After the Fall (The Fallen Men 4)

We hadn’t found Wrath after everythin’ went down. One day, we thought he was dead, and weeks later, we’d come downstairs and found him sittin’ at our kitchen table lookin’ like a real-life zombie drinking a cup of our coffee. Cress had cried and thrown herself into his lap, and he’d let her, even held her. But I’d seen the apathy in his eyes and the way he’d winced at the pressure she put on his healing wounds, and I’d known Wrath had returned from the dead a different man.

Still didn’t know the specifics of what had happened to him, but if there was one thing I recognized, it was the look of demons lurkin’ in a man’s eyes, and Wrath’s were full of them.

With Kylie gone, Cress and I were the only two souls he had left he could turn to now that his club was disbanded, and we’d taken him in without a word of contention. That same day, I’d gone out with Lion and his truck and brought back an Airstream so Wrath could have his own place on the property.

I’d asked him to be a groomsman one night when I’d found him on the back patio smokin’, but he’d just given me a blank look, snuffed out the stick, and left.

Apparently, that had meant yeah.

He stared at my hand, face completely unanimated by any emotion, eyes a flat, dead grey-blue like slate. And then his hand was in mine, and I was leverin’ his weight up onto the stage with me and the brothers standin’ with me.

They didn’t like him, outside’a Lion who had his own bound with him after takin’ down the Berserkers, but I didn’t care.

They’d come around, and if they didn’t and I told them even a hint of Wrath’s story, they’d get it and get him. The Fallen were named so for a reason; not one’a us was without our tragic stories.

Seconds later, cars started to pull into the drive and park along the road leading down to our cabin, and my nerves hit me again like a battering ram.

“You ready?” Harleigh Rose called as she walked up the path, but honest to God, I forgot her question immediately because she looked so damn pretty.

She’d always been a beautiful girl, and she grew into a beautiful woman. It was the bane of Zeus’s and my existence as she got older, but now, I was happy as fuck she’d wound up with the one man I could trust to take care with all that loveliness. Because I knew, the way most people didn’t, that H.R. was soft and sweet as an unfurled rose at the heart under all those thorns, and Lion would always make sure she kept that tenderness and it remained safe from harm.

Lion stood then, mouth open, eyes blown to black by the sight of her.

“Prettiest flower in the whole fuckin’ garden,” he promised her as she stepped up into his arms and let him kiss her.

She pulled away with a smile and then bit his bottom lip playfully. “Thorniest too.”

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered dryly.

I laughed, drawing my sister’s attention. She cocked her head as she took me in and then grinned like a loon. “You look fuckin’ dapper, King.”

“If I look dapper, then you look like a princess,” I countered with a raised brow.

She pursed her lips. “MC princess then.”

“Dapper rebel then,” I retorted.

She laughed, lighter than I’d seen her in years, and bounded up the three steps to the small stage we stood on to hug me so hard it took my breath.

“Easy,” I whispered even as I wrapped her up tight and breathed in that floral scent that somehow suited her. “Try not to break my back before my weddin’, yeah?”

She burrowed her nose into my chest and sighed so heavily it felt like a cleansing. “Love you, big bro. You know that, right? Even if I’m a brat half the time.”

“Only half?”

“King…” she warned, tilting that streaky blond head back so we could lock eyes. “I’m bein’ serious.”

“So was I.” I grinned, then let it drop off my face as I cupped the back of her head and kissed her forehead. “In all the hardest times of my life before Cress, it was my love for you that kept me goin’.”

Instantly, her cerulean blue eyes, our mother’s eyes, went wet with tears that trembled on her lower lids. “Cress’ll be pissed you made me cry and fucked up my makeup.”

“Nah.” I hugged her again because over the past few years, it was rare she’d let me show her affection easy and often as I pleased. “Wish Dad was here,” I admitted into her hair.

She squeezed me. “Me too.”

“Okay, enough huggin’ and cryin’ and all that crap,” Boner bellowed as he walked up the aisle, clapping his hands. “This is a biker wedding, ain’t it? Let’s fuckin’ well act like it then.”