I had a bad feeling.

But a bad feeling was the least of my problems as we pulled up to the appointed place for the exchange, tasting the bitter irony of meeting up at the bullet-ridden warehouse where we had only been a few months earlier.

“Bastard’s got a sense of humor,” Hunter growled, coming up at his side. His dazzlingly green eyes were dark as he turned from the warehouse to look at me, shaking his head. “This feels wrong.”

“Dazhe v doline ten' smerti dva I dva ne delavit' shest',” I said, the words heavy on my tongue.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Ripper grumbled, coming up on my other side. The light glinted off the scar on the right of his cheek, and he looked upon the warehouse with irritated brown eyes, sympathetic, but not empathetic compared to the rest of us. When the shit fest between us, the Hell’s Runners, and Grim Reapers had gone down here, he had been left at the club to guard it just like Jax, Pretty, and Mint had. The ones left behind had seemed to be the most resilient about going through with this as well, and I didn’t want them to hesitate when it came down to it.

“Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two does not make six,’” Ash roughly translated, her small brunette head coming up next to Ripper. “Leo Tolstoy.”

“There ain’t much right in our world from the beginning,” I explained, looking to Hunter, who frowned at Ash’s translation.

Her sunglasses were replaced with one of Bell’s old pairs, since hers had shattered upon the impact of Anna's fist. However, although they hid her eyes, they did little to hide the purple bruising around the front of her face from where Anna had broken her nose quite brutally.

Hunter nodded at my words, and I found myself looking up at the warehouse, thinking about what I was about to go through with. Hunter wasn’t the only one who couldn’t settle on this decision.

If you go through with that deal, we’re done.

Anna’s face and words had been turning over and over in my head on the entire ride here. I knew by going through with this, I would be sacrificing so much more than just Ash for my club.

Just.

The word made my stomach feel sick, disgusted with the fact my life had come to the point that the word “just” could come before a human’s life. Ash was about the same age as Oral would be, maybe a slight bit younger, and I was ready to hand her over to a man who was planning to kill her.

“I’m guessing Anna gave you an ultimatum?” Ash’s crisp accent, almost as jarring as the cold, interrupted my thoughts. I looked down at her, finding her on my other side, unsurprised, as Lamb was now standing next to Ripper, handing him, Hunter, Polo, Jasper, and the other brothers extra magazine clips as Hunter unloaded them from the saddle bags attached to his bike.

“Let me guess,” Ash said, reaching up with her tanned, slender hands to brush her hair away from her mouth as the cold wind chipped at everybody’s skin. “No me means no you and her?”

My eyes narrowed on her, and she nodded her head, her lips flattening into a line. “Yeah, I figured as much. I was hoping she wouldn’t be like this.” She turned to look at the warehouse, but her expression showed she was looking distantly beyond anything around her.

“Hoping she wouldn’t be like this?” I growled, pissed at the apathetic tone of her voice. “You wanted her to be fucking flowers and sunshine when her best friend, the person she thought she had sworn and failed to protect, says she wants to hand herself over to the very same people she swore to protect her from?” Ash flinched hard at my words, but I didn’t feel the slightest bit regretful for saying them. “If you hadn’t fucking appeared, we wouldn’t have had to deal with this shit!”

Ash’s anger must have flared, because she spun on me faster than I expected, and being she was taller than Anna, she managed to push up onto her toes and make use of the slight hunch in my shoulders to shove her snarling face into mine. “My father would have come whether or not I fucking turned up. I kept as far as fucking possible from her to make sure he never came anywhere near here! But Anna settled with you guys! She knew the risk of hanging out in the same place for too long. Deep down, she knew he would find her eventually and things would no doubt come to this, but she chose to ignore that and stayed anyway. She stayed for you. This is the only way I can protect her now, do you understand? I’m doing this for her! I’m doing this to make sure she can finally have the happily ever after love disaster that she wants. So she doesn’t have to be dragged through the mud anymore with me! She deserves a future!”

The whole group around us became silent as they all turned to face Ash, eyes wide and expressions shocked as Ash blurted out everything.

I searched her face, her tinted glasses hiding her eyes but not hiding the way her body dropped back down onto her flat feet, her shoulders slumping with the weight as her anger drained from her. Her lips flattened into a thin line as she looked down at the ground, and I sieved through her words. “Then you lied about being done?”

