Page 42 of Deacon (The Sovereign Mountain #3)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

DEACON

I go to the blacksmith shop. It’s icy cold, and all the metalworking materials I left after making her chastity belt are still laid out. The smooth-topped fence stake still sits on the anvil from the night I fucked her with it.

My mind goes back to when she told me Aiden smashed her collection. I’ve heard a lot of sad stories in my life, but nothing that tugged at my heart like that, especially in the context of everything else she’s told me, how scared she’s been her entire life.

I pick up the stake. It brings back the memory of that night—of Freya draped over the anvil, firelight glimmering over her beautiful body.

My fingers tighten.

Beneath all the good she brings out in me, I’m still the same animal who drove metal into Henderson’s skull, again and again, long after he was dead. All those years of torment poured out of me. I should have hit him the minute Phil died, but I let it build until there was so much bad blood, nothing but death could fix it.

That was when I realized there was something different about me.

Something dark .

It lifts its head, sniffing the air. I bring the stake to my face and inhale. Just metal, nothing else. Head blank, I run my tongue along it, and that’s when I taste a faint sweetness.

My eyes snap open.

It’s time to pin that motherfucker to a wall like one of the bugs he crushed to dust from her collection.

It’s almost dark when I step out of the blacksmith shop. Jack went out and rode the property. He came back, certain that with the number of trucks on the McClaine land, they took Freya to the farmhouse at the top of the hill. He went by the Hatfield property to find their house locked up and the lights off. The McClaine house is a fortress with the best vantage point.

Now, he sits on the porch, hat low and cigarette tip glinting. Stu rolls lazily at his feet. Ryder Ranch is quiet even though everyone is on high alert. The wranglers are stationed along the border. Andy has his best at the gates.

I hear the vehicles approach and move to the edge of the driveway. A black truck pulling a horse trailer comes up first. Riding on either side of it, at an easy posting trot, are Gerard Sovereign and Westin Quinn. The silver Sovereign Mountain logos on their hats and side of the trailer glint in the barn lights.

Jensen swings out of the truck, eyes tired and shirt damp with sweat. Westin pulls his horse to a halt. He’s a tall man, a year or two younger than me, with a grim face and bright, piercing eyes. When he needed me most, I was there. Now, he’s back to return the favor.

Gerard circles him and pulls to a halt. He’s the only man I know who’s bigger than I am. Not by much though. His body is broad, his shoulders like cinder blocks. Even the horse he rides, Shadow, is a giant of an animal.

Slowly, he takes off his hat and gives me a long stare.

“Get me back alive,” he says. “I got a pregnant wife at home.”

I nod, jerking my head at the house. They both dismount, and one of Sovereign’s cowboys gets out to bring the horses into the barn. We head up to the front porch and go inside. Jack Russell is in the kitchen, taking down a bottle of whiskey and setting glasses out on the counter.

“Westin,” I say.

He glances up. Over the summer, he found himself up against some powerful men, ones who hurt his wife. I was there, helping, the night he killed them all. Since then, there’s been an unspoken bond of brotherhood. Out of anyone, he’ll understand what I’m feeling.

“Cigarette?”

He nods, following me through the side door to the porch. I shut it behind me and light two cigarettes, passing him one.

“Jack thinks Freya is in the McClaine farmhouse,” I say.

Westin inhales, eyes glinting below his hat. “We can’t attack if she’s inside.”

I shake my head. My throat feels tight.

“There’s something else,” he says. “What?”

“She thinks she’s pregnant.”

Westin glances at me sharply. “By you?”

“What the fuck? Yeah, by me.”

Desperation cracks my voice. Westin puts his hand on my shoulder.

“I get it,” he says. “We’ll get her back. They don’t say all roads lead to Sovereign Mountain for nothing—you’ve got us. Between the five of us, we can figure this shit out. Okay?”

I nod, wordless.

“You eat today?” he asks.

“Not since early morning.”

Westin stubs out his cigarette and pulls the door open. “Go shower, get some clean clothes on. We’ll make some food and get a plan together.”

He’s right—I need to be sharp and have a clear head. I move through the bodies in my kitchen without speaking and go upstairs. With the bedroom door shut, everything is quiet.

I go to the bed and sink down. The pillow, smeared with a bit of blood, stares back at me.

I pick it up and bring it to my face .

Sweet, warm vanilla. Like home, the home I never had.

The home she’ll give me.

Without her, I’m not a man. I’m a shell, a machine made of nothing but hurt and scars. I can fight, can hit back better than I know how to breathe, but to be whole, I need her. She’s the heart in my chest. She breathed life into my empty body.

I set the pillow aside. One of her fern-green ribbons sits on the bedside table. I shove it in my pocket before I go into the bathroom and strip my shirt off. The fear is ebbing away—maybe because I have the best men I can get downstairs, maybe because I know there’s no world where I don’t get her back.

My eyes lock with my reflection.

I’m not the man I was a week ago, a month. Freya has changed me, deep inside. There’s no confusion about who I am.

John, the boy who got kicked around, is gone. Now, there’s only Deacon Ryder, a man who doesn’t question himself.

I want blood the way I needed it the night I put a stake into Henderson’s temple. I can be a gentle beast for her, but not for the rest of the world. Whatever son of a bitch fathered me put something in my veins that’s stronger than conditioning.

I’ve always wondered who he was, what he was like. Now, I think I’m looking at him. I’ve tried to change, to not be this brutal kind of man, but I always come back to myself in the end.

Numbly, I open the drawer and take out a silver chain, threading Freya’s ring on it and hanging it around my neck. Then, I turn on the shower and let it run while I take out the buzzer and run it over my head until there’s nothing left but a dark shadow.

There it is: the haunted dark eyes of the man who burnt the dead body of his brother, standing drenched in hot blood, watching the funeral pyre disappear into the sky.

