Wolf (Black Angels MC Book 2)

by A. E. Fisher

  “You didn’t hear the phone call, Hunter,” I growled, standing myself back upright as I faced my brothers.

  “Then tell me what was so fucking important about that phone call that you’re ready to chuck a twenty-something girl into the mouth of her abusive father!”

  At that point, I saw Pretty stop trying to hold Hunter back; instead, his eyes cut to me and stayed hard as he constructed a carefully formed mask on his face.

  I realized by this point that Hunter must have heard the story from Mallory, who must have heard it from Anna or Ash herself, though I wasn’t too sure on either possibility, considering how tight-lipped the two of them had been about their past.

  Expressions hardened throughout the room, some mixed with outright glares in my direction, while others were defended by caution as they hung onto my awaited answer.

  “Polo,” I said, turning toward the older member as one of the ones giving me a hard glare. “Where’s your old lady?”

  “Amanda?” Polo’s voice instantly dropped, his old, weary face now a mask of viciousness and anger. “What has she got to do with—”

  “Just answer me, Polo,” I snapped, shoving a stick straight up his arse as his eyes flashed with fury at my tone. “I’m your fucking president, so answer me!” I yelled, losing my patience.

  Anger at my disrespect to an older, honored Black Angels member didn’t go amiss, and I saw Polo stew for a long few seconds before, through tight lips, he opened his mouth to spit out, “She out at the—”

  “Hair salon?” Cutting him off wasn’t taken as disrespect this time. No, Polo’s eyes grew wide for only a second before they furrowed with confusion.

  “How did you—”

  “She’s there right now, with Sofia and Roxy,” I elaborated, some of the brothers showing recognition at hearing the names of two retired members’ old ladies.

  “Mia, Chloe, and Alistair.” I spun, turning to Ripper, whose hand was tightened in Hunter’s shirt. “They’re out at Redwood Middle School. Mia and Chloe are playing hopscotch, while Alistair is playing soccer with his friends.”

  Ripper’s face lost all its color, the scar across his face becoming a brandished dark pink, almost smooth across his square, jagged features.

  “Adair.” I turned at last, looking at Hunter. “Is drawing in the second-floor classroom of the elementary school. He’s drawing his dad’s bike. A ruby red motorcycle.”

  By now, my words had lost their harshness as the anger swept from the room, replaced by shock and devastation as one by one they all understood how I knew.

  “You wanted to know what I was told on that phone call?” I replied, making sure to meet each and every single brother’s gaze. The brown, the blue, the silver, the green, the blue-green, the blue-brown, the copper-colored, the mixed. Every single one of their eyes was looking to me now. To their president.

  But what they probably didn’t know was, underneath the shock, and the no doubt coming rage, was a helplessness that hung in the air around me, that weighed down on my shoulders, that quelled any hesitation I had.

  “So, you’re asking me why I’m ready to throw a twenty-something girl who isn’t even a part of our club into the hands of a guy who will no doubt kill her, then there’s your answer.”

  “But Anna—”

  “Anna,”—I turned, looking to where Jax stood staring at me, his eyes hard with conflict that I didn’t want to bestow upon my brothers, that had made me not want to tell them the sickening truth about what that phone call had revealed—“will get the same answer you all did, and she will understand.”

  With that, I turned to reach for the door, and just as my huge hand engulfed the handle, the cold of it freezing against the clammy heat of my hands, a voice stopped me. “What if she doesn’t?”

  I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know it was Lamb. I knew he wouldn’t be looking at me with a biased expression on his face. He wouldn’t be saying it as a way to make me stop and reconsider. He was saying it as simple fact.

  “Then she doesn’t,” I said, my voice a hollow even to my ears. “That’s all.”

  Then I opened the door and walked out.

  It took Kay two and a half minutes to open the door after I knocked.

  Her long red hair, several shades lighter than Mallory’s and tinged with minor streaks of gray, slipped down her arms as they blocked the doorway. Kay was tall in comparison to the girls, but compared to me, she was barely significant. “Kay, move,” I growled.

