Page 30 of Pain

It wasn’t an ideal start to the discussion we were going to have over Saraya. But it was a start. And it would definitely let Devil know how serious I was about keeping her out of his hands.

I was still hoping we could manage this without too much more bloodshed. But I wasn’t counting on it.

And if Devil thought I was going to back down from violence, he had another fucking think coming.

CHAPTER 14

SARAYA

I was cleaning tables in the bar-slash-restaurant that made up a large part of the Banshees’ headquarters when I heard the roar of bikes.

And I’m not even ashamed to admit that I dropped what I was doing and hit the floor the second I heard them.

Hey, the last time I’d heard the roar of bikes it had been the Steed attacking us, guns blazing and throats screaming with obscenities. I hadn’t been at Knight’s HQ long enough to really know how things went around here, but I knew enough about motorcycle clubs to know that if someone had attacked you once, they were likely to attack you again. And I didn’t exactly want to get shot.

I’d just fought my way free of Devil and his crew. I wasn’t going to get myself killed before I had a chance to at least taste that freedom.

I hit the floor and shimmied under a table on my stomach, my breath short and my eyes darting right and left. On the other side of the room, I saw some of the other women doing the same thing.

I also saw the prospects, who’d been left at home, ducking down and reaching for their guns, then rushing en masse toward the window.

Right, I thought. Prospects were already committed to the MC. They were the soldiers. They wouldn’t be hiding under tables when they could be shooting at enemies of the Banshees.

A second later, though, the sound of the bike engines pulled into the parking lot at the front of the clubhouse and then died—to be replaced by a hoarse voice screaming for Mandy.

I saw a streak of bright pink shirt and blond hair heading for the door out of the clubhouse and jumped to my feet, following her quickly. If someone was screaming for Mandy, it meant those were friends out there, not enemies.

Given her position as medic to the MC, I was guessing it also meant someone was hurt.

I sprinted forward, every piece of my mind caught on that last point. Hurt. Shot, most likely. Bleeding. Possibly dying.

Shit, how had that happened so quickly? I’d thought they were going to start a discussion with Devil, not open up the first battle of the war. I’d thought they would be...

No, I hadn’t thought they’d be safe. That would have been beyond naïve. But I hadn’t actually considered the idea that someone might be shot.

And now that I was considering it, I couldn’t stop thinking that it might be Knight out there bleeding. Couldn’t stop the absolute horror running through my veins at the thought.

Because I’d finally found my freedom from Devil—and with that freedom, a man who lit me up inside like no one ever had.

A man who made me feel safe for the first time in my life.

I wasn’t ready to lose my freedom. And I was definitely not ready to lose the man who’d given me that freedom.

I’d barely passed through the door to the outside world when Mandy started screaming.

I jerked myself to a stop and stared out into the parking lot, barely able to breathe with fear... and saw Gemini falling off a bike, his shirt soaked in blood and his face so pale I wondered how he’d been able to sit up at all. He looked like he was already dead, or insanely close to it. His skin was gray, his eyes lacking the emotion I’d seen in him yesterday. The only color on his face was a spray of blood across his chin and up onto his cheek.

He looked like he’d given up on the idea of living—or like someone else had tried to force him out of the living and into the dead.

Mandy ducked under his arm and took it over her shoulder, then turned and stumbled toward the door into the headquarters, her knees buckling at his weight. Without thinking twice, I darted forward and took his other side, pulling his other arm over my shoulders to take part of his weight from Mandy.

He grunted in pain, and I realized I must have aggravated whatever wound he had, but I didn’t care. Mandy needed help, and I wasn’t going to let her struggle through something like this on her own.

Not when she’d been so kind to me when I needed a friend.

We worked together to get him several feet into the headquarters and then grunted and maneuvered until we had him lying on his back on the floor. I grabbed the cushion off a nearby chair and lifted his head to push it underneath him.

“Best I can do, I’m afraid,” I muttered.