To say tensions were high would have been an understatement.

Ash sat at the bar, her head turning as she overlooked the room through her dark sunglasses. As I assessed her from my leather seat on the furthest end of the room, I noticed how her gaze didn’t linger on the knife marks in the doors, nor the bloodstains that we hadn’t managed to get off the paint, nor the big and burly brothers who usually drew attention. No, it was focusing on the cracks in the walls, the slight lift of some of the floor boards, and the precise order of the alcohol lined up on the shelves; a bottle of Jack Daniels in particular.

I must not have been the only one watching, because Lamb reached up to the shelf, lifted the bottle from its place, and broke the seal on the unopened bottle. He set a glass in front of Ash and poured a double measure before pushing it toward her.

I waited for her to take the glass, and so did Lamb.

She didn’t take it. Instead, we watched as she reached down into the backpack she had apparently stored at Anna’s house before coming to her rescue—which Anna had sent a brother to go collect, compared to last time—and unzipped the tattered thing, reached in, and pulled out a glass bottle.

She uncapped it, put the Jack Daniels bottle to her lips, and took a long mouthful before continuing to peruse the minute details of the room.

I expected Lamb to annoy her about it like he would if it had been anything else. But ever since her arrival, Ash hadn’t been the only one on guard. Lamb may not have been looking at her directly, but his attention was glued to her. The calculative air about him that he normally hid was on full display as he took the abandoned glass, downed the whiskey, and put the bottle of Jack back in its rightful place.

He had barely put the bottle back before Sweets leaned over the bar, her chest almost falling out of her little skimpy shirt. “Lamb,” she purred, flipping her long blonde hair, drawing his attention. Lamb turned slowly and leaned his hips back against the shelves, folding his arms over his chest as he looked Sweets straight in the eye, not giving her tits a single glance.

He crooked a blond eyebrow at her, taunting her to try harder.

That was the Lamb I knew. Seeing his playful albeit sadistic side come out of the muted coldness relieved the slight restlessness inside of me. It had been there the second my eyes had landed on Ash, and I hadn’t been able to shake it since. The skin of my leg ached in memory of the gunshot wound in my leg. It was barely an ache, a flesh wound like she had said, and didn’t bother my walking like I had expected, despite having been shot only a day ago.

I had thought Anna was wild when I’d first seen her. Now I was beginning to see that she wasn’t the only one. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who taught whom.

Thinking of Anna made me realize that she wasn’t there. My eyes scoured across the clubroom like lightning, and I knew for sure she wasn’t in the bedroom nor my office after she had stained my expensive oak desk because she was pissy at me.

An unwarranted growl left my lips, and the noise drew attention from a few of the passing girls, all of them skittering quickly out of my line of sight.

I looked up, seeing Ash almost completely done with her bottle of Jack in the five minutes I wasn’t glaring holes into her, and I was sure she was a little unsteady. I looked to Lamb, wondering if he would take the bottle away from her, but noticed that he had long since abandoned the bar and joined Pretty on the couch, along with Sweets, Ember, and Georgia. He had probably lost interest in her after all.

Just as my gaze left Lamb, I spotted one of the weekender’s old lady walk in Ash’s direction. I recognized the tall, busty brunette as Moon’s old lady of about two weeks—Michelle? Misty?—as she propped her hands on her hips, stopping in front of Ash.

It wasn’t hard to hear her snap even on the other side of the room. “You need to stop perving on my old man,” she hissed, flipping her hair at her.

Ash’s head tilted up to look at the brunette. As she set her bottle on the bar, the girl continued to spout random, possessive shit I’d heard several times before. I didn’t think Ash had been doing anything other than checking out every nook and cranny of this clubhouse, but instead of stepping in to stop it, I found myself inclined to remain in my seat, curious as to how it would turn out. I was also aware of a few nearby brothers glancing in my direction, waiting for a signal.

“Moon is my old man. Only I get to touch him,” Moon’s old lady snipped, just as I noted Moon stepping into the room, spotting his woman, and rolling his eyes before heading toward them. “Why the fuck are you even wearing sunglasses inside? Trying to hide your perving? How about we see what happens when I take them off.” The girl lunged for Ash’s face, and I saw Ash’s body rise out of her stool.