“No.” Ash shook her head. She reached up to her face, her rough, broken-nailed fingers running along the smooth sunglasses. “Running away from my family was always just a dream. I’ve been doing it for four years, but I’ve been fighting them for a lot longer than that, Wolf. The only thing that ever gave me hope, that ever made me want to fight, was Anna. I used to be an obedient good little girl until Anna showed me that that kind of life wasn't living and I should look for more. Fight for more. She was beautiful and dazzling in my dark world, and she was the hand who in my darkness moments saved me and showed what the real world was. But the one thing about the past is that it never completely goes away. Do you think my family would be okay with me murdering my mother and running away? Do you think I would have gone unpunished? There's no escaping the dark, Wolf. There is only running for as long as you possibly can. But I'm running out of road, and if my last thing to do on this earth is protecting her, then so be it. Call it pretentious; call it selfish. I don't give a fuck. This is how I'm giving back to her, for everything she's done for me. I'm done letting her sacrifice everything for me. I'm done.”

Ash shook her head before her hand reached up to the frame of her glasses and pulled them from her face. The cool tint of green, I realized up close, was tinged by the silver sheen of fog over her eyes as she turned to look at me, squinting against the brightness of the low sun before a small smile overtook her face. “A bird with broken wings can’t fly. I won’t ever be free, not while my family is around. So, you can let me do this, Wolf. You can let me do this, knowing this is what I chose to do. Don’t carry the guilt on your shoulders.”

The smile didn’t look satisfied. It didn’t look happy.

It looked lonely.

Ash lifted the sunglasses to cover her eyes once again, and for whatever reason, I noticed for the first time the silver scars around her slender wrists faintly hidden by her tan. She didn’t acknowledge the way my eyes followed them as she released her grip on her sunglasses, comfortably setting them on the bridge of her nose, away from her purpled bruises. With her armor replaced, she turned and took a small step toward the warehouse.

“Let’s get this over with.” She slung her rucksack over her shoulder and began walking.

I watched her walk away in the quiet wake of her words, the light warmth of the sun on my back like a push forward, but my feet didn’t get the message as her face replayed over and over my mind.

“I know what she said,” Hunter said beside me, his eyes following the small, straight back of the girl. “But are you sure you want to go through with this, Wolf? There’s no going back, and making up for mistakes isn’t easy. Trust me.”

I looked at him, a man who had given too much for the club and so much more for those he loved, and despite how true his words were, I couldn’t give him the answer they all wanted.

“If I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t be here,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel and began to walk forward into a deal I knew I shouldn’t make but had no choice but to go through with.

By the time we entered the big warehouse doors, Ash had been placed in a circle of bikers. We didn't want to risk her being taken in an ambush in case any of the other parties had any dirty tricks up their sleeves.

We had our guns loaded and down by our sides in case we needed them, not caring if it made us seem defensive because we were; I wasn’t ready to sacrifice a ready defense to posturize in front of men I had no doubt would outnumber us.

Our feet echoed across the concrete slab, small bullet cases rattling as they kicked into them. Thousands of them were dispersed across the warehouse floor, reminding me of the shit fest that had gone down here last time. I kept my eye on Hunter as his drifted around the room; he almost lost his wife here a few months back, and although I hadn’t wanted to bring him when I heard about the meeting place, I knew I needed Hunter’s quick reflexes if this broke out into another gun war.

Shadows danced around the edge of the windows, their outlines cut through as light spliced through holes in the rigid metal walls. As I counted the men in black around the room, I noticed the tattoos many of them bore, and it wasn’t difficult for me to know these men were the Black Jacks. My total added up to around twenty, making it 2:1 against our ten. I also remembered Charon had told me that the Black Jacks had thirty members. It was possible Charon was wrong, but seeing his smug face in my mind made me highly doubt that.

I didn’t like this.

I disliked it even more as I heard the growing sounds of a car’s engine and the big garage doors began to open. Bright winter light cut into the shaded warehouse, and a whistling breeze caught everybody’s skin as the black SUV tore across the compound.

I tensed up, forcing my hand to the side of the trigger so I wouldn’t pull it despite my instincts telling me to take out every single man in this room. I noted my action reflecting in my brothers beside me, their own eyes jumping around the room as they kept the rigid posture of calmness.

We stayed apprehensive as the vehicle pulled up only a few feet before us. The engine cut out, and silence dawned upon the room.

It felt like a long few seconds before the click of the car door echoed in the huge chambered warehouse.

A slight warmth hit my back, and I didn’t have to turn to know Ash had moved closer to me as the brothers tightened ranks around her. There was a slight quiver in her breath as the shining black door swung open.

As the first polished shoe touched the floor, I knew this man was business. The cuff around his ankle was a tailor-made suit, the color a dark gray, and the socks white. By the second shoe, I could practically smell the lethality in the air as he cruised with smooth, simple movements out the car, not a single unnecessary movement expended until he stood facing us.

