Page 113 of Caution to the Wind

“With me?”

It had always been risky coming to Entrance when I was still loosely affiliated with the triad, but I honestly hadn’t thought Axe-Man would let the club run me out of town, let alone that he’d reallywantthem to. Though, after a serial killer had put his hands on Cleo, I guess I couldn’t blame him for wanting “the most dangerous thing” he’d ever known on the first train out of town.

I just didn’t know how I was going to do that. There was no way I could ride my bike in this condition, and…

Harleigh Rose’s hand on my leg beneath the covers jerked me out of my spiral. When I looked up at her in surprise, her head was cocked, and her gaze was considering.

“Not with you,” she said slowly. “Foryou.”

I blinked dumbly at her.

“Listen, I get you’renewhere and everything, but we’re The motherfucking Fallen. No one hurts one of ours without serious retribution. Especially when it’s one of our women.”

“Didn’t I overhear you say two weeks ago that you’d happily run me out of town if Axe-Man wanted that?” I asked, my tongue thick and numb in my mouth.

I thought I might’ve been in shock, not from the attack, but from the mere idea that I might be even loosely enfolded in The Fallen.

No, not The Fallen.

In the family Axe-Man had made here in Entrance.

Her smile was a thin slice, red as blood. She was Zeus Garro’s daughter, and she looked it at that moment with violence in her eyes. “You might be the girl who sent Axe-Man to prison, but you gotta understand something. I was the girl who stabbed my now-fiancé in the chest. Bea was the girl with her own stalker psychopath. Loulou was the girl who shot her own bastard of a father in the head.” She shrugged as if such things were normal, a rite of passage, and maybe in the biker babe handbook they were. “If Axe-Man forgives you, who are we to hold the past against you?”

“I doubt he forgives me,” I muttered, but there wasn’t my normal conviction behind it because I was reeling. “I think I have a concussion.”

Harleigh Rose nodded. “You do. And he might not forgive you, I dunno. He’s a private guy, and he doesn’t share much. But if he’s throwing down for you, it’s for a reason.”

“Probably for Cleo. I bet she’s freaking out. And…well, he’s just a good guy.” Thebestguy. My off-white knight. Always and forever the hero, even when it was to his detriment, even when people (like me) didn’t deserve it.

“He is,” she agreed as voices swelled downstairs. “But trust me, girl, these bikers don’t do anythin’ they don’t wanna do.”

“He’s protective, and those instincts have to be blaring after what happened to Cleo,” I explained. “Trust me, if Axe-Man wasn’t such a good guy, he’d probably be wishing the triad had killed me and saved him the trouble.”

“You are the human personification of a pain in my fuckin’ ass,” Axe-Man said as he stepped into the room and crossed to the bed, arms folding across his chest as he studied me with a glower. “But no man who’s been to war wishes death on anyone just ’cause they can’t stand them.”

I looked over his shoulder to shoot Harleigh Rose an I-told-you-so look, but she only ducked her head and smiled.

“It’s not just about you, though,” he continued, ignoring my impudence like he usually did. “Nova and I got a call from Jae Pil. Seems the triad went after Sara, Chloe, and Jae tonight too. Figure they got lucky seein’ me leave your room on their way outta town and thought they’d extend the bloody love letter to the club by writin’ you into it.”

“Are they okay?” I asked at the same time as Harleigh Rose did.

“Jae’s got a broken fuckin’ hand that’ll take him outta commission at the shop ’til it heals. They roughed up Sara and Chloe, but not as bad as you. Bumps and bruises, mostly. They’re at King and Cressida’s house with the doc. They’ll be okay. Truth is, they targeted the club, but they specifically wanted to pissmeoff by goin’ after the civilians workin’ at Street Ink.”

“Fuckin’ cowards,” Harleigh Rose hissed.

Axe-Man grunted his agreement, but his eyes were like nails driven through my skull, pinning me back to the pillows. “Why didn’t they kill you tonight, Mei?”

I sighed, but the act hurt my ribs so much that I winced and had to take a moment to catch my breath. In that time, Zeus Garro entered the room, his presence taking up all the air in the space that wasn’t already occupied with Axe-Man’s palpable frustration. He was followed by Axe-Man’s friend Bat Stephens and a red-headed man covered in tattoos whose leather vest was festooned in a myriad of patches, one of them reading “Enforcer” and another bearing the shape of the Grim Reaper.

So this was the infamous Priest McKenna.

I’d met a lot of criminals in my twenty-five years, but the dead look in those eyes made a sharp shiver zip my spine up a little straighter.

It was hard to imagine this dead-eyed biker with the pretty blonde Bea, but in some way, it made me relax to do so. Cleo was filled with light, but she’d always been drawn to the dark, and it helped to know she’d still found that in Bea. Helped to know Bea and I had something in common and that Cleo hadn’t just…become a new person with new types of friends in my absence.

“I’d like to hear the answer to that question, too,” Zeus told me as he took up position at the foot of the bed.

It was a large room––peaked ceilings, French doors open slightly to let in the breeze of a patio, big enough to fit a California king bed and oversized furniture to fit Axe-Man’s Viking warrior size––but suddenly, it felt too small.