I stepped back into line with my brothers, who seamlessly broke rank to let Cress, Zeus, and me slide into place.
“You’ve got nothin’ on The Fallen, and you won’t ever get the best of us ’cause we’re straight up better men than you could ever dream of bein’.”
“But Danner,” Zeus added, his voice just as weaponized as mine, “you come for more Fallen women and our families, and I’m tellin’ you now, straight up, The Fallen will come for you.”
King
* * *
There was someone in the house.
I woke up with a start and that knowledge, as if the intruder had triggered some invisible alarm in my head. Cress was in her habitual place sprawled half on top of me, her silky hair fanned over my chest, an arm curled around my waist. Carefully, I dislodged her and rolled silently off the bed to crouch at its side. I had a shotgun under the bed, the knife on the bedside table, and a Walther P99 gun under the mattress.
I opted for the knife and the handgun, tucking the latter into my waistband as I crept from the bedroom onto the landin’ and then down the stairs. It was only when I reached the bottom that I heard the fierce whispers of two men arguin’ by the sliding doors off the livin’ room.
When I pushed the door fully open, it was to find Wrath and Cressida’s brother, Lysander, locked together. Wrath had his gun at Sander’s gut, but Sander had him in a headlock with his own weapon trained on his temple.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, unable to hide the humour in my voice.
“Claims he knows ya,” Wrath growled.
“I fuckin’ well do,” Sander snapped. “My fuckin’ sister lives here. If you’d given me half a bloody second to talk, I would’a told you that.”
“Cress?” Wrath asked, though he didn’t release his hold.
“Let him go,” I told them both through my laughter. “Bunch’a idiots, the both of ya. Why the hell are you tryin’ to break in our house at this time?”
They hesitated and then broke swiftly apart, both takin’ enormous steps away from the other and plantin’ me in the middle of them. They were both huge ass men with more muscle than sense sometimes, but I wasn’t concerned. I’d grown up watchin’ Zeus mediate between men like that, and I knew all his tricks.
“Came to tell you the ’serkers are lookin’ to pull off a highway robbery when you lot do your run down the coast tomorrow. Seems they got a tip-off from someone,” Wrath told me as he leaned against the railin’ and crossed his arms, grimly eyein’ down Lysander. “Wonder who that could’a been?”
“Like hell it was me,” Sander spat, looking nothin’ like his pretty sister and everythin’ like an ex-con.
I slapped a palm on his chest before he could lunge across the deck and kill Wrath. “Yeah, we believe ya. Still don’t know why you’re here, though. Cress said she hasn’t seen or heard from you in a fuckin’ age. Why now?”
Sander glared at Wrath then back at me. “Maybe we could talk ’bout this after fuckin’ Goliath over there fucks off?”
“Or maybe I should stay to make sure you aren’t a lyin’ sack a shit tryin’ to get back with a sister who basically excommunicated you already,” Wrath countered.
Sander stared at me in shocked horror, obviously surprised Wrath was a good enough friend to know about our history.
I shrugged, not at all sorry because truth be told, I still held a wicked grudge against him for puttin’ Cress in the spot he did with the Nightstalker fuckers who abducted her and hammered nails through her palms.
“He’s a member of the Berserkers,” Sander pointed out. “You really think you can trust him?”
“You were a member of Cress’s family, and you betrayed her, so you tell me how much loyalty means?” I countered.
The older man cut his eyes to the ground and chewed on the inside of his cheek to level out his ashamed anger.
I left him to it.
“When’re they aimin’ to come at us?” I asked Wrath.
“Off Exit 78 on the Sea to Sky highway.”
I nodded, pulling up the visuals of that stretch of road in my memory easily because I’d been ridin’ it since I was a boy.
“Right. Let ’em, there’s no way you can convince Reaper not to go through with it, not without givin’ yourself away. We’ll put a tracker in the bags, stuff half of them with nonsense and track them back to their warehouse. Assumin’ that’s where they’d take the loot?”
Wrath nodded.
“Right. We’ll have a second group of brothers go down the mountain earlier and wait to follow your crew to the warehouse. We’ll hijack them there, get our shit and theirs, and show them what it is to fuck with The Fallen.”