When I’d heard it was Ash’s father coming, I hadn’t quite expected someone so... old. This man’s face was wrinkled, deepened with heavy frown lines around his face, and a lack of wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. His hair was short but styled over his head in a cut that might have been out of date by at least fifty years, and he carried it as if he didn’t care. This man screamed old school, from the striped Armani suit to the silk-gloved hands tucking the golden cane underneath his arm. This suit didn’t wrinkle in the places it normally would in his movements, and I knew it had been custom tailored. Designed to hug, and hide everything he didn’t want to be seen.

Pale green eyes reflected the late morning light as they narrowed on me and my brothers. He didn’t look surprised by much; even my height did little to impress him as the weighed brows sat close above his eyes.

“Where is Alexandria?” he asked, not one for small talk, it seemed.

I figured Alexandria was Ash’s real name, and I gestured behind me without moving a step. “Take your men off my people,” I demanded. “Then I’ll let you see her.”

The man’s eyes darted across my face, slightly shocked at the audacity in which I told him what to do. I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out, but when I saw his lips flinch with what could only have been a smirk, I felt a momentary swell of relief.

“Fine.” The man held out his hand, and only a moment later did both the front car doors pop open and out stepped two giants. I mean, I was tall, but these guys must have been at least seven foot. With scars, piercings, and tattoos covering so much of their skin, the word “goons” immediately came to mind. One was dark haired, though, while the other had gone to the extent of bleaching his an almost yellowish blond. Both held many of the tattoos that I knew were faded old Russian military markings. They were strikingly different from the classic man’s attire.

One of the men handed him a black phone, and the old man reached into his suit jacket, pulling out a pair of reading glasses. He balanced them on the bridge of his nose and dialed a number before lifting it to his ear.

“Your work’s done. Come back,” was all he said before ending the call and handing it back to the blond goon.

“Now, Alexandria.” He gestured his arm out to me as if expecting me to move.

I didn’t.

The man’s relaxed expression quickly turned into a frown as I saw his patience wear thin. He opened his mouth, probably to demand I move this time, but before he could, the shrill ring of a phone cut him off.

The older man looked to his goon, but it wasn’t his phone that was ringing.

I held out my hand as Polo placed a black burner phone inside it.

“What’s that?” the man snapped, his aged voice dipping into a hoarse growl.

“Assurance,” I replied as I answered the call, placing the phone to my ear.

“Wolf,” Amanda, Polo’s old lady, greeted me, her voice calm. “Big, tattooed, and ugly just walked off. He got into his car and left.”

We had managed to call the salon on the sly and get in contact with Amanda only, considering she was the old lady with the most seniority. I knew I could trust her to keep her calm and not look suspicious when I told her something was up. This old bastard had been behind killing off Spider by saving him only to dump him in the nearby lake, so I couldn’t be entirely sure that I wouldn’t be double-crossed. This was the only way I could be sure.

“Thanks,” I said, hearing her quick goodbye before I hung up the phone and passed it back to Polo, who dropped it to the floor before crushing it under his boot.

With that, I stepped aside, letting Ash step forward.

Her shoulders were squared, her chin raised as she took the long, confident stride around me, eyes forward as she faced her father. But she couldn’t deceive me. I could see the way her shoulder muscles rippled down her back through the exposed jacket. The way her bones looked like they were about to snap as she fought every urge not to curl into herself and cower in front of this man.

Her father’s expression suddenly changed, and darkness descended like a screen over his face. I saw him force down the need to snarl, his eyes shrinking into tiny slits as he regarded his daughter.

“Alexandria.” He practically hissed the word, and the bad feeling inside of me only grew worse. Despite the fact I didn’t like her, every fiber and instinct in my body demanded I grab her and put her back behind me. Sacrificing herself for Anna was so wrong. So very wrong that I couldn’t help but think it was a mistake.

I was only momentarily distracted by the anxiety clawing its way up into my brain as the older man snapped his eyes from his daughter and moved back to my face.

The second man, the darker haired of the two, stepped out from behind his employer; he was large, muscled, and plain and simple a goon even without his all-black attire. This one I knew wasn’t a part of the Black Jacks or ex-military of any kind, and I was convinced even more so as he rounded the vehicle, popped open the trunk, and dragged from it a man with a black hood over his head, covered in all the prison tattoos, jewelry, and scarring I knew made him ex-Bratva.

The goon shoved the man at my feet, pulling off the black cloth from over his head.

