Page 29 of Axel (Belles & Bratva Beasts #2)

“Ruby will be a target, which makes others around her a target, too.” I don’t fuck around with this. I tell Scarlett, “I respect you and your family. This is why I’m disclosing the risk. I have grave concerns about Ruby’s safety.”

Scarlett narrows her glare at me. “Like I won’t kill ANY man who hurts my sister.” It’s a thinly veiled threat I respect.

“And like I won’t help my wife,” Luca adds coldly.

“I trust that’s true.” I nod. “Please, kill any man who puts a hand on Ruby.” Scarlett cocks a brow. “Any hurting hand, because I will never hurt her. I’ve vowed to protect her.”

“Listen,” Scarlett warns. “We’re not canceling our vacation, and you’re not coming.”

“Indeed, I can’t. I have work here. So promise me that you’ll spare no expense to protect Ruby. To appreciate the risk she’s in now that…” Something grabs my heart, my voice. “Now that she works with me.”

Now that I love her. Now that I’m fighting like hell to make her love me, too.

They nod, and with a few awkward pleasantries Zar uses to ease the tension, we rise to leave .

While Sire politely pecks Scarlett’s cheek goodbye, Luca Mercier threatens me with his handshake, “Hurt Ruby, and you die.”

I look him in the eye. “If Ruby is ever hurt, it will kill me.”

The man can figure it out. I don’t need to say who I really am for him to hear the truth in my voice. The love, too. I trust it’s what Luca feels for Scarlett, too.

“Well, if that wasn’t a meeting of the alphas, I don’t know what was,” Sire boasts in the elevator to the lobby. “We should make Scarlett Mercier an honorary queen.”

“She’s close enough. She’s partnered with Nick and Zar.” I worry. “Our worlds are colliding and fuck … with this Olan Turner shit and our side missions, too; something’s going to break. I can sense it.”

Sire’s quiet as we step into the sunshine, steaming the pavement over Meeting Street. We walk in stride for several blocks toward Delta’s, and from behind my sunglasses, I catch the tourists craning their necks at us.

Maybe Ruby’s right.

We should tone down our fashion. Dark suits. Sunglasses. Ink. Scowls. I could change more to blend in, but I won’t be caught dead in Madras shorts.

I grin at all the shit Ruby gives me. What I wear. What I say. How I’m a smug, protective dickhead. How she said she likes my dickhead.

Then I glower about our conversation yesterday. I felt sick, not telling Ruby the whole truth about Alena.

But what if, as I fear with everyone else, Ruby leaves me over what I did for Alena? It’s Ruby I fear losing the most, and that’s if Nash doesn’t kill?—

“What in the hell is bothering you?” Sire has the uncanny ability to dive into my soul, any soul, and find your burden.

“Rewind the past hour, and you’re up to speed. ”

“Stop lying.” He stops in front of an artisan selling Palmetto Roses. “Long before today. Even before Ruby worked for you. What is it? What makes you act so damned. Literally. And don’t say it’s Katya because I’m not buying it.”

God, if I could tell any brother, it’s Sire.

As unorthodox as he may be in the bedroom, he takes confessions, vows, and prayers seriously.

I’ve kept this damning secret for so long, and he’s my blood; he can sense it. It’s been a lonely hell, suffering in silence, unable to tell anyone. Even Alena and I rarely speak of it.

I nod to my right, and he joins me in the park by a historic church. Seems a fitting location for this confession.

Once no one’s in earshot, Sire guesses, “Who was she? Because you’d never cheat, so if you love Ruby, it’s no one now. It’s someone in your past because it’s usually a woman who rights or wrongs a man’s world, so who? Who did you get pregnant?”

“God, you’re obsessed with breeding.”

“Don’t mock me.” We stand, eye-to-eye, and Sire’s deadly serious. “We’re not talking about kinks and games. You know what heirs mean in our world. You know the blood that binds us, so is that it? You have a child with a woman we don’t know about?”

“No,” I sigh. “Thank god, no, there’s no child. Though … she’ll be a great mother one day.”

Sire steps back like he can sense it, like he knows this is my greatest sin. “Who?”

“Don’t hate me.”

“ Who ?”

“She asked me.”

“Who? Wren? Delphine? Who the fuck did you fuck?”

My throat tightens. I almost can’t say it.

I’ll never forget that night. It was tender and sweet, but it was forever ago, so why does it feel like a curse that will damn me forever? Why do I wish I could take it back, but never would?

Alena needed me. She asked for me. I stopped her tears, and we shared something special, but like a rainbow, it faded in minutes. It was never meant to last.

Why can’t people believe you can be with someone but not belong with them?

