Page 90 of Lamb

“I know,” I answered.

“No.” Wolf shook his head, silver threads falling around his aged face. A wry smile formed over his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You don’t.”

I tilted my head at my president, my eyes wandering over the face I had read many times more than any other. Age lines had deepened in his leather skin, and dark circles hung from his tired, weary eyes.

“I got intel last night.” He sighed, resignation deep in his tone.

I frowned as I reached into my own pocket this time, pulling out my phone. It was unusual for Wolf to get information outside of my network. Before it made its way to him, it always came through me first and—

“8 unread messages.”

Wolf caught the change in my expression and scoffed. “You’ve had your head so far up her pussy there’s no wonder your ‘network’got neglected.”

I scrolled through the messages, eyes sifting through the information, plucking out what was the most important and casting aside the lesser. It only took seconds before I found what Wolf was talking about.

He knows.

My finger froze, hovering over the anonymous text message. My brain was turning, organizing, plotting, and planning mynext move, adjusting the several hundred others I had lined up, ready and waiting.

“I know it was inevitable”—Wolf dropped his cigarette onto the floor, the tip catching the edge of a leaf from a reaching weed—“but I thought we’d bought ourselves a little more time.” His boots pressed and twisted, snuffing the cigarette into ash.

“We’re ready,” I reassured him. “This is what we’ve spent the last few years building up to. We’re stronger now. We have what it takes.”

“It’s not having what it takes that matters,” Wolf sighed, rubbing his weary brow. “It’s what it takesfromus that matters. There is always a cost.”

I could see fragments of the past rushing over him. It had aged him faster these last few years than any before him. When the war came crashing down on our side, the fallout too heavy to bear, the club almost fell apart. It had broken, cracked, and nearly crumbled right before our eyes.

“We will rebuild, like we always do; repair the cracks and fill the bullet holes. We’ve always been stronger for it,” I reassured him. “And we will this time, too.”

Wolf frowned. “They never tell you this about being president.” His gaze turned distant as he looked out over the open field, staring past the guarding chain link fence, past the woodland boundary, past the dark horizon. “The weight of all the lives on your shoulders. It is not simply the lives of others. It’s the weight of our home. Of our women and children. Of our brothers … I don’t want to lose a single one of them. Not when we’ve lost so much already.”

I knew the face that came to mind. The face of a brother fallen far too soon. Too young. Too hopeful. Nobel had been a member long before he’d carried the badge and should have held it for years longer than he’d been given.

“Isn’t that why we’re here?” I countered, wanting to wedge away that weight even if it was just a little. “The weapons, the deals, the connections—everything we’ve gained the last few years. It wasn’t to wage a war for vengeance or pride. It’s to protect what’s ours. Protect our women. Protect our children. Protect ourbrothers.” I placed a hand on the wide, strong shoulder of my president. It was a weight of warmth beneath the heavy burden of stone he was destined to carry so long as he wore that patch. “If we do this, we’re risking it all. But if we don’t, we risk losing it all.”

Wolf sighed, his shoulders adjusting underneath my grasp. “You know, it’s moments like these that fool people into thinking you’re actually human.”

I smirked, retracting my hand. “Only on people who want to be fooled.”

Wolf considered my comment, his face pensive. “Then what about her?” he asked. “Are you fooling her, too?”

The words tickled my mind, sorting my new swell of emotions between sharp, logical lines. “Are you asking if I’m being genuine?”

“I know this started as a mission. As club business. But it’s not like that for you anymore, is it?” Wolf’s eyes sharpened, the clear honey-brown piercing and clear. “You didn’t have to go this far. You didn’t need to fix her. You don’t need to be by her side.”

“It’s safer for us and her to be by my side,” I argued, having gone about this line of argument once again. My answer never changed.

“But it doesn’t have to beyou,” Wolf bit back, frustration building on his brow. His foot began to bounce against the floor, the black boot stirring small dust storms rolling over the concrete. “I could ask another brother to take your place. Even Mint could—”

Wolf’s words stopped dead. His brows shot upward in surprise, registering the small, but meaningful movement.

My flinch had been obvious, and I couldn’t deny the reality. I trusted Mint; he was my brother through and through. Though new and young, I knew I could rest easy with my life in his hands, as I could with any of the brothers who had fought alongside me. The seconds his name had left Wolf’s lips, however, I was ready to gut the man.

It was hot, possessive, and intense, and it was over in a flash. Even in a fraction of a second, it had said enough.

A smile fought at the corners of Wolf’s mouth as he struggled to bite it back. “Do you know why I helped you?” He sighed, the tension in his shoulders slumping, eyes relaxing their visual grip on my own. “Because I know what it’s like. To have someone whom you fear to lose. Fear so much it can overtake you and make you act in ways that aren’t true to yourself. Love is hard.”

That word burrowed into my chest; it was like a physical weight bearing down on my ribs and lungs. I reached up, rubbing against my sternum, as if to ease the ache I knew didn’t exist. “Is that what you think this is?” I hadn’t considered it. The word was foreign to me. I’d never needed to learn or know what love was. I’d understood loyalty and devotion to my brothers and our club, but I’d never been able to call it that. “You think I love her?”

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