Shield

by Anne Malcom

  He was.

  He would’ve thought it would’ve been hard to end a lifelong vendetta, to leave behind all the hard work, hate, and sleepless nights.

  It was the easiest thing he’d ever done.

  He hadn’t known where he was going until he ended up sitting in front of Keltan Brooke at the Greenstone Security offices six months back.

  “I need you to find her,” he said, barely seconds after they’d sat down.

  The man’s face was impassive, certainly not surprised. Then, in the face of Luke’s terse words, bordering on aggressive, he’d smiled.

  It wasn’t cruel, or intended to laugh Luke out the door. It was something different than that.

  “It’s ’bout time, mate.”

  Luke jolted. “Come again?”

  Keltan leaned forward, clasping his hands together, his smile trickling away. “I’ve been waitin’ for you to pull your finger out of your arse and start this war. I’m already smack-dab in the middle of mine.”

  Luke blinked. “War?”

  Keltan nodded, reaching underneath his desk and coming out with two cold beers. He handed one to Luke, who took it more out of reflex than anything else.

  “Love, mate,” Keltan said, sipping from his beer. “It’s a bitch of a fight, isn’t it?” His eyes moved with something that Luke only recognized because he’d seen it in the mirror.

  He knew Keltan and Lucy had been in some kind of dance for months. Knew she ran away, right into the city where he’d set up a security company. And that look told him that Keltan had finally caught her.

  Lucky bastard.

  Then again, he didn’t look like he’d triumphed in that war of his.

  “Yes,” Keltan mused to himself. “Thought mine was a bastard, a long fuckin’ wait. But you’ve got me beat. You were fighting long before I entered the fray.” He eyed him. “I’m thinkin’ you’ll be fighting long after I’ve lost.”

  Luke failed to hide his surprise at the brisk Kiwi’s sage words. They hadn’t interacted much, but when Luke had encountered him, he’d had a grudging respect for the man. Another outsider falling for someone inside the club. Someone who didn’t understand it, who didn’t want his woman involved.

  “Lost?” Luke repeated. “You think you’re going to lose her?”

  Keltan chuckled. “Nah, mate. I’m never gonna lose her. No fuckin’ way. Which means, of course, I have to lose the war.”

  Luke tilted his head, not sure if that was the most profound thing he’d ever heard or the stupidest.

  “Already lookin’ for her,” Keltan continued, not giving Luke enough time to come to a conclusion. He frowned. “Got my best guys on it. Nothin’ yet. Your girl, she’s good.” His tone was a mingling of impressed and sympathetic. “So for now, I can’t give you her, but I can give you a job. How’s that?”

  And somehow, Luke had said yes.

  Those months were full of frustration and dead ends and battles. Against himself. Trying to figure out who the fuck he was outside of Amber, outside of his uniform.

  Without her.

  That was easy.

  He was nothing without her.

  And there he was, in the same seat where he’d begun his search. And he hadn’t found her. She’d found herself. And he still didn’t have her.

  Keltan had been right. This war wasn’t gonna be short.

  “How about we sort that when we get back?” Keltan said, standing.

  “Where are we going?”

  Keltan grinned, the lingering demons of Lucy’s almost death tainting it. Luke guessed he’d never smile properly, not for the rest of his life, with that memory.

  “My wedding, of course.”

  Chapter Nine

  Rosie

  “I can’t believe you’re getting married in a hospital bed. After being stabbed. In polyester.” I screwed up my nose. “I don’t know which is worse.”

  “Neither do I,” Lucy admitted. “And I was the one who was stabbed.” She laughed and the motion jerked my hand, which was applying eye shadow to her closed lid.

  “No moving,” I snapped, hitting her shoulder. “I’m trying to work my magic.”

  Lucy went still but scowled at me with closed eyes. “You just hit me,” she gasped. “I’ve been stabbed.”

