I was hallucinating.

The shock from Harry. The hits from Slater. The fight with Trigger. The gunshot wound from Ayda.

Still, I found myself staring into the eyes of my father. A man I hadn’t seen in ten long years. A man who hadn’t changed, but had also changed in every single way I could imagine. His dark hair was now being drowned out by the mass of silver. His eyes had aged, the wrinkles of the hard years showing. He looked cleaner, though. Less worried… or maybe he was better at carrying the weight of it all.

“Hey, Drew,” he spoke with confidence from behind my future wife. “Long time no see.”

I looked back to her, unblinking.

Ayda’s eyes were wide with shock as she turned to the side, glanced at the man behind her and then back at me, all the color draining from her cheeks. Unspoken apologies shone in her eyes as they met mine. She’d had no idea who he was.

I rose from my stool, unsure what the fuck to do.

I was hallucinating. I had to be.

But he was right there…

“He’s alive,” I whispered to myself, unsure if anyone else heard.

Glancing back over my shoulder at all my brothers, I saw their expressions mirroring mine. Every single man was in shock, their mouths agape and their eyes wide with surprise.

“Drew?” Eric said my name like he hadn’t been gone for so long.

And like the obedient son of the former king, I turned his way on his command, staring at him with nothing to say.

“Harry’s gone.” He stated it like it was fact. Like he knew.

I scowled instantly. “What?”

“Harry. He’s—”

I cut him off quickly, taking a step closer while wondering how the hell I must have looked to him, all bruised skin, swollen eyes and wounded arms with blood still splattered across my T-shirt.

“How the fuck do you know about Harry? What the hell are you doing here? How? How…” My head shook as all the questions rattled around inside of it.

Eric stepped forward, moving himself around Ayda as carefully as he could. “We need to talk.”

“You’re damn right about that!” Slater piped up behind me. “Someone needs to talk and talk fast. Where the fuck has Harry gone?”

I wanted to turn back to Slater, but I was so focused on the man in front of me, I couldn’t move. So I said what I needed to say like a fucking coward, not looking any of them in the eye apart from my father as I delivered Harry’s fate to their feet.

“Harry’s got cancer. It’s terminal,” I practically whispered. “I didn’t know until he got in Sutton’s car and told me. Like the hero he’s always been for me, he refused to let me go back to prison, so he took my place.” I rolled my tongue on the roof of my mouth and tried to rid myself of the fucking pain in my throat. “He’s got weeks to live…”

The cry of the men behind me sounded like a pack of whimpering wolves, each one injured from the emotional bullet I’d just shot straight into their hearts without build-up or warning.

Ayda pushed past my father a lot less delicately than he’d moved around her. She crossed the room in a few short strides with her head up and her eyes locking onto mine. She was unsure of whether to touch me or not, so she stood by my side, the back of her hand brushing my thigh. A silent I’m right here.

I grabbed her hand and curled my fingers into hers, tugging her to the side of my rigid body as the men behind me growled their quiet grief out through their gritted teeth.

Eric looked between Ayda and me, his eyes softening and his smile growing before he quickly cleared his throat and pressed his lips together.

“How long have you known about Harry?” I dared myself to ask him.

“Should we do this in private?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Just tell me,” I pleaded quietly.

Eric sighed softly. “A while.”

“You’ve been in touch with him this whole time?” I raised my brows and tried not to let him see that hit that delivered. The loss of Pete. The prison time. The release. The Emps. All the shit that had happened since he’d been gone, and there was a chance he knew all about it. “Harry lied to me this whole time?”

“No.” Eric shook his head firmly. “Harry never lied to you like that. He did what needed to be done.”

“What needed to be done?”

“People needed to think I was gone for good, Drew. That I’d disappeared. That I could have been dead.”

“Including me?” I asked, hurt.

“Including you,” he answered quietly.

“Why?” I winced, curling my fingers tighter around Ayda’s.

Eric glanced around the room, assessing every pair of eyes that were focused on him and him alone. I could see he was trying to do a quick evaluation on who was there he recognized and who was there he didn’t know. His eyes lingered on someone at the back, narrowing even farther until he slowly brought his gaze back to me.

“Let’s do this in private. Not here. You and me…” He trailed off, turning his attention to the woman in my grip. “And Ayda.”

“Me?” Ayda sputtered with surprise. Her hand tightened around mine, but her eyes were leveled on Eric.

“Especially you.”

I pulled her closer. I had no idea how to feel. Eric Tucker was my father, and I loved him because of that, but my world was turning upside down, and he’d been gone for so long, I was struggling to believe any of this was really fucking happening.

“How much time have we got?” I asked carefully, knowing for damn certain that him being in The Hut had to be a temporary thing.

His eyes assessed the room again. “Enough.”

“Let’s go.”

I was torn between telling my father to leave my girl out of it and wanting her by my side. I’d had some low points in my life, but that was turning out to be one of the lowest. It was selfish of me to want her there to draw strength from, but I tugged on her hand anyway. She followed me through the parted sea of my men, with my father not too far behind. The Hounds all made quiet rumblings of a greeting to him as he passed them by. I could only imagine the amount of questions they had. I knew for certain I had even more.

