Page 103 of Hate Mates

I shake myself, determined to break free of the spell the fragrance casts over my psyche.

“Dandelion,” she murmurs. My toes curl inside my boots. “I still wear the same perfume from school... it makes me feel...things.”

The tattoo on the inside of my wrist pulses like a second-degree burn.

Like being scalded by boiling water.

An injury I’ve sustained more than once.

I lurch away from her.

It’s cowardly, yet instinctual.

An honest reaction in the face of danger.

The memory she’s invoked is painful and poisonous.

And Layla’s role in the destruction wrought on me and my friends is unforgiveable.

“Sander’s tryna pick a fight with Slash,” Wyatt blurts out in a rush. He bends in half, propping his hands on his thighs while he fights to catch his breath. “Pulled... him... off Cherub.”

“For fuck’s sake.” The curse comes from the depths of my soul. My thumbs fly across the screen of the phone I retrieve from my pocket while we’re on the move. After hitting send on my SOS message, I turn to Wyatt. “I’ve asked Toker to come here. He can calm things down.”

“Toker’s already here.”

The second youngest of the Mayberry siblings gestures toward the DJ stand. Looking like a leather version of Casper the friendly ghost, Toker observes Sander and Slash with an air of disquiet hanging around him. His stance is wide. His arms are folded across his chest. An eerie halo circles his head whenever the lights bounce off his white-blond crew cut. There’s worry in his eyes, but I can’t tell who it’s aimed toward—my best friend or his.

Wyatt answers my next question before I pose it, “He showed up with a face like a thundercloud, then the next second Sander was using Slash’s cut to yank him off Cherub. Soon as he stood there instead’a intervenin’ I went to find you. Not sure who called him, but he’s clearly not here to help.”

“Sander called him.”

“What?” Whirling on Layla, I’m in the process of reaching for her when self-preservation kicks in. I discard the impulse to shake the answers I seek out of her at the last second to link myfingers at the back of my head instead. My shoulders strain when I stretch to my full height and tilt my head to glare at the ceiling. A dozen thoughts circle my brain, each one more disturbing than the next. Expelling a steadying breath, I inhale through my nose before I return my attention to the raven-haired woman who’s trailed me inside the nightclub. “How doyouknow that?”

My role within the Shamrocks is new. A responsibility created by modern times. I’m the club’s inaugural Technology Officer. One of my main jobs is to use the internet, surveillance, hacking, and social media to know all thethingsbefore everyone else.

Things like who called our surly Enforcer into Club Mirage on his night off.

“I,ah—’ Layla licks her lips. I dig my fingernails into the back of my head and avert my eyes from the confusingly tantalising sight. “We spoke before I came outside to see you. He warned me not to hurt you in my quest to make amends.”

The bone I have to pick with Sander is Jurassic-sized.

His heart might be in the right place.

That doesn’t mean he has the right to meddle in my life.

I don’t need Layla’s apologies to find closure.

Whatever the fuck that is...

“Fine,” I grunt.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the oldest of the Shamrocks’ prospects lose control of the situation when Slash aims a level of rage I’ve never witnessed from him toward Sander. Isaiah is shoved out of the way. He stumbles backward, then tumbles over a female partier. Scrambling to his feet, he quickly assists Nadia in dragging Cherub out of the fray.

The rest of my biker brothers are moving through the crowd as fast as they can. Big men dressed in leather should be able to part the masses easily. Unfortunately, the pounding music and the artificial darkness mean some of Mirage’s patrons areoblivious to the drama in their midst. Others are too busy rubbernecking. They hamper the Shamrocks progress in order to watch one of Perth’s basketball stars fighting with a local biker.

Slash is infamous.

Sander is plain famous.

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