I didn’t know what the deal with the sunglasses was, but I was more than sure that it was a sensitive topic, considering not even Anna asked her to take them off. I figured Ash was going to flip, and with my leg aching, I knew if she did, it wouldn’t be good.

My mind flashed back to the house. I had noticed one of Charon’s men passed out in the corner, the glass from the window all the way around him, and knew a girl of her size should never have been able to take a man down like that. Not without some dirty tricks.

Shit.

I shoved out of my chair, ignoring the pang of pain in my leg, as Ash grasped the girl's shirt and…

...kissed her.

Ash held the girl tight against her, her lips pressed to hers, her tongue delving into her mouth for a whole forty seconds before pulling back, leaving the other girl gasping for air. “Keep talking like that,” Ash purred, “and you’ll make me jealous.”

Ash let go, and the girl stumbled back, her face bright red and lips swollen. Even Moon stood gobsmacked a few feet away as the girl got her bearings.

Speechless, she just stared at Ash for a long few seconds before she let out a loud huff, flipped her hair, and turned back to Moon, who was throwing a shit-eating grin at his old lady, earning him a hiss.

“Told you not to start shit in here, Monica.” Moon’s face changed as he growled at her, and just as she was about to argue with him, he grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her outside.

My eyes turned back to the room to see that they had all gone back to their business.

All except one.

Lamb’s head was lifted over the girl’s on his lap, his eyes completely focused on Ash.

Ash, no doubt aware of her new attention, spun on her stool, showing her back to Lamb, and sucked back on her whiskey.

Shit.

My memory of Anna doing a similar thing to Mallory had my annoyance growing as I made my way toward Ash, trying to shove what she just did out of my mind.

My towering body still dwarfed Ash, despite her extra inches of both the long length of her body and the height of the stool. At the intrusive shadow appearing over her drink, Ash poured herself another one into a shot glass provided by Pipe, who took over Lamb’s position at the bar, and downed it.

“Where’s Anna?” I grumbled, not interested in making conversation. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t get my bearings with this girl, which made her unpredictable. And unpredictable meant distrust in my books.

Ash tilted her head in my direction, opening her mouth as if she was about to answer. Instead, she took another shot and ignored me.

A growl was out of my mouth before I could stop it, annoyance itching on my skin. I noticed Lamb appear at the bar. He overtook Pipe’s position and came over to our side just as Ash set down her shot and reached for the whiskey bottle. It was gone before she could grab it, Lamb sliding it underneath the counter.

“Where is she?” I growled, her distraction now gone.

She reached down to her bag, ignoring me again, and took out another bottle of whiskey, filling up her shot glass.

“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. Finally losing my patience, I took the whiskey bottle from her hand and slammed it down on the counter. “Tell me where my woman is.”

Ash, at long fucking last, turned to me, a small smirk on her lips. “Your woman?” she sneered.

“Yes. My goddamn woman,” I hissed, my hand tight around the bottle. I wasn’t sure why I was getting so heated up, but fuck, this girl just got on my nerves.

“Don’t know her,” Ash said, turning her head away.

“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “That’s fucking it. Tell me where she is now, or I swear to God—”

“Swear to God, what?” Ash retorted, stepping down from her stool to go toe to toe with me. “You always get this angry when someone tells you no?”

“What?”

“You gonna get angry like this when Anna tells you no one day? ’Cause she will,” Ash pushed, her toes lifting her higher into my face. “You going to swear to God at her, too, huh? You going to get mad? You going to hurt her like you want to do me?”

“No!” I hissed. “Of course, I fucking wouldn’t. Anna’s my woman. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to fucking protect her, even it meant giving my life for hers. She’s the most precious thing I got; there ain’t no way I’d hurt her. Are you fucking crazy?” I went to move forward, but a hand across my chest stopped me.

My head spun to Lamb leaning across the bar, ready to tell him to get his hand fucking off me as I told this bitch what was what, until I realized he wasn’t looking at me but Ash.

Ash stood quietly, back on flat feet, her shaded eyes pointed up at me, chewing on her lower lip.

“You were done?” Lamb asked her, and it was at that moment I realized what she had been doing.

She’d been testing me. Again. Testing to see if I was good enough for Anna. For her best friend.

