Page 55 of True Bastard
I swallowed hard, the weight of Helen’s words pressing against the fragile mask I’d constructed. Grief knotted itself in my chest, sharp and fresh, as memories flickered behind my eyes like lightning: laughter at Aunt Karen’s dinner table, Keely and I giggling in the night when we should have been sleeping, a sense of belonging that felt impossibly far away now. My lips trembled as I searched for something to say, anything to fill the silence and keep the pain at bay. But all I could muster was a quiet, “Thank you,” my voice barely louder than a whisper, as I clung to Anna Joy for support, desperate not to unravel in front of them.
“Anna Joy, we need to go. You don’t want to be late.” Helen’s voice was a gentle prod, pulling me back from the precipice of my own turmoil.
“Oh, Mom. Can’t I miss it just once, please?” Anna Joy’s whine was a desperate plea, a plea I understood all too well. To be forced into normalcy, into trivialities, when my world had shattered, felt like a cruel joke.
“No, young lady, you can’t,” Morpheus firmly said, walking into the room carrying a coffee mug in his hand. His voice, usually a low rumble, held an edge of steel. “Kitten will be here when you get back. She isn’t going anywhere. Are you, Kitten?”
It was a challenge.
Plain and simple. He knew. He saw the carefully constructed façade, the trembling hand I tried to hide, the war raging within me. He knew I wanted to scream, to tear at my own skin, to flee this suffocating politeness. He knew I wanted to tell Helen to shove her condolences where the sun didn’t shine, that her pity was an insult. But the choice was forced: maintain the mask, acknowledge the deception that kept me safe, or shatter it and risk exposing the raw, bleeding wound. And if I shattered it, could I ever put myself back together? Could I, in my current state, afford to be honest? The calculated risk of his question hung in the air, forcing a decision I dreaded. To lie again, or to risk everything.
Shaking my head, I looked at Anna Joy. “I will be here when you get back. I promise.” That ever-present knot tightened in my stomach. The promise felt hollow, a fragile shield against a reality I was desperately trying to ignore. It was easier to focus on Anna Joy’s fleeting visit, on the warmth of her embrace, than on the suffocating weight of my own existence.
Hugging me once more, I watched silently as Anna Joy and Helen left the club. Standing next to Morpheus, the familiar, oppressive air of the place settling around me, I said, “Thought you’d still be asleep after everything you drank and fucked last night.”
My statement was a pathetic attempt to inject normalcy into this cesspool, a desperate reach for a past where such mornings weren’t the norm.
“Sleep is overrated.” Morpheus’ voice, a gravelly rumble, grated against my nerves. It was a dismissal, a statement of a lifeI could never comprehend, a life that felt increasingly alien to the woman I was supposed to be.
Frowning, I looked up at the mountain of a man. “When was the last time you actually slept, Morpheus?”
My words tumbled out, laced with a weary frustration I couldn’t contain. It was a challenge, yes, but also a plea. A desperate, unspoken question of how one could live like this, how one could survive it. I knew, even as I asked, that the answer would be more damning than enlightening.
The president of the Brotherhood threw his head back and laughed heartily. “Just because you are the first old lady of this club, doesn’t mean you get to mother me, Kitten. You want to mother someone, then mother them,” he said, waving his hand around the room to the men everywhere my eyes could see. Some were naked as the day they were born and curled around the last whore they fucked, while others hugged a whiskey bottle for dear life. His words, meant to belittle, landed like a blow. Mother them? Did he truly believe that was something I wanted? The sight of those broken men, mirroring a despair I fought daily to keep at bay, sent a wave of nausea through me. The urge to recoil, to scrub my eyes clean of the tableau, was overwhelming.
Ignoring the fucking room—a Herculean effort that left me trembling—I glared at the man. “That reminds me. I never asked to be Firestride’s old lady. How the hell do I get out of that?”
The desperation in my voice was a raw wound. This was the choice I’d been avoiding, the precipice I’d been pretending wasn’t there. To stay meant betraying every instinct for self-preservation, every whisper of the woman I used to be. To leave... that was a terrifying unknown, a path fraught with dangers I couldn’t even begin to chart.
Morpheus grinned, taking a slow sip of his coffee, the clink of the mug a mocking punctuation. “You don’t, Kitten. Once you’re in, it’s for life. The Brotherhood doesn’t let go that easy.”
His words hung in the air, heavier than the afternoon haze, crushing the last vestiges of hope.
A choice.
I had a choice, didn’t I? Stay and wither, or leave and face... what?
His gaze was a physical weight, pinning me down, forcing me to confront the impossibility of my situation. Could I truly be strong enough to break free, or was this the fate I was always destined for? The thought of staying, of becoming another fixture in this grim landscape, clawed at my throat. But the alternative... the thought of the repercussions, of the Brotherhood’s inevitable wrath, made my blood run cold.
I was trapped, not just by Morpheus’ words, but by my own fear. The freedom I craved felt like a cruel illusion, a distant star I could never reach. As laughter and groans echoed from around me, I couldn’t help but wonder if freedom was ever really an option here, or if I was already too deeply buried in the Brotherhood’s suffocating embrace. The weight of belonging was a crushing burden, the chains it came with, unbreakable. And in that moment, staring into the abyss of my own powerlessness, I knew I had already made a bad choice—the choice to believe in promises I couldn’t keep, and to linger in a place that would surely kill me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kyllian
The smell of stale beer and cheap perfume was a constant, cloying presence, a testament to the relentless cycle of the Brotherhood. Days bled into nights, marked only by the rise and fall of drunken revelry and the hollow echo of forced laughter. My existence had become a monotonous loop of serving drinks, enduring leers, and the gnawing emptiness that settled in my gut after each encounter. The clubhouse had become a hell from which now escape was a distant, impossible dream. Every shadow seemed to hold a threat, every brother’s gaze a silent assessment, a reminder of my status as Kitten, Firestride’s old lady.
Firestride’s presence had become a constant ache in my life. He’d vanished after that night, leaving me with the scent of shame and a terrifying awareness of my own compromised desires. His absence was a stark void, filled only by the suffocating knowledge that he owned me. Aunt Karen’s words,“They will protect you both,”echoed in my mind, a desperate instruction that had led me back to this hell. Inferno had taken Karter, a small victory in a sea of losses, but now I was adrift, bound to this world by a man I couldn’t escape.
Morpheus’ words, a brutal pronouncement of my permanent entrapment,“You don’t, Kitten. Once you’re in, it’s for life,”hadsunk deep. He saw my fear, my desperate attempts to cling to the remnants of my former self, and he relished it. The Brotherhood of Bastards offered no sanctuary, only a suffocating embrace that promised to extinguish the last flicker of my spirit.
I was their ‘old lady,’ their first, a trophy to be displayed and controlled.
The freedom I craved, the life I’d fought to rebuild, felt like a cruel illusion, forever out of reach, buried beneath the smothering weight of the Brotherhood.
“You know it’s not that bad here.”
Glancing up from my beer, I frowned at the young bartender. “What would you know? You want to be here.”
