By all rules of physics, I shouldn’t have been able to walk. The night before had been intense enough, even with my complete verbal ejaculation of something I hadn’t really intended to say. I’d honestly believed Drew’s very intense reaction and sexual drive following that had been a ploy to wipe my brain clear so I would forget.

I hadn’t forgotten.

Even as we’d lain spent, I’d thought about it.

Then came the ring, and a formal proposal from the sneakiest, and sexiest man alive, which was followed by more sex. That time it really did have mind-wiping qualities. I’d had to lock him out of the bathroom before I lost full use of my legs.

And he called me insatiable.

It had only been while he’d been in the shower and I’d been dressing that the reality of what was coming next slammed into me like a freight train. Rusty’s. Jacob. The Navs… The only upside was that it could now be considered an engagement party, too. True Hounds style.

The weight of the ring on my finger dragged my attention to it. The result included the full-on goofy smile and ass-shaking dance as I studied the sparkling yellow diamond in the glowing white gold setting. The ring fit perfectly and was perfect coming from Drew because it was as unique as he was. Every time I looked down now, I would smile knowing he wanted to marry me.

Me.

Skipping to the bathroom door, I pushed it out of my way and took my time admiring the fine ass and back of my future husband as I leaned against the frame. “You want some coffee?”

He barely moved. He just glanced at me from his position on the bed, his eyes and smug face as alive as ever before. “I think I’m beyond coffee. Make it a whiskey.”

I shuffled to the door, being overly dramatic because I knew he was watching me. After my shower, only my inner thighs were really feeling jellified, but the effort he’d given me was worth the exaggeration. Once I’d slipped through the door, I forced myself to move normally and headed toward the main bar to grab a coffee and whiskey to cart back to the room, only my eyes were trained on my finger, which was a big mistake.

The moment I passed the threshold into the bar, a wall of sound hit me in waves. I think I may have screamed as I stumbled back and hit the wall, knocking all of the wind out of myself. The whole club was there in the bar, faces shining with smiles and laughter at my rather ineloquent entrance.

The slap of feet behind me told me that Drew had joined me, and I only hoped he’d put something on because the entire Babylon charter and families were present.

“Congratulations,” Harry choked out on a laugh, his cheeks red with mirth.

“Oh, would you look at that,” Drew faked surprise, one hand landing on his hip and the other ruffling the back of his just-fucked hair. “The entire MC is here. Early. I wonder what could be the occasion.”

I looked over at him and down, snorting when I realized he was only in his boxers, and not really giving a shit about it.

“Did you call them?” I asked under my breath, as they stayed unanimated and smiling. It was starting to freak me out a little.

“Nooooooo,” he drew out. “Harry did.”

I started to laugh and headed into the room, throwing my arms around Harry’s neck. “Should have known you’d be his partner in crime with this.”

Harry’s arms folded around me as the rest of the room erupted with sound once again. Once Harry was done with me, I was passed around, arms hugging, ass slaps and even a few jealous glares from some of the Hound Whores who were present. I smiled at Drew every time we passed one another, but as I reached Deeks, all I could do was smile even brighter and fall into his embrace.

“I heard you hurried him along.” He guffawed.

I smiled against his neck, not willing to give up the hug quite yet. “His fault. All that wedding talk was fused in my brain. It just kind of fell out.”

“As a proclamation like that does.” He chuckled, squeezing me again. “Even if you did do this in your own unique way, I’m proud of you, kid.”

“Thanks, Deeks. Thank you for everything and for just being there, even when I was being an idiot.”

“Enough of that.”

I stepped back and out of his embrace. “Enough of what?”

“You know what.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

He gave me that look he was so good at and turned me around, handing me to Tate who was watching me with the eyes we’d both inherited from our parents. The moment I was pushed toward him, he scooped me up and turned us both with a laugh I hadn’t heard from him since before the warehouse.

He didn’t say anything—he didn’t need to—that laugh had been something I’d missed every day, and even with the impending storm it made me feel a little bit lighter about what was to come. We were heading into uncertainty, waters too deep to comprehend, but we were all a family. And that had to count for something, right?

I don’t think I’d ever seen the neon open sign turned off at Rusty’s. It was one of those beacons you could see while driving down the highway. A welcome wagon when you hit the city limits of Babylon. The street sign was still lit up and spinning slowly, but the windows were dark, and the building looked strange. Lonely. Although I doubted that would be the case when the motorcycles were all parked outside. They had a way of making places look crowded.

I stepped inside and looked around the dark interior, yet another unfamiliar sight when it came to Rusty’s. But this had been done for the club, and I wasn’t going to dwell on the fact that this felt wrong and weird.

“Is it true?” Janette squealed as she burst through the swinging doors from the kitchen.

I pushed my hands onto my hips and turned up my smile. “Well, that depends on what you heard.”

“Let me see that ring.”

“That’s a yes then,” I mumbled and rushed forward to bounce around with her. She caught my wrist and studied the stunning yellow diamond of the ring for a long time. Her eyes welled with unshed tears as she twisted my arm left and right to see it from every angle.

“Where is he?”

“He’s helping the guys load the van. Deeks is just riding out real quick to make sure no one is hanging around. Tate is bringing Sloane in on the back of his bike to help, just to make it look genuine.”

“You mean so he has an excuse to ride his bike.”

“That’s what I said. Like he needs an excuse. He’s always on the damn thing these days. I should have waited to give it to him as a graduation present.”

“Leave the boy alone,” Rusty said, pushing through the doors and scooping me up without warning. “Just be glad he’s not making you an aunt.”

“Wait, what?”

