Glory
I’d known something was bothering Wolf. Pain and worry flashed in his eyes off and on ever since he’d gone to the clubhouse two days ago. He’d said it wasn’t safe for me to leave our home, and I’d trusted him to tell me the truth. Whatever he’d learned while he’d been gone, it must have been horrific. If I left the room for more than a few minutes, he came to find me. It was like he worried I’d vanish into thin air and he’d never see me again.
“Are you going to talk to me?” I asked as we lay in bed. “Or touch me?”
He’d gone from not being able to keep his hands off me, to giving me almost brotherly kisses. Not once had he reached for me or given in to my attempts at seduction. To be honest, he was scaring the crap out of me. If it weren’t for all the hovering, I’d think he’d lost interest.
“I touch you all the time,” he said.
“Not what I meant and you know it, Wolf.”
He leaned up on an elbow and glowered at me. “Since when do you call me Wolf when we’re in our own damn home?”
I reached up to cup his cheek. “You’re scaring me. I know something’s wrong. You barely leave my side, and at the same time you haven’t done more than give me a quick kiss on the cheek in the last two days. Talk to me. Please.”
“The doctor from the clinic is dead,” he said. “The guy sent a video of him…”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, as if he couldn’t handle seeing the images in his mind. I snuggled closer to him, breathed in his scent, and wished there was some way I could comfort him. But if he saw what happened to Amelia, then he knew what the man planned for me too. It occurred to me that was why he’d been hovering, why he’d been so worried when he didn’t know where I was every second of the day. Whatever happened to her, it must have been horrific.
“He tortured her. Raped her. Then killed her on camera,” Wolf said softly. “I can’t handle losing you, Glory, especially in such a brutal way. I’m sorry if I haven’t been myself. I didn’t intend to pull away from you.”
“I’m here, Max. By your side. Whoever the man is, he hasn’t gotten to me yet, and as long as I stay in our house I should be safe. Right?”
He nodded. “It’s Twister’s brother. Apparently, he had a twin and an older sister. The club sent someone to fetch Twister’s niece in case she’s in danger too. Meredith is Twister’s daughter, but we have no way of knowing if his brother knows about her.”
He still seemed tense, and I ran my hand up and down his arm. “What else? I can tell you have something else weighing on you.”
“They’re part of a group. We don’t know the name yet, but there’s more than one, Glory. It’s not just one man trying to get to you. It could be many more. We’ve seen two on camera. Twister’s brother and someone we haven’t identified yet. We don’t know exactly how big this thing is yet. Blades said he remembered a man in prison who always referred to the Sons. The hackers are trying to get more information.”
“So we don’t know who the group is, what they want, or how many of them there are?” I asked.
“Right. And that’s why I’m a bit obsessed with where you are every second of the day.”
I could understand why he was so worried. It bothered me no one knew anything about the men who wanted to hurt me. Even worse, if they’d killed Amelia and filmed it, they’d probably hurt other women. Someone needed to stop them. I had no doubt the Devil’s Fury would do their best to put an end to the monsters, but what if they couldn’t?
“Is someone supposed to call you with an update?” I asked.
“Demon has sent a few texts out to everyone. I haven’t heard anything since lunch.”
I leaned over Wolf and picked up his phone from the bedside table. “Text or call him.”
“It’s almost midnight,” Wolf pointed out. “If I wake up Farrah, or his daughter, Rebel, Demon will be pissed as hell. Trust me when I say you don’t want to be on his bad side.”
“You’re stressing out and not sleeping well. Please, Max. Call him. Tell him I asked if there’d been any news. Make it sound like it’s for me.”
He sighed and placed the call, putting it on speaker.
“What the fuck do you want?” Demon asked when the line connected, not even bothering with a simple “hello” first.
“I have you on speaker and Glory is here. She’s worried that we haven’t found out anything new. I told her you’d been sending updates, but she asked me to call,” Wolf said. “I told her what I could.”
“Right.” Demon sighed. “The group is called Sons of Vassago. From what Shield was able to determine, it’s a group who worships a demon by the name of Vassago, a Prince of Hell. We believe the women, and the way they’re killed, are intended to be some sort of sacrifice.”
“Jesus,” Wolf muttered.
“All the hackers, except Outlaw, are working on finding the names and faces of the members. At least the ones within a few hundred miles of here. It’s possible some could have flown from other areas, but the Sons of Vassago appear to be global. I’m not sure we’ll have a list of every single one no matter how long we work on this.”
“Wait,” I said, my chest feeling tight as anxiety crept through me. “If they’re global, even if you get rid of whichever ones want to hurt me, won’t more just try later? Or want revenge if you kill any of their members?”
“And that’s why we haven’t done anything yet,” Demon said. “We need to determine how expendable these men are. The last thing we want to do is start a war.”
“They already brought it to our doorstep,” Wolf pointed out. “We didn’t start shit.”
“Any idea how this all ties in to the clinic?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t overstepping. But since these assholes wanted me dead too? Yeah, it made it my problem.
“Wire helped out with that end,” Demon said. “Twister’s brother goes by the name Saul Sanders. We can’t tell if that’s his legal name or not, but everything Wire has dug up has that name on it. Wire and his wife went through camera footage in the area for days and finally found our man stalking the patient from the clinic. He may not have been the one to assault her, but she was on his radar. The fact we helped her, then made sure she got home safely, probably pissed him off. Add to that the fact his brother was part of this club, and is now lying in a shallow grave, and it put a target on you and the doc.”