  “Don’t speak to me like that, you ass,” Kay snapped, her silver eyes glaring at me, telling me that she—unsurprisingly—didn’t understand, nor agree, with what I had done. “I fucking warned you.” She released her hand from the frame to jab me in the chest, not giving a shit about how tall I was. “But you didn’t listen, so whatever she has to say to you is exactly what you deserve, you hear me?”

  With that, Kay didn’t give me a chance to say anything as she barged past me, stomping her foot down hard on mine as she left.

  “Fuck,” I hissed, my foot throbbing hard, as I heard Kay’s feet march away.

  I shoved the pain out of my mind as I moved into the modest, neatly arranged room. One look in any of the brothers’ rooms would have told you that it was a man cave with barely a glance, but this room held two twin beds, both with neatly folded pale sheets and pillows, polished furniture, and window ledges with thin curtains, allowing the winter daylight to bleed through into the room.

  Anna sat on the furthest bed, her eyes not looking away or into the distance, but straight at me as I came into the room. Her red boots and socks lay in a pile on the side of the bed, her bare feet, toes painted with red and black nail polish, were hooked over each other, her top leg balancing a bag of frozen peas over her ankle, no doubt from kicking Ash’s door’s almost completely off the hinges during her rampage. Her thrown hand was in a bowl of ice water, cradled in a thick towel on Anna’s soft thighs as she looked up at me.

  I took notice of her property jacket still on her shoulders, her shirt sleeves rolled up and her hair tied back around it. Her ice-blue eyes looked red but not inflamed, like they would had she been crying, though I knew she couldn’t.

  “The phone call—”

  “I know,” she interrupted me. Her voice was hard, and her eyes had me unable to move away from the inside of the doorway. “They threatened the kids and the old ladies, right?”

  “Then you under—”

  “No,” Anna growled, her lips curling into a snarl. “You do not get to ask me if I understand.” She took her hand out of the ice bowl, picking it up with her good one, and set it on the bedside table. She grabbed the towel off her lap, wrapped it round her hand, and kicked the peas off her leg, revealing a bruising purple mark on her ankle. “You do not get to ask me to try and be okay with the fact that you want to sacrifice my best friend.” I opened my mouth, but she shoved her finger up to stop me. “Regardless of whether she agreed to it or not. You do not get to make me understand that because she means nothing to the club, that she means nothing to you, that it’s okay for me to sacrifice my best friend. You. Do. Fucking. Not. Get to make me be okay with you.” She shoved her finger at me, her top lip curling to reveal her snarling white teeth, distorting her angelic face. “You do not get to make it okay to sacrifice my best. Fucking. Friend!”

  She fought to suppress the anger on her face, but she couldn’t stop the curl of her lips as she took deep breaths in and out of her nose. “What I do get is that you want to protect the club. That is okay. Because it’s club before all, right, Wolf?” Her head shook softly, the snarl dropping off her face as her eyebrows turned upward, her lips trembling into an empty smile. “But what about me? What about who comes first for me? What am I supposed to do about that? How do I make that okay with me? How do I make it okay to sacrifice the only other person I love in this world?” She unwound the towel from her hands and reached back for the bowl, her shaking fingers stilling against the cool glass, condensatio
n dripping onto her purpling fingers. I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything as the sound of shattering glass echoed in my ears, cold water splashing over my body while I managed to dodge the hurled bowl.

  “How can I make it fucking okay?” she screamed, her broken, hoarse voice filled with pain as she forced out the words.

  Her body dropped down back onto the bed in a heavy breath, her head falling into her hands.

  I felt my own eyes burn as I looked at her. My heart heaving the heavy blows as it hurt to just breathe, to look at this woman, the other most important thing in my life broken and hurting, and although knowing that it wasn’t directly, I was the cause of her pain.

  “What can I do?” I begged.

  “Fight for her,” Anna replied, her eyes meeting mine, the baby blue dark and pained as she held my stare. “Fight for her like you would for any of the rest of us.”

