“Hey man,” a kid no more than sixteen stepped up onto the dais, blocking my view. “You think I could talk to—”

“No,” I growled. “Now get out of the fucking way.”

“But Grey said that maybe—”

“Move.”

The kid opened his mouth a third time, but one look from me silenced him and he bolted for the exit. Practically shaking.

“Dude, that was Jesse’s kid. He wants in,” Grey hollered. “He wants to take the trial.”

I shook my head, searching for the new girl again in the crowd. “He isn’t ready,” I retorted. “The kid was about to shit himself.”

I wasn’t wrong. And Grey didn’t argue. I wasn’t about to stick my neck out for some pipsqueak with Diesel when I knew full well he wouldn’t last asecondin the trials. Besides, Dies didn’t take on kids. You had to be a legal adult to be initiated into the ranks.

Bri sneered something at Ava Jade, and I took in how her body shifted, the miniscule movements seeming second nature, putting her in a fighting stance whether she was aware of it or not.

Her file had been missing from the office when I went to have a look through it the other night after Randy’s send off, but that didn’t stop me. It took me a couple of days, but I now knew all there was to know about Ava Jade Mason.

She lived in a trailer park with her dad before he was killed. His very brief police report alluded to gang involvement, but it didn’t look like they were doing anything about it. I doubted they ever would.

Her mom was a mystery. It was noted in her files at Lennox High that she was no longer a point of contact, so I assumed she split.

Ava Jade wasn’t pictured in any of the yearbooks aside from the obligatory class photo each year which led me to believe she was a loner.

A loner who seemed to know how to handle herself, and who carried a blade. I wondered if she knew how to use it. Why she felt the need to carry it in class?

Bri turned her venom on Becca, but it was Ava I couldn’t peel my eyes away from. I’d already noticed her curves, despite the fact she liked to hide them beneath baggy sweaters and ripped jeans, but tonight…

Tonight she wasn’t hiding. In that dress, with everything she had on display, she was fucking taunting giants. She knew it, too. I saw the way her face changed when she noticed us watching. Flustered at first, but then rife with defiance as she began to dance.

My brow furrowed as she stiffened now, her body going rigid as she watched over her new roommate. When Bri launched herself at Becca, Ava Jade was primed and ready.

When her fist flew, sending Bri staggering back, my cock throbbed in my jeans.

Grey moved to stand, but I signaled him to stay put. I wanted to see how this played out. She had an audience now, even Rook was sitting up and taking notice, a gleam of appreciation in his dark stare. His cigarette forgotten, left to burn out between his fingers.

There would be no taking this back. Ava Jade was royallyfucked.

Bye-bye, little sparrow.

In a move not even I could’ve anticipated, she fucking hit heragain.As if once wasn’t enough to seal her fate. You didn’t mess up Gregory Moore’s daughter’s face and get away with it.

Bri’s nose shattered under Ava Jade’s fist on the second hit, spraying blood in an arc over her face. Somehow, the red warpaint suited her, and I ground my teeth to keep my body in check at her savage beauty.

“Jesusfuck,” Rook groaned, and I caught him pawing at the front of his jeans, practically salivating, his shoulders shaking with a shiver of rabid desire.

A hollow chasm gaped open in my stomach. That wasn’t good.

Ava Jade wasn’t what I thought, and I didn’t know if I should be as turned on as Rook, or even more wary of her than I already was. I hadn’t wanted something,someone, in a long time. Dolls broke too easily under pressure and the ones here were made of porcelain.

Ava Jade was made of something much stronger. Maybe not even a doll at all.

Would she break under my fingers? Would she shatter?

I’d been worried about what a girl like her could do to us, from that very first moment my brothers and I saw her. Their interest had me on guard, eager to get rid of her as soon as possible. My primal nature viewed her as a threat and my job had always been to eliminate those. To eliminate any possibility of distraction, but...

Bri fell to her knees, choking and spluttering. Ava Jade was on top of her in a second, ripping her head back to whisper something in her ear, andthe fearon Bri’s face. If that wasn’t the most beautiful fucking thing I’d seen today…