“Less of the little.” Without wars to fight, the Kings had time to train like beasts, so I trained too, and I’d regained the muscle I’d lost last winter. But Logan said nothing else regardless, and he was going to drive away without letting me know for sure why he’d really come, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I pulled him back for a last hug. “When are you back at work?”
“In the morning.”
“Be careful.”
“Always am.”
“No, you’re fuckin’ not.”
A low chuckle rumbled from my brother’s broad chest. “Now you know how it feels.”
He kissed my forehead and left. I watched his rear lights disappear, but I didn’t feel like he’d gone. Never did these days, and I knew who I had to thank for that.
Nash.
Orla.
My heart did that thing where it compelled me to find them. To be with them. Hold them. Touch them. Watch them hold each other while I mulled over what Alexei had dropped on me this afternoon. I hadn’t seen him since, but his ominous words played on my mind. Alexei didn’t like many people, but he was as fiercely protective of Willow as he was of all our brothers and their kids. And he didn’t waste words. If he didn’t like this mystery kid she was knocking around with, I was fuckin’ listening.
The compound was busy tonight. With the deadwood of the club finally cleaned out, the brothers who remained had come together for an MC-style wake for a soldier most of them had only known on the wrong side of a brawl.
I slipped into the bar. A wall of testosterone and metal music hit me, and I shouldered through the crowd, making my way towards the alcove where the council hung out on nights like this. The council and the motherfucking queen.
But I didn’t get that far. Alexei popped up again, a ring of space around him no brother, friendly or otherwise, would dare breach. “Come.” He pointed at the door. “I do not like having this on my mind.”
I followed him outside without catching so much as a glimpse of Nash and Orla.
Alexei pointed at a vacant fire pit. “Let’s sit.”
“Why?”
“So you are easier to catch if you overreact.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sit.”
“You talk to Cam and Saint like this?”
“Yes.”
Exasperation rippled through me, but knowing he was telling the absolute truth, I buried it and took a fuckin’ seat.
Alexei passed me his phone. On the screen was a series of photos—a car, a pub in Cornwall, and the blonde head of my scatty kid as she talked to some drip who pissed me off already for the way he towered over her.
My face folded into a natural scowl. “That him?”
Alexei gave me a dry look. “Yes, Mishka.”
“Who is he?”
“All in good time.”
“Are you taking the fuckin’ piss?”
“Already?” Alexei lounged on the patio chair he’d coiled his body into. “I thought you were one of the reasonable men around here.”