  “You’re fine,” I shot back. Because her eyes were closed, she couldn’t see the utter disconnect between my joking tone and my horror-stricken face.

  I was only joking because it was one façade I could clutch onto with my newly applied acrylic nails. The other option was complete mental breakdown.

  That was not happening.

  This was my girl’s wedding day. Even if the wedding was taking place in a hospital room that reeked of cleaning products.

  Despite my magical skills with a makeup brush, it was hard to mask the thin pallor of death still clinging to my friend’s beautiful face. It was sticking, etched in there like a scar you could only see if you looked really close, or if you had one similar.

  Or if you’d inflicted one similar.

  I was doing all three.

  The only thing that could chase that darkness away from her was the happiness that pulsed around her, the warm glow fighting the cold grip of death. It was working.

  It would work.

  One had to only look into Lucy’s violet eyes to see that. To taste the air when she and Keltan were together.

  Which was, since I’d been back, every moment. I tried to alternately give them time together while greedily claim my friend back before she was lost to me forever.

  We’d still had the unbreakable connection we’d forged as children, but she was moving into a different club, not the motorcycle club we’d welcomed her into.

  “You must love him,” I whispered, “if you’re forgoing Vera for Hospital Gown, off the rack.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, Rosie, I love him. Very much.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. That I haven’t been here for you,” I choked. “I know from experience that the courtships in our family never go without one, or a thousand and one, hitches.”

  Lucy reached out and squeezed my hand. “You’re here now.”

  I sucked away my tears. “Yeah.”

  Lucy’s beautiful eyes narrowed. “You want to talk about it?”

  I stiffened, leaning back and fiddling with putting away my makeup so I didn’t have to meet Lucy’s eyes. “About where I’ve been?”

  She shook her head. “No, babe. That’s a conversation for another day. When it’s not so fresh, and when talking about it can be done with a safe distance of time and memories,” she said. “No, not about where you ran to. But about why you ran. It wasn’t the same as the other times, was it?”

  I froze, my hands on a makeup palette but somehow not.

  My hands were covered in blood, one year old and yet it was somehow still sticky and warm. The past had preserved it perfectly for me.

  One Year Earlier

  My dating life had been decidedly sordid. As a stupid, heartbroken and reckless teenager, I decided if I couldn’t have the man I wanted, the man I needed, I’d have every other man I possibly could.

  That didn’t mean I jumped into bed with every man who was half-decent to look at and had three legs. I wasn’t that bad. Also, a lot of the fuck-worthy men in my vicinity wore leather cuts and answered to either my adopted father or my brother.

  Both of those men would’ve happily had me virginal until marriage, or preferably death.

  But I was a biker princess. They made me that way. I hadn’t been virginal since I walked into the clubhouse and saw Lucky fucking some chick on the sofa.

  I was maybe seven.

  Lucky got in a lot of shit for that, especially since he was barely patched in. Even bikers didn’t like seven-year-old princesses getting firsthand knowledge of what ‘doggy style’ was.

  Despite my barriers, my family, I dated. A lot.

  I liked variety in my wardrobe, and I also liked
it in men. I got bored easily too. Not many made it past a couple of weeks. Or a couple of dates. And I made sure to hunt for my next distraction in neighboring towns or cities when I felt like a road trip. Which was a lot.

  There were a few good guys. I dropped them quick. I needed good guys like I needed a punch in my face. I was trying to get over the good guy. Which meant I needed to make sure whoever I got under was as different from Luke as possible.

  There were a lot of average guys. Also a lot of wannabe bad boys. Then a few really nasty ones, which I somehow managed to stay with longer than the rest.

  It wasn’t because of low self-esteem or daddy issues. It was because they gave me some sort of sick excitement. Or maybe I liked the bitterness of a toxic relationship, craved it on some level.

  Of course, no one, not even Lucy or Ashley, knew about the real nasty ones. Especially not the club. They would immediately intervene, and things would get decidedly messy. Because I went for nasty guys, they were tangled up in equally nasty things.

