Page 20 of My Ruthless Alpha (Alpha Outlaws Club #5)

When Ethan and I pulled up together, the bar seemed busier than usual, but luckily, the guys already had a table and put in a quick order to get us started while the game was underway.

We sat closer to the bar than usual so we could have a better view of the crummy television to check out who was winning before getting down to business, but even so, it was hard to hear the announcers over all the noise.

“Damn,” Ezra muttered, glancing over his shoulder at the full bar behind us. “This place is so goddamn busy, you can’t hear a thing.”

“I wonder why,” Sebastian agreed, taking in the nearly packed place. “Even on a Friday night, it’s never this busy.”

I hummed and looked around, noticing how gruff the crowd looked while they played pool, laughing and talking amongst themselves. Still, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when it came to the type of clientele out for the night. They seemed to fit the bill of who you’d expect to show up at a rundown bar.

It wasn’t exactly the ideal place for a meeting—that much was clear.

Honestly, I was surprised we didn’t see more nights like that…with guys that seemed rougher around the edges.

We were pretty familiar with the locals, given how often we’d been there over the years, but I could tell that group of guys weren’t from around there.

“There must be an event going on nearby or something,” Levi said, voicing his observations while he took a swig of his beer.

“Let’s just hope they don’t scratch our vehicles on the way out,” Jacob muttered, shaking his head before returning his focus to the game.

Try as we might, paying more attention to the screen than the rowdy crowd around us was nearly impossible. Between their laughter and the obnoxious clank of pool balls hitting each other, it was almost maddening in comparison to how quiet the place normally was.

Still, I didn’t want it to detract from our night, even if it was distracting.

After a few drinks in, Ethan leaned back in his chair and lifted a brow in my direction as if trying to seem casual. “What do you think of Red?”

I gave him a vaguely incredulous look. “You mean Sydney?”

He chuckled. “Same thing.”

Rolling my eyes, I huffed. “She’s fine…nice. Faye knows her better than I do, but I’ve never had a problem with her. Why?”

“No reason,” he shrugged, putting on a nonchalant air. “Just curious. Does she always blush so much?”

I scoffed and shook my head. “She wouldn’t have been blushing if you were just normal with her. What did you think would happen when you pointed out her hair color?”

Ethan chuckled, feigning innocence. “I thought she’d take a joke, y’know? She seems pretty sensitive.”

“Even if she is, that wasn’t your smoothest move,” I told him directly, not mincing words.

“What, Ethan not having a filter? That’s not surprising,” Sebastian chastised him with a faint grin.

“And he wonders why he’s still single,” Levi poked as he lifted a brow, gauging his reaction.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I’m single by choice. You should’ve seen how mushy Beau was with Faye earlier. It’s sickeningly sweet.”

“By choice, my ass,” Jacob returned, laughing to himself. “Maybe if you tried being sweet for once, you wouldn’t be forced into bachelorhood.”

Unable to help ourselves, the rest of us chuckled, well aware that it was at Ethan’s expense. He may have been our good friend, and we’d all be willing to do anything for him, but sometimes he did deserve the ribbing.

“Gah, you guys are the worst.”

We laughed more at his vaguely annoyed reaction, forgetting about the game until I caught the sound of footsteps behind us.

Glancing over my shoulder, I found a handful of bigger guys looking down at me. They were all wearing dark jeans, heavy leather boots, and some sort of leather vest or jacket with an insignia I didn’t recognize. But regardless of that fact, it didn’t take a genius to realize they were bikers.

“You guys mind keeping it down? Some of us are trying to watch the game on that shitty tv there,” the one in front said in a gruff voice as he pointed to the screen.

Realizing we had been a bit loud but nothing egregious compared to the rest of the patrons, we all brought it down and nodded.

“Yeah, no worries, man,” Ezra said before taking another swig of his beer. “Busy night.”

The guy gave a low grunt in response, nodding a few times. “Yeah, it is. I’m surprised to see the lot of you pretty boys here tonight. Doesn’t seem like your type of crowd.”

At once, a mutual bristle moved through the table at his words, especially at the sight of his amused grin.

Paying them a bit more attention since he made the comment, I looked over the group again and realized there was a handful of wolf scents mixed in with the humans. That immediately caught my interest as my brows furrowed slightly.

What were wolves doing with humans? And why were they all at the bar that night in particular?

It wasn’t unusual for shifters to try blending in with human crowds, yet I couldn’t help but wonder if they knew. If they were aware, or if it was just them sinking into the background and using their biker image as a cover-up.

“I don’t think you know much about our crowd to speak on it,” Levi interjected, giving them an assessing once-over.

Even if those guys were big, I didn’t sense a single alpha between the few shifters there, and their strength wouldn’t hold a candle to the group of us. They had no idea what tree they were barking up.

“No? You seem more like the type to drive fancy sports cars and get weekly manicures,” the ringleader taunted, to which the others broke out into belly laughs as if it were comedic gold.

Ezra’s gaze became more heated then, and I knew it was taking him a lot to hold back. “Do you guys have a problem or something?”

The guy in the front chuckled and took a step forward. “…or something.”

There was a moment—a brief pause—when nobody moved. Nobody said a thing while we assessed the situation, gauging whether things were really heading in that direction.