We pushed into my office, and I guided Ayda to the old battered sofa, dropping a kiss to her forehead before I turned and waited for my dad to walk inside.

When he did, it was like he’d never been away. He owned the space. He’d built it. This used to be his private place to escape the MC life. Whatever had happened to make him leave, disappear from my world and throw me into the deep end of MC life, it had probably been plotted in the very room we were standing in.

He turned slowly, looking around the place with a very faint trace of a smile tugging at his lips.

“Just the same,” I heard him whisper to himself.

“Not everything is.”

Eric glanced over his shoulder before turning fully. For a while, it was just two men standing in front of each other. Two men who could have been strangers but looked far too alike, despite the way they assessed each other.

“I can see that,” he eventually said. “I would say you look well, but the blood on your skin and the fact that you can barely see out of one eye makes it pretty clear that that would be a lie.”

I shrugged a shoulder and narrowed my eyes at him. “It ain’t easy being pres.”

“Now that I can agree with.”

“Some of us just don’t run away when the going gets tough.”

“I deserved that.” Eric shuffled on his feet before he crossed his arms over his chest and pushed his fists against the underside of his biceps. He raised his chin, looking at me like he owned the air around us all. It was then that I realized he stood exactly the same way I did. He commanded the space the same way Ayda told me I always had.

He was my double on the outside. On the inside, though, I knew we were different.

“I don’t blame you for the cool reception, Drew. If my father had done to me what I did to you, I’d hate him, too.”

“I don’t hate you,” I replied calmly. “You’re my father, and I love you. Nothing will ever change that.”

My admission seemed to catch him off guard, the surprise flashing in his eyes as they widened before he gained control of his face again.

That’s right, pops. I’ve no problem with the I love yous anymore.

“But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when you walk into my Hut after so long away and tell me you’ve been in talks with Harry all this time. It doesn’t mean that I have to like the fact that you knew my other father—the one who watched over this club while I was sent away for five years—was dying. It doesn’t mean I have to throw my arms around you and tell you I’ve missed you.”

“Have you missed me?” he asked quietly.

I worked the muscles in my jaw, copying his pose and raising my chin. “I needed my dad. I didn’t have a mom.”

“I didn’t ask if you needed me. I asked if you missed me.”

“Yeah, I fucking missed you,” I practically spat at him. I had. I’d missed the blood connection and feeling like I had an angel on my shoulder, even if he could be cold and calculating at times. I missed having someone like me who would understand me.

Eric’s eyes softened, his gaze falling to Ayda. “I’m sorry you’re having to meet me this way.”

Nodding once, Ayda sucked in a breath and finally found her words. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to meet, Mr. Tucker.”

His smile grew as he watched her. It was a little threatening from the outside looking in.

Not to me.

I knew he was eyeing her much the same way I had the first time I saw her. She was a magnet. A shining beacon of goodness in this dark, dirty, fucked up, grease-filled world we were stuck in.

“You’ve brought a new lease of life to this club.” He paused, his smirk growing. “So I hear.”

Ayda offered a small, cautious smile in return. “Not really. Just cleaned up a bit and fed them some square meals. Drew’s been the life to them. He’s a leader they can get behind. A leader they love.”

“I do love that protective spirit of yours.” Eric grinned.

Considering he’d only just met her, I frowned harder.

“With all due respect, Mr. Tucker, I don’t think you’re qualified to make that assessment.” She squared off against him, rolling her shoulders back, and lifting her chin again, not allowing him to even begin to intimidate her.

“Your bullets sure don’t take corners. Straight shooter.”

Ayda frowned at him, her hands rubbing on her thighs. “Funny. I’ve heard that before.”

Bullets don’t take corners was always one of his favorite things to say growing up. Whenever I had a gun in my hand, he expected me to make the shot count. I glanced between Ayda and Eric. Something about the way she was glaring at him made my spine tingle.

“I know you have,” he said calmly, staring straight at Ayda.

“How?” she challenged.

Dad glanced back at me, his eyes cautious. “I know she’s stubborn and hard-headed, Drew, but there were times when she really shouldn’t have been left alone… no matter what fight she put up.”

“I don’t…” I frowned harder and shook my head before something clicked. “You’ve been in Babylon a while, haven’t you?”

“Long enough.”

“It was you. All this time I thought it was Jacob trying to goad us and it was you,” Ayda gasped.

“What was him?” I asked, snapping my head to her.

“I got a few random notes that didn’t make much sense. Just notes scribbled on paper. I threw them away and ignored them. I thought it was just another stupid game of Jacob’s and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of reacting to them.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

Ayda’s eyes moved slowly to me. “I forgot them almost as soon as I threw them away. I didn’t think anything of it. Not to mention something always came up between the time I received it and when I saw you.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, not wanting to think anything even remotely bad about her. She’d done what she needed to do, that’s all I had to keep thinking. I reminded myself of the freedom she gave me to fuck up and remembered how much I wanted to be like her. To not take so much control.

But I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d known about that one note alone, I’d have figured out that my father was lurking in the shadows.

