As a president, I knew my shoulders would bear the responsibility of protecting my club. Before myself, before the ones I loved, before anything, it was truly and simply club before all. That was the duty I chose to dedicate myself to.

It was the duty I honored with the highest pride, the duty I would dirty my hands to protect. I carried the flame from Roscoe, who had done exactly the same.

It was why Kay’s words had hurt me deeply. I knew I must have glorified Roscoe’s legacy, and Kay had managed to tear it down. I always remembered Roscoe being willing to come to your aid when you needed it, was attentive and devoted to the club, to the point he always noticed trouble in you before you could even notice it yourself. He was also always there when you needed it.

Because he was never at home.

Being a good president ruined him for his wife and family.

If Kay had said that to me three years ago, I would have been disappointed, because three years ago, I wasn’t even thinking of a family beyond my brothers.

And then along came Anna.

She had burned down my walls and etched herself into me in a way that I could never remove. I would never have wanted to. She was hard work, but she was worth it. She put back in me the thrill of getting in deep with someone, and it was something I didn’t want to lose.

Now, all of that was in danger. I could lose Anna. I could lose everything she had given me thus far, and everything she might hope to have given me. But even so, first and foremost, I was president of this club. This club was everything, not just to me, but to my brothers, too, and it wasn’t up to them to make that kind of sacrifice. It was for the president, so the brothers who chose to follow me wouldn’t have to.

My body slammed hard against the wooden walls. My lip split as the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

“Hunter!” Jax yelled as he struggled to drag Hunter’s huge weight back. Ripper lunged onto Hunter’s free fist that had just dished me the throbbing ache, and no doubt crack in my jaw, as he leaned his weight against his chest.

“What the fuck are you thinking, Wolf?” Hunter roared, not giving up his fight against the two barriers until Pretty had no other choice but to jump in and help drag Hunter’s 6’4” body as far away from me as they could. I noticed they were the only brothers forced to action as everybody else just watched.

“You didn’t hear the phone call, Hunter,” I growled, standing myself back upright as I faced my brothers.

“Then tell me what was so fucking important about that phone call that you’re ready to chuck a twenty-something girl into the mouth of her abusive father!”

At that point, I saw Pretty stop trying to hold Hunter back; instead, his eyes cut to me and stayed hard as he constructed a carefully formed mask on his face.

I realized by this point that Hunter must have heard the story from Mallory, who must have heard it from Anna or Ash herself, though I wasn’t too sure on either possibility, considering how tight-lipped the two of them had been about their past.

Expressions hardened throughout the room, some mixed with outright glares in my direction, while others were defended by caution as they hung onto my awaited answer.

“Polo,” I said, turning toward the older member as one of the ones giving me a hard glare. “Where’s your old lady?”

“Amanda?” Polo’s voice instantly dropped, his old, weary face now a mask of viciousness and anger. “What has she got to do with—”

“Just answer me, Polo,” I snapped, shoving a stick straight up his arse as his eyes flashed with fury at my tone. “I’m your fucking president, so answer me!” I yelled, losing my patience.

Anger at my disrespect to an older, honored Black Angels member didn’t go amiss, and I saw Polo stew for a long few seconds before, through tight lips, he opened his mouth to spit out, “She out at the—”

“Hair salon?” Cutting him off wasn’t taken as disrespect this time. No, Polo’s eyes grew wide for only a second before they furrowed with confusion.

“How did you—”

“She’s there right now, with Sofia and Roxy,” I elaborated, some of the brothers showing recognition at hearing the names of two retired members’ old ladies.

“Mia, Chloe, and Alistair.” I spun, turning to Ripper, whose hand was tightened in Hunter’s shirt. “They’re out at Redwood Middle School. Mia and Chloe are playing hopscotch, while Alistair is playing soccer with his friends.”

Ripper’s face lost all its color, the scar across his face becoming a brandished dark pink, almost smooth across his square, jagged features.

“Adair.” I turned at last, looking at Hunter. “Is drawing in the second-floor classroom of the elementary school. He’s drawing his dad’s bike. A ruby red motorcycle.”

By now, my words had lost their harshness as the anger swept from the room, replaced by shock and devastation as one by one they all understood how I knew.

“You wanted to know what I was told on that phone call?” I replied, making sure to meet each and every single brother’s gaze. The brown, the blue, the silver, the green, the blue-green, the blue-brown, the copper-colored, the mixed. Every single one of their eyes was looking to me now. To their president.

But what they probably didn’t know was, underneath the shock, and the no doubt coming rage, was a helplessness that hung in the air around me, that weighed down on my shoulders, that quelled any hesitation I had.

“So, you’re asking me why I’m ready to throw a twenty-something girl who isn’t even a part of our club into the hands of a guy who will no doubt kill her, then there’s your answer.”

“But Anna—”

“Anna,”—I turned, looking to where Jax stood staring at me, his eyes hard with conflict that I didn’t want to bestow upon my brothers, that had made me not want to tell them the sickening truth about what that phone call had revealed—“will get the same answer you all did, and she will understand.”

With that, I turned to reach for the door, and just as my huge hand engulfed the handle, the cold of it freezing against the clammy heat of my hands, a voice stopped me. “What if she doesn’t?”

I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know it was Lamb. I knew he wouldn’t be looking at me with a biased expression on his face. He wouldn’t be saying it as a way to make me stop and reconsider. He was saying it as simple fact.

“Then she doesn’t,” I said, my voice a hollow even to my ears. “That’s all.”

Then I opened the door and walked out.

* * *

It took Kay two and a half minutes to open the door after I knocked.

