FANG
Scythe danced around on his toes like a fighter, his eyes slightly crazed. “Are we standing around singing camp songs or are we going to go storm the castle? Let’s go.”
War held up a hand in a stop motion. “Hold on to your bloodlust for just a minute, would you? We need a plan.”
“There’s six of us, one of him. At worst, his friends are still there, so that’s three. We’ve got the numbers.” Vaughn recited the stats to the other guys, sparking a debate over where we parked the cars and who took what entrances.
I tuned out. All I wanted was a cigarette. Or really just anything to do with my hands. I eyed the way Scythe was fingering his blade and understood why he did it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman tied up in Caleb’s basement.
It could have been Pix.
At one point, it had been. Maybe not tied up exactly, but they’d kept her in that house, hurting her instead of letting her leave. I hadn’t been there to save her. The very fucking least I could do was save another. Maybe it would help ease my guilty conscience.
“Fang. Ride with us.”
I glanced up at my name to see War flick his head toward Nash’s Jeep, parked in the dark across the road from Rebel’s place.
Vaughn and Kian hesitated on their way to Kian’s truck, waiting for me to decide who I was riding with. After the night we’d had, and knowing what we were about to do, it didn’t feel right to just leave Kian and Vaughn to themselves.
We might not have been true friends before last night, but something had changed in those few hours.
But when your prez gave you an order, you followed.
“Go on ahead,” I called to Kian. “We’ll meet you there. Park down the road a way, okay?”
They walked off into the slowly lightening darkness, and a moment later the truck doors slammed.
I fell in line with War. Nash and Scythe drew ahead of us, discussing something I couldn’t quite hear because War slowed our pace until it was really just the two of us walking together.
He glanced over at me with a half-smile. “She loves you back, huh? ’Bout fucking time you told her.”
I wasn’t generally one for smiling, but this time I couldn’t help it. Hearing her say she loved me in front of our friends was better than any other feeling in the world. I’d almost expected her to want to hide the fact we were together. I would have gone along with it.
I wanted Rebel in any capacity I could have her.
I always had.
But War’s smile faded. “You haven’t been around the clubhouse much lately though. There was a meeting last night you didn’t show for.”
I blinked and pulled out my phone, scrolling down through the messages, and sure enough, there was one from War.
“Fuck, boss. I’m sorry. I didn’t even see it.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “I get it. I get it. Women got a way of stealing your focus sometimes. Guilty of that myself with Bliss. But I needed you last night.”
“Won’t happen again. What did I miss?”
“We’re going after the Sinners. It’s time, brother. We can’t hold out anymore.”
I’d been waiting for this. If War hadn’t been so caught up with Bliss and her pregnancy, it probably would have come a lot earlier.
Not all that long ago, War’s parents had been in a terrible car accident when one of the club women had tampered with their brakes. She’d had reasons of her own for wanting them dead, that none of us had seen at the time.
Fancy, War’s mom, had been knocked out cold but survived.
War’s dad—Army, our previous prez—had been found at the bottom of the cliffs by a hitman who’d put a bullet through his brain.