Alena belongs with Loch. I belong with Ruby. We know when we find our soulmate.

“Who, Aleksi?” Sire, born Sergei, lowers his voice, using my birth name, conjuring our past and pain, our bond that can’t be broken. “Please, God, tell me who, brother, and I promise I will forgive you.”

“Alena.”

I say it and let the chips fall like Sire’s jaw.

“She was twenty-one,” I explain, “and she asked me to be her first. She felt ugly, like no one loved her, and she was crying. I couldn’t let her feel that way and…”

I can’t read Sire’s eyes. They’re as blue as mine and as piercing and murderous.

“Alena didn’t love me,” I assure him, “and I didn’t love her. Not like I’m falling for Ruby or how you love Wren. It was different and?—”

“And Nash is going to fucking kill you.” He shakes his head.

“And I’ll let him.”

Sire seethes, “And I won’t let him, and that’s the problem, and you know it. This is going to tear us apart.” He clenches his teeth. “Does Loch know?”

“Only me, Alena, and now you know. That’s it, and the guilt has been making me sick for years, but I don’t regret it. How is that possible?”

He looks away, his stare trapped by the church spire. “ Sometimes, we make deals with devils. Sometimes, we make deals with angels. And both are impossible bonds to explain.”

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He turns back to me. “Just that I get it. I get how we do something for someone else with the best intentions, but the worst outcomes.”

“Goddamn,” I huff, “I hope you don’t counsel your parishioners like this because I want to jump off the Ravenel bridge. So, you’re saying to expect the worst outcome?”

“Nah.” He huffs sarcastically, “Maybe Nash, your best friend and our brother, will be perfectly fine that you fucked his daughter and took her virginity. And Loch will surely love that you fucked his wife first and lied about it.”

“You don’t have to be so crass.”

“Is there another way to spin this shit show?”

“What else can I do? You’re right. This will tear us apart if anyone finds out.”

If we pull this thread, our whole world will unravel, and Alena will know everything about her father, our brothers, my mom, and worse, my father. And nothing will destroy Nash more than if I put his daughter in harm’s way.

The less Alena knows, the safer she is.

That vow I can keep to Nash.

“Look.” Sire throws his arm around me. “I’ll give them both five rounds with you.

Nash gets to beat your ass into oblivion first. Then Loch.

Oh, and then Mom. She’ll fucking kill you.

But let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.

I’m here for you, brother. I’ll help you fix your fucking mess, literally. Just make me the same promise one day.”

“Why, holy fucker. Who’d you fuck? And you get a hall pass if it was Katya because I don’t care.”

It makes him chuckle. “I never touched Katya. Only for her initiation. But if I touch Ruby when it’s her turn to be tested?”

“I’ll cut your dick off and boil it in holy water.”

He smirks like the Devil. “Ah, but dear brother, my big dick would only rise again.”

He makes me laugh, and I need it. “Fuck off, Sergei.”

After our meeting at Delta’s, where I get an earful from the Queen of Snark, Vale Monroe, and the biggest confirmation that she will indeed be Nash’s queen one day soon, I’m emboldened to talk to my queen.

Sire turns one way to go home to Wren, and I turn another to go home to Ruby.

I’ve trusted her with so much already. I can trust her with this. Right? She won’t think I’m a perv or a predator?

If I tell her I had sex with my best friend’s daughter, my goddaughter, and took her virginity because she asked me to … Ruby will be wonderful with it.

Yeah, I’m wide awake.

I can smell the shit I’m shoveling, too.

But I have to do it. I’ll tell Ruby and stand in her wildfire until it’s burned out, and we move on.

Like Sire said: Believe.

It’s an enchanting walk from Delta’s to my home. Jasmine perfumes the air. The church bells ring with seven chimes. Pink azalea petals fall from their blooms, fluttering by on sidewalks where strangers say, “Hello.”

I like this city.

My mother chose it as our new home because she’s a history buff.

She said if a city like Charleston can go from one with an evil past of trafficking enslaved people, into a city of churches, hope, and freedom, then maybe we had a chance here, too.

Maybe it would be the last place my father would look for us.

It puts me in a pensive mood.

Then, a hopeful one.

Yes, then a little romantic when I spot purple lilacs blooming in my neighbor’s flower box.

Sorry, Mrs. Aiken. I snap a flower stem off. I’m trying to woo my woman.

I feel seventeen again, about to ask a girl to prom, though I never did, as I reach to unlock my iron gate…

And find it unlocked.

What the fuck?

I race to the front door. It yawns, eerie and wide-open, with Sparky at the threshold, yowling because…

Ruby’s gone.