Two green-blue bloodshot eyes ringed with dark circles into a face rugged with a partial growth of stubble on his hard jaw and an almost gray, pale skin tone looked back at me. He looked young, but I could tell that was deceptive as my eyes read his tattoos as well, knowing he was of the older world. What surprised me the most, though, was the green snake curling up over his forearm, red beading eyes like rubies over the top of his wrist.

I felt my blood rush with heat as I put two and two together. “You,” I growled, a red film threatening to descend over me as I realized who this fucker was.

“A gift for your troubles.” The older man gestured to me, his wrinkled hand pointing down to the guy on the floor.

The man snarled at me, his eyes feral with aggression to hide the concern for his life lurking behind them. I saw his palms flatten on the floor in front of him despite the ties around his wrist, knowing he was preparing to attack me if I made even a single move toward him.

But despite the rage wanting to take over, the caution ringing as low as the bells at Perebor I had often heard back home in Russia prevented me from taking my revenge against the bastard for stabbing Anna. They were the bells that rang out during a funeral as a body was carried from the church building to their grave. I couldn’t help but hear them ringing in the back of my mind as the silence continued to stretch between us.

It was only as I heard the sound of small footsteps beside me that the tension around me snapped.

I turned to look down at Ash as she shook away Lamb’s grip around her wrist, shaking her head at him. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but stopped with a single look in my direction. He pulled back his hand, his pale brown eyes glowering at the small brunette as she pushed passed him.

I saw each of the other boys’ bodies stiffen as they all fought against their urge to stop her, but a single glance at my back prevented them from moving.

Ash continued to step toward me, the small ponytail piled on top of her head swaying with her careful steps as she moved to my side. And then suddenly, she stopped. Her head snapped toward me, mouth parting as a force refused to let her move any further.

“Wolf,” she said, her head then moving down to her arm, to where my hand was clamped down hard around her tiny, thin forearm.

Her father’s eyes flashed with annoyance before letting a calmer, confident demeanor take over, waiting.

“You can't back out now.” Ash’s voice was softer, almost lighthearted, as she said the words to me, but it wasn’t that easy.

I turned to look at her, making sure that I met her eyes beyond her tinted lenses and held them, desperately trying to see any splinter of emotion that would somehow stop me from doing the one thing I knew would ruin everything for me.

“She won’t forgive me,” I said, looking at her, watching her expression falter, her soft smile flattened into a small frown. “If I let you go, let you do this, she won’t ever forgive me.”

“‘Mistakes are forgivable if one has the courage to admit them,’” was all Ash said in return, reaching as she pried loose my hand, my eyebrows scrunching at her words. “It’s Bruce Lee,” she added, then she reached over to her free arm and tapped it. “It’s Anna’s tattoo.”

Her Elvish tattoo. I had always wondered what it said, but never had the courage to ask her.

“She had it inked so she would never forgive herself for not saving me sooner,” Ash said, a sad shrug rolling from her shoulders. “Maybe forgiving someone else can help her learn to forgive herself.”

With that, she walked away from me, her back held straight as she headed toward her deepest fear.

She paused in front of her father. His hand gripped tense around his cane as he regarded her with a disgusted snarl.

“Wait.” She paused, her eyes looking up at her father. “How did you find me?”

I saw her father’s top lip flinch as he slid his glare away from his daughter’s face to mine before looking back down at her. “It was easy,” he growled, flicking his eyes back up to me for a second time. “I’ve been making connections to move over to the US, using motorcycle clubs since they have the connections to the gun, money, and drug movements, but then one of my connections became troublesome.” He paused for a moment, and we all knew who he was talking about.

Spider.

“I looked into the clubs he ended up clashing with, in case they would try cause trouble for me later on for interfering, and it’s a good thing I did because I noticed a familiar face.”

Anna.

“I finally had my connection to you.” I heard Ash’s hiss as he release his cane, his vice grip clamping down around her arm. “You have never been a disobedient child, but to have murdered your mother and run away? Do you know how many people thought it had been me? How much my reputation suffered from your disobedience?”

The urge to run in there and pull her out of his grip grew in my chest as his voice rose and his grip tightened on her arm, turning it pale. But the itch on my skin as he went on and on about his reputation and the accusations rather than the death of his wife, the woman he had a child with, was what I had to fight the hardest as it screamed how wrong this all was.

I heard the sound of movement all around the room before I even realized my feet had taken two steps forward.

Ash’s father snapped his head toward me, his anger stuttering as he realized we were all still there, and all I could think about was the rage inside me that wanted to tear his throat out. I suddenly didn’t care, just for a second, how he had his hands around the treasured members of our club, still practically in the palm of his hands; all I wanted to do was end him just to end my absolute disgust.

