Tonight, Judge reached out to Talley, the real Talley, and he found him.
“Your own mind closed the memory down, Adair…know it was horrific and move past it.”
“I can’t,” she said honestly. “I can’t look at you and not think about how you killed him—” She almost said she knew it wasn’t easy on Judge to do so, but the words died in her throat when she saw him tense. It was a memory he didn’t want to ever revisit and he had been forced to, more so than ever, since her return.
Judge’s rigid composure relaxed. He slowly looked up at her. “I’d rather you look at with me disgust than to have endured what I stopped.” He judged the impact of his words. “I’m sorry. But I’m not.”
Unconsciously Adair reached for her stomach, to the scars she’d covered with ink. At the very least she was sure Talley had sliced her, deeply, mortally—what else had he aimed to do? Adair was not a fool, she was just in denial.
Judge nodded once, answering her silent question then went back to mending her.
The pair of them were at an impasse, but they were side by side, lost in a quiet moment together.
His silence spoke a million words, and his words were always blunt, honest. He was protective, possessive, he was loyal. He could be funny, the calm the room needed. And when he was alone with her, veiled in the dark of the night, he surrendered to her, only her.
He let only her see the darkest corners of his soul. The ones that craved to right the wrongs across his life—the revenge he ached for, needed. He opened his soul and showed her every scar. This I all I have to give you, Dove. I pray it’s enough with each breath.
That’s why she had loved him…had. Was it ‘had?’ She didn’t know. She hadn’t had the chance to really dissolve her recollections. In a way, looking back was the only way for her to look forward.
Slowly, her mind was melding what she knew now and what she knew then. Either way, she felt pulled to Judge.
Pulled, but independent.
“Why would you vow to protect me all of your days and push me away so easily?”
“Nothing was easy ‘bout it.” His words were heavy; his deep tone ripped right through Adair.
“It was more than what Talley did, wasn’t it?”
He kept to his work. His touch would grow heavy or weak with each emotion jarring through him. Adair was reading him more clearly than if she was standing in his mind. Every fiber of his body whispered to her. His gaze spilled with soundless words that Adair would swear her soul could hear.
“When you saw me there, hurt, you saw your family—what you were too late to stop. Your vengeance, killing Talley, was for me. I’m sure. But it was just as much for Chalice, the enemy you never faced. It was for the fact that you’re too scared to ever let any one all the way in—that way you never have to worry about feeling the agony of grief ever again.”
Intense silence.
“Yeah. And maybe I could read the writing on the wall.” His gaze snapped up to hers. “You’re too good for the likes of me. For the life I’d give you as on Ol ‘Lady.”
“Bullshit.” She narrowed her eyes in anger. “You didn’t want to feel. I made you.”
He dropped his gaze back to the wounds he was tending.
Adair read the silent message. She was right.
“You don’t want to feel now because Chalice is close, because you want to make sure you are as empty and ruthless as possible when your chance to strike comes.”
The push of his fingertips across hers hesitated ever so slightly. Telling Adair once again she was right.
“I want you to be ruthless, Judge.”
He swallowed abruptly, letting Adair know he was wary about the direction her interrogation was leading. He thought she was telling him there was nothing there between them any longer. He was free to embrace his darkness.
“From the moment you told me the story, the very second I saw the pain of the memory prickle your gaze, I thirsted for your vengeance.”
He stopped his work but didn’t look up.
“I know you’ve been trapped in an out of control situation for ages, and this gives you control, it gives you justice—or so you think.” At this his gaze lifted. “No matter how gruesomely you destroy him, the pain will remain. The only hope of overcoming it is facing it, accepting it, and moving on.”
“Your witch instinct, the natural balance all of you cling to, is that where this lesson is coming from?” Disbelief leaked from his every word. There was no balance to be had.
“No. This advice comes from experience.”
He drew his brow together.
“Talley, Finley, they were taken from me, years of my life was seized. And I don’t want revenge. I want peace for those I loved. Their peace will be mine. Revenge will do nothing but haunt me once it’s said and done.”