Her long red hair, several shades lighter than Mallory’s and tinged with minor streaks of gray, slipped down her arms as they blocked the doorway. Kay was tall in comparison to the girls, but compared to me, she was barely significant. “Kay, move,” I growled.

“Don’t speak to me like that, you ass,” Kay snapped, her silver eyes glaring at me, telling me that she—unsurprisingly—didn’t understand, nor agree, with what I had done. “I fucking warned you.” She released her hand from the frame to jab me in the chest, not giving a shit about how tall I was. “But you didn’t listen, so whatever she has to say to you is exactly what you deserve, you hear me?”

With that, Kay didn’t give me a chance to say anything as she barged past me, stomping her foot down hard on mine as she left.

“Fuck,” I hissed, my foot throbbing hard, as I heard Kay’s feet march away.

I shoved the pain out of my mind as I moved into the modest, neatly arranged room. One look in any of the brothers’ rooms would have told you that it was a man cave with barely a glance, but this room held two twin beds, both with neatly folded pale sheets and pillows, polished furniture, and window ledges with thin curtains, allowing the winter daylight to bleed through into the room.

Anna sat on the furthest bed, her eyes not looking away or into the distance, but straight at me as I came into the room. Her red boots and socks lay in a pile on the side of the bed, her bare feet, toes painted with red and black nail polish, were hooked over each other, her top leg balancing a bag of frozen peas over her ankle, no doubt from kicking Ash’s door’s almost completely off the hinges during her rampage. Her thrown hand was in a bowl of ice water, cradled in a thick towel on Anna’s soft thighs as she looked up at me.

I took notice of her property jacket still on her shoulders, her shirt sleeves rolled up and her hair tied back around it. Her ice-blue eyes looked red but not inflamed, like they would had she been crying, though I knew she couldn’t.

“The phone call—”

“I know,” she interrupted me. Her voice was hard, and her eyes had me unable to move away from the inside of the doorway. “They threatened the kids and the old ladies, right?”

“Then you under—”

“No,” Anna growled, her lips curling into a snarl. “You do not get to ask me if I understand.” She took her hand out of the ice bowl, picking it up with her good one, and set it on the bedside table. She grabbed the towel off her lap, wrapped it round her hand, and kicked the peas off her leg, revealing a bruising purple mark on her ankle. “You do not get to ask me to try and be okay with the fact that you want to sacrifice my best friend.” I opened my mouth, but she shoved her finger up to stop me. “Regardless of whether she agreed to it or not. You do not get to make me understand that because she means nothing to the club, that she means nothing to you, that it’s okay for me to sacrifice my best friend. You. Do. Fucking. Not. Get to make me be okay with you.” She shoved her finger at me, her top lip curling to reveal her snarling white teeth, distorting her angelic face. “You do not get to make it okay to sacrifice my best. Fucking. Friend!”

She fought to suppress the anger on her face, but she couldn’t stop the curl of her lips as she took deep breaths in and out of her nose. “What I do get is that you want to protect the club. That is okay. Because it’s club before all, right, Wolf?” Her head shook softly, the snarl dropping off her face as her eyebrows turned upward, her lips trembling into an empty smile. “But what about me? What about who comes first for me? What am I supposed to do about that? How do I make that okay with me? How do I make it okay to sacrifice the only other person I love in this world?” She unwound the towel from her hands and reached back for the bowl, her shaking fingers stilling against the cool glass, condensation dripping onto her purpling fingers. I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything as the sound of shattering glass echoed in my ears, cold water splashing over my body while I managed to dodge the hurled bowl.

“How can I make it fucking okay?” she screamed, her broken, hoarse voice filled with pain as she forced out the words.

Her body dropped down back onto the bed in a heavy breath, her head falling into her hands.

I felt my own eyes burn as I looked at her. My heart heaving the heavy blows as it hurt to just breathe, to look at this woman, the other most important thing in my life broken and hurting, and although knowing that it wasn’t directly, I was the cause of her pain.

“What can I do?” I begged.

“Fight for her,” Anna replied, her eyes meeting mine, the baby blue dark and pained as she held my stare. “Fight for her like you would for any of the rest of us.”

“I—” I paused. I wanted to say I would, I wanted to tell her those words just to take away her pain, but I knew it was a lie. The faces of the those who were staked in this deal were burned into my mind, and I knew, I knew I couldn’t say it. I shook my head. “There's too much at risk.”

“Then go,” Anna replied. “But my deal still stands.”

She turned away from me, and I felt my body scream in physical pain as her face dropped back into her palms, her blonde hair forming a wall between us as I stood there, desperation clawing up my chest with nowhere to go. There was nothing I could do.

“Ann—”

“Just leave,” she pleaded. “Please, just go.”

I stood still, my eyes burning into the top of her beautiful blonde head, buried into her small, pale hands, curled over on the bed, making her seem impossibly smaller than she already was. I wanted to beg her just to look into my eyes one more time, to smile at me, just so I could etch it into my mind, selfishly wishing that I hadn’t taken for granted the last one she had given me.

I nodded, despite knowing she couldn’t see it. And despite every cell in my body screaming at me not to move a single step, I pushed through the pain and forced myself back to the door.

“Wolf.” Anna stopped me, and for a second, a crack formed in the stone and a single slither of hope slipped in. “If you go through with that deal,” she said, her voice steady and calm as the words followed me, “we’re done.”

I paused, half of my heart filled with my love for her urging me to turn back and hold her, hug her, and promise I’d fight to my death before I went through with that deal. But it wasn’t that half that made me walk out of that door. It was the love for my club.

Club before all.