Page 1 of Paladin's Hell

Prologue

Two and a half years ago...

Standing, with my back against the wall, I watch the girl lying on the bed. Observing the slight differences, changes in her breathing, little twitches of her muscles that signify she’s stirring, waking up. My gut clenches in sympathy, half wishing she could continue sleeping, knowing her nightmare is still to come.

Jayden, Ella’s younger sister, who’d been groomed by much older men, members of the Herrera family who had forced themselves on her time and time again. I hadn’t been in the house when the Satan’s Devils had found her. As a dutiful prospect I’d been standing guard outside. My role began when I’d been called in to carry her out and take her back to the safety of the compound.

I’d seen enough of what she’d been through from the state she was in. I’d gritted my teeth and stilled my hands to stop rushing in and gunning them down myself. Had to be satisfied with the knowledge that all her abusers would die. Once she was out of the way, they’d be killed at the hands of the men I hoped one day to call brothers.

Even sleeping, she fills me with pity. As she wakes, I wish I could take all her pain, both physical and mental, away. What she’s gone through will stay with her for years, for all her life. Her pallor pale, her eyes sunken, there’s drool at the side of her mouth, but it doesn’t detract from her beauty. My stomach tightens again. Will, can, she ever recover?

“Marsh, could you leave us, please?”

“Sorry, Ella. No can do. Slick told me to stay put so here’s where I’m stayin’.” Even if I hadn’t been given the instruction, I couldn’t move from this spot. Not bothering to analyse the reasons why, I just know I want, need, to stay close, to protect her, even if all I can do now is help save her from those thoughts in her head.

“Can’t you stand outside the door? You can guard us from there just as well.”

As I wonder how I can refuse Ella’s reasonable request, Jayden takes one of her sister’s hands in hers, and points the other toward me. “You. You were there. You rescued me.” Rather than immediately correct her assumption, I give her a smile and a quick nod. She looks at Ella and pleads, “Can he stay?”

Unable to keep my distance, I walk to the bed, now admitting the truth. “I didn’t have much to do with it. I just carried you out. I didn’t think you’d remember.” She’d been drugged and out of it.

Ella’s hovering as though she’s her mother, not her sister, but I ignore her. It’s me who passes Jayden the painkillers the doc had left. It’s me who carries her into the bathroom and holds back her hair as she vomits. Something about her calls to me. Already, I care.

I stay, listening to her story. Feeling my eyes water as she goes into the horrific details. How she’d been groomed, threatened, isolated. Forced to do things no fourteen-year-old—scrap that, no woman should ever have to do. Telling myself it might be hard hearing, but it had been devastating for her to live it. She’s the same age as my sister. Not that I have any contact with her, just know of her existence, we’d both been entered into the system after my mom had died. But she’s out there somewhere. I’d hate to think anything like this would happen to her.

Jayden latches onto me. Although I’m almost five years older, I’m the closest to her age on the compound. It’s me she turns to, and I try to help heal her, showing I don’t give a damn what had happened. It hadn’t been her fault, she hadn’t done anything to attract the unwanted attention, been naïve perhaps, but that was because she was so young. She’d had sex, yes, but she had never been an active participant. Broken and shocked, she tries to find her own way to recover. Eventually I have to spell it out, letting her down gently when she tries to take our relationship further.

I wouldn’t take advantage of a traumatised girl, even if Slick, Ella’s man or Drummer, my president, hadn’t read me the riot act. They’d seen where things were heading even then. I was to be hands off until she was of the age of consent which, in Arizona, is eighteen. I knew I’d wait for her. Watch over her, keep her safe, give my life for her if that’s what was needed.

When I’d been patched in, she was the reason I was given my handle. Paladin. Jayden’s knight in black leather armour.

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