He gives me a one finger salute before strolling away. And much like Koz, it’s fucking lucky I got nothing but mad respect for him, or I’d be kicking his ass for his obvious diss.
Swinging back to the entrance of Birdie, plans change when Raney comes rushing out with Hayes and Puck at her back. The girls follow after and their excitement at knowing what’s coming next, the actual bonding ceremony at the lake, has them nearly bouncing out their skin.
For one fucking moment, I think I’m over-reacting, reading bad shit into a good day. For one fucking moment I breathe a sigh of relief.
Raney dicks around with Koz, throws a handful of words at me before her joy bubbles up and she does the most un-Raney thing in the world—she runs past us all. She leaps into the waiting limo, her body turned to us as she yells something before cracking up laughing.
Because of the way she’s turned, my daughter does not see the events play out behind her, but that snaky feeling that hadme acting a cunt, manifests into a real-life situation with ex-boyfriends abducting ex-girlfriends right in front of us.
We try to stop Reid, God how we try, but we get jumped ourselves. Koz, Puck, and Hayes fly towards the car. I seriously don’t know how they don’t get hit. It is nothing but gunfire and carnage, and at first it makes no sense the indiscriminate way they shoot. But our attackers are doing nothing but causing panic before taking aim.
Joker is one of the first to fall, next to him one of Koz’s men, then another of mine, another of Koz’s. I literally feel the scope of a gun taking aim, but my focus turns to Tristan as she stands in the eye of the violent storm.
I see nothing but her. I have to blink away the red sheen of rage. I have to lock out my Alpha to disassociate from his ferality like we’re two separate entities because I have to protect her, it is my sole purpose.
Shots whiz past me, and I take a leap crash tackling and rolling her until she is under me shielded.
“Go! Fucking get them,” I scream at Jasper and Twinkles, and anyone else around us.
Moving my head, Big Tom and Tonka take a stand shoulder to shoulder in front of me, to the left I see Heidi’s already surrounded, her team forming a wall no one will be able to get past. Further back Simona’s team race her away already.
“You okay, baby?” I ask between looking for where the shooters are.
Her lack of response is like acid through my veins, and I take my eyes off what’s happening around us, and she’s here with me unharmed physically but she’s already got shadows in her eyes.
There’s a shuffle of movement on the edge of my periphery and I see one of the shooters. There is no mistaking the President of the Death Riders nor the way his face lights up when he sees me already down.
“Get Tristan out of here,” I snarl, dropping my nose to her hair in case it’s the last time I get the chance. And this just proves my point about how much better she’d be without me. “Love you, killer. You remember that.”
I surge to my feet, not giving her the chance to respond. And boy she does. I get the gist of her screaming but miss the actual words she uses. I hear the moment she gets picked up and raced in the opposite direction too. But Rex Fucking Larking is in my sights.
Letting go of my designation, my Alpha side joins the hunt and the splinter inside me from earlier is long gone. I become an Alpha on a mission, ready to pull this fucking asshole’s asshole from his body before I shove it down his throat and strangle him with it.
“Behind you,” JB calls out, probably sensing he’d get a bullet in his forehead if he spooks me too much.
A fucking smile breaks over Rex’s face as even more shooters stream out of god knows where, while he disappears into the shadows. I fire indiscriminately but with learned accuracy, same as JB. We don’t stop to check if the people we hit are still breathing, it’s fucking irrelevant, all we do is clear a path to where Rex was standing before.
A rumble of a bike powering to life has us changing our direction, but by the time we make our way to where he is, we’re too fucking late and the only thing we’re left with is his, and someone else’s taillight fading in the distance.
The need to chase after him is strong, but the need to make sure my men, Tristan, and all the other people are okay is stronger.
“He’s a fucking dead man,” JB promises as we race back to the plaza.
“Let everyone know there’s a bounty on Larkin’s head, but I want him alive. And find out who the fuck was helping him because he’s dead too.”
Chapter
Twenty-Four
TRISTAN
Tugging up my hoodie to cover my hair, I try to look like everyone else in the hospital. I’m not sure I pull it off, but I’m also not sure I have the energy to care.
The hours since what happened at Birdie’s has been some of the worst I’ve gone through. Finding out Raney was okay filled me with instant relief and definitely helped me get a grip. But now I’m struggling again.
By the time I got to cover, Simona and Heidi had already been rushed away. Even after the constant calls and texts from my girls, I’m stuck in a bad headspace because I have a desperate need to see King.
I know he is okay. I know he’s at the hospital watching over Joker as he battles to survive. And I don’t begrudge him for being who he is and what he’s doing but at the same time words are words, and I’m going out of my mind imagining the worst which is why I’m creeping through the hospital to try to catch a glimpse of him. If I can see or scent him or hear his voice, I know my anxiety will go. I’d be able to leave but until then I simply can’t.
