Page 30 of Awry
He’s never wavered, not once in almost thirteen fucking years.
My younger brother is perfectly rational, maybe even too much so, in all other aspects of his life.But he’s completely unhinged about the girl we three loved and saw murdered in front of us.
I answer the call, barking, “Report!”like a complete fucking asshole.
Rought’s Southern-tinted drawl comes over the line.He retains it because of his mother’s side of the family mostly, because neither of us has lived anywhere near our sperm donor since … then.“Someone fucking slit the throat of a fucking berserker up here, then just left the corpse on the fucking beach.”
I scrub a hand across my forehead.“We already knew that.”
He scoffs.“Yeah, but knowing it is different than seeing it.It’s Breaker.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, a surge of misplaced adrenaline competing with my pounding headache.“We already knew that too,” I say, though Presh hadn’t exactly spelled it out through her terror.I swear I can feel my heartbeat in my fucking jaw, in the aching roots of my teeth.“What we don’t know is what the fuck was he doing kidnapping Presh?”
“No idea.Except there’s no way he was even adjacent to our territory all on his lonesome.”
“Chains was with him.He’s not on the beach?”Berserkers, even if they are capable of acting remotely human, never travel alone.And trusting one within a mile of Presh?Un-fucking-believable.Even for our shared sperm donor.
“Nope,” Rought says.“The Cataclysm is going to be livid.”
The Cataclysm.He doesn’t mean the entire club or pack.He means the man, the president of the club.The evil fucking asshole who also happens to have spread his seed so liberally that none of us sired by him know how many half-siblings we actually have.
“Wars have been started for less,” Rought says, not sounding the least bit concerned about it.
“Not when it’s self-defense.”
“There’s no way Presh did this.And there’s way more blood soaked into the sand than even this bastard could bleed out.So whoever else bled here, no doubt died here, has been taken, along with whatever weapon was used, and the second bike.”
“Chains,” I say.Repeating myself like a stupid asshole because I can’t mention Zaya.Can’t mention that Presh was sure that the woman who’d rescued her had died, then came back.
I can’t deal with that.With the possible ramifications of that.Not right now.
“Yep.You don’t get one without the other.But a dead man couldn’t have gotten back on his bike and driven away.”
In addition to being Breaker’s babysitter, Chains is a lieutenant for the Cataclysm.I’ve lost count of how many times he beat down Rought, Reck, and me during one of his ‘teaching’ moments.All of us under eighteen years old at the time, and without our beasts to fortify us.Breaker joined Chains’s training sessions on more than one occasion.Before Reck fucking destroyed both of them in a day that’s still etched into my memory.
My older brother might have saved Rought’s life that day.Maybe even mine.
We hadn’t been patched yet, so despite our bloodline, we didn’t have the protection of club status.And our sperm donor firmly believed in survival of the fittest, so our deaths would have been a mere footnote for the Cataclysm.That brawl was two against one, and neither bear shifter walked away easily.It wasn’t long afterward that the three of us permanently left our father’s custody, and Breaker went berserker.With Chains assigned as his permanent keeper.
At the time, our sperm donor seemed to let us go easily.Buteven though I haven’t been able to confirm the suspicion or share it with anyone, I’m pretty certain he still has his claws deep into Reck.So there might have been more at play with our apparent ease at walking away from the Cataclysm — the man and the club — and coming into our uncle’s care permanently than I’d thought at the time.
Zaya Gage — a fake Zaya Gage — popping back into our lives is going to fuck up everything we’ve struggled to build.Every relationship and —
“Right, well, Pinky and her crew are here,” Rought says over the phone, pulling me out of my thoughts.“They’ll get the body melted and the site scoured.”
Pinky is an Outcast mage.She runs the crew that keeps all the club’s more … physical businesses as clean as possible.Rought keeps our digital footprint just as squeaky.I keep our reputation stellar within the community and with our partners, managing those businesses and always looking for expansion opportunities.
“Based on what I can see,” Rought is saying, “there are four sets of footprints to the beach and three out, if drag marks count.You’ve got eyes on Presh and her friend?”
‘Friend’ is how I’ve explained the identity thief tagging along with Presh during her escape— to everyone but Reck, at least.She-who-is-yet-to-be-named-within-Rought’s-hearing-range.The fake Zaya needs to be gone before Rought even gets a whiff of her.I would have stonewalled Reck as well, except he picked up on what was happening and called me.
And yeah, I will deal with whatever surveillance — traditional or essence-wrought — Reck has on me, or in my office, or in the clubhouse, after this shit gets dealt with.I’ve let that asshole’s actions slide, given him the benefit of the doubt, for too many years already.
“I’m about to have eyes on them,” I say, hoping Rought puts the pauses in the conversation down to a bad connection.
“I hear there’s a sweet ride that needs my attention,” Rought says.It’s a statement, not a question.
“Yeah,” I say.“Grinder tell you?We gave it a look before we hit the motel.It’s scratched up bad, wouldn’t start.Hurt my heart just a little.”Then I add without thinking, “A silver-glossed beauty, 1972 or 1973 BMW 3.0 CSi.”
