His eyes slowly peeled open revealing that blue I loved so much, and the moment he saw my face, he went alert.
“What’s up?”
I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth, and said, “Follow me down the mountain. Harleigh Rose just texted, and I think she’s in some serious crap.”
Cressida
* * *
A lot had happened in the past few weeks, and by a lot, I meant a whack ton in the way only biker lives could reel. Harleigh Rose had stabbed Lionel Danner in the chest. It was a truth that felt wrong in my head, like I’d been hypnotized to think that way when my gut said different. But it was true. When I’d gone down the mountain to the address she’d texted, I didn’t find Harleigh Rose in the suburban home. Instead, through the wide-open door, laying sprawled on the kitchen floor in a pool of warm blood, I’d found Danner, barely conscious and bleeding savagely from a large wound in his upper left chest.
I’d called 911 and then King, who was waiting around the corner so I could at least give the allusion I’d obeyed Harleigh Rose’s orders, and then set about trying to save Danner’s life.
We got the story from him days later, when he’d come to enough to talk about the tragedy. Apparently, after Reaper Holt, the Prez of the Berserkers MC had threatened to kidnap, rape, and possibly kill Loulou to cut Zeus off at the knees, H.R. had decided to take it upon herself to help Danner and Wrath take down the club. He didn’t know why she’d stabbed him, only that she must have had a damn good reason for doing so because they were madly in love with each other.
I didn’t know who was more surprised, him or the club, when Zeus decided that Danner was worthy of not only our respect, but his daughter’s love. There was no drama or fallout. Only a quiet talk between the two men who had raised Harleigh Rose and King and then a mutual, warm kind of acceptance. With everything going on, I think they both realized drama over a happy relationship was small potatoes. Though, spending time with Lion as he recovered, it was easy to see that the knife might not have pierced his heart, but his separation from Harleigh Rose had. She was in deep with the Berserkers in a way that meant she would either end their organization entirely or end up dead.
It was a strange and horrible thing to watch men of action who felt duty-bound to protect their women at all costs be forced to do nothing. At this point, they could only watch closely and wait to see what the fallout would be so they could swoop in to pick up the pieces where they might fall. Zeus was irritable, a bear woken from hibernation but unable to hunt, and Loulou was worse, the hormones raging inside her as she neared her due date so that she could laugh or cry at the drop of a hat. I’d never felt the club so on edge before. Brothers bickered with brothers, Old Ladies were essentially banned from the compound, and Ares was forced to stay with Nova’s family, the Booth’s, just in case full-scale gang war broke out at a moment’s notice.
To make matters so much more heartbreaking, we discovered some of the details surrounding what had happened to Wrath and Kylie. She had been killed as retribution for Wrath’s betrayal of the Berserkers, and on learning about her murder, Wrath had soon followed, killed by the very men who had sworn brotherhood to him. Danner said there was a slim chance they’d kept him barely alive somewhere to torture, but King and I weren’t holding our breath. No one had known about King’s connection with him, and we kept it that way, only Eugene, King, and I planted two markers in the ground at Eugene’s cabin so they could be metaphorically laid at rest together. I hope they found their peace in the afterlife because they had been so brutally robbed from it on earth.
They were dark weeks, bleak like the winter sky, a low ceiling that hung too close to our heads. Paradise Found was thriving, Shadow was a constant source of delight and had taken to draping himself over my shoulders as I read or puttered around the house, and Ares, as always, brought a level of happiness to our lives with his quiet intensity and tenderness.
But it felt like the calm before a tropical storm was predicted to roll through Entrance and raze it to the ground.
Today was the only day in over a month that everyone seemed to be in good spirits and that was because it was the night of our engagement party.