CHAPTER EIGHT
MANE
When Mason inquires about why the guys need to replace a few of the bunnies, ones he never met because they’re housed below in the cells, my temper heats up. “Because our old group of bitches in heat decided they needed to make their mark on the club. They had this bright idea that they’d go from sluts to old ladies by puncturing a few condoms and getting themselves knocked up.”
“What?” Mason spits out, looking shocked. “Who?”
“Bruiser,” Ella says with a tsk, and if this was a cartoon, steam would be billowing from her ears.
“He’s the only victim we know of so far,” Hydro remarks. “But we’re keeping an eye on the situation.” Mason looks confused by that statement but doesn’t ask, he’s well aware that he isn’t in a place to have that knowledge, he hasn’t even accepted the position of prospect yet so there are things he can’t be told.
“That’s preposterous,” Mason mumbles. “In a way it’s sad because it shows where they think they belong in society. What’s Bruiser going to do?”
“Raise his kid, if it’s his,” Ella answers. “We won’t know that until a DNA test can be done.”
“What about the mom?” he continues. “What’ll happen to her?”
“That’ll be up to Bruiser to decide,” Hydro maintains, leaving no room for argument. “He’s the one who was the most impacted by this little display of mutiny they imposed. She’ll have choices, let’s just hope she makes the right one.”
“I feel a bit like a hypocrite,” Mason discloses.
“How so?” I ask, not understanding why.
“I was elated to learn Julia wasn’t around anymore to torture anyone, but I find myself feeling sympathetic to this bunny who betrayed Bruiser and the club.”
“It’s two sides of the coin,” Hydro claims. “They’re both psycho, just in different ways. One was murderous and the other just plain stupid. You can’t trap a man into committing to you and patching you into the club. Things don’t work that way in our world. Julia signed her death warrant the day she started killing innocent people, but for Bruiser, her betrayal was just as profound. He’s a family man, but she’s not his old lady, she wasn’t even a prospect for one, so what she did has him spiraling.”
He’s always wanted a family of his own, but like our fathers and uncles, he planned to find an old lady and then have children. Now, any woman who comes into his life will have to understand that he’s a package deal, and that may take him some time to find someone like that. There aren’t a lot of females who want to take on raising a child they didn’t give birth to and to me, that’s unfair to Bruiser.
“Because if she’s capable of this, what else could she do?” I mutter. “She’s a traitor to not only him, but the club as a whole. We trusted her to follow the rules set out to her before she ever joined. She knew what was expected of her and she agreed. Then she spit on all of us by joining Doc and the other bunnies with that preposterous plan. They ruined not only their lives, but it was a domino effect that trickled up to our founding club.”
“Yeah. Kruger and Stella are ecstatic about being grandparents, but are also livid at how it came about,” Ella surmises. “They’ll love this baby no matter how he or she came to be, but they want justice for their boy.”
Mason has a look on his face I can’t fully decipher. Then he starts to speak and I realize why I fell for him. He’s honorable, loyal, and just an all-around good person. “While I don’t like how the initiations will occur, as long as I’m not required to participate, I can’t tell y’all what to do. I haven’t decided about becoming a prospect and I’m not a member, so I know I don’t really have a voice in any of this. Hydro, you being willing to even check to see if there are workarounds is greatly appreciated. As for the bunnies who betrayed the club, especially Bruiser? In my mind, they’re as bad as Julia was and they deserve whatever the club decides to do in regard to their punishment. Whether that’s being removed from the club or otherwise. Choices we make always have consequences.”
“They fucked around, and now, they’re finding out the hard way that we’re not the ones to be crossed,” Hydro advises.
“It’s not as if we hid who we are and what we’re capable of,” Ella defends. But there’s no need for it, Mason knows the club aren’t bible thumpers. If he truly wants to be immersed in my life and become a brother to these men, he’s going to have to do some serious soul searching and get past some of his hang ups.
Otherwise, he’ll have to settle for being a friend to the DreamCatchers.
* * *
Monday sucked big brass monkey balls.
