Page 51 of Tyrant

Probably worse.

“I should hate you, but it’s not possible.” I can’t see, but his voice is wrong, it’s rougher. “Lark told me everything, but there’s a lot that needs to be said… fuck. We’ll figure it out. You’ve got the whole club behind you, and we will always be brothers, you hear me?”

I want to nod, but there’s a buzzing in my ears that turns into a different kind of roar, not the sound of bikes being kicked to life. More like an ocean crashing in around me. Waves and fire and then a black, deep, starless night.

Chapter 20

Lark

“Are you sure she’s okay?”

“Yeah, Lark. She’s fine. Settled right down with Dad.”

I crush the phone tight to my ear. I wasn’t willing to let Penny out of my sight, but Raiden finally convinced me that the small basement clinic with its antiseptic smells and all the equipment and surgical tools wasn’t any place for a child.

When we got there, I tried for hours to calm her, but as soon as we left the clubhouse, she refused to stop crying. She clung to me and whimpered on and off. Sometimes it was full-on sobbing. I tried my best not to join her, because her seeing me lose it would only make her more hysterical.

When the men changed over guarding the clinic, Raiden tried to convince me to go back to the clubhouse, but I wouldn’t leave Gray. Not for anything, not ever again. He did appeal to what little reason I had left and got me to let him take Penny with him. There are a few old ladies and kids at the clubhouse. Those who had passports left for Canada. Others went to stay with friends or family, the ones left had nowhere else to go.

“Okay. I—”

“She needs to rest and so do you. You’re too stubborn, but I’ve got Penny settled here and I promise Dad will be with her the whole time. says, his voice sounding far sterner than usual, “you want to help Gray and Penny then you look afteryourself. If you can’t sleep, our club doc might be able to give you something.”

I open my mouth to argue, but I can just see my brother, already anticipating it. He cuts me off. “I’ll bring Penny the second Gray wakes up.”

I’m using a burner phone now, since as soon as they got to Gray, Raiden destroyed my old one. The call came through on it, with the coordinates of that old trapper’s cabin. My phone, not any of the brothers or the phone at the clubhouse.

Raiden’s confidence replaces some of my pain and doubt. Hours ago, the doctor who cancelled all his appointments and took over Gray’s care—who is actually a fucking plastic surgeon—told Raiden and the men here with him, that he’d be okay. He’d be awake within a few hours, as soon as some of the stronger painkillers and whatever sedative he’d given wore off.

“Thank you.”

I hang up and fold my hands between my knees, clutching the shitty little phone. It’s just me and Gray here in this room. The basement is divided up between an operating and surgery area, a room with machines for tests, anther for supplies, and two recovery areas. There is no waiting room or anything else you’d usually expect in a doctor’s office. The regular shit is upstairs. This? It was made just for the club, for patching up the kind of injuries that they couldn’t turn up at the ER with.

That terrible night Gray was taken turned into a terrible morning. The men met in their church while I helped Seer organize the women and children. I helped anyone who needed help with the packing, trying to keep myself calm. Even in all the chaos, fear, and confusion, every single person still had time to sit with Penny. It helped that some of the kids played withher. Doing something normal with other children, even for just a few minutes, helped her forget her mother’s screams and the shadowy demons, the smells of ash and blood.

My dad, who had never been a strong man, shocked us all by finding his spine at the club. We had been staying in those two guest rooms. After all the women and children were taken care of and the club made the decision to stand behind their president, all we could do was wait for news. I used that time to explain to Penny who Gray really was.

I tried my best, over and over, for hours.

She had a thousand questions about her dad. She wanted to know if he was okay. What was going to happen. Where we’d live. She wanted to know if he was going to go to be in the sky with her grandma.

The days were hellish, the nights even worse. All I could do was keep Penny close to me. I was a shadow that barely functioned until finally my phone rang with those coordinates given by a gravelly voice. It was Raiden who took my phone from me when I frantically ran to him. He had mobilized the men and rode out in his truck at the back of the long armada of bikes, just so he could be the one to bring Gray back with him.

The whole time, Gray was only a few hours away. Far too close for any sort of comfort when it came to Zale Grand and his men, but so far away that my heart wept with every moment. I wasn’t the only one. The women and children at the clubhouse were shells of themselves. Living ghosts afraid of an uncertain future, afraid for their men who were on the road, fighting a brand-new enemy none of us really knew anything about.

Raiden had brought Gray here to this clinic and then came back for me and Penny. We sat together for hours, men guardingthe building upstairs while Archer operated in a private room in the basement. I say operated, but really, he was just cleaning and patching wounds, putting back together what could be healed with a surgeon’s hands, giving antibiotics, painkillers, and hydration. The guard changed over before it was all done, and Raiden came for Penny to take her back to the clubhouse.

I’ve just been waiting here beside Gray in the bed that doesn’t look anything like a regular hospital bed, but with a few of those same machines beeping steadily, an IV plugged into his arm. All I can do is sit and hope and relive the nightmare, burnt to nothing by pain and rage and a new depth of hate I’ll never be able to dig out of myself.

A horrible gurgle snaps my attention to the bed. Gray’s one eye is swollen shut, but the other is open and fixated on me. The pupil is dilated from the drugs he’s been given, but I know he’s with me. He’s trying to say something, opening his mouth and making an awful, damaged sound like he can’t figure out why the words won’t come.

I fly out of the hard wooden chair I’m in as soon as he chokes and grunts.

“Uhn. Arhhhhh.”

“Shh.” I know he’s been beaten and tortured. They fucking burned him and used pincers, nipped his flesh off and cut him, abused his body with fists and kicks and brass knuckles. He’s sore, stitched, and bandaged, but I don’t hesitate for a second to get on that bed beside him and wrap my arms around his neck.

I’m careful as I hold him, kneeling beside his legs even though there’s hardly room, but he’s not having any of it. He surges upright and clings to me, the strength in his hands astounding given everything that he’s gone through. He doesn’tcare about the wires and the IV. The blanket slips away. There’s no hospital gowns here, not for men like Gray. After cleaning him up, Archer put him into a black t-shirt and a fresh pair of boxers. They aren’t Gray’s and it seems so fucking weird that this kind of thing would be kept on hand here, but nothing about this clinic is normal.

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