  I could handle myself with every single one of them.

  Until Kevin.

  Absurdly boring and harmless name for an absurdly unpredictable and dangerous man.

  I didn’t particularly like him, but he was better at distracting than the rest, and he fed that ugly evil part of me.

  So I kept seeing him.

  Despite the red flags.

  Despite the protectiveness and jealousy that was driven by anger.

  Despite the fact that the sex began to scare even me.

  It took a lot to scare me.

  But I was also at the peak of my fucked-up state of mind. Luke was dating too. I think it would’ve been better if it was a revolving door of girls, but it wasn’t. It was some empty-headed bimbo with fake tits and faker Choos.

  He was staying with someone like that, letting her into his life, in that spot I coveted, instead of me.

  So I stayed with Kevin, fed into that ugly hunger that turned ravenous after seeing Luke with someone who was only better than me because she wasn’t connected to a motorcycle club.

  Then he hit me.

  I can’t even remember why. I spoke back to him, most likely.

  I do remember lying there, on the ground, where the force of his blow had put me. I held my cheek in surprise rather than pain. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt, a fuck of a lot, but I could handle pain. The humiliation that I’d stayed with someone who thought it was okay to beat a woman who wasn’t as silent as a mouse, that was what I couldn’t handle. No matter how fucked up I was, I shouldn’t have landed myself there.

  And I was sure many millions of women had thought that exact same thing in my exact position before.

  I was shocked too. I’d seen violence. Lived a life of it. My best friends had been subjected to some of the most brutal and ugly acts that could be dealt at the hands of men. Most of them had not only managed to survive it but thrive after it.

  One of my most treasured girls didn’t survive. I thought witnessing that, seeing the people I loved most in the world being broken like that, was worse than anything I could experience.

  And it was.

  But that didn’t mean I didn’t freeze from the surprise of experiencing this violence firsthand from a man for the first time in my life.

  Kevin utilized that, my shock, kicking me in the ribs. I grunted as the force of the kick expelled a painful gasp from my lungs and rolled me toward the coffee table.

  “See, you’re a hot piece, babe. The hottest. And I care about you, I really do. But you just have to piss me off. Why do you do that?” he asked, as if I was the one hurting him. As if it was my fault.

  I barely listened to him. I blinked through the pain that wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been since he was barefoot. My eyes focused on my purse, which, thanks to the kick, was now within reach.

  I wasn’t frozen anymore. I didn’t hesitate to dart my hand forward, into the opening, and clutch the gun that was always in there.

  I turned onto my back with some pain the moment he reached my side, standing above me. The barrel of the gun blocked out his handsome face.

  “You don’t touch me again unless you want it to be the last thing you do,” I said, my voice even.

  It was his time to freeze. And he did it long enough for me to scramble clumsily to my feet.

  By the time I’d done that, still pointing my gun at him, his face changed from dumb shock to a dumb snarl. A cocky confidence fed by women who didn’t have enough strength to stand up to him.

  I was doing this for them, and, of course, myself.

  “You’re not going to shoot me.”

  He barely got the words out before I replaced them with a gunshot.

  His screams were embarrassingly loud for someone who prided himself on being the big bad drug dealer who beat women.

  “You fucking bitch! You fucking shot me!” he bellowed from the floor, which he’d collapsed onto as soon as the bullet went through his lower leg.

  I raised my brow. “I don’t do empty threats, babe,” I said, then snatched my purse from the ground, keeping my gaze on Kevin while I did. “You know, I think we should break up.”

  “I’m going to fucking—”

  “Tut tut. I wouldn’t go about making promises you can’t keep.” I narrowed my eyes. “And trust me, you can’t keep any promises of revenge that you’re going to throw at me like that weak punch.” I rubbed my cheek. “I’m not like the other girls. In all the best ways. And all the worst. That means I will fucking kill you if you come near me again. I’ll make sure I chop your dick off first. Oh, and I’ll be having someone keep an eye on you. And your next girlfriend. If she has as much as a hangnail, I’ll come back. And I’ll give you a lot more than a hangnail.”