  “I—” I paused. I wanted to say I would, I wanted to tell her those words just to take away her pain, but I knew it was a lie. The faces of the those who were staked in this deal were burned into my mind, and I knew, I knew I couldn’t say it. I shook my head. “There's too much at risk.”

  “Then go,” Anna replied. “But my deal still stands.”

  She turned away from me, and I felt my body scream in physical pain as her face dropped back into her palms, her blonde hair forming a wall between us as I stood there, desperation clawing up my chest with nowhere to go. There was nothing I could do.

  “Ann—”

  “Just leave,” she pleaded. “Please, just go.”

  I stood still, my eyes burning into the top of her beautiful blonde head, buried into her small, pale hands, curled over on the bed, making her seem impossibly smaller than she already was. I wanted to beg her just to look into my eyes one more time, to smile at me, just so I could etch it into my mind, selfishly wishing that I hadn’t taken for granted the last one she had given me.

  I nodded, despite knowing she couldn’t see it. And despite every cell in my body screaming at me not to move a single step, I pushed through the pain and forced myself back to the door.

  “Wolf.” Anna stopped me, and for a second, a crack formed in the stone and a single slither of hope slipped in. “If you go through with that deal,” she said, her voice steady and calm as the words followed me, “we’re done.”

  I paused, half of my heart filled with my love for her urging me to turn back and hold her, hug her, and promise I’d fight to my death before I went through with that deal. But it wasn’t that half that made me walk out of that door. It was the love for my club.

  Club before all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Anna

  “They’re gone,” Jax’s soft southern voice announced.

  I let out a shaky breath, my head throbbing in my hands as I dropped it yet again. Pain radiated through my chest, and I felt like I was balancing myself on the edge of an endless hole just at the edges of my feet, leaning over it, my elbows on my knees, my hands holding back my hair as all I could do was stare down at it.

  “Are you sure you didn’t want to say goodbye?” he asked, the sound of his voice blurred as if I were deep underwater as he propped his slender hip against the door. His belt knocked softly against the wooden doorframe, and just at the corner of my vision, I caught the action of one of his boots hooking around the back of his other ankle.

  I felt like I was going to be sick.

  “How am I supposed to stop them, Jax?” I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, trying to fight the urge to gag as my stomach curled, threatening to spill its contents. “What am I supposed to do when Ash doesn’t want to fight anymore and Wolf is forced to throw her to the wolves to protect the club? How am I supposed to stand in the way of that?”

  “Fuck, I dunno, Anna.” Jax sighed, unhooking his feet as he let his boot drop to the floor, crossing the wooden panels to drop down next to me. His heat felt humid as it touched my cool, goose bumped skin covered in a sheen of cold sweat. “You’ve done so much shit, I’m sure you could have thought of something. Sitting here like this, scared out of your mind, isn’t like you.”

  It wasn’t like me. I knew that. And the fear that was beginning to chew through my stomach lining was threatening to have me fire off the nearest gun into my head just to stop this horrible, overwhelming anxiety. What if they don’t come back?

  I knew what they went to do; I couldn’t have any part in it. And I knew that, if everything went according to plan, Ash wouldn’t come back. And if it didn’t... neither would Wolf.

  And if Wolf came back without Ash... I couldn’t.

  I pressed my hand to my stomach, my finger’s numb against the softness of the flesh there.

  “You know Wolf didn’t have a choice, right?” Jax reached out his hand, flinching as it covered my own, his skin like a furnace as he felt the depth of the chill eating through my core.

  My stomach heaved, and I lunged from Jax’s side and raced for the toilet, barely making it before I threw up everything with horrible retching.

  Fuck, not now.

  Jax quickly ran clear from the room, and for a second I thought the bastard had abandoned me. Despite being slightly annoyed, I was mostly relieved, because I didn’t want him sticking around and making assumptions. But then he returned with a glass of water. Why did the bastard have to be so nice to women?

