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Authors: Stephanie Tyler

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BOOK: Defiance
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Chapter Three

Roan was fighting tonight. As Lance’s youngest, he had a lot to prove, and he’d never been of sound mind. Caspar’s fingers ran absently along his scar as he watched the two men in the ring beat the shit out of each other.

Roan was bigger, but the other man—Bear—was wiry and fast. A good match.

The crowd was excited, not because they liked Roan and his tough guy bullshit, but because they kept hoping someone would finally kick his ass. They were also wondering if Roan would announce his intention to bond with Tru tonight if he won the fight.

He’d thought about challenging Roan tonight, but he’d been banned from fighting years earlier because there was no one in the MC left to beat, and that included Roan and Silas. Couldn’t make the princes look bad, and since Caspar had refused to throw the last fight with Silas before he’d married Liv, he’d been beaten by six MC members. Taught his place.

Or, at least they kept trying and he never learned. You’d think by now, they’d realize he never would. Not until they burned and buried his bones.

Someone brought him a beer. Coupla girls chatted him up. Happening more and more in the past year since he’d been named Enforcer, taking on more as Hugh got sicker and taking over after Hugh died.

Since then, things had changed. People looked at him differently.

Tough but fair.

Crazy.

A
good leader.

Lethal.

He’d heard himself described all those ways and they were all correct.

He glanced over to the other side of the ring. Lance sat watching his son’s fight, Trix standing at his side while he puffed on a cigar, his face expressionless. Silas and Liv were right next to his parents, Liv acting like the princess bitch she’d become.

Ever since she’d learned Tru was on the property, she’d been trying to get a look at her. But no one was getting through Trix and her orders to keep Tru and Liv apart.

Trix wouldn’t let anyone in to see Tru, a blanket order so no one would realize Tru was refusing to see Roan.

Trixie was protecting her baby boy, as usual. At one point, Roan had been considered a coveted prize among the gang’s women. He supposed the guy still was because of circumstance.

Lots of women came in looking for protection. Not all of them could get bonded, and so, like before, those were kept for the MC men to pass around as they pleased. It was the woman’s choice to stay or go, and most chose to stay for their own safety. New men who showed up wanting full Defiance membership were tested by the members—usually a fight, and then some kind of trial by fire deed that typically included breaking laws. Then they’d be made prospects and if they passed the tests, they became full MC members and they could pick from the harem of leftovers.

Tru wouldn’t be allowed in that pot of single, unclaimed women. She was born to be an old lady. That was something every woman associated with Defiance wanted. And Roan would do exactly what her father had done to her, and Caspar knew she still bore those scars, whether they showed or not. She’d kill herself first.

So let her.
None of it’s your concern.

He wondered how fucking long you had to lie to yourself before you believed it.

He heard the rumbles of conversation around him, because it was five days gone and nothing had been confirmed about Tru and the bond. He knew she’d continued to refuse to see Roan and the only reason she got away with that shit was because of Big Hugh’s legacy.

Lance would only stand for it for so long. Once bonded to Roan, Lance would make sure she was taken in hand and taught a lesson for her impertinence. Everyone wanted that, because she’d put them all in danger. The Kill Devils, including Paddy, hadn’t ridden back to their charter’s North Carolina home. Rather, they were staying in the Manderly motel, which was an hour outside of Defiance. Close enough to put everyone on edge, no matter how hard they tried to pretend otherwise.

According to Trixie, Paddy hadn’t touched Tru, which was why the man was out for blood. Paddy wouldn’t fuck with Tru because her father had saved Paddy’s ass—seemed that everyone was indebted to Hugh, the crazy ass motherfucker who had been made of iron and steel. Caspar had seen baseball bats simply break in half over Hugh’s head and iron pipes seem to bounce off him. The man had been goddamned Teflon, good to the men in his life but the women? Forget it.

Caspar hadn’t been back to see Tru and kept a wide swath of distance between himself and Trixie. Silas had only asked how Tru had taken the news about Roan, and not in front of Liv. When he’d told Silas that Tru hadn’t seemed upset, he could tell Silas had wanted to punch him.

That had been the only thing that had made Caspar smile in days, and he smiled again just thinking about it.

That smile vanished when the mood inside the tent shifted, fast and ugly, and he went on high alert as he searched for the reason.

The crowd’s attention had shifted from the fight to Tru.

Tru.

Silence gripped the crowd with a stranglehold, threatened to choke the motherfucking life out of him as he watched her stroll through the tent toward the ring.

Outside was dark. Cold. The world was black and white but Tru, she was color.

Fucking Technicolor.

She’d dressed in black leather pants and a tank top. Her long, blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her ass swayed as she moved languidly, finely muscled arms bared to show she bore no ink and he wanted to pick her up, drag her out of there by her hair, anything to stop this slow-motion stroll.

