Their Fractured Souls: Sons Of Lost Soul MC Book Six

by R. Hunter, Ellie

  “What happened to Victoria?” she asks, looking up at me.

  “Come with me to the hospital and then come back here and stay the night.”

  I don’t know if I’m asking her, pleading for her to say yes or outright telling her what she’s going to do.

  “You want me to come to the hospital with you?”

  “I want you with me, I don’t know why, but I do. Please.”

  I’ve never begged a woman before, but I will drop to my knees for this one if I have to.

  “You need me?”

  Confusion marrs her perfect skin and I simply nod.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  It doesn’t take long to find where Victoria is when we arrive at the hospital. Myles is stood talking with dad and mom is sat on a plastic chair with her head in her hands.

  She lifts her head when she hears Myles mutter something I don’t catch, and she jumps to her feet when I stop in front of her. Cautiously, she glances at Aspen, but she doesn’t comment.

  “Any news?” I ask, keeping my hand wrapped around Aspen’s.

  “Nothing yet. There was so much blood, it can’t be anything but bad news.”

  Fresh tears stream down her cheeks and with my spare arm, I wrap it around her and pull her against me.

  My mom, for everything she’s been through in life, is a strong woman, but she barely hits my chin in height. But when one of us is hurting, she hurts ten times more. I remember when we learned of her past, when she was an addict. We didn’t believe it at first, it wasn’t until she told us it was Grumps and dad who saved her and dried her out that it sunk in.

  She met dad and left Heroin in the past. All I see when I look at her is a mom devoted to her kids and a wife who is still in love with her husband as much as she was when they first met.

  “She’s going to be fine, mom,” I assure her, but I doubt myself too. “Where’s Grumps?”

  “He’s on his way, Sparky’s driving him up here,” Dad calls over and I nod, letting go of mom and she sits back down.

  “You forgetting the meaning of family, boy?”

  I don’t have to turn to see Grumps has arrived and is talking to me. Aspen shuffles closer to me like I will protect her but it’s mom who speaks up.

  “Dad, not now.”

  He purses his lips together and the old man looks tired. He slumps down on the chair beside mom and holds her hand.

  “She’s strong, Ky. Mark my words, she’s going to be fine,” he tells her and sets her off again.

  “What happened to the guys you were laying into when we left?” Dad asks Myles and me.

  “We left them unconscious, Gabe had them taken away before we could kill them,” I say and he nods.

  “This chapter is a fucking joke. A fucking stain on our reputation. Cas should shut this shit down before we leave.”

  “Dad, please, I can’t listen to this right now,” Mom snaps.

  “This happened because of a Lost Soul, two of them! This wouldn’t have happened if we were at home. They want to hope I don’t see them, I’ll put a bullet between their motherfucking eyes.”

  “Dad…”

  “If she doesn’t recover, nor do they.”

  Mom stands abruptly and paces the corridor before settling in dad’s arms. Over her head, dad makes a gun sign with his hand and tips it up. Grumps nods and then sets his attention on Aspen.

  “For someone who wanted to kill her father, you aren’t doing a good job.”

  “Grumps, give it a rest. We’re here for Tori, can we leave this until we know what’s going on?”

  Curling his lip, his nose flares before he nods. “Don’t see why she’s here though, unless you’re trying to tell us something?”

  Fuck sake. This isn’t happening right now. Thankfully, a nurse pushes through the doors at the end of the corridor and heads straight for us, putting an end to this conversation.

  “Victoria has been taken down for surgery. She has suffered major damage to both eardrums. I’ll be back with more news when she’s in recovery.”

  She walks back to wherever she came from leaving mom bursting into more tears.

  Surgery?

  This is serious and I swallow the lump in my throat.

  “It’s okay, babe. She’s in good hands,” Dad assures her, even though he doesn’t look like he believes himself.

  It’s another two and a half hours before we find out if dad’s assurances are right, when the nurse returns with a doctor.

  He shakes mom and dad’s hands and introduces himself as Dr. Fowler.

  “Your daughter is out of surgery and doing well in recovery. The nurse will take you to see her once she’s settled in her room. I managed to clean up the wounds but the damage left is quite extensive. As so, she will suffer a loss of hearing and I can’t assure you she will ever get it back.”

  None of us take in what he says after, I know I go into shock. She’s deaf now? As in, she can’t hear a fucking thing because two assholes were fucking around with their guns.

  Rage simmers throughout me and it’s not until pressure on my hand reminds me Aspen is still beside me. I look down and she’s squeezing my hand. Beating the shit out of them did nothing to help Victoria and now she has to suffer their consequences, possibly, for the rest of her life.

  “I’ll send a nurse to show you to her room.”

  The doctor disappears in the blink of an eye and we’re left to digest this life changing news.

  Mom cries in dad’s arms, grumps keeps going for his gun, and Myles punches the wall.

  “I’m so sorry, Mason,” Aspen whispers but not quiet enough.

  “Why are you pitying him? He’s not the one who’s left without his hearing,” Grumps grunts and I exhale heavily, closing my eyes.

