The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (35 page)

I watch the vulture vanish into another cloud, then say, “Nah. Fuck him. Let him come to us. Only…lets not forget to keep an eye out this time, yeah?”
 

The boys go silent for a moment, then Nash says, “I’m with you on the West Coast claim, Prez. I think we all are. The only question mark is with your girl and her Risen pack and the fucking Fallen.”

“Lets leave that discussion for another time, Nash,” Blue growls. “We’re almost out of booze.” Then Blue turns to me and says, “So what do you think? We leave the bikes here and head into the woods looking for her?”

I scent the air.
 

An alpine meadow at dawn.
 

She’s out there. She’s not alone. But I still can’t get a read on which direction, and there’s an entire mountain range—

“She’ll find us,” Nash says.
 

“She’s
hurt
,” I say, my temper flaring.

“She’ll heal.”

“Hey,” Blue says, coming to my defense. “Prez says his girl’s fucking hurt—”
 

Nash hops on his Harley. “She’s fine. You weren’t there, Blue. I
saw
this thing. The All Encompassing. What she’s capable of. And whatever it was in that vision in the sky, Aaron. The First Fallen? Who the fuck knows. But the power. It was…unreal.” Nash kills the bourbon, tosses the bottle in the ditch, then turns and stares Blue right in the eyes. “Let me tell you…there’s not a pack of Purebloods—no matter how hardcore—that can stop the Risen.”

Blue shrugs. “You’re wound up tight as a sinner at the gates, Nash. Fretting like a bitch. You always did exaggerate.”

“Nah,” Tate says, his usually smiling face flat and grim. “Nashy’s not exaggerating. I saw her s well. Twice. Not something I’d like to see a third time.”

Blue sends me a worried look that says: this is the chick you took for a bloodmate?
 

I can’t blame Blue for beginning to doubt my decision to track Lily. Her creature’s put the fear of god into two murderous Pureblood biker’s who don’t even believe in god. The problem is…I know where doubt leads. This crew’s already been wrecked once, torn in half, with Lily on one side and my crew on the other and me in the middle, fucking it all up.
 

I can’t let that happen again. I
won’t
let that happen.
 

“We won’t need to stop Lily’s creature,” I say.
 

“Why you so sure?” Nash says. “Last I heard she tried to murder you.”

I light a smoke, untie an AK that’s strapped to my bike and begin cleaning it.

“Because Lily’s my bloodmate. Took a while for that to sink in. What it means.” I lift my head and give each of my inner circle a hard stare. “It means she’s one of us.
Family
. It means she gets the same respect and loyalty I do. It means we have her fucking back. Always. And we’re going to help her. Whatever she asks.”

My voice softens. I look at Nash and say, “Would you die for me?”

“You know I would.”

“Then you’d die for my bloodmate as well.”

“Yeah,” Nash says, real slow, like it’s beginning to sink in for him too, “I would.”

“So that’s it, Aaron?” Blue says. “That’s the call? Purebloods and Risen ride side-by side against whatever comes next?”
 

“Yeah. I made my call. No reason to overcomplicate things.”

That’s what I realized out in the desert. More than anything, a functioning pack needs a strict hierarchy. The fuckers need to know who they answer to. It wasn’t so much that Nash and Mia didn’t want Lily around. It’s that they didn’t know where she fit in.
 

That was my fault.
 

It was new to me.
I
didn’t know where she fit in.
 

But now I do.

My bloodmate belongs right at the top. Beside me.

It’s my job to make that crystal clear.
 

The four of us stand in silence for a long while, then Blue clears his throat and says, “Fuck it. Maybe some regular pussy’ll lighten you up a bit, Prez.”

“We can always hope,” Nash says.

***

My smart-ass comeback is interrupted by a warning shout from one of my crew. I whirl, lifting the AK toward the forest. Twigs snap. There’s something moving in the undergrowth—
 

“You in the woods!” Nash screams, raising the TAR-21 he stole off the Lockdown Crew. “Come out real fucking slow!”

My crew fans out along the road, ready to unload a bunker’s worth of bullets on whatever’s sneaking up on us. I send my shadow wolves up the road on either side, then into the forest, intending to hit the fools from behind.

