Page 50 of Running on Empty

“And where would be the fun in that?” Ronan asked me.

That fucking little prick… It was always like this. He wanted blood and I wanted everyone home in one piece and we couldn’t seem to find a way to get both our needs met.

“Snake has to have guards posted around his house, though if he’s staying on his own its either because he doesn’t see us as a serious threat, or the senior Spencers are trying to mitigate any losses they might have, ensuring at least one son lives on to carry their name,” I told them. “We have to be prepared for both scenarios.”

I grabbed a handgun I had stuffed down the back of my jeans and then wrapped her hands around it.

“You know how to use this. We made sure of that. But shooting at a range is not the same as shooting someone.”

“This would have to be a lot more satisfying,” Stevie said, looking at the gun, not me.

I wanted to tip her chin up, to get her to meet my eyes. I wanted to tell her what it was really like, going on one of these missions. Not thrill filled shootouts full of acrobatic moves as we strove to bring down the bad guys. Usually it was short, sweet, getting in and out before too much fuss, doing what we came here to do and nothing else.

And then there were the other times.

I stared at my brother then, willing Ronan to reel the side of him back that felt like this was all just a bloody game, to pretend that he wasn’t having fun when he was elbow deep in guts. His lips just twitched in a half smile.

“I don’t want you to come,” I told my mate and I watched her eyes go flat and cold in an instant. “You could stay here, use that,” I nodded to the gun, “to keep Mum safe. We can wear body cams so you see everything.”

For just half a second, I dared to hope she would fucking listen to me for once.

“At some point you have to stop trying to protect me and start actually standing beside me,” Stevie snapped back.

I nodded, feeling the sting but not able to do much about it. It would come again, sure enough.

“You won’t be beside any of us. You’ll be at the back of our group protecting our rear,” I ground out.

“And what a rear it is,” she said, her eyes sliding conspicuously sideways to check out my brother’s arse.

Fuck.

There was a time and place for eating my own heart out with jealousy and now wasn’t it.

“Get the rest of her gear on and then everyone piles into the car. We need to get shit underway well before the sun rises,” I told Ronan.

“You got it, brother.”

Only Ronan could agree with me and make that sound like an act of defiance, but I couldn’t let that shit bother me, not right now. I walked over to Jax, who was talking to our dads.

“Tell me I’ve got your support during this whole shit fight,” I asked him in a muttered aside as I directed him over towards the car.

“I can’t. You don’t.”

I blinked, my fingers tightening so hard around the car keys it felt like the shape of them were indented into my very flesh. But Jax just stared at me with the same fucking flat look the others sported, like his were the eyes of a stranger, not my fucking pack mate. It didn’t help that they were green as grass either.

“You can’t—”

“You got it wrong. You always did. You make decisions without consultation based on the premise that you know better.” He nudged me with the muzzle of his handgun, something that had a warning about gun safety bubbling up inside me. “You don’t. You’ve proven that to Stevie, to Ronan and to me, but for some reason you won’t see it. Well, after this shit is done and the dust is left to settle, we’ll see where you are. With us or on your fucking own, with only your righteousness to keep you company.”

He gave me a little shove to my shoulder before stalking off and getting into the passenger side seat of the car.

“Time to go?” Blue asked me, my fucking fathers sending up howls like they were actual wolves not men that sometimes took the forms of them, and that’s when I watched something that had always haunted me about them happen.

It’d taken me a while to realise other alpha fathers weren’t like mine. Not just because of their MC affiliations, though perhaps that's what attracted them to the life. The four of them huddle together, their bodies stiffening, their muscles tensing, seeming to double in size. And that wasn’t just an optical illusion. Their flannelette shirts and leather jackets creaked as they summoned this forth.

Going berserk, that’s what my research had thrown up, or theUlfhednarstate. It could’ve come from some obscure Norse ancestry, but I wasn’t so sure. When I looked into it, the Kelly family was the usual mutt mixture of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon bloodlines that a lot of white Australians came from. But none of that explained this.

Their eyes were pure green now when they pulled away, the colour all the more stark for the black bandanas hanging from around their necks. And their faces? They were part wolf, part man and the worst of each, ready to tear the world apart. But when I looked over at my car, I saw my two brothers watching them like hounds with quarry in sight.

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