“You wouldn’t seek it? If the very man who cursed Talley, who ultimately ended his and Finley’s life was before you, you wouldn’t strike him?”
“I would. But I wouldn’t care if you were by my side as I did so. Strength in numbers and all.”
He slightly lifted his chin, his eyes glinting with curiosity.
“My trust isn’t here. I’m confused. I’m lost. But I know there is something unexplainable between us. I know Finley and Talley wanted me with you.”
Not like this. “You’re saying you want to stick around out of honor to them?” Judge’s words were stained with pain and disgust.
“No. I’m going to try because Finley was not an ordinary witch. She spoke of what was to come. What the soul had already decided to manifest.” Adair studied his every feature, his sharp stare, the high, sharp cheekbones, his strong jawline and full, lush lips. My own dark angel. “She saw us comin’.”
In more ways than one, Judge thought to himself as what Talley had said, what he had showed Judge surfaced in his mind.
***
He wasn’t coming. Reveca had come to the conclusion she had, in some way, lost King.
She hadn’t moved from where the fight with Talon had landed her, sprawled on the front porch.
Talon had. He had slammed the door shut. She heard him in the shower, him washing off the sin, the out right rape she had laid on him. She felt the weight of emotion thick in the air, heavy on her soul. The finality of it all. Warped closure.
Talon had done the unthinkable weeks back, and now Reveca had. Balance.
Otherwise, the Boneyard was at peace. The party in the lounge was going on as if nothing had happened. The Sons in the inner circle had Jade escorted off the property. Miriam was under Thames’s interrogation, and he wasn’t alone. Shade had ridden off with Gwinn before the drama with Adair had ever begun, before the fight in the lounge ever broke out, completely unawares.
Reveca lay there, rethinking her entire life. It fucking sucked to know the truth was right there, to know it was her, and only her, who had chose not to look.
Talon had suffered.
And she was too foolish to let him go, too weak. She needed him. And now, she still needed him, but not in the same way. Now, he asked for payment. He wanted her to vow to protect his daughter, this Voyager witch. A payment that was rich with irony, yet well deserved.
The tasks before Reveca, before this MC now were immeasurable. Action was required—knowledge was needed.
Knowledge she was going to have a hard time getting considering the only two men she let in her life were now alienated from her.
When the door to the cabin opened, she didn’t bother to look his way, she couldn’t. If the tables were turned, if he had done what she did—men have died for less.
His heavy footsteps scuffed across the boards around her, then he sat down on the front step.
She felt herself being moved, a gust of energy, energy she had stolen and given to him. In the next breath, she was cradled in his lap. Her cheek was his against his damp, warm chest. She could hear his calm, content breaths, and for the briefest of seconds she let herself remember this embrace was all
she lived for at one time.
Gone forever now.
Even though they were close, there was a noticeable distance.
A single tear fell, for who she didn’t know.
“He’s formidable. You wouldn’t love him if he was anything less.”
Reveca closed her eyes. She and guilt were not friends.
“Let him in. Use this sin to let him in.”
Reveca bit her lip before she spoke. “I was saving your life. I need forgiveness. I—I can offer the same.”
He knew she couldn’t. She would never forgive him for using Tisk to break them up, which was exactly why he chose to end them so brutally. He knew this woman. He knew her hard limits. “I need a vow.”
“I will protect her.”
Talon showed no emotion, but he felt it. Reveca Beauregard was a force to be reckoned with. Her protection over Adair was priceless.
“Vow to let him in.”
She looked up at him, anguish drowning her gray eyes.
“You’re a stubborn fool,” she said quietly. She didn’t want him back, there was no way she could have another beyond King for the rest of her days, but the fact was King had every reason to turn on her. She was sure he had already—his silence said as much.
Right now, after what she had done, Talon was sending her back to him, determined once again to see her with her first love.
It made no sense. Men, the Pentacle Sons, were not built this way. You didn’t live ages with a woman and then pass her off when a new, or rather, old plan came up.