I’m sighting down the AK barrel. My finger poised over the trigger. There’s more than one of ‘em stalking through the woods. “Hold your fire!” I scream, an awful feeling building in my gut—

Something moans, stumbles out of the woods and into a wide ditch filled with blackberry and alder. It’s a woman.

“Hold your fire!” I scream as my crew howls and roars, ramping up for a kill.

The woman’s face is hidden in brush and shadow.
 

But that scent.
 

“Lily?” I whisper, slowly lowering the AK.

It can’t be.
 

The woman’s too thin. Too exhausted looking. Too…
broken
.

She takes another stumbling step through blackberry and alder, then crashes into a sapling and falls to the ground, invisible in the thick undergrowth.

“Stay down!” Nash screams. “Do not move!”

“Wait,” I say, too quiet. The wind whisks my words away.

The woman struggles to feet, and for the first time I get a pretty clear look at her face.

The AK slips from my hands.
 

Clatters on the pavement.

“Uh, what the fuck, Prez?” Nash snarls.

I’m too stunned to answer.
 

Dried blood’s caked across the woman’s face. A wound on her forehead’s still bleeding. Her right eye is swollen into an ugly blue-yellow lump. Her shoulders and chest are covered in bruises and mean-looking gouges. Her hair might have been pretty once, but now it’s matted and tangled and caked with blood.
 

Chick looks half dead.
 

“It’s me,” the woman says, lifting her arms higher. “It’s
me
, Aaron. Lily! Please?” Her voice is scratchy and weak.

“Lily?”
 

The word tumbles from my lips.

“Aaron? Aaron you bastard—”
 

“Fuck sakes
Lily
!” I yell, smacking Nash’s rifle down and racing through the brush to my bloodmate and then she’s in my arms and my MC moves to surround us, guarding us.
 

Lily’s skin is clammy and cold and her eyes are ringed in dark bruises and there’s a look in her eyes that I never wanted to see, a look that says she’s close to losing hope, and it’s all I can do to hold her tight while she bursts into long, wracking sobs, the kind that mean she’s been rent and pierced in secret places I can’t see, the kind of sobs that speak of deep, hidden hurt, and fuck me if I’m not suddenly
pissed
, my animal raging at the motherfucker that hurt her, howling to track down and tear the bastard limb from limb, but when she lifts her head from my chest and looks into my eyes I understand—

It was me.

I’m
what hurt her.

Maybe not outside but inside.
 

Where it matters most.
 

I cup Lily’s chin in my hands and bring her lips to mine and at first she flinches, just a little, but it’s enough to let me know she hasn’t completely forgiven me and all I can hope for is
time
, please give me time to prove what she means to me, time to show her how much I love her, and then her lips open slightly to mine and our first kiss is enough to carry a man through his last living days because the world is cruel and hard and senseless, the world’s a goddamned
prick
, if you get right down to it, a prick aiming to fuck you over, and it’s easy to become bitter and jaded, to close off the best part of yourself in fear of getting hurt, but then, if you’re real lucky, you stumble across this gift.
 

And man, you’d better hope you haven’t sealed yourself up so tight you forgot what this is. Because this…this is what makes the world worth suffering through.

“Thought you were dead?” Lily mumbles with a sad, guilty half smile while she presses her forehead to my chest and runs her fingers over my pecs, across my nipples—

“Been hearing that a lot. More like whipped.”

“That sounds all right.”

“A whipped cur.”

Lily’s lips brush against mine a second time. Soft. Hesitant. Like she’s afraid she’s making a mistake. Maybe she is. Maybe we both are. But her body pressed tight to mine tells me this is no mistake. How she scents tells me. How my wolf howls for her. She’s my bloodmate. We share a bond stronger than anything the Skins can imagine. It’s primal, rooted in dirt, wind and stone. Forged in the hunt, in the long winter, in survival and raw animal instinct—
 

I hold Lily’s hips and pull her tight, loving how her curves feel, the soft swell of her generous tits. My breath catches in my throat as our kiss becomes more needful, passionate—

My MC whoops and hollers.

