Wolf (The Henchmen MC 3)

I turned slightly to look at him. "He hasn't left much of a paper trail," I hedged. He knew when he visited Hailstorm that we kept tabs on all of them. There was no reason to pretend I didn't know things about them.

"Babe," Reign said, stopping suddenly. His hand grabbed my arm, stopping me too.

"What?" I asked as he paused, looking like he was trying to figure out how to tell me something. "Reign, I'm not a shrinking violet. I've killed men. I've even killed men at your side. I can take it."

He nodded, taking a deep breath. "Wolf has anger issues," he still felt the need to hedge.

I felt my lips quirk up. "Wolf? We're talking about the same guy here, right? Twenty-feet tall, million pounds of muscle, perpetually underused voice box? The most self-controlled person I've ever met..."

"Yeah, babe," Reign cut me off. "Ninety-eight percent of the time, he's the most even-tempered fuck you'll ever come across."

"But that two percent?" I prompted.

"That two percent shows you why his name is very, very fitting."

"He rages out," Repo broke in, sensing Reign's urge to ease me into things and realizing I didn't need it. "Full-on Hulk shit. He's not the man you know right now. We don't want you going in there and expecting Wolf. He's not Wolf. He's a wild fucking animal."

"Okay," I said, nodding at him in thanks before turning to Reign. "Are you taking me to him or are we going to stand here clucking like a bunch of fucking hens all day while he's locked in a god damn shed?"

To that, I got one of Reign's rare and, therefore practically radiant, smiles. "I like you, kid," he said, moving forward again.

You wouldn't if you knew what I did.

But I fell into step, flanked on both sides by two intimidating bikers as I tried to make sense of what they were telling me. If they were saying he was wild and their general lifestyle was wild by most standards, that was really saying something. It was hard for me to even imagine Wolf not being calm, level, steady.

Then again, up until about a day ago, it was hard for me to imagine I could crumble into tears that I couldn't stop no matter how I tried.

People like us, people with pasts, with scars somewhere deep inside, there was no telling what could happen when we were pushed, when we were forced to confront the dark parts of our psyches. He didn't judge me for breaking. I wasn't going to judge him for doing so either.

The shed was nestled a long distance from the house and was more like a mini version of his already kinda mini-cabin, made of logs with a steep pitched roof, a normal door, but no windows. As soon as we got close enough, I heard slams from inside. Something split against the wall. And then I heard the sound I had heard many times before, a growling noise. He made that sometimes, a low sound from somewhere deep in his chest. I kind of found it both amusing and sexy before. But this was different. This was an animalistic kind of growling.

Reign and Repo stopped a few feet from the door, looking at the mini cabin. I turned to Reign. "What are you being bitches about? Are we going in or not?"

To that, Reign made a short snorting sound, offering me a small smirk, pulling the door open and cautiously stepping inside. I moved to do the same and felt Repo's presence behind me. I got into the doorway and froze.

They had warned me.

I hadn't exactly disbelieved them either.

But it was a whole other thing to see it, to see a man you had started to think of as a less golden version of Michael, become a completely different animal.

That two percent shows you why his name is very, very fitting.

That was what Reign had warned and he was right.

Because Wolf was no longer a man; he was a beast.

Every inch of him was covered in bright, vivid red. I didn't have to get any closer to know it was blood. Nothing else was that exact color; nothing else carried with it the metallic smell that blood did. And I wasn't exaggerating either. I could see his beard sticky with it, smears of it across his face, staining his shirt and jeans in large splatters, and pooling around the bottom of his shoes like he had been walking in a puddle of it.

His arms were in front of him, making his big shoulders slump forward. I looked down to find his wrists were imprisoned in handcuffs. They felt the need to... cuff him? Was he really that far gone?

"Key," I said, looking at Reign.

"Babe, no," he said as Wolf roared loudly enough for my ears to ring, picked up a shovel from the floor and threw it at the wall.

"I wasn't fucking asking," I countered, squaring my shoulders. I wasn't about to deal with their macho bullshit. "Give me the god damn key or I will knock your ass out and take it from you."

"Janie he's..." Repo tried to reason, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I grabbed it at the wrist, twisted, and used the momentary pain he was experiencing as an advantage, grabbing his throat and shoving him back against the wall. I wouldn't be able to keep him there. He was taller and stronger. But I was just making a point: don't fucking underestimate me.

Repo smiled at me, nodding his head. "That was fast as fuck."

I smiled at the praise and turned to Reign. "Gonna give me the keys or you want a demonstration on how Israeli defense training can beat your street fighting any day?"

Reign shook his head at me, chanced a glance at Wolf who was pacing the small space, huffing out his breath like a boar, then reached in his pocket and held a key out to me. "You can let him go, but we are staying until we're sure he ain't gonna split your pretty little head open."