Tempest joins in by giving me a loud, wet kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, you love us. How can you not? We’re fucking awesome.”
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of faces and names. Tempest and Ava stick to my side, feeding me tidbits about everyone I meet. Rotten, the gang’s VP, may be a sweetheart on the surface but has asuperquicktemper. Voodoo, the sergeant at arms, is mildly deranged. Rooster and Sadie take in strays, as they’ve done with Ava and Tempest, with Sadie being Mayhem’s resident mother hen—and God forbid if you mess with her chicks.By the time I’m done meeting most of the senior and junior members, I’ve been introduced to Dirt, Rebel, Preacher, Angel, Ruthless, Roswell, Sunny, and lastly. Hades. There are at least ten others, which doesn’t make them the largest gang, but they certainly are one of the most formidable.
Ferryman, a mammoth covered in tattoos, takes a seat next to me when the food hits the tables. He tells me the scar on his bald head is from a bullet intended to kill him. Instead, it grazed his skull, and he murdered the Berserker who’d been too craven to fight him fairly. I show him the scar on my arm from where a fellow homeless woman cut me with a broken bottle when we brawled over a scrape of shelter during a hurricane.
You know, normal dinner conversation.
Malice saunters in after everyone else is already at the tables. He, along with Wraith, Jester, Havoc, and Discord take up the far end—as far from me as the space allows.
I pick at my burger, with Ava on one side of me and Tempest on the other. Peppered among us are some of the other trusted women. All young and beautiful, and each one capable of holding their own in a town dominated by some of the most brutal men this country produced. Stories fly. Laughter booms. It’s a fun meal, and although I feel a bit lost amid the conversation, I truly enjoy myself.
When the sun begins its descent behind the Appalachians, the tables get cleared. The men fold them and set them aside. I lose sight of Ava and Tempest and make my way inside Sanctum. Suddenly awkward and unsure, I use the bathroom, and when I come out, I literally bump into Ferryman’s impossibly broad chest.
He grips me by the arms to keep me from toppling over. “Having a nice time, honey?”
I wriggle out of his hold. “I am, thank you.”
“Good.” He winks. “Kids are gone. Actual party is about to start.”
I drag in a fortifying breath and glance around him down the hall to where the main room is—and then to the front door. My way out. “I was actually hoping to leave.”
I hide my recoil when he wraps his heavy arm around my waist and pulls me against him. His body is solid and strong. “Nah, you can’t go home yet. I gotta piss like a racehorse. Promise you’ll stay and do a shot with me. Just one, then you can go.”
I hold up my index finger. “One shot.”
…that I have no intention of doing.
He untangles his arm from me. “One shot.”
As soon as Ferryman ducks inside the bathroom, I hurry down the hall. When I hit the main room, I skid to a stop. He’s right. The real partyhasstarted. The overhead lights are off. Strings of white lights are on, draped across the walls in a crisscross pattern that gives the room an intimate ambiance despite its immense size. The music’s turned up, with Tool pumping through the speakers. Everywhere I look, there’s someone doing something. Drinking something. Smoking something. Sniffing something. Couples are intertwined with their mouths and hands on each other. Not caring that they are in full view of everyone. Others are getting off on watching. Other seem to like that they’re being watched. It’s decadent. Scandalous. Everything I’d heard an Unholy party is, and this is just the beginning of the night.
But one couple, half-hidden behind the carnival of chaos, catches my attention. My limbs go numb, and my stomach drops at the vomitous sight of Wraith perched on a couch with a brunette draped across his lap.
My first instinct is to grab the woman by those stupid pigtails—because what grown woman wears friggin’ pigtails—and haul her trashy ass off him. But I fight down the surge of jealousy. Wraith isn’t mine, and even if he were, the woman doesn’t deserve my anger. No, Wraith does for his audacity to stare point-blank at me, smug smile slapped on his face.
His disrespect draws first blood in a war I didn’t know we were fighting.
My heart doesn’t break. That would be too merciful. Instead, it withers in my chest like rotten fruit on a vine. My blood is a river of acid. It slides through my veins and destroys every part of me in its wake. And then I’m dismissed when he turns his head and goes back to his conversation with Malice. His apathy is the cut that severs my soul and bleeds it out at my feet.
Even if Wraith had found out what I did, if he knew my sin… He could at least have the courage to fight with me. To tell me he hates me. Blame me for what he suffered. But this… This cold cruelty?
Wraith can take it and shove it up his ass.
I’m worth more than this, damnit.
Jester glares murder at Wraith before shooting me an apologetic look. I shake my head, seething because I won’t be the guest of honor at a pity party.
“You stayed.”
At least someone is glad I’m here.
I give Ferryman a tight smile. “I did.”
Those two words are a breathy whisper, forced out of a mouth that feels full of sand.
“Cool. Afraid you were gonna bolt.” Ferryman grabs my hand and pulls me toward the bar. I swallow a gasp when he lifts me and sets me on a stool before claiming the empty one beside me. “What’s your posion?”
I bunch my shoulders. “Nothing. I’ve never touched a drop of alcohol.”