Lily and me break our kiss.
 

I scowl, drop some fang at the interrupting bastards.

“I’m sorry,” I say, not wanting to let Lily go without her hearing the words.
 

Never said anything I meant more.

Lily looks into my eyes. She’s weak and beat up and hurting. But more: she’s
furious
. She hasn’t forgiven me. Not by a long shot. But she’s here. Maybe that means she’s willing to try, and that’s more than I deserve, so I say something I’ve never said to another living being.
 

I say, “I love you, Sparkles.”

Lily looks at me for a few moments, and those moments stretch out for a lifetime. Then she gives me a brief, flickering smile and says, “Yeah, Mr. One-Eight-Seven. I think you do.”

She’s not gunna say it.
 

Not now. Not here.
 

Maybe not ever.
 

And you know what? I don’t care.
 

The fact that she walked into my arms says enough.
 

More than enough.

“Aww, what a couple of cutey pies,” Blue roars, and the rest of the MC clap and jeer and joke and that’s cool too, because I know they have my back.
 

They have
our
backs.

Lily steps out from my arms and there’s a part of me, the possessive, alpha wolf part, that wants to snatch her up and drag her into the forest and take her right then and there.
 

Seems as good a time as any.

Funny thing is when I look at Lily I know she’s thinking the same thing. There’s an awkward moment while both of us wait for the other to make a move, then the moment passes and the world comes between us.

“The Pureblood MC has grown in ranks,” Lily says, stepping away from me and eyeing the crew.

“The End Days Chapter,” I say. “We picked up a few stragglers. MOst of them aren’t worth shit.”

Laughs and jeers from the boys.
 

Blue offers his huge hand and introduces himself with some half-assed joke I don’t hear because my blood’s pounding loud in my ears.
 

Tate and Nash give Lily a hug.
 

Trish steps out of the woods, also beat up and exhausted-looking. She fires me a glare and doesn’t say a word. All right, so at least I know where Trish and I stand.
 

Same place we did before. At each other’s throats.
 

Shuffling along behind Trish is an old guy I don’t recognize. He’s wearing thick glasses and has a gleaming bald dome and from the look of the bandage wrapped around his shoulder I’d say he’s shot up pretty bad.
 

The old man introduces himself as Professor Melchuk, then his legs give out and he kind of half-sits half-collapses on the ground. Trish runs up and asks if he’s all right. The professor lies and nods his head yes, then looks right at me, wrinkles his brow like he’s studying something under a microscope and says, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Aaron of the Pureblood Predators.”

“Believe everything you hear.”

The professor smiles. A thin sheen of sweat glistens on his cheeks.

“He needs antibiotics,” Trish says, giving me a stern look. “You got any?”

Good old Trish. Always right to business.
 

“I need
painkillers
,” Melchuk corrects. “Many of them.”
 

Trish forces herself to smile. “Those also.”

I’m trying to pay attention to Trish and Melchuk, but the truth is I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes off Lily. The anger hits again, the desire to hurt whatever did this to her. She’s wavering, like she’s fighting just to stay standing. And she’s cradling her belly in an odd way.
 

Something about her.
 

She looks…haunted.

Afraid.

But not for herself. For someone else.
 

“Yeah. We got meds. In the bikes…” I say, gesturing toward the road. I move to stand beside Lily. She leans into me, exhales deeply. Chokes back another sob. I tuck an arm under her elbow.
 

She’s too proud to have me carry her.

“Walk?” I whisper.

Lily nods, takes an unsteady step.

I bark an order at the prospects to guard the road and the sky overhead. No way I’m gunna let that fucking vulture dive down and claw at my bloodmate.
 

Lily struggles to make it up the road embankment. I wrap an arm around her hips and lift her, then set her gently on the road.

“Thanks,” she says, her lips tight.

“Don’t mention it.”

So that first kiss caught Lily with her guard down.
 

She’s already putting the walls up. All right. Maybe the whole I love you thing was a bit premature. It just blurted out. Not to say I didn’t mean it, but I don’t want to add to my bloodmate’s stress.