Page 13 of Saving Her

“I have to head back. Your father and Skull are probably already waiting. You two can say goodbye to them, but then you will need to get to the SUV and our meeting point. You can keep your vehicle hidden and wait for us to come back with the women.”

“Is there any way you guys could ride UTV up the service road? It would make things go quicker,” I ask.

“No. It could be heard by the guards. Plus, there’s a few places I’m not sure a UTV could get through. We’ll have to be quiet and keep in the shadows as it is,” King explains.

“I guess slitting the guards’ throats is out?”

“At least on the way up. We can probably do it on the way back and then get the heck out of there. There are four of them.”

“Then you guys should do it. Dad and Skull will be quick about it,” I respond.

“Plus, th-th-that will be f-four less that we have to fight,” T adds with a nod.

“Not to mention killing a few of those motherfuckers will release some stress.”

“Don’t make me start liking you, Dom. T is about all I can handle,” King grumbles.

I smirk, but don’t really know how to respond. I don’t know him and if you had asked me a week ago, I would have said I hated the son of a bitch. Now? Things have changed. Thea has changed me, and this man is laying his life on the line to rescue my mother. I slap him on the back. “Let’s get a move on.”

He huffs but turns and walks off. T and I follow him, proceeding with caution. That’s partially because of King’s mood, but also because we have to be hyperaware of our surroundings. We can’t afford someone spotting us or sneaking upon us either. When we get to the base of the old service road Dad and Skull step out.

“Ready?” King says, mostly looking at Skull.

“Yeah,” Dad answers, while Skull merely nods.

Except for moments of planning, Skull has been oddly quiet since reading the file that I had amassed on Gabby. Some of it was brutal. I imagine it’d be hard to read all that about his daughter. He can’t really argue about it, however, because most of it was doctor reports and the rest had photographic proof. I’d even enclosed stills from the camera feeds. I didn’t want there to be any way Skull could come back and say I was lying about his precious daughter. Gabby needs some professional help at this point. All I know is that I don’t want her around my woman or me.

“Let’s get a move on then,” King adds, bringing me back to the here and now. We say our goodbyes while T and I go find our vehicle.

“Is this g-g-gonna work?” T asks, and I exhale deeply as I look up at the starry sky.

“It has to,” I tell him. I don’t have to explain my answer. It’s self-explanatory. Mom is the glue of our family. She’s also the only woman who can keep Dad from going completely dark and losing himself in his need for vengeance. If Mom dies, he’ll wipe any signs of the Feral Kings MC off the face of the earth. That’s a given. Hell, he may do it anyway. That’s not the biggest issue, though. If Dad loses Mom, he’ll annihilate anything in his path—friend or foe to get to the Feral Kings MC. No one will stop him. T and I certainly won’t. There’s a huge chance we’ll be just like him.

We are our father’s sons.

I push my thoughts out of my head as T and I make it to the vehicle. Mom will be okay. She’ll survive this. There cannot be any other outcome.

There just can’t.

Chapter 10

Dragon

The surrounding tension is so thick that you cut it with a knife. We don’t speak. There’s a lot we need to say, but I’d rather do it when Skull isn’t here and when we’re not hiding from the sloppy-ass foot soldiers that the Feral Kings MC have guarding this trail. It’s remarkably easy to get by them. I’ll be killing them on the way back down.

After I get my woman back.

Fuck, I’m nervous. I’m trying not to think about it as we go about getting to the top of the mountain, but I can’t help it. Nicole is still pissed at me. She has every right. I shouldn’t have hidden what I thought was true about King. I should have told her, especially after we completed the file on him. Allowing her to be blindsided was a mistake I should have never made. I know all that. I’m not a man who runs from things—not normally. I panicked. Fuck, it hurts to admit that, but I did. I know the topic hurts Nicole, and the reason is my fault. I was worried that this might make her leave me again. When she went to Tennessee all those years ago, I lost it. I was a shell of a man, and I knew that if she didn’t come back to me, that if I didn’t have her and my kids, I’d rather swallow a bullet than go on living. I know how weak that makes me sound, but fuck. Once you’ve had heaven, there’s no way to go back. Nicole is part of my soul. Without her, there’s no me. My world begins and ends with her. It has been that way since the day I carried her across the weeds of that old rental she and Dani lived in for a bit and tasted her lips. Fuck, I think it began when I saw her pumping gas barefoot the first time we met. Other women ceased to appeal to me from that day forward.

I love that woman with every fiber of my being.

“You’ll need to stay here. I’ll go around, so it looks like I’m coming in from the parking lot and through the main entrance. I’ll make up some shit about my bike breaking down and then share beers with the assholes.” He pulls out three bottles. I can tell even in the dark with just the moonlight shining down that they all look the same and I frown.

“How do you know which ones have the drugs?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

“They all three do,” he says, and I look at him like he’s insane.

“How the fuck are you supposed to drink, then? We can’t afford for them to get paranoid here.”

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