  “It’s called being kind, old man,” I remind him.

  “Oh, so now you’re stepping to me over her?”

  “Cut it out, the both of you. We’re here for Victoria and she doesn’t need you lot causing trouble,” Dad yells, keeping a tight hold on mom. “Boys, go back to the mountain, and for the love of god, stay the fuck out of trouble.”

  They walk off with Grumps trailing behind, leaving Myles and I with Aspen out in the corridor.

  “I’m going to kill them,” he vows and starts walking away.

  “Myles, wait.”

  Pulling Aspen along with me, I chase him down and manage to catch him before the elevator doors close.

  “We can’t cause trouble tonight, when we get back, you need to leave those pricks alone. We caused them enough damage before we left.”

  The elevator shrinks as he turns his raging eyes my way. “Since when the fuck do we listen to the old man? Our sister is deaf, and you want to let them get away with what they’ve done? Am I fucking hearing this right?”

  Aspen tries to take her hand back but I’m not having any of it. It’s the only thing keeping me from punching him square on the jaw.

  “Just for once, let’s do what the old man asked. For one night, until we’ve seen Tor for ourselves tomorrow.”

  The elevator doors open and he’s the first one out, pushing by us, knocking into Aspen.

  The divide between us is deepening and I don’t know how to get through to him.

  * * *

  Myles walks off towards our parent’s cabin as soon as we come to a stop outside the clubhouse. The place is dead and not one Mercy brother is showing his face.

  “I can wait here if you want to follow him?” Aspen offers.

  Tearing my eyes away from my brother’s retreating back, I turn to her and sigh with relief. Asking her to stay with me tonight was the right decision for me.

  “He’ll be fine, I’m more interested in being with you.”

  “I feel like I’m coming between you and your brother. I don’t want that.”

  Running my fingers down her cheek, she leans into my touch and I cup the side of her face.

  “Whatever goes on between me and him will be on me
and him. He’s angry with me…”

  “Because of me.”

  “No, because he knows I’m falling for you and this is all new to us. We’ve never not shared anyone before, and he knows I don’t want to share you.”

  “He wants me too?”

  Shaking my head, I say, “It’s not that, imagine spending your whole life doing everything and I mean everything with someone and then all of a sudden, it changes. We’ve got shit we need to work through but I know my brother, we’ll get through this.”

  “And if you don’t?” she asks.

  I can’t think along those lines. It’ll never happen. Even if I have to make choices that don’t sit right with me, I will never lose Myles. I wouldn’t be able to survive with him. But I’m coming to learn there’s another way we can survive together but not together all the time.

  Instead of answering, I lean down and capture her lips with mine. This feels too right to be wrong. I push Myles out of my mind, he’s made his choices and I’m making mine.

  From the moment I saw Aspen breaking into the motel and then thinking she broke into the manor, I’ve been attracted to her like no one else before her.

  “Do you still want to stay the night?”

  “You don’t even have to ask,” she says breathlessly.

  “The first night I stayed here, what was yours and Myles’ plan for me?” she asks stroking small circles on my chest.

  I can’t see her face from this angle, only the back of her head and I’m glad, because when I tell her, I don’t want to see the possible hurt flash across her beautiful face.

  “We were going to play games with you, make you want us until we were the only thing you needed to breathe.”

  “Is that what you normally do with girls back home?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Is that what you did to the girl who tried to kill herself over you both?”

  Tensing, I have no fucking idea how she knows about Katherine. “Your sister warned me not to fall in love with you because you’d only be using me.”

  “Did she now.” I sigh and shuffle down the bed so I’m facing her. “I’m not going to lie to you, Aspen. Me and Myles have done some fucked up things just for our own entertainment and at first, coming to this town, we were already bored before we got here and then we met you. You were and still are, fiery and fearless. We were both attracted to you and we both wanted you something bad…”

  “But it changed for Myles when he found out who my father was?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But not for you.”

  “Not for me. I don’t know, I guess I believed you when you said you wanted your daddy dead. Fuck, when you said you came back to kill him I wanted to fuck you right there and then. Myles didn’t believe you, we were raised to only trust the men wearing our patch. You were someone to entertain him while he thought you were a nobody.”

  The lines on her forehead deepen the more she frowns. “I’m falling for you, Mason, and it scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the way I feel for you feels like it’s forever and yet everything that’s going on, it can’t end the way my heart wants it to.”

  I understand every word she’s admitting. I feel it too.

  “I’ve learned recently that storms pass and people can make anything work if it’s really what they want. We will kill your father before long and you’ll be free to choose what you like.”

  “And if I chose you, would you choose me back? Could we make it work?”

  Rolling on top of her, she goes with my movements and looks up at me as I hover over her.

  “Ask me when your daddy is dead and gone.”

  It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth not to give her the answer she wants. I have no idea how to do this properly and there are too many people I have to look out for, especially with Tori in the hospital about to go through a life changing ordeal.

  Pushing my mouth against hers, the time for talking is over. I need more of her and I’m going to take all I can before the inevitable occurs. If this is all I get with her, it’s more than I’ve had before that will mean something and will most likely have again.

