by Ker Dukey
Contents
Royal Bastard Code
Author note:
Prologue
1. Alec
2. Drew
3. Alec
4. Drew
5. Alec
6. Drew
7. Alec
8. Drew
9. Alec
10. Drew
11. Alec
12. Drew
13. Alec “The ANIMAL” Walker
14. Drew
15. Animal
16. Drew
17. Animal
18. Drew
19. Animal
20. Drew
21. Alec
22. Drew
23. Alec
24. Drew
25. Alec
26. Drew
27. Alec
28. Drew
Epilogue
Epilogue
ROYAL BASTARDS MC SERIES
Acknowledgments
Books by Ker Dukey
ANIMAL
Copyright © 2020 K Dukey
Cover Design: Jay Aheer
Photo: Adobe Stock
Editor: Word Nerd Editing
Formatting: Book Design Formats
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Royal Bastard Code
PROTECT: The club and your brothers come before anything else and must be protected at all costs. CLUB is FAMILY.
RESPECT: Earn it and give it. Respect club law. Respect the patch. Respect your brothers. Disrespect a member, and there will be hell to pay.
HONOR: Being patched in is an honor, not a right. Your colors are sacred, not to be left alone, and NEVER let them touch the ground.
OL’ LADIES: Never disrespect a member or brother’s ol’ lady. PERIOD.
CHURCH is MANDATORY.
LOYALTY: Takes precedence over all, including well-being.
HONESTY: Never LIE, CHEAT, or STEAL from a brother or the club.
TERRITORY: You are to respect your brothers’ property and follow their chapter’s club rules.
TRUST: Years to earn it...seconds to lose it.
NEVER RIDE OFF: Brothers do not abandon their family.
Author note:
This is an MC title with dark themes.
These men are raw, alpha assholes. If you get easily offended, stop now, turn back, this isn’t for you!!!
If you like your stories, gritty, real, and dirty, strap in, beautiful, I’m going to take you on the ride of your life.
For all my girls who like to ride motorbikes, bikers, and their faces. Get yours, girl.
Some Animals can’t be tamed.
Prologue
Alec Walker…
My father always said to find a bitch who keeps your mind calm, belly full, and balls empty. Save your love for the road. If you give it to a woman, she’ll use it to control you, even after she’s left you.
The thing is, I didn’t give my love to a woman; I gave it to a girl who happened to turn into a woman, and this is our story…
One
Alec
Eleven years old.
“She will kick your ass,” I warn Mason, who’s picking up a toad, hoping to put it down Drew’s shirt. I’ve known Drew since she was six years old. I was on the cusp of turning eight and she caught my attention when a kid at a family cookout tried teasing her about her pigtails. She took a pair of scissors and cut them off, putting them in his lap, like a badass. From that day on she’s been my best friend.
Not two seconds later, a scream rings out, and Mason is lying on the ground, cradling his junk. “Told ya,” I snort, kicking off my sneakers and wading into the dirty water of the pond Mason’s old man calls a pool.
“You bitch,” Mason wheezes, trying to get his breath back.
“A bitch who kicked your ass.” Drew smirks, sauntering to where my sneakers lay on the grass. “Did you know he was going to do that?”
“I knew you were going to drop him,” I tell her honestly, grinning.
“My daddy said I shouldn’t be hanging out here. I got sick last time we played in this pool.” She scrunches up her nose, her freckles more noticeable in the summer sun.
“What’s wrong with the pool?” I hold out my hand, gesturing to the murky water swimming with wildlife. I don’t think they use the proper stuff to keep it clean like the pools at hotels.
“You think this is clean?” She places a hand on her hip, her mop of curls whipping around in the wind. It’s grown longer than usual.
“Clean enough.” I shrug. Since when has she cared about getting mucky?
She picks up my sneakers. “Clean enough for these?”
“Put them down, Drew,” I warn, and she teases by dangling them near the edge of the water. Before she can do anything with them, she’s shoved hard from behind and hurtles toward the pool face first. “Boom, bitch!” Mason hoots, hands in the air like he just won a wrestling match. Her body splashes against the water, but it’s too shallow, she was too close to the steps. She floats there, facedown, motionless. My stomach twists.
Racing to her, I pull her against me, turning her body and swiping her hair from her face. A ghastly crimson slit traveling from her hairline to the top of her eyebrow seeps blood. “Shit,” Mason calls out, running his hand through his hair.
“Go get your dad,” I bellow, dragging her out of the water and grabbing a towel holding it against her cut. “Drew, don’t do this to me. You’re my best friend, wake up.” I don’t know what to do. Panic blurs my eyes.
“Is she dead?” Mason asks, coming back outside.
“Did you get your dad?”
“Yeah. He’s on the crapper. Is she dead?”