“You can leave now,” the old man growled, his goon stepping toward me with wide shoulders and closed fists, drawing my attention. I flicked my eyes back to the old man, now making no attempt to hide his glare, daring me to challenge him, knowing I couldn’t afford to when taking down our club would simply be a case of a single phone call. “And don’t forget to take him with you.”

I looked down at the shivering, ex-Bratva member as he glowered up at me, trying to look as though he wasn’t about to piss himself.

I looked back to Ash and felt my anger spike.

Bang.

Everyone in the room flinched at the snap in tension as guns were raised and pointed, all of them focused on me as I lowered my smoking weapon to my side. The man’s body swayed before it fell backward, blood oozing out of the hole in his skull.

“You can keep him,” I growled as I looked one last time at the tanned skin of Ash’s back. She didn’t make a single attempt to look back at us as I turned, and with what must have been all the strength I could muster, I forced myself to walk away, my brothers falling into step behind me.

I didn’t hear the car start up as we exited out the broken door of the warehouse, my body shaking with so much adrenaline and rage that my logical mind was struggling to keep ahold of it.

Ash’s last words repeated over and over in my head, and despite what she said about Anna forgiving me, I couldn’t stop Anna’s face appearing in my mind. It was her face as she was telling me about her and Ash. The way she lit up as she pointed out the stars. The way she smiled and spun on the grass. The pain on her face as Ash broke her heart.

My feet sped up over the pavement as I exited into the chilling winter sun and our bikes glinted at me, parked neatly in a row.

Ash was the daughter of a dark politician-controlling family, and sacrificing her had just saved my club. But Anna wouldn’t forgive me. She wouldn’t forgive me for making this huge mistake.

Mistakes are forgivable if one has the courage to admit them.

Fuck.

My feet came to an abrupt stop on the ground, my eyes bearing down into the concrete.

“Boss?” came Lamb’s tight voice from behind me.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

“Wolf?” Jasper called a moment later when my silence continued.

“This is a mistake,” I growled, shaking my head as I turned to look at my brothers’ faces. “This is wrong.”

“What do you want to do, boss?” Lamb stepped forward, and with him, the echoing sound of the safety of his gun clicked off.

Another click followed as Jasper met my eyes. And then it was Polo. Then Ripper. Then Hunter. Moon. Pick. Roy. Talon.

Each one of them looked at me, and I could see it in their eyes. It would be the same look that was reflected in my eyes.

Fuck.

“Let's go—”

I didn’t even have time to finish my sentence as I heard the resounding crash of gunfire echo across the warehouse.

I was sprinting as fast as I could back to the warehouse, my gun by my side, grabbing the hole-filled door and tearing it off its hinges just as the car’s engine rumbled through the room.

I watched in slow motion as Ash’s straightened body crumbled to the ground.

“No!” I bellowed, my roar echoing through the room as I saw her father’s head snap up.

He didn’t even blink as he handed his gun back to his goon, and before I could even raise my gun, he was in the car and slamming the door shut.

My brothers came up behind me, guns firing at the lesser members hanging around the sides of the warehouse, half of them having disappeared in the moments we were outside.

I lifted my own weapon and fired, the recoil burning my hands as I popped off shot after shot at the black SUV as it squealed away, the bulletproof glass deflecting each bullet as I ran in their direction

Lamb came up beside me, his gun aiming with that deadly precision as he aimed lower on the car, but the car made it to the open gate just as Lamb popped a tire. It swerved, slamming into the side of the wall, chewing up the metal but not stopping as the driver regained control and the car spun out of sight.

I reached Ash in what must have been a few seconds but felt like so much longer. I dropped down to my knees, seeing her shirt soaked in blood as her chest was spilling it. Her eyes were already closed, her chest still, and her face slack as she lay in a pool of her own blood. The red was so stark against her pale skin that I hesitated to look down at her, stunned.

Lamb, beside me, wasn’t so shocked as he grabbed her shirt with both hands and tore it straight down the middle. The thick blood clung to the material, and just for a few seconds, we had a clear view of the six bullet wounds riddled across her chest before blood oozed up out of them and covered her skin.

Lamb slung his cut aside, the leather smacking against the concrete floor as the gunfire silenced around us.

The other brothers rushed over just as Lamb pressed his shirt to the wounds, soaking up the blood before dropping his head to her chest, the side of his face being coated in a sheen of red.

The only sound was the cold wind cutting through the holes in the metal walls as we all waited in a never-ending moment for Lamb to open his mouth. I prayed, for the second time in the last decade, that we got here in time. That we had a chance.

I wasn’t that lucky.

Lamb lifted his head and said the two words I knew would bring everything crashing down around me.

“She’s dead.”