Page 76 of Reaper Released

“What the fuck?” My mouth hangs open, and then I close it, then open it again and look at all the smiling faces at me. “Wait, I haven’t even prospected. How is this… huh?”

Ares’s laugh booms out through the mic. “Holy shit! I’ve left Reaper lost for words!”

Everyone in the tent bursts out laughing as I flip them all off. “Motherfuckers!” I mutter under my breath.

“As it’s your wedding day, we will wait a few days before we make it official and get you tattooed in, so after that, everyone, grab some food, dance, drink, enjoy yourselves and welcome Reaper to the family!”

Everyone stands up and cheers again, clapping, as I sling the cut over my dress and head over to Steel, spinning around. “What do you think?”

“Fucking perfect!” He drags me into his lap.

“I don’t understand. Why does it say ‘Enforcer?’ That’s you. I … I …”

Steel puts his fingers to my lips. “When Ares asked me to vote on if we should patch you in or not, I told him I didn’t want you away from me, not because I think you can’t take care of yourself or anything like that, but since I met you I can’t bear to be apart from you, and after seeing you in the barn with Miguel, fuck, I wanted to join in so badly, so what better way to be together than to actually work together, too? So I’m going to be the Lieutenant, and you’ll work alongside me as the Enforcer!”

“You sure you’re not gonna get fed up with me!”

“Never!”

I kiss him again, and we get lost for the longest time, lost in each other’s eyes, in each other’s minds, and especially in each other’s lips. When we finally break away, it’s because I can smell Scar stuffing her face beside me, and my stomach rumbles.

Steel drags me over to grab food, and when we get back to the table, we have drinks, and the band begins to play a few steady tunes for some background noise. Once we’ve finished eating, the guys slide the long tables together to make it a big square table and shove it to the side nearer the bar. We all sit down again and start chatting. There’s me, Steel, Scar, Ares, Viking, and Carmen. Apparently, Tali has gone to sit with Roach at one of the other tables. Carmen thinks she has a little crush.

Demi, Bran and Dane are with us all, my pas, Marie and Tank, Priest, Blade and Dice. We laugh and drink.

The girls are in the guy's laps, so we can huddle closer together.

Dice whispers over, “Bernie, I’ve got the gizmo working!”

“Fuck yes!” is Bernie’s reply!

Steel turns to Cade. “So what was it like bringing these guys up?”

Cade laughs. “Hades! It was a fucking nightmare. How much have they told any of you about their childhood?”

They all look at each other and shrug. Only my pas, Marie, Bran, Dane, Pops and Scar know how we were brought up. The others know bits but not specific details.

Bernie laughs. “So Ray had a twin brother, Bas. He was… a dick even from being young. No matter what we did, he thought he was better than us all, and he made Dane, Bran, and Ray’s lives miserable. When Ray’s mum died, he got worse, but in fairness, he was always an arsehole. Bas just beat them all up and bullied them!”

JJ continues, “So we decided to give them a little hand. Did they tell you about our jobs?”

“Yeah, you run an Adventure Centre in the UK!” Steel answers.

“Yeah, well, we do now, but we were all military SAS and Navy SEALs. We were well trained, so we started the kids on a little self-defence… but it escalated.”

“You can say that again!” I bark out, “I could shoot a gun by the time I was seven, my axe throwing and knife skills are second nature, I can hot wire a bike or car or any vehicle, I’m a shit hot mechanic in case any of you didn’t realise. Really, we were trained in mixed martial arts. It just depended on who we were spending time with that day. I can build a bomb, I’m proficient in parkour, we can dive, me and Bernie have our own code we can speak in and decipher, and Bran and Dane have pretty much the same skills. We were trained basically as child assassins!” I shrug, and Bran and Dane laugh!

“Anyway,” Bernie interjects, tossing me a scowl. He hates when I use the child assassin description. “They had… opportunities other kids didn’t.”

I roll my eyes.

“Bas didn’t want anything to do with them, and although we had brought them up together, he wasn’t interested, so he stayed away. Even from being little, Ray and Bran and eventually, Dane were inseparable but fought like cat and dog,” Steven continues.

“We did not!” Dane shoots out. “We never fought. We always had each other’s backs… OW!” I kick him under the table, and he turns to me. “Bitch,” he mouths.

“See!” JJ cuts in. “They never stopped!”

Everything goes quiet as Dane, Bran, and I are in a stare-off.

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