“All right…” Sebastian said, putting his hands up in an attempt to diffuse the tension building. “There’s no need to escalate anything.”

The man chuckled and gave us all a once-over again, grinning beneath his greying mustache. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For us to all hold hands and compliment each other instead, right?” He laughed again while the others egged him on, voice gruff. “Pretty boys like yourselves must come here to make you feel all manly before you go back home and take turns—”

Ezra’s fist clipped the man’s jaw hard as he stood in the blink of an eye, sending him reeling back with a loud grunt. His eyes were dark with barely restrained anger as he stood his ground.

Once the shock left the other guys, they zeroed in on us and rushed forward.

“Here we go…” I mumbled under my breath as we all got up, not prepared to be beaten down by their retaliation.

At once, with the scrape of chairs and several angry grunts, the bikers swung at us, trying to land their blows. The humans were easy to bypass as their reflexes were much slower, but the shifters did prove to be a bit more challenging to handle in such a small space, given their size.

The bar erupted in a sea of chaos. A full-fledged bar brawl broke out, with punch after punch being thrown and some of the other bar-goers joining in.

I heard Ethan laugh from beside me after receiving a fist to the face, spitting out a mouthful of blood as an antagonistic gleam shadowed his face with a grin while he looked at his assailant with his fists up. “Is that all you’ve got?”

He was in his glory, along with Ezra, when he grabbed another man by his vest and hit his face repeatedly, able to let out that anger on a deserving target.

It was all happening so quickly, and I had half a mind to try and stop it, but the moment one of the shifters grabbed my collar, I swung reflexively, stunning him with an elbow to the face before following it up with a quick punch, forcing him back out of my space. I felt as my phone buzzed in my pocket, but given everything going on, there was no time to check it.

While it was tempting to shift and show them some real power, it wasn’t the time or place.

We were skirting that precarious line of allowing that fury to guide us without giving up our shifter identities or causing even more damage. If we let all that careful restraint go, there was a high chance the building wouldn’t still be standing by the end of it.

As the men kept coming at us, refusing to back down, we continued to retaliate, forcing back anyone we had to with our fists.

It was a complete mess of limbs and bodies as tables were shoved back or broken, caught in the middle of it all. Anyone who didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire left the bar in a rush, but the others who were drunk and hyped up by the action joined in, sometimes swinging on people who had nothing to do with the brawl, which only instigated more violence.

The bartender and bottle girls were long gone, well aware that they could do nothing to break up the fights.

Soon enough, though, the bikers were starting to tire as their faces puffed up from the inflammation and blood-stained their skin.

The ringleader caught my attention while he stood near me, looking somewhat dazed as he laughed.

Narrowing my eyes at him, I shoved him back against a wooden support beam, hearing the faintest crack as the material groaned beneath the force of it. “What the hell’s so funny, huh? That you and your goons are losing this fight?”

He chuckled again with a wheezy sound as blood trickled from a cut above his eyebrow. “No, you idiot…you think we targeted you for no reason, right? Well, you’re wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That pretty little mate of yours has caused quite the trouble for us…but while you and your buddies are here beating our asses, you’re too preoccupied to know we have quite the numbers, and some of our men are already in your home turf…just waiting to take the bitch.”

His words sank in as he gave me more of that smug expression, beginning to laugh all over again as the realization settled within my features. “There you go, kid…let those wheels start turning.”

“Shut up,” I muttered, feeling a rush of simultaneous panic and rage as I shoved him back against the beam again, forcing the breath from his lungs. “You work for Colton, don’t you?”

The ringleader chuckled despite his pain and managed to lift his hands in mock surrender. “Guilty…”

With the confirmation, there was no holding back by then as I grabbed his shoulders and threw him, putting distance between us while he crashed into one of the old wooden tables.

I turned my attention to the guys as they continued holding back the others, making fairly quick work of them.

“This is a diversion!” I shouted at them, watching as they swung at whatever men were still standing and returning for more. “They’re after Faye!”

Some of their heads turned at once as they caught my words, letting mutual realization wash over them. Their eyes widened, well aware of how we’d walked into a trap. We took the bait and allowed ourselves to be distracted.

“Shit—”

Ezra cut himself off as another shifter charged at him again, but he fed him a fist to the face again easily enough, forcing the assailant back again. He looked at me. “You have to get to her then.”

“We need to take care of this first!” Ethan returned, receiving a good few punches from one of the shifters before slamming his forehead into the other’s, causing him to groan and stumble back.

Despite being aware of my mistake, I knew he was right. He had to fend them off before we could do anything.

Aware of just how far away we were from my territory, it was easy enough for me to find the inspiration I needed to keep fighting—to hit harder and faster with the intention of finishing it, not merely entertaining the brawl.

I could only think of Faye and Margo while I grit my teeth and take out the nearest guy, not letting up until he refused to move again.

Through that near-blinding wrath that coursed through me, alarm threaded itself throughout.

In an overwhelming rush of flying fists thrown at whoever was still able to put up a fight, we pushed and pushed, prepared to do whatever it took to end the senseless assault.

All the while, every cell in my body was screaming at me to go—to run back home if I had to. It didn’t matter how I got there. I just needed to see them.

I needed to know my girls were safe and that I hadn’t made an irreversible mistake by going out that night.