I also realized that all this time, when I said I didn’t grasp Anna and Ash’s relationship, that wasn’t true. I acted like I had been awaiting judgment on it, but deep down I had really been thinking of Ash using Anna’s selfless protectiveness.

But it was this moment, now, that I realized Ash and Anna’s relationship was a lot stronger and a lot more intense than I had first thought.

Ash was willing to challenge a huge man like me who towered her by over a foot and outweighed her by almost four times her mass for Anna.

Jolted by the revelation, I barely heard Ash as she pointed to the glass doors and said, “Outside.” Her voice was a conflict of emotion, something telling me that despite revealing where Anna was, she wanted to stop me.

I cast her one more look, watching as she went back to her whiskey, overshadowed by Lamb, before I turned toward the door and headed straight out of it.

* * *

I found Anna lying on her back on top of one of the picnic tables, admiring the clear early winter sky.

I patted Mint on the shoulder, sending him back inside to where it was warm, and headed over to my woman.

When Anna noticed my approach, she tilted her head in my direction, waiting until I was standing over her, looking down at where her blonde hair was fanned over the wooden bench. Her baby blue eyes were muted in the dark light, and she was wrapped up in her thick property jacket. Then she started speaking. “That’s Orion,” she said, pointing up into the sky. I didn’t look up, instead taking in her face, the light smile on her lips, and the rare gentle expression, eyes glittering as she continued to move her hand around, pointing in different directions in the sky, naming each constellation. “Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini, Taurus...” Her hand dropped down onto her chest, her eyes still flickering between each one. “In July 2005, Ash and I were in college. We drove as far as we could from home for the hell of it and ended up in this field in the middle of Derby, looking up at the stars as she googled what each one was on her phone.”

She then sat up, the wood creaking under her sudden movement as she hopped off, her feet touching the grass, the heels digging into the softer mud ever so slightly. “March 2008, we were at this beach in Cornwall, and there was this surfer there who was getting a bit too handsy with her, so I ended up hitting him with his surfboard, but it was one of those cheap tacky ones, and it split over his head. And when he complained to me to pay for it, back before I knew where to hit for knockouts, Ash just kicked him in the balls and we had to leg it as fast as we could. Do you know how hard it is to run on sand?” Anna laughed, the noise filling my ears, one of the most pleasant sounds I’d heard from her outside the bedroom.

She spun around on the grass, this lighthearted version of her bathing in the starlight as she practically glowed in front of me.

Until she didn’t.

“April 2012.” She stopped spinning, her hands dropping to her side. The gentleness of her expression soured into a painful wrinkle between the bridge of her nose, the saddened frown of her red lips, and the dropping of her eyes into the grass. “Ash went missing.”

“Missing?” I repeated, watching as Anna’s face shut down, the emotion drawing back as a cold, calm voice entered the chilled air.

“You wanted to know Ash’s connection to the Rothwells?” Anna asked me, the question rhetorical. “She’s the daughter they never wanted.”

I felt my chest lurch as the words hit my ears. “Daughter?” I repeated, my eyes wide as Anna nodded.

“They were never a family, not really. They wanted a daughter for show. For their perfect political family, to keep up their ruse. And for a long time, she was like that. When I met her, she was like this little porcelain doll. She didn’t laugh or smile unless she was told to. She was a puppet on a string. Soulless. I couldn’t leave her alone, and bit by bit she began to break out of her shell, started doing things she wanted to. She became a real person. And that’s where it all went wrong. For every disobedience, every embarrassment and shameful behavior, she was... punished.”

“Punished? What do you mean, punished?” I hissed, feeling a burn in my chest, which I saw reflected in Anna’s eyes.

“Abused, beaten, tortured. Call it whatever the fuck you like,” Anna spat, her lip snarling, bearing her white fangs. “It went on for years and years until I’d finally had enough. I managed to convince her to leave. We were going to run where they couldn’t reach us.

“We were supposed to meet up at Manchester Airport. We were going to get out of there once and for all. Get Ash away from her family and their abuse. When it got to an hour past the meeting time, I knew something was wrong.” Anna’s hands clenched at her sides, her top lip curling against her teeth. “I got to her home and was banging on their doors, demanding I see her, but they kept me out, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even bring myself to care about the danger; I searched all their hideouts, their meeting places, properties they owned, but there wasn’t a single trace of her. It wasn’t until three days later that I got the phone call...”