I didn’t see Mason the entire day as he completed his paperwork and got the rundown of our daily operations. We may not be on the road or rescuing someone every day of the week, but we have plenty to do. There’s research done on every call, sometimes we’re too late but we can’t go into a situation blind. Those are the call outs that hurt the most. Unfortunately, in the beginning, we went in without all of the facts only to be brought into the middle of a tumultuous divorce where the woman wanted to get a new identity so that her husband couldn’t find her and take the kids. I’ll never understand a woman who is so angry with a man for whatever transgression she believes he’s committed that she’s willing to keep a good father from her babies. I understand the anger—divorce is hard on one’s soul and can rip your heart out, but there’s no need in punishing their kids for what’s happened between them.
It’s an adult issue. I find it sad that the children in these situations are the ones who pay the ultimate price. They’re like a rope in the midst of a tug of war.
“Mane,” Ella calls my name as she walks into my office. “Your updated certification arrived in the mail. Jeez, lady, how many educational hours did you have to put in to get these credentials?”
“About sixty hours of continuing ed classes,” I answer, going through the file that was in my inbox when I arrived this morning. “You do the same thing every year for your social services certificate.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t just graduate,” she harrumphs, shaking her head. “How often are you going to have to do this?”
“That all depends,” I remark.
“On what?” she asks, placing the manilla envelope in her hands on the edge of my desk.
“On if there are any new developments I’m interested in,” I return, hiding my smirk. Ella hates classes and loathes tests even more. She’ll never be able to grasp why I take as many as I do and did when they weren’t a requirement for my degree. The human mind is a mysterious thing and if I don’t take every opportunity presented to me to learn more about scientific and neurological discoveries, how can I perform my job properly here at Kings?
“Anyway, I want to talk about that file I put in your inbox last night. It was a last minute entry, but I have an eerie feeling about this one,” Ella conveys. Ella’s always had an acuteness when it comes to these things, so when she says she has a ‘bad feeling’ we pay attention.
“What makes you feel wonky about this particular case, Ella?” I’ve learned throughout the years to ask a myriad of questions, it’s the only way to get to the bottom of her gut instincts and get her to talk it out.
“I find it odd, that yesterday morning we helped Mason reclaim his identity and then late last night a case from his hometown pinged in my inbox and was marked as urgent, Mane. I don’t believe in coincidences, and this is a colossal one.”
“That is… odd. Ella, do you think somebody is watching for his name to go into the system?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. We need to do a lot of research before we jump into this one.”
“I have a suggestion,” I start. “What if we ask Mason if he still has any contacts back home that he trusts and can have look into this woman and her homelife?”
“I considered that,” she sighs as she takes a seat in one of the armchairs that rests on the opposite side of my desk. “But I don’t want to put him in a position he’s not ready for being in yet. He’s still wrapping his mind around rejoining the society he was forced to abandon. He hasn’t been in contact with anyone back home since he left. They’ll have a lot of questions and it isn’t fair to him that we force his hand and put him in a position where he has to explain himself when he’s still trying to suss out where he fits in.”
“Suss out?” I snort. “Are you trying to work on your vocabulary?” She flips me off and tilts her head backward, closing her eyes. “You alright?”
“I’m just fucking tired,” she tells me, expelling a huffed out, defeated groan. “The emails that come through, the ones that aren’t legit, take resources away from the ones needing us most. It’s time consuming weeding out the fake ones from the real ones.”
“I think we should call a team meeting and let everyone go over this file,” I suggest.
“Yeah,” she agrees, lifting herself up from the chair as if she’s decrepit. It’s the first time I’ve taken a good look at her and notice the dark circles under her eyes.
“You need to get some sleep, Ella.”
“I’ll sleep when there’s time, Mane. We’re getting an influx of requests, and they’re on opposite sides of the country. It’s almost like someone is attempting to separate us.”
“That’s a problem. We can’t split up,” I impress upon her. “It’s too dangerous to go in for a rescue with only half our team.”
“That’s another thing we need to discuss. It may be time to start searching for qualified people to add a secondary team to our roster.”
“Bring in outsiders? We don’t do that, Ella.”
Just then, there’s a knock on the door and I see my dad, as well as a few of my uncles, standing in the doorway with their arms crossed. “Don’t call in strangers, call in your brothers and sisters,” Dad interjects. Ella and I turn and look at each other, a silent conversation taking place between us.
“Could it work?” I silently ask.
“I don’t see why not,” she answers.
“What do we have to lose?” I question.
“Nothing… absolutely nothing,” she responds.