I just couldn’t figure out if that would have been a good thing or not.

“Why were you sending her notes?” I asked him with as much control as I could muster.

Eric released a weighty breath. “There’re a lot of things I need to tell you. Both of you. All the brothers, too. But ten years is a long absence, Drew, and there’s no starting point for me. There’s nowhere I can begin that won’t bring more questions, probably more hate, definitely some resentment.”

My eyes flew open as I turned my head his way and took an angry step forward. “How about you start with the truth! Something I seem to have spent my whole fucking life without. How about you tell me why you’re back after ten long years of me thinking you could be dead for all I fucking knew. How about you tell me why the man who was there for me is now on his way to Babylon Police Department to take the fall for a crime he didn’t commit? How about you give me something, Dad, Eric, Mr. Tucker… whatever the fuck I’m supposed to call you now you’ve risen from the dead. Tell me something real. Tell me something true. Or get the fuck out of my Hut.”

He stared at me, and I saw the flash of respect in his eyes. But Eric Tucker didn’t flinch. He never flinched, which is why it had always sat badly with me that he’d ever run at all.

“Your Hut,” he said softly.

“You’re goddamn right it’s my Hut. My club. My patch.” I jabbed my chest, refraining from ripping my T-shirt wide open for him to see the tattoo on my skin. “My goddamn brothers. The ones I would bleed and die for. Not run away from.”

“Sometimes we have to run away to protect the ones who stay.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you need to tell the ones who stay why you’re going at all, otherwise you’re just keeping them out of one prison and putting them in another they can never get out of.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you, son.”

Son.

That one word. The word Harry had said with truth and respect—like he meant it.

It felt strange coming from another man’s mouth, but I found myself falling back onto flat feet and collecting my breaths anyway.

“Give me something, Dad.”

Eric scratched his eyebrow before he dropped his hands into his jean pockets and held my gaze. “The biggest problem I ever had was with The Navarro Rifles. I worked my whole life to keep this club away from them. I knew the power they had… have. They’re not to be messed with. Something happened all those years ago. Something I can’t explain to you right now, but I will, I promise. Trust me, the less you know, the more protected you will be while I’m here. Especially with everything going on.” His eyes drifted to Ayda before he looked back at me. “Harry has always kept in touch with me, but it’s been loosely. Birthdays. Christmas. Times when I wished I could have been here with you all, sharing a beer with my brothers and smelling the sweet smell of home.”

“Home?”

“I never wanted to leave, Drew. I did it because I had to.”

“Why are you back now?”

“Because Harry told me what was going on. He told me about the way you’d imitated The Navs to bury The Emp. I couldn’t stay away. I made the decision that I’d rather be dead, or among you all, trying to fight, than be hidden away in a world without the heart of this place with me. As soon as Harry called me and told me about you playing with fire, I heard his voice. I heard the deterioration of it all. I heard the cancer before he even told me he had it. That’s when I knew…”

“Knew…?”

“You were about to lose a father. I needed to come back and be there for you. You’ve already lost too much.”

Ayda’s lips twitched. It was so hard for her to restrain herself when she wanted to protect me. Her hand balled at her side as she glared at my father.

“You thought it would be that easy?” she asked. “You’ve been gone for ten years, and Harry has been there for Drew at every single turn in his life, every hard decision he had to make, every change the club had to make so they could survive, and you think that Harry being gone just leaves an opening for you to walk into? It doesn’t work like that. Harry can’t be replaced.”

“With all due respect, Miss Hanagan, you’re not qualified to make that assessment.” He tilted his head to one side and studied her.

“You watch your mouth when speaking to her, you understand me?” I growled, my finger aimed at his chest as my own rose hard and fast. “You don’t get to come back in here and play king. Not today. You want back? You earn the right.”

“I’m not here to make waves,” he said calmly, glancing down at my finger. “I’m here because I think you’re under attack, and this time, I want to be fighting alongside you. If you’ll let me, I want to work together to secure the safety and the future of this entire club for the rest of your lives.” Eric looked up at me carefully, lowering his voice as he spoke. “Marriage is the best thing you’ll ever do when you do it with the right woman. I know she’s right for you. I can see it in everything you now are. Everything you weren’t ten years ago. It’s because of her, right?”

My teeth were grinding together and my nostrils flared as I stared at him, unable to speak.

“Let’s give her the good life, Drew,” he whispered as he leaned in. “Let’s give her and your future kids what we never had. What your mom never had. Let’s end all these pointless wars based upon power, greed, and envy. Let me help you give Ayda what I know you desperately want to give her… a future where everyone is safe, and you never have to look over your shoulder again.”

“How do you know that’s what I want?” I breathed back at him.

“Because it’s what every man wants to give the woman he’s in love with.”

“And Harry?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

“He wants the same for you. Harry wants you to live a good life. When he dies, he wants you to remember him like a hero, a friend, a father, and with a shit-eating smile on your face, Drew. His words, not mine. The biggest gift you can give him is this one last act of bravery.”

“You say it like it’s easy.”

“Nothing about this life is easy. Nothing worth having ever is.”