Page 112 of Locke

“Better,”I linked, not wanting to speak. “I need to get out of bed and stop this self-pity.”

Locke hummed and set me on his thigh. He pushed my hair away and pressed kisses up my shoulder. When I moved, I felt something hard move against me, and that was the first time I felt something up my ass.

My eyes widened and I moved around some more, then jumped up off his lap. Locke smirked and rubbed my ass tentatively.

“Something wrong, Princess? What’s got you standing?”

I glared at him. “There’s something in my ass.”

Locke chuckled and bit his lip. “Is there now? I wonder what it could be?”

Locke tried several things to lift my spirits, even though he knew mourning was part of the process. He said, even to this day he gets upset about his sister and his mother, and there isn't a day that goes by that he doesn’t think about them, but he tries to keep the pain away.

He’d told me stories, even though I could reach into his mind and find them myself. I found it so invasive; I didn’t want to do that, nor did I have the skill. So, he told me bedtime stories about him and Grim, and how the club came to be.

After Blood Rose was no more, he took the carriage that held massive amounts of gold, and the horses, and took the long trek to the nearest portal. Along the way, he found Grim, just as beat up and lost as he was.

Their smells were similar then, the smell of rogues with no pack. They decided that since their situations were the similar, they would travel together to the Earth realm and die in peace on Earth.

That vision changed when they saw others just like them dying off along their journey. Many deserved to be rogues. They had refused any sort of bond or were wicked. What Locke and Grim noticed was that the rogues who paired together didn’t go rabid as quickly.

As they pondered those findings, they concocted the idea in their heads about making a group of rogues under the disguise of an MC. The more rogues together, the longer they could last before they went rabid.

Because all living things want to survive, why couldn’t they?

And motorcycles seemed like the logical choice. It was the perfect cover for roughnecks like them. Plus, they could ride, gofast and feel the wind in their hair. They couldn’t very well run through the forest like they used to.

Locke had the most hope that one day they would achieve redemption, maybe even a second chance, but they knew very well that it was a far-fetched idea, especially Grim. They didn’t know where to start in the beginning, until one day he found a letter with a gold weighted scale embossed on the front, with feathers on one side and coins on the other.

Locke said, at first, he thought it was a joke and threw away the letter, but it appeared back on his desk the moment he turned his back. He figured he’d humor whatever ghost, god or entity had thrown it back there, and took some of his stronger men to a site that had women held in cages. It was their first mission.

It was sloppy, he said. They should have been caught, but the enemy didn’t know they were coming. They were a small group but after that night they took it more seriously, and the letters kept coming; the missions larger and more complicated.

They never lost.

Not once did Locke and his men turn down a mission, even though he took his men tochurchand asked if they wanted to complete it. His members had to do something; they couldn’t sit on their asses. No shifter, rogue or any other supernatural could sit on their ass and do nothing. Thus, they started the Iron Fang. The one percent of MCs that took care of the weak, especially women.

Locke and Grim used the gold stolen from the Blood Rose pack to get started. The left-over gold still buried underneath this cabin. If we are ever in any financial need, Locke told me that beneath the rug and floorboard, we would find twenty more gold bars and that would keep the club running.

The club was self-sufficient, now, though. With Locke’s investments in the human world—we didn’t need to use the goldfrom his home realm of Elysian. It was just back-up gold at this point.

He was resourceful. I’d give him that.

There was a mirror in the small bathroom, and I sauntered over to it. The mirror was too high to see the thing poking my asshole and I groaned, trying to bend my ass over and see what was back there. But I had a good idea what it was.

“Did—did you plug me?” I tried not to smile, but it spread across my face anyway.

“Maybe,” he drawled. “Figured it was one way to get you outta bed.”

I bit my lip and walked back toward him. Luckily, I kept up with my hygiene by taking a dip in the lake. Locke cleaned up the dried blood, dirty sweat, and tears from the first few days while I was passed out from exhaustion, but I was determined not to let him see me as a hairy human.

“Sorry, a lot happened at once. I should have gotten up, especially with the pack I—”

“Shh, shh,” Locke soothed, and pulled on me, so I straddled his legs. “My luna needs to take care of her physical and emotional health first, before she can tackle a pack. Besides, the mind-link was a mess. I’ve been detangling all that for the pack while staying in here with you. It isn’t like I was sittin’ pretty either.”

Guilt hung heavy in my chest.

“Fucking gods, Emmie, don’t do that.” He pulled on my hips and kissed my soft stomach. “Before I set off from Blood Rose, you wanna know how long I stayed in that barren wasteland before I took off with all that gold? Two months.”

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