  I eyed him, clutching his leg and glaring at me. He was angry. Furious. This was probably the first time a woman had ever got the best of him.

  I really hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

  I also hoped that he wasn’t stupid enough to mess with me again.

  I should’ve known better than to hope.

  It took a while for everything to line up just perfectly for my life to be ruined. I’d pretty much forgotten about Kevin by the time all the drama with Bex came to a head. Which was comical, since it was him, not the drama with Bex, that ruined it all.

  It was a strange thing when all the seemingly isolated clouds in your life joined together, creating the perfect storm that even George Clooney wouldn’t dare sail through.

  It shouldn’t happen, such a storm. Even in my dramatic and barely believable life, such events, like the one of that fateful day, should not have stitched together like at the hand of Frankenstein itself, creating a monster I’d provided all the parts for.

  Like most of the shouldn’ts’ in my life, it got turned into a “surely will.” Imagine that in a Southern accent too, just for kicks.

  It was just another Sons of Templar courtship. The most recent of the five, and this time, finally, Lucky got his girl. But shadows as black as midnight yanked at the both of them, taking two members of my family on the darkest journey the club had seen since Laurie.

  Just another day in that courtship meant a car bomb.

  Specifically the car Lucy and I had been about to get into until Bex saved our lives. The message was to her and the club. By the person trying to destroy it all.

  They failed, just like everyone beforehand had.

  But it was close.

  Emergency trip to my brow lady kind of close.

  But everyone was fine, save Lucy’s broken wrist.

  But an explosion in the Sons of Templar compound didn’t go unnoticed by local law enforcement.

  Specifically would not go unnoticed by Luke.

  I knew that, which was why I had been trying my level best to escape the aforementioned compound before Luke arrived.

  Yes, I was running and hiding, though not from the reasons that I also got blown up.

  From the man who would’ve liked
to protect me from all that.

  From my family.

  Who would’ve done that by destroying it.

  But my overprotective family—more precisely, my overprotective brother—wasn’t about to let me escape without being under observation.

  So while the men fought amongst themselves, trying to control a situation that was already chaotic, the sound of shrill sirens cut through the air.

  “We’re gonna have cops crawling the place right about now,” Brock said, hard eyes on the windows showing the smoking remains of my car.

  Every part of me froze.

  “Yeah, well, let them come,” Cade growled from in front of me, where he was currently standing as if to make sure he hadn’t overlooked a missing limb. “We’ve got nothin’ to hide, and as much as I loathe Crawford’s little visits, maybe we can make the boys in blue work for our taxes and fuck around while we find out who did this.”

  I unfroze at the mention of Luke’s name, and at the utter hatred in my brother’s voice.

  I darted up from the chair they’d banished me to. A woman couldn’t possibly be expected to stand after she survived an explosion. As if being vertical would be the thing that ended me, not the explosives.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, my voice bordering on hysterical. Hopefully everyone would think it was due to an explosion that almost killed me, not the police officer who was much more dangerous.

  Bex eyed me shrewdly.

  Cade foiled my escape attempt, his eyes hard. “Are you fuckin’ insane?” he demanded. “No, wait, I already know the answer to that question. But you were almost just fuckin’ blown up, kid. You’re not goin’ anywhere.” His voice rippled with fury, as did his eyes, only I could see the concern lingering beneath the granite gaze. And a flicker of fear.

  That one day we’d stop getting off lightly with scratches and ruined jeans and broken bones.

  That we’d lose one.

  Another one.

  My eyes quickly touched on Bex, the demons dancing on her face, even now that she had a man who adored her and the horrors of her past behind her.

  Though our horrible past was never really behind us. For Bex, it was in the memories and waking nightmares she struggled with every damn day.