Page 60 of Bear

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Bear

When I return to thehouse, Tink’s brothers are all sitting around the table, drinking coffee and cleaning the food from their plates. I didn’t bother knocking; this place already feels more like home in the last few days than North’s cabin ever did.

“You want somethin’ to eat, man?” Liam asks.

“No. I need you all to go pack a bag.”

“What?”

Tuck’s face lights up. “Where are we going?”

“Lockdown.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Liam says.

“I have school.”

“And we have work,” Jeb says.

“You have three seconds to move your asses. Prez has called a lockdown—that’s what Prez gets. I’m taking your sister, and since she’s my family now, that makes you my family too.”

“That’s touching but we can’t drop our entire lives because your prez says—”

“Listen, motherfucker—none of you will have a life left to live when our enemies come to town. Now, you can go pack a couple things for a night or two and follow me to the clubhouse, or I can bring you in bound and gagged in the back of Jupiter’s truck. The choice is yours.”

“What is going on here?” Tink says from the doorway. I turn to face her, resigned to having my ass handed to me for talking to her brother like that.

Jeb and Tuck get up from the table and scurry away. Liam gives me a long disapproving look but sets down his coffee mug and addresses his sister. “Bear was just telling us to pack a bag.”

Her eyes flit between us. “What?”

“Chaos has ordered a lockdown.”

“And that means what exactly?”

“It means our families get their asses to the clubhouse for everyone’s safety.”

“And do what?”

“You wait until we’ve dealt with the problem.”

“I can’t go into lockdown and sit around the clubhouse twiddling my thumbs with the rest of the ol’ ladies. I got work to do.”

“It’s not up for negotiation.”

She laughs humorlessly and crosses the room to the coffee machine. “You know, I’ve heard a lot of that lately, and I’m getting kind of tired of taking orders from the club.”

Liam uses this moment to slip out of the kitchen. I sure hope the asshole is going to pack, because he’ll never live it down if I have to bring him into the clubhouse hogtied in the back of the truck.

“We’re trying to keep you safe,” I tell her. “It isn’t about ordering you around or taking your freedom from you now that you’re mine.”

“What did you say? Because it sounds a lot like you’re laying claim to me, and here I thought I was my own person.”

“Jesus, woman.” I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling in exasperation. “You’re so fuckin’ stubborn. You haven’t even figured out yet how much goddamn danger you’re in, so let me spell it out for you—if you stay here, you die. If you go to work, they will find you and kill you, but not before they’ve raped and tortured you first.”

She flinches, jostling the coffee pot in her hands and spilling the black liquid over the side of the cup onto the counter.

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