"He still doesn't get that I was sort-of in the MC for a while," Maze said, shaking her head, making her purple hair catch the light.
"No 'sort-of' about it. You were in. You pulled all the shit shifts to prove it."
"Yeah, Repo was a dick back then, wasn't he?" she asked, smiling fondly because of the years between and the fact that she and that dick were happily married.
"Take that back!" Fallon, Reign and Summer's second child, yelled as he ran past us.
"Make me," came the reply from Malcolm, Wolf and Janie's first and only.
Both were six and both were like siblings, forever crashing into each other and starting shit. They would be good bikers one day.
"It's gonna be a long day," Maze said, watching Fallon tackle the much larger Malcolm.
"Let 'em go at it. They'll stop before there's any real damage."
Maze's head tipped to the side. "Is that how all you guys think? I swear someone is telling me that at every one of these kids' parties."
I shrugged at that. "It's a guy thing, I guess."
"Gotta toughen them up, huh?"
"It's not a sexist thing. Bri, Alexis, and Willa will get toughened up one day too."
"And Ferryn," Maze added.
"Ace, have you met Ferryn? She doesn't need any toughening up."
"Good point," she said with a smile. "Well, I have to go put these Spiderman tablecloths up before everyone else gets here."
And then everyone else did a good fifteen minutes later, including the last three kids: Breaker and Alex's son, Junior, as well as Paine and Elsie's kids- Jackson and Willa.
With them came the rest of the men and their women.
"Know the best thing about this?" Cash asked, moving in beside me closer to the front than the backyard. Lo was talking to the rest of the girls club before moving off toward a playpen to fawn over Willa.
"About what?"
"Everyone having kids," he clarified. "We get to come here and enjoy them for a couple hours," he said, meaning him and Lo, "then we can go home and fuck on every surface without having to worry about little eyes watching us."
"Can't argue with that logic," I said, the sound of a car catching my attention. I was barely half-turned when it happened.
The car slowed, some nondescript black car with black-out windows and no plates. I immediately felt myself stiffen at that, knowing no one up to any good would be driving around without plates. Cops loved to ticket you for that shit around Navesink Bank. Then it crawled to almost a stop and the back door opened.
Then a fucking body was shoved out mere seconds before the car peeled off.
The woman's body rolled until it landed right outside our gates.
"What the fuck..." I exploded, already running toward the woman as everyone else's attention turned to me. I could practically feel the movement going on behind me, likely everyone trying to wrangle and shield the kids as the men scrambled toward me.
I was on my knees beside her body, pulling her half onto my lap, the blood already smearing over me. My heart was in my throat at her cut-open shirt and the crude, large Henchmen-style H carved into the perfect skin in her back. I grabbed her under her shoulders and pulled her up, careful not to touch the cuts, feeling my guts twist when she cried out anyway.
I barely had her facing me and I knew who she was.
It was the same blonde hair, the same milky skin, the same soft features, the same everything.
It was the lost girl who needed directions to her appointment from the day before.
Penny.
"Fuck," I hissed, brushing her hair out of her bruised and busted face as Reign dropped down beside me, reaching for something in her pocket.
"'You're all next'," he read, his tone cold and hard as a couple of the men fanned out toward the street. "What did you see?" he asked me.
"Is she breathing?" Lo asked, stopping beside us, a phone already to her ear.
"Yeah. She's breathing. Beat up and has our H carved into her back."
Lo nodded, all business, as she called her people up at Hailstorm and ordered the medical personnel come and check her over.
I put an arm under the girls' legs and moved to stand. "Black late-model. No plates. Black-outs. There was nothing to go on," I told Reign as I carried the girl into the clubhouse, knowing we needed to get her out of sight.
I walked her through the clubhouse and toward the hall with the bedrooms. Then I walked her right into mine.
Don't ask me why; that's just where my gut told me to take her.
"Who is she?" Cash asked, everyone filing into my small space. It wasn't much, just gray walls, a black comforter, a couple black dressers, a big TV, and the door to the bathroom. But it was home.