If she is, I’m going to kill him. “Don’t be dead,” I plead.
“What the fuck did you do, you little asshole?” Mason’s dad roars, coming out through the back of the house, buckling his belt, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, wearing his cut with no shirt.
“Let me get a look, kid,” he tells me, removing the towel to look at the wound. He stinks of motor grease and ash. “Fuck, that’s going to leave a nasty fucking scar, and she’ll have a shiner for a couple weeks, but she’ll live.” He pats my shoulder and places my hand holding the towel back to her head.
Getting to his feet, he pulls out his phone and calls her dad. “Mitch, your girl’s banged up. Cut her head in the pool. Yeah, meet me there.” He ends the call, scoops Drew up, and puts her in the back of his dirty truck, gesturing for us to get in with her. I place her head on my lap and keep the towel against her wound, the gray fabric nearly completely red with her blood.
Ten minute trip to the hospital and she still hasn’t woken up. My gut hurts.
They rush her off on a gurney as soon as we get there, asking a thousand questions. She needs to be okay. She needs to be okay. She needs to be okay.
We’re sitting in the waiting room when her old man comes barreling through the doors like a bull in a china shop, nearly shattering the glass windows. “Where’s my baby girl?” he demands to any and everyone. Mason’s dad steps up, pulling him to the side and gesturing to her room. I stand, th
en sit, stand, pace, waiting. Two seconds later, my old man comes through the doors, looking pissed as all hell.
“What the fuck happened? You injured?” he growls. He’s a beast of a man. Everyone shrinks around his intimidating size, but not to me. To me, he’s my dad, and I need him right now. I throw my arms around his middle. “It’s Drew,” I gasp.
Pushing me back, he holds me by the shoulders. He sees affection as weakness, and his rejection leaves a little notch of scar tissue on my heart.
It’s a weird thing being his son. By all rights, I should be a tough, asshole like him, and I am in a lot of ways. I can hold my own. I like to box, and I can look after myself if I need to be on my own for periods of time while Mom is on a bender and he’s doing club business. But when it comes to emotions, I have them—unlike him. I’m sick at the thought of something happening to Drew. She isn’t just some girl; she’s my best friend.
Mason gets to his feet, coming to stand by my side. “We were messing around. She kicked me in the balls, and I pushed her into the pool. It was a nudge, a joke.” He shrugs.
“It wasn’t nudging.” I turn on him, placing my hands on his shoulder and pushing forward. “That’s a nudge,” I bark. Then I shove him as hard as he did her. “That’s a shove.”
“Hey,” he snaps, coming at me. I rear my fist back and clock him right on the nose, making him stumble. Blood streams out of his nostrils. “If she’s gonna be walking around with black eyes, so are you,” I growl.
Mason’s dad steps up, tipping Mason’s chin, looking at the small cut across the bridge of his nose. “Saves me doing it. We square, Prez?” he asks my dad.
“You’ll be covering the medical bill,” my dad informs him.
Mason’s dad grabs Mason by the scruff of his collar and marches him out with a nod of his head. “Come on, you little shit. Let’s leave them to it.”
“We can’t have violence in here,” a nurse walking the corridors tells my dad, frowning.
“Mind your damn business, woman,” he snarls. Her eyes grow wide, and her lip trembles. A couple minutes later, Drew’s dad comes out of her room, shaking his head. “She’s going to be fine. Stitches and a tetanus shot,” he tells us. “She’s asking for you, kid.”
I look up at my old man. He lifts his chin giving permission, and I rush to her room. As I walk up to her bedside, I wince at the Frankenstein line down her forehead.
She’s awake and smiling at me. “Always breaking the rules. You were determined to get me in that pool.”
I want to laugh, but my chest hurts. “I thought he killed you.” I shrug, feeling relief so intense my eyes water.
“I wouldn’t let ginger Mason Roily kill me.” She scoffs, then cringes, reaching up to touch her wound.
“Don’t,” I tell her, stretching for her hand and taking it in mine. She looks to where I’m holding her palm and curls her fingers between mine, gripping my hand in hers. The strangest part is I like it…
Two
Drew
Thirteen years old.
Heidi is being so obvious that she has a thing for Alec, it’s almost embarrassing. Her skirt is too short and top too tight, yet Alec barely looks at her. I don’t know how I’d feel if he did. Yes, you do.
“Hey.” I waltz toward them, whistling at the chrome and leather Harley Alec’s propped against in front of the clubhouse. His face lights up when he sees me, and my stomach flip-flops.
“What’d you think?”
“It’s a beauty, but you’re not old enough to drive it yet.” His dad giving him a motorcycle for his fifteenth birthday is crazy town. I got new sneakers for my last birthday.
“Oh God, who called the no-fun police?” Heidi rolls her eyes, folding her arms across her chest. “You can take me for a ride on it, Alec.”
