Page 11 of Bandit’s Bounty (Iron Howlers MC #3)
Chapter Ten
Bandit
“ F ucking hell,” I bellow when I realize that Raine left the house with Dane. Reaching out to Cyrus, he calls Corbin and the next thing I know, we’re supposed to head to the Spiked Raiders’ clubhouse once again.
I swear to all that’s holy, I’m going to kill that motherfucker if he lets a strand of hair on Raine’s head get damaged. It’s bad enough I don’t know the enemies to go after for hurting her but dealing with that numbnuts on top of it all is almost more than I can bear right now.
“Calm down,” Sloane says, causing me to quirk a brow at her. “What? It’s what men all over the world say to women when they’re being dramatic, Bandit. I figured I’d see if it worked on y’all because it sure as hell doesn’t work on us.”
Her deadpan delivery has me chuckling even though I’m still madder than a wet hen right now at my sister. She swore she wouldn’t leave and even though Mom and Dad are now home, when he came over to check on Raine, Mom made me and Dad leave the house! So, to come back and find out that Raine is out with Dane and my own mother allowed it has me feeling all sorts of disgruntled.
“Yeah, it doesn’t work too well on males either,” I finally admit. “C’mon, kiss me because I’m headed to their clubhouse. Since I don’t know how it’s going to pan out, you stay here, okay?”
She huffs out a sigh, obviously frustrated at my decree, but leans in and kisses me.
“Just remember, he’s her mate,” she reminds me as she pulls back.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, stalking out the door and to my bike.
Stalking into the Spiked Raiders’ clubhouse, I see Raine next to Dane, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. "Raine," I call out, suddenly furious with her. "Why did you leave the house with him ?"
"Mom knew I was with Dane, Bandit, you can calm down before you give yourself an aneurysm," Raine snaps. "Is that why you're here? You're mad I didn't stay or let you know I was leaving the house?"
Dane leans in and whispers, “Raine, baby, calm down.”
"I don't want to calm down," she retorts, staring at Dane. "I want to know why my brother is here, ready to do his dictator impression."
"Dictator impression," Cyrus snorts. "Sounds about right."
I glare at Cyrus before turning it on Dane and demanding, "You wanna let my sister go?"
"Considering she's my mate and she's not rejecting me, the answer to that is no," Dane tells me. Despite my rage over the situation, I have to admire the fact that he’s not backing down from me. Lesser males have done so in the past.
Maybe he’s worthy of her, my wolf whispers.
"Raine," I growl out, still unhappy with everything, especially the fact my wolf seems to be on that fucker’s side now. "You wanna step away from him so that we can fuckin' talk?"
"Bandit, just tell me what it is you want to tell me. We were going to be eating pizza and that got interrupted. I'm hungry and I want to get back to Dane's so we can watch Meg 2. If you want to talk, then let's get on with it," Raine retorts.
Corbin and Justice snort and chuckle before Abel states, "For a human, I gotta admit, she's ballsy."
"Well, you grow up with a big brother like Bandit and you learn to be," Raine huffs, not taking her glare away from me. "Well," she drawls out.
"We need to know what the hell happened last night," I grunt out. "You need to tell us so we can deal with the situation."
I see my sister stiffen and sense the wounded hurt emanating off of her, but I’m puzzled as to her emotional reaction. Before I can probe further, Dane snarls while putting himself in front of Raine, and snarls, "No offense, Bandit, but you need to leave. I'm not going to let you come in here and force Raine to talk when she's not ready. You want to know something we all want to fuckin' know, but I ain't forcing her to talk. Nor am I gonna let anyone else."
"Cyrus, brother, you might want to get your people out of here," Corbin warns as he closely watches Dane.
"I'm not leaving my sister," I announce, stubbornly digging in my heels.
"Bandit," Cyrus growls. "She's with her mate. He's not going to hurt her. Let's give him space right now. We'll find out what happened, Brother, I promise."