Cain, left to wander the Earth.

I get in the shower and wash quickly. I’m fastening my belt and pulling a Henley over my head when I hear a faint shout from outside. My pulse spikes, and I pull on my boots and move down the stairs. Jack stands in the front door, body relaxed, rifle laying over his thigh. He glances at me and jerks his head, disappearing onto the porch.

I follow him.

“Westin and Jensen went out,” he says. “There’s a man crossing the fence line.”

I scan the darkness, gaze fixing on bobbing lights near Deacon’s Hill. “Don’t shoot,” I say.

“They won’t,” he says. “They’re bringing him in.”

I alight the steps and watch the lights bob closer. Voices rise and fall. Three figures come into view: Westin and Jensen, a limp-shouldered man walking between them. They get closer, and I can see his hands are tied in front of him and he’s walking with difficulty.

Jensen steadies him as they reach the bottom step.

Bittern Hatfield.

He drags his head up. His skin is moonlight white and dewy with sweat.

“Jesus, you look like shit,” I say.

His chest heaves. “Can’t breathe good.”

I jerk my head. “Get him inside. He’s no good to us dead.”

They drag him into the kitchen, and I watch from the hallway while Jensen sets him down and gives him a glass of water and a shot of moonshine. Sovereign stands in the doorway between the kitchen and the porch, arms crossed. When he sees Bittern, he narrows his eyes and studies him without speaking.

“Where’s Freya?” I ask.

The kitchen goes quiet. Bittern drags his eyes to mine.

“She’s at the McClaine’s,” he manages. “She asked me to help her. I don’t know how.”

There’s a short silence. I sink down in the chair opposite him.

“Aiden put a tracker in my truck,” I say. “He trapped me.”

Bittern wipes his drenched face with his palm. “Yeah, he did. He didn’t expect you to leave so soon, but he had everything he needed with him. Ryland had his truck parked at the pull-off from the night before. ”

I take a moment to digest that. Aiden disgusts me, but he’s smart. I underestimated how smart.

“So how do I know this isn’t a trap too?” I ask.

He shrugs.

I take my pistol out and set it on the table. “Maybe I should just shoot you right now.”

His eyes drag up, and a chill goes down my spine. There’s weariness in them I’ve never seen before. It’s as if, deep down, in the fibers of his body, he’s ready to go out at any moment.

“You can do that,” he sighs. “Just get Freya out. She doesn’t deserve the things Aiden does to her.”

The mood in the room shifts. I glance at Westin, and he’s giving me a faintly disgusted look, like I’m playing with a wounded animal.

“What does Aiden do to her?” I ask.

Bittern shakes his head once. “Makes her cry. I always say, don’t fucking make Frey cry, but all I get for it is the shit beat out of me.”

I get up and take a cigarette from the everything drawer. He leans back in the chair, putting it to his lips with shaking fingers. I snap the lighter, he inhales.

“Does he do anything else?”

Bittern glances up. “If you’re asking if he touches her, he doesn’t,” he says. “He thinks about it, but he doesn’t.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Sovereign from the corner.

The corner of Bittern’s mouth turns up, but there’s no humor in his face.

“Nobody hates Aiden more than Aiden,” he says.

I don’t know what that means, but I have bigger concerns. I sink down in the chair beside him. “You say you want to help. What do you want in return?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. Keep me here, send me back. Either way, I’m dying.”

“The fuck’s wrong with you, other than being a pill addict?” Westin says.

Bittern goes quiet for a second. Then, he takes a drag. “Got fucked up in the mines,” he says. “Nowhere for men to work but the factory and the mines. Nothing for men to do after but die. Get pills to help you there, if you’re lucky. I’m ready to go.”

The kitchen is dead quiet. I get the feeling Bittern hasn’t spoken this many words in a long time.

“Does Freya know you’re here?” I ask.

“No, I told her I couldn’t help her. But I came anyway.”

“Why?” I press.

“Because if anybody deserves to make it out, it’s Freya,” Bittern says. “If you’re going to save her, I gotta go back and pretend like I wasn’t here. You can’t shoot into that house with her in it. She says she’s pregnant.”

Everyone looks right at me.

“Yeah, not sure, but likely,” I say.

“You know, they got a test for that now,” says Jensen.

I give him a look. “Thanks.”

Bittern clears his throat. “I’m going back,” he says. “I think I can get Freya out, but I can’t get her further than the land where the easement was supposed to go. Don’t have the lungs for it.”

“We can have someone get her there,” Jack says from where he leans against the wall. “I’ll go and Westin can spot me. Unless you wanted to go, Deacon?”

I shake my head. “I want someone to take her as far from that house as possible. There won’t be anybody alive by morning. She doesn’t need to see that.”

Sovereign clears his throat, pushing off the doorway. “Let’s get moving,” he says. “It’s already nine.”

I look at Bittern, studying him. His eyes focus for the first time, and a chill goes down my spine. He might not be her blood, but he is a piece of Freya. He looks at me with her haunted eyes. There’s a deep trauma bond between them.

I lean in. He doesn’t break eye contact.

“When this is done, you’re going to rehab,” I say. “You’re getting help, getting whatever is fucked up in your lungs taken care of. And if you try to leave wherever the fuck I lock you up before you’re stone cold sober, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes. We clear? ”

His lack of reaction tells me everything I need to know.

He fears death, but he loves Freya enough to face it. I admire him for that, and I’ll keep my promise and do my best to save him.

“I got it,” he whispers.

I stand up and pour a shot. “Alright, let’s make a plan.”

He clears his throat, hitting his chest with his fist. “There’s one more thing you should probably know about Aiden, Freya, and me,” he says. “Everything makes a little more sense in light of it.”

I sit back down. “Go on.”