“Nah, no girls are riding on the back of my bike.” He cocks his leg over to straddle the bike and pulls his helmet on. “You coming, Drew, or what?”
A smirk hooks my lip, and Heidi snorts. “He doesn’t see you as a girl.”
She’s such a bitch.
I climb on the back and wrap my arms around his waist. Before he pulls away, he pulls off his helmet and slides it on my head.
“We need to get you one.”
I flip Heidi the bird.
Yeah, we do.
We manage two laps around the grounds of the club compound before my daddy comes out, hollering at us. “You’re too young to be riding, and you, sweetheart, are never going to be on the back of any club member’s bike,” he barks at me.
Hypocrite.
“Well, that’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” Alec scoffs.
“What did you say, boy?” my dad warns.
We both smirk, then burst out laughing. Kicking the kickstand, we jump off and run inside to the bellowing tirade of my daddy.
“Your dad’s nuts if he thinks after raising you in a club, you’re not going to end up with a biker,” Alec scoffs, throwing a ton of snacks on his bed he stole from the club bar.
“I might not.” I shrug, opening a packet of chips while he kicks off his boots and grabs the TV remote.
He’s staring at me like I just told him the sky’s not blue.
“Do you want to be a biker like our dads?” I scrunch my nose. “It’s bullets and blood, chaos and constant mayhem.”
“You sound like you’re reciting the first page of the rule book,” he teases. “You do remember I’m Alec Walker, right?”
Rolling my eyes, I play with the seam of a packet of chips. “You’re just Alec to me, and I want to see the world.” I sigh, thinking of the pictures Riley showed me from her trip to Hawaii over the summer.
“Being a biker is all about the open road—nothing but freedom to go wherever you want.” He chuckles, moving up the bed and laying on the pillow next to me.
“Bikers aren’t about traveling. They go out on business. Daddy never just says, ‘Oh, I’m going on an adventure.’” I pull his covers across my legs, a chill coming in from the open window.
“So, you want an adventure?” He raises his eyebrow, and it’s so cute, I want to die. “How about we go nomad and just live on the road?” The fact that he’s seeing us as a pair causes my heart to beat hard in my chest. I’m terrified of the day he realizes I’m a girl with stupid girl feelings. No matter how hard I try not to have them, they’re there, formulating misery and happiness at the same time. It sucks being a girl.
“We?” I ask, needing to hear his answer.
“Yeah, we.” He scoffs, looking at me with squinted eyes.
“What if I want to go to college and stuff?”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” I shrug, popping a chip in my mouth.
“When you do know, let me know.” He nudges my arm with his elbow.
“And if I do want to go?”
“Then I’ll go too. That’s what best friends do, right?” He shrugs, emptying a bag of M&Ms down his throat.
“What if I want to date college guys? You going to do that with me too?”
He almost chokes on his candy, coughing and spluttering. “Shut up, Drew. You’re not dating college boys.”
“You know I’m a girl, right?” I narrow my eyes on him.
He laughs so loud, I’m sure the entire clubhouse hears him. My cheeks flame. I want to burrow beneath the covers and never come out. Jumping to his feet, triggering the mattress dip and jolt, he begins a tirade of tickling. “You’re a girl, is that what you are?” he teases, making me screech and giggle as I slap at his hands.
“Stop it!” I yell,
“All this time, I thought you had a dong,” he torments.
I kick out my legs until I knock him off balance. He lands haphazardly on top of me, almost head-butting me in the face.
We’re both breathing heavily, our chests rising rapidly from exertion. Snacks crushed and littered around us, long forgotten. The heat from his body soaks into mine as his dark eyes explores my face.
&
nbsp; “I know you’re a girl,” he breathes. He’s so close; the air from his words heats my skin as my heart races wildly beneath my ribs. He opens his mouth again, and I wait to hear what he’s going to say, my insides twisting into goo. “You scream like one.” He grins, then begins to tickle me again, and I scream…like a girl.
Three
Alec
Fifteen/Sixteen years old.
Mason's sister, Penny, twirls her hair as I glare at her. She's six-years older than me and cornered me in the clubhouse's hall asking for the key to my room. I'm the only biker brat with a room because my old man is the club president and we live here when Mom decides she's had enough of being his wife.
Our clubhouse used to be a huge ass clothing factory. When my old man bought the land, they renovated it. He built his auto repair shop, Rider’s and Hellmade, a custom helmet design business out front, then installed a huge wired fence, creating a perimeter. The auto repair was a legitimate trade to hide the not so legit business that went on around here. It’s easy to wash money when you own your own companies. Hellmade, though, that was a passion project that took off, gaining customers from all across the country, bikers and motorbike enthusiasts on backlist all wanting their domes custom.