Page 55 of Savage King

Someone kicked in her back door right beside her, the barbs of a stun gun piercing the flesh of her chest, the blast of electricity slamming into her, then her falling, hitting her head on the counter, then collapsing to the floor.

Three men rushing in, Tessa screaming, the sounds of a scuffle, more screaming, then silence.

Then…the men speaking in frantic Spanish.

“The woman…Prez…MC….”

It took a moment for her shattered brain to muddle through what they meant, and once it had, she was horrified.

They thought Tessa was her. They’d come to get her, but they took Tessa!

Tessa! She had to save Tessa!

Move, body, move! Her body responded by jerking, her limbs like jelly, her muscles sore from the contracting forced by the electrical charge.

Focusing on moving one muscle at a time, it took much too long to get her body to listen to her commands, but finally, once she was able to pull herself to her knees, she struggled to her feet.

“Tessa!” she screamed, ignoring the pain and grabbing the edge of the peninsula with white-knuckled fingers. “Tessa!” she cried again, desperate to hear her friend’s voice, but knowing, deep down, her friend was already gone.

Stumbling through the living room and into the other rooms—all empty—Skathi tripped over her own feet to get to the kitchen. Her cell. It had been on the counter where she’d been standing, staring down at Odin’s most recent text. One that said something had come up, and he was spending the night at the clubhouse. She remembered the bitterness, the soul deep hurt that he wasn’t even trying to come for her, to explain his abruptness, his coldness to her. But then the men came…and nothing mattered but Tessa.

She had to get to her phone.

Had they taken it?

No. There it was.

She steadied herself against the peninsula and blinked. Her vision blurry from the shock of the Taser and the head trauma, she couldn’t make out the name on the screen as she tried to find the one she needed.

Who to call, though?

Call the police and the chances of getting Tessa back in one piece were nil. Besides that, she would spend hours giving her statement over and over before the police even put out a BOLO, not that Skathi even knew what the men looked like or even what vehicle they were driving.

All her years of training, being called an elite of the elite, and she couldn’t even protect her friend from being abducted…and worse could be happening to her right then. Those men had come to take Skathi, but they’d taken Tessa instead. What would they do to Tessa once they realized they grabbed the wrong woman?

Call Odin and he’d be there in minutes, the force of the MC behind him.

But he’s busy looking for his fancy club whores.No, that wasn’t fair. Odin and his men were looking for women who’d also been abducted, and chances were that the people who took those women were probably the same people who took Tessa. Two abductions in one day were too much of a coincidence.

She would call Odin. She needed him. His arms around her. Comfort. Strength. The security of knowing she wasn’t alone. Yes, she was a formidable woman in her own right, but right then…she needed the man she loved. She didn’t care that she was pissed at Odin, that she had decided to give herself space from him and his larger than life personality and demands. Tessa needed her—needed him.

After remembering the Odin’s number was the last one she called, she found the large redial button and hit CALL. She placed the phone against her ear, hissing at the building pressure at her temple. Her hands trembling, she waited for the other line to pick up.

Odin picked up after the third ring, a weary sigh escaping for his words did. “Skathi, now is not the time—”

“They took Tessa. They came here, into my home, and they took her!”

The mounting tension in the aching silence made her knees buckle. She slid to the floor, her back against the peninsula. Her butt hit the floor and she grunted, whimpering. The pain shooting through her head making her stomach churn with nausea.

“Who took Tessa, Skathi!” Odin demanded, the sounds of movement clear on the other line. Skathi grunted again, the volume of his voice sending barbs of agony through her sinuses. “Are you okay, baby? Tell me you’re okay!”

She choked, the agony crawling up the base of her skull and into her eye sockets making simple speech like speaking with a broken jaw. “Jus-just come, please….” The pain in her head coalescence into a blanket of darkness that covered her, suffocating her, until she left it pull her down.

Odin stared down at his phone. Waiting. He gritted his teeth, willing those three dots to appear, telling him that his woman hadn’t completely shut down on him. That she’d hadn’t walked out of the clubhouse and out of his life for good.

Skathi hadn’t responded to his last text—to any of histentexts—since she’d left the clubhouse six hours ago.

He’d rather be tied to a stake naked, his guts in his lap, in the middle of the Afghan desert than feel whatever he was feeling right then. Because Skathi had left, her eyes cold, her words hard. She’d denied his kiss, giving him her mouth but refusing to give herself.

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