The fact Talon was doing so was terrifying. It’s not that she felt worthless, degraded. It was the opposite, the person who loves the most always lets go the first. It was the fact he saw or felt something coming and was protecting her, and he wasn’t telling her what it was.
As Reveca had laid there before she wondered if it was Ambrosia, if this was what he was shielding her from, severing her for. The logical answer was yes. Yet logic rarely applied to Reveca’s long life.
“There is a reason for all of this, Reveca. I can’t see it, but I know I feel you in Adair. I feel King.”
Reveca’s body went rigid. Fear and denial had stricken her.
“In the energy you gave me—I recognized it. It’s the same. The power she uses for her craft, for her protection.”
Before she could deny it he simply said, “I know my daughter. She’s the only woman I understand completely.”
Reveca was sure she was going to retch. Her entire body shivered, and the tears flowed.
Talon slowly rocked her in his embrace; his touch was innocent, full of comfort, and maybe forgiveness. His mind was clear. His power was stronger than it had been in centuries.
He was ready for war.
Death may be imminent but it would not be swift.
Episode Eight
Chapter One
Waiting sucks.
Stakeouts are a fucked charge that gives you too much time to think.
Shade had never been happier to be off of the one he had just been released from.
Every stakeout starts out okay. At first, you can catch up with who’s with you, clear the air on how you all feel about the bullshit that’s flaring up around you. Then you can plot and plan what you will do if it actually comes to the point where you have to take action.
After that point, frustration sets in. Aggression builds.
In Shade’s situation, the plots and plans were as complex as they were simple. Honor your brothers, your family. Always. Those words were exactly what Talon had told him when he accepted him into the MC, an outsider—the first outsider.
Simple enough.
And now, Talon had given orders that would cause Shade to do the opposite. He was to stop Judge if he approached the Devil’s Den lair or Chalice.
Shade had decided instantly to honor his brother, let Judge have his fight. His decision had spurred a fight with him and Gwinn. Their conversations had been clipped. Her with the same questions dressed up with different words, her telling him, over and over, ‘It can’t be that simple!’
It was.
What Gwinn didn’t understand over this last week was that Shade was going to just stand back and not influence the situation. He wouldn’t break any laws or oaths unless he had no choice, unless he knew he could live with the outcome. His own personal code when it came to war games.
More than once Chalice had dared to move from the property. He always did so on Shade’s patrols, as if he assumed Shade would be the only one to let him by.
The man clearly had strategy. Shade wasn’t around when Chalice was a part of the Sons, when he turned on them. He had to know out of all the immortal Sons, Shade was one of the youngest. To some that would mean impressionable. Shade wasn’t, but this fucker didn’t know any different.
Chalice was nothing more than a story Shade had heard, a demon he saw in his boy Judge’s gaze.
In the beginning of Shade’s stint with the Sons he spent most of his time with Judge. He was his teacher. Judge was also charged with the task of figuring out where the fuck Shade came from…no such luck on that front as of late. At this point, it wasn’t likely to ever happen.
On the stakeout, Chalice would come to the edge of the woods. Shade would step out of the shadows. No expression could be seen. His glasses, all the darker and menacing at night, covered his eyes. The shadows of the swamp covered the rest of Shade’s stern, young expression.
“I’m not the enemy,” Chalice had said a few nights back.
Shade only stared like a dark reaper waiting for the clock to tick into place. And it would.
“There is a way to cleanse, you know so,” Chalice had said.
Shade had heard all about Chalice’s cleansing. It involved slaughtering innocents before Reveca could reach them and give them immortality—life as a demon immortal, as Chalice called it.
“The moment must be precise,” Chalice stated.
Shade gave no response.
Chalice stepped forward and as he did, Shade, in the quick sharp whisper of an immortal, stated a spell Gwinn had told him, one she had nagged him to use to delay this bullshit.
Shade had never once—ever—spoken a spell. In all truth, he didn’t expect it to work, but he wanted to look his Ol’ Lady in the eye and tell her he at least tried the peaceful way first.