“Jesus, Rusty.” Janette growled, rolling her eyes. “Are you really trying to get the award for most inappropriate shit to say, or is it a God-given talent?”

“Talent,” Rusty grumbled, dropping me to my feet and heading out the front to my truck, still muttering under his breath.

“That’s his way of saying congratulations,” Jan shouted at his back before the door could swing closed again. Shaking her head, she looked to me with a wide smile. “I’m yours to do with as you will. What do you need help with?”

“Just setting everything up and making sure everything is in place. Libby said she was going to pick up a few engagement decorations on the way over, something Tate is happy about. I’m not sure he was sold on being the center of attention, you know.”

Rusty pushed into the diner and dropped a couple of boxes on the table before heading back out again, and I went to start sorting through them. I’d barely pulled open the top when I saw the stiff piece of paper inside with two words written on it:

Vultures circle.

What the hell did that even mean? I read the note three more times until my silent reticence became too much for Janette to handle.

“What you got there, hon?” she asked, surprising me enough to have me spinning to face her.

“Oh, nothing. I guess it got put in here by accident. It’s just a doodle.”

Of all the things to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, this stupid note with two words on top was it. This plan, this situation, this setup... I trusted Drew and his strategy; it was just Jacob I didn’t trust, and the Navs who scared me shitless. They were the variables we couldn’t predict, and the whole situation was beginning to come together leaving just hours before we were supposed to pull this all off.

“I need some air for a second,” I whispered, and sidestepped Jan to slip out of the door and into the cool air of the early afternoon, just as Drew pulled up to the front of the building on his bike and parked next to my truck.

He was clearly still high from the night before and this morning as he swung his leg off the bike, readjusted his cut and walked over to me. As soon as he got close enough to see my face, his smile faltered, but not his swagger. There was barely a flinch of a frown before he corrected himself and came to a stop in front of me.

“Everything okay?” he asked, brushing my cheek with his knuckles.

I smiled up at him, leaning into his touch. “Having a moment.”

“Talk to me.”

“I don’t trust Jacob, and his association with the Navs scares me. The usual, I guess, but I’ll be fine once I don’t have time to think about everything too hard.”

“Listen…” He dropped his hand from my cheek and picked up my newly accessorized finger, staring down at the ring before he looked into my eyes again. “It would be stupid of me, and naive as fuck to stand here and tell you everything is going to be fine. We both know how things can go wrong. What I need you to do is to not think about all that until it happens. This is just a party. There’s a chance not even Jacob will turn up. There’s a chance we might not get a hint of who hurt Sloane. There’s a chance every Nav within a three hundred mile radius of this place is asleep, tucked up in bed already, too fucked from the night before to even think about taking part in today. But if they do turn up, we wait for them to approach us, okay? And when they do, we’ll be ready. All of us. Including you. You’ve never been stronger than you are right now. You’ve been trained by the best.” He smirked.

I was leg tapping like a tweaker as I looked up and met his eyes. Seeing that assuredness in his eyes always seemed to help. But the unpredictability was what worried me the most. Drew would be the main target if anything went wrong, but then again so was I. That shouldn’t have been comforting, and yet, it was. I knew what to do in a crisis. I knew what was expected of me tonight, and those were the things that settled my scrambled thoughts and anxiety.

I stilled my body and stepped into him, my arms circling his waist, and my chin resting against his chest. “Thank you.”

His hand pressed against my hair before he ran it down my back. “I’ve got you, Ayda. No matter what happens, you getting hurt is not an option.”

“I know,” I blew out with confidence. “Like I said, I was just having a moment. I needed to be reminded that we’re the ones with the plan. We all know what we’re supposed to be doing in any given situation. I just… the memories of the chaos catch up with me sometimes.”

“You and me both,” he admitted quietly. “You good? I have no problem staying like this with you if you need me. I can make the men work twice as hard as they need to. Perks of being King.”

“Well, you’re warm, and you smell good, but I guess I should get to work, too. We’ve got a lot to do before tonight, and I may need to call in those perks later with the dress I’m planning to wear.” I pushed up on my toes and pressed my lips to his, before releasing him with a reluctant sigh. “Get to work, Tucker.”

“Is that how it’s going to be from now on? You telling me what to do?”

I laughed gently and shook my head. “I could try, but you always do what you want anyway. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”

“Damn right, I do.” Drew swatted my ass hard and sent me on my way.

I stumbled and rubbed my ass cheek with exaggeration, giving him a small smile as I finally got to work.

It was easier with a crowd there to keep my attention on the task at hand. There was really only one area we could set up for the band. The tables were all easy to move, but the booths were a different story. Once the stage was set, though, it gave a really odd feeling of being in the middle of some dive bar that you’d see in the movies. It felt a little like something from Pulp Fiction, which also left me with a slightly ominous feeling at the same time.

We lost a few of our work crew when Drew directed some of the guys out to invite the people from town to the celebration, which was now officially part an engagement party. Sloane and Libby had gone through the invites we’d printed out and drawn in the word ‘engagement’ with a sketch of a ring next to it.

Rusty headed to the kitchen to count out inventory of what was needed because the club was reimbursing them for the stock, but he’d refused any money for time or venue. He said that was our engagement present. Sutton even steered us toward a couple of off-duty officers as security so we could drink without having to obtain a liquor license. Everything was falling into place almost too neatly, but I didn’t allow myself to think about the what if factor anymore. We could only control what happened when it played out. We couldn’t make a path for them to follow.

As I looked over at Drew talking to his men, I went back to that happy place where the weight on my finger reminded me of the future beyond tonight, and I smiled to myself.

I was going to marry that man.