  Aspen

  As soon as my eyes have opened, I know I haven’t had much sleep and it’s still quite early. It’s so warm under the sheets and when I roll over and find Mason beside me, still sleeping, I know I’m not leaving any time soon. He’s perfection wrapped in a tattooed blanket of skin. Roaming over his ink, they’re mostly Lost Souls insignias and scripture. I read what I can make out and it’s mostly verses of, live hard, play harder. There’s one tattoo of a drawing and it looks like it was done by a child. It occurs to me, he might have a child. No, he would have said. Then again Victoria did warn me they wouldn’t tell me their business. I never suffered paranoia when I was with Curtis, but then again, I didn’t feel the same for him as I’m feeling for Mason. Looking back, in the beginning I liked Curtis because it was new and I’d never had a boyfriend before but I never loved him. I don’t know if I love Mason but I do know I’m well on my way to owning such feelings.

  Last night changed everything. I stood beside him at the hospital and felt how much he needed me at his side as he held my hand. He fronted up to his family on my behalf and never once backed down. You don’t do that for someone you’re not falling for. I told him my feelings were scaring me, but not because I don’t think they’re not reciprocated. A black cloud is hanging over us and the outcome is what is scaring me. I want there to be an us. I want him to be mine and I want more than anything for me to be his.

  Sighing, my bladder protests and I quickly slip out of bed and use the bathroom. Instead of climbing back in beside him once I’m done, I dress and head downstairs. Here’s me worrying about the outcome when the power is in our hands. If I want to be with him, I have to make it possible. I hope to find Myles but I stumble down the last step and Cas is sitting alone by the fireplace.

  The fire crackles in the hearth and the warmth hits me as I pull a chair out and sit beside him.

  He side eyes me and cocks a brow.

  “You know what I want to happen to my father, I know you want the same. Men like him don’t back down and the only way to get rid of him is to end him. I want to know what you’re planning.”

  There I’ve said it. He can only answer, hopefully with something I want to hear.

  “What if I said you’re a part of my plans?” he asks, turning his head to face me.

  “I’d say, I’ll do anything to help.”

  This causes him to smile and he says, “Okay, first, I want you to find out who his contacts are. I want names.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll let you know the next step when you need to know it.”

  Always being shut down. It’s getting tiring and frustrating.

  “I wish you’d trust me, it’d make this so much easier going forward.”

  I make him laugh and when he looks back at me, I lose my smile.

  “Sweetheart, how do you think I’ve stayed alive in this world for so long?”

  “Because you’re an asshole?” I mutter quietly but he catches it and only smiles.

  “Because I’m not fucking stupid. I trust those I have known a long time and only them.”

  “It’s because I don’t have a dick and I don’t wear the same patch as you, right?”

  “Nah, I trust women, albeit not many but I trust them. I don’t trust you, one, because I don’t know you and two, because you come from across enemy lines. The day you earn my trust, it will either be a cold day in Hell or because you’ve lived up to your word and given me no reason not to trust you.”

  “I mean what I say, Cas. I’ll do this with or without you and your club.”

  His eyes narrow slightly as he tries to read my face.

  “I believe you mean your word now, but it’s a different story when the moment is here and your father is at your feet begging for his life. You say your relationship changed when h
e raped your friend, but when you stand there with his life in your hands, all the good times will flash through your mind and you’ll question your decision. It’s natural. It will happen and only then will your choices show me if you’re a woman of your word.”

  My mouth opens to throw a comeback at him, but nothing comes out.

  “Besides, what do you care if you have my trust? Once your father breathes his last breath, you can go on with your life and we’ll go home.”

  “Mason is important to me, and it’s tearing him in two between me and your club.”

  “I’m not interested in where Mason sticks his dick. You’ll soon learn private lives are no concern to club life. What Mason does is on Mason. I’m not going to say anything you want to hear, Aspen.”

  Fast paced thuds come down the stairs and we both look over to see Mason jogging down, bare chested, only in his jeans. Relief surges through him when his eyes land on me and it hurts that he thought I was gone. We need to figure this out.

  “One thing I will say, if you are playing us, more importantly, if you’re playing Mason, you will share a grave with your daddy. You hear me?”

  I nod, simply because I know I’m not playing anyone here and I like how he has Mason’s back.

  “I thought you skipped out on me,” Mason says when he joins us.

  “Did you want to make me breakfast or something?” I say, totally joking but his look of horror has me laughing.

  “I mean, I could find something to eat. I don’t know, I’ve never cooked before,” he rambles on.

  “She’s messing with you, Mase. Shit, since when do you cook for pussy?” Cas says around a laugh and Mason scowls at him.

  Cas is pushing him and I don’t like it.

  “I’m fine, I’m not hungry,” I tell him and he relaxes.

  “Let me get dressed and I’ll take you back into town.”

  “No, Aspen has her car here, she can take herself back. You need to get to the hospital, Victoria woke up a couple of hours ago.”

  “Okay, I’ll get dressed and go get Myles.”