To his surprise—it worked.
Chalice slammed into a wall of nothing. The more he struggled to move closer to Shade the more the barrier became somewhat visible. Glinting blue flames raced across the moist, swampy, darkness.
Shade scarcely held back a triumphant grin. He managed to look lethal, unbothered by the event.
Chalice stood back and glared forward.
“You need my blood.”
At this Shade did grin slightly, a cold grin. Soon, very soon, all of Chalice’s blood would be spilled.
“The truth is in the past, the dead had to rise—no salvation would come otherwise.”
Holy roller fucker, Shade thought to himself.
Chalice pulled a knife from his pocket. Shade thought to go for his weapon but waited, trusting the spell.
Chalice reached the knife to his arm and sliced his flesh. He stared at Shade as the blood fell to the earth, then he turned and left.
How very Pagan of you, Shade thought as he watched the immortal preacher lurk back toward the compound.
Hours later, Shade told Rush, leaving out the spell barrier, he’d faced Chalice. Rush didn’t have much to offer in response. He only asked if Reveca and Talon were told, and they had been.
Shade asked Rush to tell him his version of Chalice, of the night Judge would never recover from.
Rush’s eyes glassed over, as they often did when he was asked to think or speak about any memory that involved Talley. Up until five years ago, every memory of Rush’s involved Talley.
“Chalice was insane long before he died,” Rush had said. “A mistake. The only one Reveca Beauregard will ever admit making aloud.?
??
They both smirked at his comment. Reveca never boasted about always being right, but the notion was clear in the way she carried herself.
“He spoke a curse over Talley,” Rush said absently as he stared into the darkness. “Talley was the one who had slain Chalice, taken his mortal life. It was a mistake. His sword went through another body then Chalice’s.” Rush lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “He was just a crazy fool for the longest time, some play toy for Zale to ‘rehabilitate.’ Then he started his salvation tour, he struck us all—looking for any existing lineage in the area.
“He struck Talley first. We had no one but us by then, so he challenged Talley himself. Talley honored the fight, but it was a trap. Chalice didn’t show. Four other Rouges did, and they all crawled away once Talley laid them down. Two days later, Chalice tried to go after Talon; he almost succeeded.”
“Talon?” Shade said aghast. In Shade’s mind, in the mind of all the Sons, he was undefeatable. Even now, in his weakened state, they were all sure he could take most of them—all he had to do was let his beast all the way out. According to Rush there was no going back if he did, the beast completely free was like a possession. Rouges who had done so had begged for death when the Sons finally faced off with them.
Rush nodded slowly. “When Zale was ‘round it was always stressed between Reveca and Talon.” He glanced at Shade. “You know she’s his power, right?”
Shade nodded once. The whole sex is power motto was invented by the pair of them.
“Talon wasn’t himself, stressed and worn down by the war. Zale was pulling strings we didn’t even know were attached.
“Judge found Chalice saying some curse over Talon, the words were fucking with his head. I don’t know how he did it, but Judge stopped Chalice—saved Talon.” Rush paused. “We all set out to hunt him that very night, only him, leaving the other Rogue bastards for another day.”
Shade glanced to his side at Rush, his expression was hidden in the darkness but it clearly stated, ‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.’ Shade was all for revenge, but still, there wasn’t a Rouge out there he would turn his back on, especially with Zale pulling the strings.
“Yeah,” Rush said with a long exhale of smoke. “Hindsight.” He waited a moment before he spoke again as if he were watching it all. “Everything went wrong that night. There were mortal soldiers about, too, fighting their own war, masking ours and not knowing it. It didn’t take us long to figure out we were tracking Chalice’s scent to Judge’s family’s land. He was the youngest back then—he had living family. We checked every carriage that was fleeing, looking for Chalice, for mortal soldiers or Rouges hurting his family. Scorpio and Judge found them first in the house, heads nearly gone. He cut that deep.” Rush grimaced. “Talley and me were second to arrive. We saw Judge cradling the youngest sister.