At least it wasn’t something I’d done. And it wasn’t directly related to the clinic and the work we’d been doing. I had to wonder if Saul hadn’t discovered the club was affiliated with the clinic, if the doctor and I would have been safe. Or since his victim had managed to escape, would we still be considered a good alternative? I had a feeling we might never know.
“I’ll call Church tomorrow and we can come up with a plan,” Demon said. “Hopefully, we’ll have more information on the men we’re dealing with right now and who else might be close by. Each club helping us track down this information is also going to keep an eye on the Sons of Vassago.”
“Thank you, Demon,” I said. “I know you didn’t have to let me hear all that, but it helps. Not knowing scares me more than having an idea of what I could face if those men get their hands on me.”
“Not going to happen, Glory. You’re Wolf’s, which means you’re club property, and we protect our own,” Demon said.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being club property, but Wolf had mentioned something about a property cut for me. I hadn’t gotten one yet. Something told me the club was too preoccupied with everything else going on.
Wolf ended the call and pulled me into his arms. “And now you know as much as I do.”
“Except for the details of the video, and I don’t need to know those. It’s clear we’re dealing with people who have no conscience. No soul. Do they really believe sacrificing women will gain them favors with a demon?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little too…”
“Hollywood?” he asked. “Yeah, it is. There’s a good chance they don’t believe sacrifices will do anything. They may just enjoy the kill and use the demon Vassago as an excuse.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Get some sleep.” He ran his fingers through my hair and kissed me softly. “You’re too important for me to lose you, Glory. You’re… everything. My heart. My soul. My reason for breathing. As much as I’d love to be up all night making love, I want to be sharp and focused. I can’t let those assholes slip past me.”
“I understand, Max.” I bit my lip before kissing him. I couldn’t hold back anymore. I needed to tell him. “I love you.”
“I love you too, beautiful. I don’t deserve an angel like you, but now that I have you, I’m holding on and never letting go.”
I snuggled closer. “Good, because I’m not letting you go either.”
He placed his hand over my belly. We hadn’t been together very long, but I still knew what he was thinking. My big, sexy biker wondered if I could be pregnant. We hadn’t been trying to conceive, even if we’d decided protection wasn’t going to work for right now. Neither of us wanted to wait long enough for me to get on the pill, and since the first condom had broken, it hadn’t seemed worth dealing with them. He was clean. I was clean. So we were leaving babies up to fate.
I pressed my hand to his. “I should start in about a week or a few days after. If I don’t, I can take a pregnancy test and we’ll see what it says.”
“As much as I’d love to have another baby with you, I’d rather wait until the Sons of Vassago are out of the picture.”
“Me too,” I murmured.
“What about your degree? You haven’t been working on your classes since you moved in here, not that I’ve seen. And you said something about needed to do a clinical or whatever it’s called.”
“I think I’m putting everything on hold for the moment. I want my degree, and I’ll get it. The time just feels off right now. What seemed like the most important thing ever has taken a back seat to everything else. I have you and Sienna. That’s what matters most. I’m only nineteen. I have the rest of my life to finish my nursing degree.”
“Don’t give up on your dream, Glory. Not for me or anyone else.”
“I won’t, Max. Nursing is still important to me, but my dreams are changing. I never counted on finding a guy like you. I’d thought it would be me and Sienna forever, or at least until she grew up and started her own life. Priorities change, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s why humans are so adaptive. Our lives are constantly shifting or turning upside down entirely. I still want to be a nurse, but it’s not quite as important as before.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “My smart, beautiful, sexy wife.”
I smiled and closed my eyes. With his arms around me, I felt safe and loved. As long as Wolf was by my side, I could face anything. Even some weird cult of psychotic murderers who sacrificed women. Nothing would take me from Wolf. I wouldn’t let it.
I needed him as much as I needed air, and I knew he felt the same about me. He’d been lonely, even if he wouldn’t have admitted as much. He might have been with Franny for a while, but it was clear she’d never really cared for him. She’d been selfish and hadn’t accepted him. I loved Wolf with all my heart. I saw him. The real him, insecurities and all. Some might think tough, alpha bikers didn’t have weaknesses, but I’d learned that was far from the truth. Everyone had a weakness. In Wolf’s case, he’d wanted to be accepted. Loved. I would gladly give him that and so much more.
He might be protective of me, but I would defend him as well. Not just physically. No, I’d fight for all of Wolf -- his strengths, his weaknesses, his heart… his very soul. He was mine, just as I was his, and nothing would ever tear us apart.
If my parents were still part of my life, they’d be trying to pull me away from Wolf. They’d say it was too soon to claim I loved him. They’d say I was acting irrationally, and not doing the mature thing. They’d never really understood me. Yes, they’d pushed me to be the best I could be, and I appreciated all they’d done and sacrificed, but when I needed them the most, they’d tossed me out like unwanted trash. Me and my baby. I’d never forgive them for that. Hugs and kisses had been rare growing up. I wanted something different for my children.
One day I’d send them a letter and thank them. If they hadn’t been so cruel, I’d have never met Wolf. I wouldn’t have moved to Blackwood Falls, fallen in love, or met the incredible people here. Picking up and moving had been scary, but it had been the best decision I’d ever made. I wouldn’t second-guess myself again. Whatever higher power had led me here had given me a gift. The best gift ever. Love.
“Love you,” I mumbled softly.
A snore was Wolf’s response and I smiled as I let sleep take me.