Anna paused, her lip quivering as she fought to take in a slow, deep breath, a shaky one expelled in return.

“It was Ash.” She shuddered. “I was so relieved and so happy just to hear her voice, to know she was alive.

“But that wasn’t all she had to say.” The single bit of emotion that had crept forward in Anna’s recount of events vanished, steel walls slamming up harder and stronger than I’d ever seen them before as she stood back, her blue eyes dead and icy, meeting mine straight on, empty of any affection I was used to seeing there.

“Ash had been tied to a chair for three days, beaten, tortured, and you name it. It was Rothwell’s demon wife who had her, having volunteered to be the one to put Ash in her place. I don’t know how, but she had managed to get her ties free and grab a cell phone from one of the men who guarded her. She dialed me first, and I came straight away, but I arrived a moment too late.”

Anna shook her head at me, her hand gesturing to the ground, emotion beginning to creep into those blue eyes of hers as her voice tightened around the words. “Ash just sat there, next to her body, blood soaked into her clothes. There was a knife sticking out of the bitch’s chest like she had been fucking staked, and Ash was looking into the distance, quiet. When she heard me stop in front of her, she turned to me so slowly, blood running down her cheeks, eyes bloodshot. She was blind, Wolf. And then she turned and looked at me, and she asked, ‘Is she dead?’ She couldn’t see. She wasn’t sure. I told her she didn’t, but she just started to cry. She knew she killed her.

“The knife went straight through the bone in her chest, the sternum cracking under the force and the blade wedging straight into her heart. She must have heard it. And heard when she finally stopped screaming.”

She stood there silent, her eyes still holding mine, as if daring me to punish her, to accuse her, to challenge her part. But I didn’t. I was silent for a long time, waiting for the walls to give just a little, and when they did, the cold ridge of her face relaxing ever so slightly, I finally asked what I’d wanted to know all along.

“What did you do?”

“What else could I do?” Anna said softly. “I got her out of the country. I knew some people who exported abused zoo animals, and they helped me get her out and overseas. I stayed behind. They had nothing to pin on me, and when it was all over, I got out as well.

“We traveled around for a while. I got her some medicine and even managed a few black-market surgeries for cornea transplants. The damage to her skin healed, but her eyes weren’t the same. She can’t handle bright light, nor can she see very well, but she was doing better... physically. Mentally... she wasn’t the same person after what happened to her. It’s as if she’s not all there anymore, not interested, not... living. I find myself so scared of letting go of her because I’m so scared she won’t come back.”

Anna let out a shaky breath then, the emotion clogging her voice as she tried her best to breathe through it, but the sight of my strong, beautiful, and so perfect woman fighting through the pain devastated me. I knew I should sit still, let her continue, but I just couldn’t fight the instinct that had my body dragging hers against mine before I could even think.

She didn’t fight me; instead, her hands clung to my back, to the leather cut hanging on my shoulders, as she quietly breathed me in, holding me with her face buried in my chest.

Nothing was said, nothing needed to be. I felt no shame in holding my woman. No shame in knowing that she wasn’t as strong as I thought she was. And that was okay with me. Ash was obviously something precious to her, and to have had that thing hurt in a way that I could see had shredded her, only made me want to hold her closer.

“I’ve got to protect her, Wolf.” Anna’s voice didn’t hesitate, didn’t crack. Not anymore. Now it was bold, it was steeled, and it had a hint of the darkness I knew she held tight to her when she spoke. “I didn’t protect her then, but now, here, I absolutely will protect her, and I will send to hell anyone who harms her.”

That was my woman.

* * *

After that, I found myself walking into the clubhouse, Anna tucked under my arm, her head lolling into my warmth, and considering she hadn’t bitten my arm off for the possessive gesture, I figured she was too tired to give a shit.

My leg ached, but I ignored it as we stepped into the crowded room. My eyes instantly sought her out above the heads, and thankful to her height, I spotted Ash still sitting at the bar, her eyes looking deep into her half-full glass, her expression contrastingly sober.

