My focus went straight to Rusty. He was sitting stiff-backed on the exam table with a swollen jaw that was already starting to bruise, a busted lip, and a gash on his shoulder that Blade was currently stitching.
Blade eased the needle through his ripped flesh, and Rusty hissed, but he didn’t move. He just fisted his hands at his sides and tried to sound stoic as he glanced over at me and muttered, “You should see the other guy.”
I swore under my breath.
My brother was covered in scratches and bruises, but all things considered, he didn’t look all that bad.
My eyes shifted over to Skid, and my stomach dropped.
He was slumped back on one of the cots, and there was a thick bandage wrapped around his head. One eye was already black and blue and swollen shut. His knuckles were a mess. Busted. Bleeding. Angry red. That told me all I needed to know.
He’d kept swinging long after he should’ve gone down. He let out a breath as he grumbled, “Laken’s gonna have my ass over this.”
“Does she know?”
“Not yet. Figured I’d give these pain meds some time to kick in before I called her.”
“Smart thinking,” I scoffed. “What the hell happened?”
“We stopped for a beer on the way home, and everything was all good until Rusty started flirting with some chick. Wasn’t nothing out of the norm. Just typical shit. You know how he is.”
“She was fucking hot. I would’ve been a fool not to at least try to get her number.”
“Yeah, well, he was laying it on pretty thick when these motherfuckers came out of nowhere starting shit. They were wearing cuts, but I hadn’t seen these guys before. They started spouting off about their ol’ ladies this and that, and next thing I knew, they had us surrounded, and fists started flying.”
“Damn.”
I stepped closer, and that's when I spotted Smitty.
He was lying back on the far cot with his eyes closed. He wasn’t moving. Hell, he was barely even breathing. His ribs were wrapped tight, and his face was swollen and cut like he’d gone a few rounds with a meat grinder and lost. One eye was swollen shut, and the other didn’t look much better.
Even unconscious, his jaw was clenched tight, like his body hadn’t realized the fight was over. My hands curled into fists at my sides and I snarled, “I’ll fucking kill ‘em. Every last one of them.”
“Looks worse than it is,” Blade interjected, trying to reassure us. “Gave him some pretty good pain meds. He’ll be out for a while, but he’ll be okay.”
I didn’t respond.
I just stood there staring at Smitty, anger roaring in my ears. These weren’t just my brothers. They were men who’d fought by my side, bled with me, laughed with me, and trusted me to have their backs.
And some assholes decided to test that.
Once Blade finished off Rusty’s last stitch, Rusty turned to Memphis and said, “We had on our cuts. They knew who we were. Didn’t care.”
That did it.
Something settled deep in my chest.
Cold. Unforgiving. Relentless.
“We’ll take care of it. You have my word on that.”
I turned for the door, and Memphis followed. I’d barely made it to the hall when I felt the shift. Concern had given way to resolve. These Coyotes thought they could make a name for themselves by fucking with us and get away with it.
They were wrong.
Memphis and I made our way down the hall and into the conference room. Most of the brothers were already there and waiting, and like Memphis and me, they were wound tight.
Prez stood at the front, and a mix of anger and concern marked his face as he looked around the room at each of us. His hands were braced on the table. His shoulders were squared, and his jaw clenched. It would be easy to mistake that calm for restraint, but I knew him better than that.
