Page 1 of At the Edge of Surrender

ONE

KANE

At close to midnight,Theo and I sat at one of the high-backed wooden booths at Twisted Moon Tavern.

A country song droned from the jukebox, and the dim lights hanging overhead cast lapping shadows over the hazy, dingy space.

Place was always fuckin’ quiet, which was why I preferred it whenever I wanted to have an actual conversation with my crew outside of our normal meeting place.

A conversation that had been coming for a long damned time.

Theo glanced around, making sure no one was in earshot as he leaned forward across the table. “You think we need to step in and intervene? Shake things up?”

Dude always looked like a coiled viper waiting to strike.

Black hair and even darker eyes. Arms and hands covered in tats. Tats that rolled up from the neckline of his black tee and fully wrapped around his throat.

In his case, appearances werenotdeceiving. The dude was fuckin’ deadly, just like the rest of us.

Taking a sip from my scotch, I warred with what to say, then I edged forward, my hand still wrapped around my tumbler as I rested it on the worn table.

“My gut tells me this extraction is going to be messy. I know River is still all in, but he’s got a family he needs to think about. We can’t sit here and pretend like the entire dynamic of our crew hasn’t shifted.”

River getting with Charleigh, and now Otto and Raven coming together.

The whole reason the rule had been made that we couldn’t get attached in the first place was because this shit was dangerous.

Fucking peril coming at us from every direction.

It wasn’t like I resented my brothers for going against one of our creeds.

It was just time we admitted it changed things. That the pact we’d made all those years ago no longer stood.

Rocking back in the booth, Theo canted his head to the side. “So what? You think it’s time to take a step back?”

My attention darted to the tattoo on the back of my left hand. It was the one that had two Ss sitting on top of each other. A dagger ran through them, top to bottom, and an eye was stamped in the middle.

It was identical to the one every member of Sovereign Sanctum had in the same spot, though mine had a wilting rose on top.

My chest clutched at the sight of it, at the mark I’d made of my greatest failure, and I squeezed that hand into a fist as I lifted my attention back to Theo. “Not a fuckin’ chance. Just think it’s time we switched things up. Stand in where we haven’t before.”

Each of us had our roles within our secret society. River’s was the one that normally put him in the line of fire. Dragged him down into the darkest pits of depravity.

But it wasn’t like every single one of us didn’t have blood on our hands.

Tainted in it from the beginning, even though the rest of my crew didn’t have a clue about my extracurricular activities. The lengths I went. The kind of shit I would never ask them to get involved in.

Something I had full intention of enacting next week considering some info I’d picked up about some scum working out of San Diego.

Awareness of what I was suggesting dawned on the blunt edges of Theo’s face. “You want to go instead.”

He didn’t even phrase it a question.

“Haven’t gotten dirty in a while.”

Okay, that was a blatant lie, but some things were better left in the dark.

“Seems only fair that I go up to bat.” I tacked a smirk onto it.

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