I’m grinding my teeth so hard it’s a miracle I don’t crack my molars, but I finally manage to get out, "Fine."
"Bandit," Raine calls from where she’s still plastered next to Dane. "Love you."
"Love you too, Rainy," I mutter, my tone automatically softening. "Call me later and let me know you're good."
"Okay," Raine replies.
As a group, me and the rest of my brothers leave the Spiked Raiders’ clubhouse. While my need for knowledge is still unappeased, I grudgingly respect Dane for standing up for Raine. It scored him a few brownie points in my book. I wouldn’t allow anyone to push Sloane if the situation was reversed and she had been attacked, so I understand. I don’t like it at all, but I understand.
Back at the clubhouse, the brothers and I are kicking back and drinking a few beers when Cyrus comes flying out of his office, an indecipherable look on his face that has fear skittering through me. Seeing as I’m a shifter, as well as the club’s VP, it’s not often I face that particular emotion.
“Cyrus?” I call out, jumping out of my seat and standing on my feet as the urgency on Cyrus’s face indicates to me that whatever’s going on is serious and we’ve gotta move. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure, exactly, but Corbin called and we’re meeting him at the old spot,” Cyrus advises. “Seems someone named Brady contacted Raine.”
My blood boils because I never liked that fucker for my sister. There’s always been something slimy about him. Not only that, but after they dated for a bit, Raine started pulling away from everyone. Finding out that he was abusive put the cherry on top, however, and put him on my short list of people I wanna destroy.
Her mate should get first dibs, my wolf says. You’d want that if it was Sloane in the same position.
I snarl at his words, even though I know he’s correct. As Raine’s mate, Dane should be allowed the first opportunity to strike out and hurt the fucker who tried to subjugate my sister. Hell, he nearly succeeded. She was so broken when she first came home and she’s just now showing signs of who she normally is which is probably due to finding her mate.
“Coming with you,” I apprise, my words short, clipped, and to the point. Granted, as the clubs VP, I should be by my president’s side no matter what the circumstances are, but just in case he thought he was going by himself, I need to nip that in the bud and voice it out loud, letting him know that’s simply not happening. Not on my watch.
“Thinking as many as possible need to go along with us, while the women stay here,” he advises. “Turtle, Lucky, Pinto, Spider, and the prospects will stay behind to provide protection for the women, children, and clubhouse. Harmony and Electra are also doing their witchy thing to make sure nothing can penetrate our wards and come onto our property without being detected and us being made aware of it.”
I smirk at his use of ‘witchy thing’ because until his mate came along, he, and like most of us, had a notable aversion with respect to any of the witches due to the problems we’ve had throughout the years with the tainted, blood witches.
Thankfully, between the two clubs collaborating, within our ranks we have elemental witches at our disposal; fire, water, and earth, although each of them also have some other additional gifts bestowed upon them by the goddesses for reasons unknown to us. However, I feel like with all of the new and old threats against us, there are purposes behind those endowments.
“Let’s ride, brothers,” Jabba calls out, then tacking on to his prior statement, saying, “trust your instincts and be mindful that we don’t really know what sort of situation we’re walking into. I feel somewhat confident that Corbin has some of his guys shifting and going in their animal form, so I won’t suggest that we do the same. This isn’t follow the leader. However, if shit goes sideways, do what you gotta do to protect our Pres and VP.”
“Check your ammo first,” Prowler, our SAA, adds.
I nearly roll my eyes at Jabba’s words, simply because both Cyrus and I are more than capable of holding our own when it comes to nuisances. I get what he’s saying, but while we hold the top officer positions, we’re no better than our brothers as far as I’m concerned. Every single brother deserves the same sort of protection as we do. Following behind my brothers, I add a few clips to my pockets, even though if push comes to shove, I’ll shift into my wolf and use my teeth and claws. I am the weapon when in my wolf form. Whereas my instincts are good while in my human form, when he’s in charge, I’m like my brothers; deadly.