She spotted me walking in, and her eyes met mine above the crowd.

She looked to Anna, who hadn’t noticed her, her eyes focused solely on the hallway door that led to our room on the other side, before they came back to mine. It took less than a second for her eyes to switch from wide to conflicted as she took in my expression. She could tell I knew.

I also knew why she had given me a hard time at the bar, and why she had looked like she wanted to stop me from going out there.

I knew all of that, but there was one thing I didn’t know. Something I had to know.

I pressed a kiss to the crown of Anna’s hair, making her grumbled drowsily. “Go to bed. I’ll be there soon.”

She looked up in surprise, her eyes jumping up and then across the room to where Ash was sitting at the bar, looking at us. Her jaw tensed, and I could tell she wanted to stop me or say something. But instead, she just gave me a tug on my cut and said, “Go easy on her.” And with that, she turned and walked through the crowd, parting it like the sea as the sound of her boots gave warning to anyone in her path.

As I made my way through the crowd, Ash looked me dead in the eye before snatching her bottle off the side of the bar and making her way to the front door. She slipped, almost unnoticed, through the crowd as I struggled to keep track of her. I only spotted her again once she was at the door and made my way after her.

I caught eyes with Lamb as I passed the bar where Ash had been, and his eyes leaped from the door to me. His look was stern but cautious as he flickered his eyes back to the door and then to me again, passing me a warning or a look of concern? I didn’t know.

As the cool air hit my skin for the second time that night, I found Ash on one of the steel drums outside the door, her boots on a ridge on the side, letting them stay propped up, despite their unordinary length for a girl her size as she took a swig of the whiskey bottle.

“Ask your questions,” Ash said, her voice apathetic compared to the grouchy bitchiness of all the other times I’d talked to her.

I found it just as irritating, but considering her background, I also understood it.

“Why did you come?”

The question was simple enough, though it might have seemed vague. But from the way her eyes flashed, and by the way her hand gripped the neck of the bottle, she understood my meaning. And when she answered, I wasn’t surprised.

“I’m done,” she said on a deep and heavy sigh.

“Done?”

“Yeah, done,” she repeated, bringing the whiskey bottle to her lips, her feet dropping limply down onto the side of the barrel, the metal chiming at the contact with her boots. “Just done.”

“What about Anna?”

“What about Anna?” Ash grumbled. “Anna has her life here now, someone to protect her, to look after her. She looks... happy. And if she was willing to tell you everything, then she must trust you.”

“How can you know that after just a day?”

“I don’t need to know you.” She grunted, and it slightly pissed me off. “I know Anna. And Anna wouldn’t trust just anyone. You wouldn’t be wrong to consider yourself special.”

Ash tilted her head at me, and I could hear the soft undertone of her voice as she said the last words, the sadness in them unmistakable.

“Anna was...” Ash paused, her head cocking to one side as she struggled for words. I watched as her head gravitated upward, and I was reminded of Anna’s story about the constellations. “She was the last important thing to me in this world,” she said, a wistful smile on her face. “She gave up everything to take me somewhere safe. Her family, friends, country. I know it wasn’t easy for her. I wasn’t easy for her, either. But to know she’s cared for here, even if it’s not the safest place or with the most competent people”—I felt my leg throb in response to her jibe—“I know this is where she’s chosen to be. And if there’s one person I trust to make the right call, it’s Anna. That’s why I won’t worry anymore. I don’t have to.”

Her feet hit the floor and a cloud of dust fell off her boots. She turned and picked up her bottle, her brown hair brushing across her face as she looked down to tuck it under her arm and headed toward the door.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, stopping her at my side. I didn’t look at her or even turn in her direction. My feet stayed firmly planted north, my eyes looking over the car lot and into the darkness of Fellpeak as the town turned in for the night.

I heard the faint sound of cars on the main street a few blocks over.

“Take care of her,” was all Ash said before she picked up her boots and continued toward the door.

I wanted to grab her and ask her what she meant by that. But my body didn’t move. Because somehow, I knew. I knew, and in the future, I would probably regret not stopping her. Not asking exactly what she meant.

But that wasn’t today. That wasn’t now.

Now, I just watched her walk away and pretended I didn’t know.