  “Hey, are you all right?” Jax’s concerned voice had my defenses up as his dark eyes traveled up and down my body. I knew he would see a pale, shivering girl heaving up all over the toilet in the late hours of the morning. The same hours I had managed to hide away from Wolf these past two weeks.

  “You don’t look all right,” Jax quickly concluded his own answer as he dropped to his haunches, reaching with his hand, the only part of his skin, other than his face and dick—yes, I had seen it before and yes, it was big, though not as big as Wolf’s—that was spared of ink, and placed the rough, calloused skin on my forehead. “No fever, but why are you—”

  I saw the pupils of his eyes dilate, knowing he had managed to separate what was my fear for Wolf and Ash and what wasn’t. He opened his mouth, and my heart leaped with adrenaline. “Hey, are you—”

  I would like to say Jax simply stopped there and his mind got distracted by some kind of bimbo or club slut. But although his mind was distracted and I was saved, it was because of something much worse than Jax finding out the truth.

  Gunfire.

  The first screams started only seconds after the first round of bullets went off.

  “Fuck,” Jax hissed, his hand immediately reaching out to wrap around my arm and pull me to stand. My stomach rolled with the fast movement, but I didn’t have the luxury to pay attention to it as I had to focus on staying upright while Jax dragged me out of the bathroom.

  I tried to pull out of his grip, but it was too strong, and all I did was jerk him, forcing him to turn and look at me.

  “Let me put my boots on,” I argued, pulling free this time as he let me rush over to my red boots. I forewent my socks and ignored the ache in my ankle and hand as I forced my feet into them and did up the zips.

  The next thing I did after that was head straight back toward Kay’s side of the bed, reaching my hand deep into the drawer until I felt the cold press of metal against my fingertips.

  Thank fuck for Kay, I thought as I pulled the small Glock 19loose from the clasps holding it to the roof of her drawer. I almost dropped the gun as the metal slipped on the cold sweat on my hands, my shaking fingers unable to keep my grip. I took a deep breath and gripped the cool handle as firmly as I could with both hands, fitting it into my smaller hands. Though it wasn’t as comfortable as my slightly smaller CW9 might have been, I more than preferred the fifteen-magazine round, outdoing my own gun tucked into the bedside drawer on my side of the bed I shared with Wolf on the lower floor of other side of the compound, at only six rounds per magazine.

  I quickly dug th
rough the other drawers in hopes for a second magazine but found my luck ran out. I turned back to Jax, who had his head out the door, leaning ever so slightly around each corner as he checked for enemies.

  I ignored my throbbing foot and made sure to crouch lower against the opposite doorframe, giving me a wider view over Jax’s shoulder.

  He put his thumb and finger out, making the universal phone sign and putting it up by his ear then shaking it at me with a silent raised brow. I shook my head. My mobile still sat on my purse on the chair in my room, where I had put my clothes before I got my shower, and then it had been the last thing on my mind up until now.

  He bared his teeth in annoyance, letting me know he had no phone either.

  He nodded when the coast was clear, and after another quick check, I did the same. Jax gestured me with his thumb across the hallway where Hunter’s room was. Adair had started kindergarten recently, since Mallory insisted on Adair interacting with other kids his own age, but that had made Mallory come hang out at the club in the mornings, so I knew for a fact she was here. Whether or not she was in her room, which she usually wasn’t unless Hunter was here, too, was anybody’s guess.

  Jax dropped his shoulders low and quietened his feet as he moved from the doorway and across the hall, staying vigilant on his side of the hallway as I kept an eye on mine. Once he made it to the other side, he waited for my all-clear before he quietly opened the door to Hunter’s room. Jax dipped into the doorway, giving himself good cover before gesturing me across.

  I didn’t linger in the doorway like Jax did, however. I made my way straight into their bedroom, my eyes going to the double and single bed tucked into the corner as I searched every inch of the room.

  Walking into the bathroom, the sight of the toilet made me want to go for a second round of hurling, and I felt myself gag before I managed to turn away when I found the room empty.