Axle's Brand (Death Chasers MC 3)

His jaw grinds. “You keep making threats toward me when you know who I am. Watch yourself, biker boy. You’re not playing with thugs right now. You’re playing with people who can make you disappear from the face of the earth.”

“Funny how Phillip and Lathan never disappeared then, huh?” I snap.

“Long game for the big ones. You’re just a small fish in a massive ocean of sharks. No one will notice you—”

“Maya will notice him missing, and your personal family has already betrayed her once. Let’s not make it a normal thing,” Sarah butts in, moving to my side.

Smitty looks away, eyes glistening as he stares at the inside of his vehicle. “We’ll discuss this somewhere else. Your friends are about to blow this place up, and I’d like to be far away from such action,” he says much calmer.

“I can drive your big shiny bike if you’ll commit the cardinal sin and let me,” Sarah says, looking up at me as I stare at the backseat, Maya still in my arms as I refuse to put her down.

“Take the damn thing,” I say without hesitation as I slip into the backseat, Maya still in my arms.

Smitty mutters something about brutes and Neanderthals, but I don’t give a damn.

Maya sleeps all the way back to the safe house, and I carry her inside to the room we stayed in the day she had to leave me.

Carefully, with every ounce of fucking delicate I possess, I put her down on the bed.

“Doctor is on his way,” Drex says as he follows me in. “We’ll take her to the hospital if we have to. She’ll be fine, though. Her breathing is solid and her heartrate is steady.”

Blowing out a breath, I gesture for him to go, and I follow him out, leaving the door open so I can see inside whenever I want to check and make sure she hasn’t vanished.

Smitty is drinking scotch when I step into the living room.

“You and I don’t get to decide, so let’s drink and wait for her to wake instead of fighting like barbarians over a woman who will kill us both for making a decision without her input,” he says, handing me a glass.

I grab an empty glass and pour myself some of the whiskey Drex hands me, knowing there’s no way Smitty tampered with it.

Call it paranoid, but these guys are shady as fuck.

Smitty’s lips simply twitch as he drinks the glass of scotch I rejected, proving to me he didn’t just try to poison me.

His eyes flit to the bar next to us, then he looks away. When his gaze darts back and settles on a few tiny condiment bottles I’ve brought here, a sad smile graces his lips.

“Well, damn,” he says on a sigh, his gaze returning to me as though he’s deflated. “She should have mentioned she fell in love.”

It’s like a punch to the stomach to hear him say that, because I go back to the sad look in her eyes the day she had to leave. Almost like she was waiting for me to reciprocate what she’d said. Or acknowledge it. Or hell, act like I heard her at all.

I drink more of the whiskey as he studies me.

The others give us some space, moving outside to drink and wind down from the night. Jude and Dash are still on their way back, since they’re the ones who volunteered to blow the place to hell.

“That’s why she was crying,” he goes on. “And you sent her away to keep your men safe from Phillip. Not that I blame you.”

“I sent her away because we have our own shit going on and she almost got killed because of it. It was just a matter of time before someone realized she was my weakness and used her against us. Against me. I didn’t want that happening, and I didn’t want my friends dying because of my selfishness.”

“Yet now you’re willing to risk it all?” he muses.

“Now I see it’s not just here that she’s at risk. As for the rest, we’ll figure it out. Even if I have to chain her to my side so that I have eyes on her at all times.”

His grin is brief as he clears his expression and clinks his glass against mine.

“Good luck with that. Maya hates being around people for too long. She prefers her solitude a lot of times.”

A smirk graces my lips, and he just studies me. She never minded me close by.

My moment of smugness evaporates with reality.

I sent her away. I was too fucking busy being pissed to even tell her goodbye. I didn’t call. I didn’t do anything but push her away.

What the hell happens when she wakes up and tells me to go fuck myself?

CHAPTER 41

MAYA

Before I can even peel open my eyes, there are voices around me.