Page 79 of Wolf

Anna’s face and words had been turning over and over in my head on the entire ride here. I knew by going through with this, I would be sacrificing so much more than just Ash formyclub.

Just.

The word made my stomach feel sick, disgusted with the fact my life had come to the point that the word “just” could come before a human’s life. Ash was about the same age as Oral would be, maybe a slight bit younger, and I was ready to hand her over to a man who was planning tokillher.

“I’m guessing Anna gave you an ultimatum?” Ash’s crisp accent, almost as jarring as the cold, interrupted my thoughts. I looked down at her, finding her on my other side, unsurprised, as Lamb was now standing next to Ripper, handing him, Hunter, Polo, Jasper, and the other brothers extra magazine clips as Hunter unloaded them from the saddle bags attached tohisbike.

“Let me guess,” Ash said, reaching up with her tanned, slender hands to brush her hair away from her mouth as the cold wind chipped at everybody’s skin. “No me means no youandher?”

My eyes narrowed on her, and she nodded her head, her lips flattening into a line. “Yeah, I figured as much. I was hoping she wouldn’t be like this.” She turned to look at the warehouse, but her expression showed she was looking distantly beyond anythingaroundher.

“Hoping she wouldn’t be like this?” I growled, pissed at the apathetic tone of her voice. “You wanted her to be fucking flowers and sunshine when her best friend, the person she thought she had sworn and failed to protect, says she wants to hand herself over to the very same people she swore to protect her from?” Ash flinched hard at my words, but I didn’t feel the slightest bit regretful for saying them. “If you hadn’t fucking appeared, we wouldn’t have had to deal withthisshit!”

Ash’s anger must have flared, because she spun on me faster than I expected, and being she was taller than Anna, she managed to push up onto her toes and make use of the slight hunch in my shoulders to shove her snarling face into mine. “My father would have come whether or not I fucking turned up. I kept as far as fucking possible from her to make sure he never came anywhere near here! But Anna settled with you guys! She knew the risk of hanging out in the same place for too long. Deep down, she knew he would find her eventually and things would no doubt come to this, but she chose to ignore that and stayed anyway. She stayed for you. This is the only way I can protect her now, do you understand? I’m doing this for her! I’m doing this to make sure she can finally have the happily ever after love disaster that she wants. So she doesn’t have to be dragged through the mud anymore with me! She deserves afuture!”

The whole group around us became silent as they all turned to face Ash, eyes wide and expressions shocked as Ash blurted outeverything.

I searched her face, her tinted glasses hiding her eyes but not hiding the way her body dropped back down onto her flat feet, her shoulders slumping with the weight as her anger drained from her. Her lips flattened into a thin line as she looked down at the ground, and I sieved through her words. “Then you lied aboutbeingdone?”

“No.” Ash shook her head. She reached up to her face, her rough, broken-nailed fingers running along the smooth sunglasses. “Running away from my family was always just a dream. I’ve been doing it for four years, but I’ve been fighting them for a lot longer than that, Wolf. The only thing that ever gave me hope, that ever made me want to fight, was Anna. I used to be an obedient good little girl until Anna showed me that that kind of life wasn't living and I should look for more. Fight for more. She was beautiful and dazzling in my dark world, and she was the hand who in my darkness moments saved me and showed what the real world was. But the one thing about the past is that it never completely goes away. Do you think my family would be okay with me murdering my mother and running away? Do you think I would have gone unpunished? There's no escaping the dark, Wolf. There is only running for as long as you possibly can. But I'm running out of road, and if my last thing to do on this earth is protecting her, then so be it. Call it pretentious; call it selfish. I don't give a fuck. This is how I'm giving back to her, for everything she's done for me. I'm done letting her sacrifice everything for me.I'mdone.”

Ash shook her head before her hand reached up to the frame of her glasses and pulled them from her face. The cool tint of green, I realized up close, was tinged by the silver sheen of fog over her eyes as she turned to look at me, squinting against the brightness of the low sun before a small smile overtook her face. “A bird with broken wings can’t fly. I won’t ever be free, not while my family is around. So, you can let me do this, Wolf. You can let me do this, knowing this is what I chose to do. Don’t carry the guilt on yourshoulders.”

The smile didn’t look satisfied. It didn’t lookhappy.

It lookedlonely.

Ash lifted the sunglasses to cover her eyes once again, and for whatever reason, I noticed for the first time the silver scars around her slender wrists faintly hidden by her tan. She didn’t acknowledge the way my eyes followed them as she released her grip on her sunglasses, comfortably setting them on the bridge of her nose, away from her purpled bruises. With her armor replaced, she turned and took a small step toward thewarehouse.

“Let’s get this over with.” She slung her rucksack over her shoulder and beganwalking.

I watched her walk away in the quiet wake of her words, the light warmth of the sun on my back like a push forward, but my feet didn’t get the message as her face replayed over and overmymind.

“I know what she said,” Hunter said beside me, his eyes following the small, straight back of the girl. “But are you sure you want to go through with this, Wolf? There’s no going back, and making up for mistakes isn’t easy.Trustme.”

I looked at him, a man who had given too much for the club and so much more for those he loved, and despite how true his words were, I couldn’t give him the answer they allwanted.

“If I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t be here,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel and began to walk forward into a deal I knew I shouldn’t make but had no choice but to gothroughwith.

By the time we entered the big warehouse doors, Ash had been placed in a circle of bikers. We didn't want to risk her being taken in an ambush in case any of the other parties had any dirty tricks up theirsleeves.

We had our guns loaded and down by our sides in case we needed them, not caring if it made us seem defensive because we were; I wasn’t ready to sacrifice a ready defense to posturize in front of men I had no doubt wouldoutnumberus.

Our feet echoed across the concrete slab, small bullet cases rattling as they kicked into them. Thousands of them were dispersed across the warehouse floor, reminding me of the shit fest that had gone down here last time. I kept my eye on Hunter as his drifted around the room; he almost lost his wife here a few months back, and although I hadn’t wanted to bring him when I heard about the meeting place, I knew I needed Hunter’s quick reflexes if this broke out into anothergunwar.

Shadows danced around the edge of the windows, their outlines cut through as light spliced through holes in the rigid metal walls. As I counted the men in black around the room, I noticed the tattoos many of them bore, and it wasn’t difficult for me to know these men were the Black Jacks. My total added up to around twenty, making it 2:1 against our ten. I also remembered Charon had told me that the Black Jacks had thirty members. It was possible Charon was wrong, but seeing his smug face in my mind made me highlydoubtthat.

I didn’tlikethis.

I disliked it even more as I heard the growing sounds of a car’s engine and the big garage doors began to open. Bright winter light cut into the shaded warehouse, and a whistling breeze caught everybody’s skin as the black SUV tore across thecompound.

I tensed up, forcing my hand to the side of the trigger so I wouldn’t pull it despite my instincts telling me to take out every single man in this room. I noted my action reflecting in my brothers beside me, their own eyes jumping around the room as they kept the rigid posture ofcalmness.

We stayed apprehensive as the vehicle pulled up only a few feet before us. The engine cut out, and silence dawned upontheroom.

It felt like a long few seconds before the click of the car door echoed in the huge chamberedwarehouse.

A slight warmth hit my back, and I didn’t have to turn to know Ash had moved closer to me as the brothers tightened ranks around her. There was a slight quiver in her breath as the shining black doorswungopen.

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