Animal (Royal Bastards MC 1)

Seven

Alec

Twenty years old

A week later…

Whispers creep around me, making me angry. I hate this fucking feeling.

The fury inside me needs an outlet. It’s weird seeing these assholes in suits, but out of respect for my father, they all made an effort for my mom’s funeral. She was way too young to die. I’m so fucking bitter. The good memories now mix with the bloody images of her final moments. Anger and disappointment sear through my brain. Did she not think about how this would fuck me up!? Was I not enough for her?

Rain coats the fabric of my black jacket. Drew’s dainty hand squeezes mine.

“You ready?” she asks, gesturing toward my dad’s retreating form. I stare down the hole they lowered my mother into, her coffin littered with single red roses. “Yeah. You coming back to the club?” Her dad went on a run. Left her a note telling her to go to her aunt’s and stay away from the club, but didn’t give a reason why. She doesn’t even like her aunt. She’s a stuck up bitch.

“Of course.” Her brow creases, and she leans into me. I wrap an arm around her and sigh into the top of her head, breathing her in.

The place is packed, members from chapters all across the country coming to pay their respects for my father. It’s not about my mother. There’s an atmosphere in here, and it’s not death—it’s simmering anger, unrest. A lot of hushed conversations and shifty fucking eyes. Something’s going on. There’s more to this, I can feel it in my bones…there has to be more.

“I need a drink,” I grunt, wading through the brothers.

“Hey, darling, you okay?” Barb asks.

“That’s a stupid fucking question. Just get the man a drink,” Joe barks, then tips his own glass back. She pours me a whiskey and places a Bud Light on the bar for Drew, ignoring Joe’s continued efforts to get a top-up.

“Woman, fill my glass,” he warns, and I let out a bark of laughter when Barb gives him the finger.

“Come on. Let’s go out back,” I tell Drew, my head pounding with a headache that hasn’t left me since I came back here to find Mom dead. Self-inflicted stab wound to the stomach. How the fuck does someone do that? I didn’t believe she would be capable of it and thought my old man must have hurt her. It killed me to jump to that conclusion, but I know his temper and in a heated argument maybe… but I watched the video footage she entered his office already bleeding, the knife protruding from her stomach, her telling him she was sorry. It made me feel like a bad son for even thinking Dad could have done that to her. Shit, my head feels so muddled. “Watch it.” Rage growls as I barge into him coming out the back door.

“Fuck you, asshole,” I sneer, dropping Drew’s hand and smacking the bottle out of Rage’s. It’s fucking suicide to fuck with this dude, but I’m in all kinds of a giving no shits mood.

“Alec,” Drew breathes in a warning.

“Listen to the girl, kid.”

Fucking kid? He’s like eight years older than me—fucking nothing. He’s got a couple inches on me in height and a shit load in weight. Where I’m lean, boxing muscle, he’s brute force. I shove his chest. “I ain’t no kid, dickhead.”

He growls low in his chest, like a fucking grizzly bear.

Fuck it, I need to feel something other than this dark energy coursing through my veins. My mother’s image, bloody and fucking dead, is constant on my mind.

I swing and land a hit to his jaw. His head jars to the side, but his body doesn’t move. Motherfucker.

“You only get one,” he warns. Drew darts off running, no doubt to get my old man to rein me in before this fucker kills me.

I let loose a flurry of jabs to his ribs, all my boxing training coming out to play—powerful, precise, and fucking dying inside. Tears blur my eyes as I scream my pain with every punch. My knuckles hurt, and my arms tire. Pain explodes across my cheek, and all the lights go out.

Fuck, my head is still pounding and my jaw is throbbing. I blink my eyes open and groan at the intrusion of light.

I sit up and squint, trying to bring a furious looking Drew into focus.

“You fucking dipshit. What the hell were you thinking?” she scorns.

Damn, she’s never mad at me, and I don’t like it.

“I’m sorry,” I grunt.

“Are you?” she fumes, her arms crossed over her chest. She’s wearing a long black dress down to her ankles and Doc Martens. It suits her. It’s rare for her to wear anything other than jeans or shorts. “I love you. You know that, right?” I tell her, catching her off guard. Why the fuck haven’t I told her this a thousand times already? This shouldn’t be the first time she’s hearing the words, I’m such a dick.