiling. The gunfire quieted the brawling wolves immediately.
“Solomon’s dead.” Rogue looked out over the crowd of rogue wolves. “You answer to me now, and you’ll obey my rules.” Without warning, he turned and shot one of Solomon’s men in the leg, the one who’d tried to aid Solomon in hurting Sophia.
The wolf crumpled to the ground, howling in pain as he clutched his leg.
“What the fuck did you shoot him for?” one of the other wolves growled.
Rogue snarled. “Because I’m just as mean a bastard as the man you used to answer to.” He gave a nonchalant shrug. “And I felt like it.” He tipped the brim of his hat toward the men who now answered to him. “Be
have yourselves,” he warned.
As Rogue strode toward the exit, he signaled for his men and Daisy to follow him as they left the building. The ragtag group shifted into their wolf forms as they ran to where the truck was parked a short way away.
The desert dust blew, coating their fur as they passed several large cacti.
It was a little too western, even for Rogue’s taste. He much preferred the mountains of Idaho or the big sky in Montana.
They found Mae and Sophia next to the truck, Mae in wolf form. She raised her hackles, prepared to fight if necessary, but when she saw it was them, she shifted back into her human flesh. Rogue’s men averted their gaze as Daisy helped her quickly grab a blanket from the truck bed and wrap it around herself. Nudity was a way of life for shifters, and most of the time, none of them paid any mind, but Rogue’s men knew if their eyes lingered on Mae for even a second too long while she was naked, they wouldn’t be pleased with the consequences.
She fell into him, holding on to him like a vise. “Tell me you got the location from Solomon.”
“He didn’t,” Murtagh said as he climbed into the truck bed. “He killed the damn bastard.”
Mae’s eyes widened as she looked toward him. “You what?”
“Th-the scientist?” Sophia sputtered. “That’s what you all were here about?”
“Of course,” Murtagh answered. “What else would we be here for? Didn’t ye just hear those two ’bout the antidote?”
“I was a little busy, trying not to get killed.” Sophia’s eyes were full of tears, but her voice was full of fire and sass. “Your scientist is holed up in a hostel down in Tijuana.”
“Tijuana?” the Scot barked in confusion.
Rogue had to agree. Whoever heard of a vampire vacationing in Tijuana? Everyone knew that bloodsuckers became few and far between anywhere south of Cleveland. Though he guessed that was likely why the vamps had chosen such a location.
“Yes,” she said. “I overheard Solomon talking about it a few days ago.”
Rogue growled. “If you knew where he was, why not just tell Mae and be done with it?”
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