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Cayde
I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone in my life as much as I do right now. Not even my fucking father.
I want to storm back in there and fight every last one of those fucking bikers to the death. I want to burn their clubhouse down around them like they burned Athena’s home. I want to tear them apart piece by piece until they tell us the truth about where she is.
But Dean is insisting we can’t. That it’s a bad idea. And unfortunately, he’s right.
We’re in the middle of arguing about what to do next when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I reach for it, and Jaxon fixes me with a steely glare. “Really? You’re checking your phone? Right now?”
But then his phone goes off, and Dean’s too.
When we pull them out and look at the screens, we’ve all gotten a text from the same number.
A drop of GPS coordinates.
“Let’s fucking go.” Dean is in the car in a second, and I follow, my pulse thundering in my veins. I think—I hope that it’s Athena’s location. But I can’t be sure. Still, we’re not going to waste any time. Jaxon is already firing up the bike, and I suck in a breath as Dean hits the gas, peeling out onto the road.
“Call the number,” Dean says, but I’m already dialing. It’s not Athena’s, but maybe—
It’s a dead number. “A burner phone,” I say in disgust, shoving my phone into my pocket. “It’s got to be the Sons. Who else could it be?”
“They seemed pretty insistent they had nothing to do with it. And their argument seemed pretty solid on top of that.”
“Then it’s a few of them who went rogue. Still pissed at her dad and want to tie up loose ends or something.”
Dean frowns, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“We have to find out who did this. If these coordinates lead to Athena, and she’s—” I can’t say it, can’t even suggest that it’s an option that she might not be alive. “We have to find out who did this to her. We can’t let her keep dealing with it on her own.”
“You’re not wrong,” Dean says quietly, his eyes fixed on the road.
My gut is churning for the entire time that it takes to drive to the GPS point. It’s no landmark, nothing special, just a strip of road about a mile out of town. When we pull over on the shoulder and get out, at first, it doesn’t look like there’s anything at all, anywhere. No reason to be here.
As if it’s a trick—or a trap.
I see Jaxon’s hand go to his back where his knife is concealed. Dean is turning back towards the car, probably to go for his gun. And then I glance towards the ditch, and I see the shape of a body.
A naked female body, on her side, with black hair.
“Fuck!” I start to run down the embankment, not waiting for the others, but it’s only a few seconds before I hear their footsteps behind me. We reach the ditch at almost the same time, and I know I should be careful, that she could be seriously injured, but I can’t stop myself from reaching for her because I know it’s Athena. I know it is.
But when I turn her over, it’s worse than I could possibly have thought.
“We have to get her back to the house, now.” I look up at the other two. Dean and Jaxon are both pale, shocked at the sight in front of us. “Come on! Forget whatever shit is going on between us right now. We have to get her home and cleaned up and see how bad it is.”
“We need to take her to a fucking hospital,” Jaxon says between gritted teeth.
“We can’t,” Dean says, his voice low and worried. “We don’t know who did this. A hospital might make it worse. They’d get authorities involved, and you know how our fathers feel about outside influence. We need to just get her back to the manor like Cayde said. We’ll take care of her there.”
“She could have broken ribs, internal bleeding—”
“Just help me move her!” I snap.
“Oh, now you’re worried about her?” Jaxon glares at Dean and me both. “You’ve been treating her like a fucking commodity all this time when you should have been treating her like a queen. She’s the prize, the thing that gives one of us the right to rule this town, and you’ve both tortured her, been assholes to her from the very first day, hurt her, bullied her, and tormented her. I’ve played my part too, but fuck.”
Dean and I exchange a glance. “We’ll talk about this later,” Dean says quietly. “But you’re right. We could have been better to her. We could—” he breaks off, looking down at Athena, and I know he’s feeling the same things I am, or very close to it, looking down at her.
She’s filthy and bloody, covered in wounds, her lips split and eyes blackening, bruises littering her body. There’s no telling what else they’ve done to her, whoever it was, and I’m not even convinced she’s going to make it. But she has to.