Anyone who’d grown up in Defiance remembered her. She looked as fine as the day she left. No, she looked better. This was a different Tru—apart from dressing like an MC member’s wet dream, it was obvious she’d come into her own. She was a goddamned woman now, and she knew it. Smiled a little like she had a secret she was about to share.

Hugh Tennyson’s daughter was a legend. More so because she’d left.

His entire body tightened until the need to punch something—someone—was urgent. He turned away from her, staring into the ring at Roan, whose face shone with blood and sweat, his mouth half open.

He thought she was coming for him.

So had Caspar, until Tru’s voice bit through the silence with a force he felt. “I want to bond with him.”

She was pointing right at him. Before he’d even turned to face her to see that, he’d felt her gaze boring through him, could hear the gasps from the crowd. But what stunned him was their reaction—the respect he’d never felt before, it was here. The crowd was on his side; they hated Roan, they were pissed for Casper for the position Tru put him in with her request, not pissed
at
him.

Tru seemed to take it in stride. Caspar needed to get his fucking balance.

The princess wants to bond with the bastard
.

“I never wanted her anyway,” Roan called out, but it was a little too late for that save, although for their own hides, everyone would pretend it wasn’t.

“Good,” Tru said, her gaze never leaving Casper’s.

“On you, Caspar. Roan won’t have her,” Lance boomed, obviously enjoying this.

Bonding with the bastard wouldn’t be enough punishment for her defiance—Lance would want to make Tru a lesson for all the other women who overstepped. Caspar would be expected to refuse Tru and request that she be put to death in order to stop the war between the MCs.

It was the only logical thing to do in order for Lance’s family to save face.

But saving Tru would be far more complicated. Her life was in his hands and she goddamned knew it. Had planned this.

He knew Tru understood survival, but he’d talked himself into believing what she’d told him, that he wouldn’t be used by the one woman he’d actually thought he could be with, at one time, at least. The one who could destroy him and everything he’d worked so hard for.

But if she’s bonded to you
,
she’s yours.
To control.
To keep.
To fuck.

It was his move and he’d be damned if he’d act like a pussy. Instead, he strode to her decisively. There was dead silence as he grabbed her biceps and forced her a few steps back. Leaned into that beautiful face and told her, “Heard you. Get the fuck back inside that house and wait for me. You feel me?”

“Yes.” She raised her chin—defiance and somehow surrender all in the same motion. She was showing him her neck, reiterating she was clean of ink.

She’d once run from this town because she refused to be owned by any man, had known that was the life she’d lead as her father’s daughter and Silas’s woman. She’d never wanted that, would rather die, she’d told him. And now, she was giving herself to him.

“I’ll make my decision on the field, in front of Paddy.” His voice was a command to the crowd, something he’d been able to do from day one of this new rule. “Until then, Tru stays in solitary, deals with no one but me.”

Tru swallowed hard but she conceded by not saying a word, simply turning and walking back to where she’d come from. Obedient.

He knew for sure that wasn’t in her nature at all.

* * *

Tru walked toward the small house she’d been staying in, her heart beating a thousand miles a minute. The leather felt sexy and decadent against her skin and the look in Caspar’s eyes had been worth all of it.

The chill had hit her as soon as she’d left the tent. She hugged her bare arms as her skin goose-bumped. He’d accepted the challenge. Would he fight for her?

If she’d miscalculated...

Everything about life is a calculated risk
, her mother’s voice echoed in her ears.

During the time she’d been free of Defiance, before the Chaos, Tru had lied to anyone and everyone who asked her about her past, made it sound like she simply had the requisite rough home life (and that was a truth) and needed to break out on her own.

Another simple truth wrapped in lies.

There was no way to explain how she’d grown up to anyone who wasn’t immersed in biker culture themselves. It was like visiting a foreign country, and even with a phrasebook, biker to English never translated well.

She’d heard people on the outside talking about what they dubbed biker gangs. It wasn’t so much that they were wrong about what happened behind the closed doors, but being a part of the culture and peering through the looking glass were two distinctly separate things.

Looking back now, she wasn’t actually sure the outside world’s treatment of women was all that much different than what happened inside the MC. The outside world simply couched it better, made it more palatable.

In the MC, women were claimed. Told the way things were. It didn’t mean they were powerless, but they had their place.

For many women, that was a huge turn on.

For many women on the outside, it was a huge turn on as well. She’d watched the bikers, guys she’d grown up with, seduce the civilian high school girls in their town with their rough ways and coarse mannerisms.

Knowing that things were relatively the same outside of the MC, it made everything she’d done, all the time she’d spent away from Caspar, searching for something she already could’ve had...it was all wasted time. It made her angry and sad and she was wiping away tears as she approached the small gate that surrounded the guest house she’d been staying in.

She shouldn’t have been surprised to find Silas waiting outside, Liv next to him. But she was surprised at how hardened he looked. It was night and day from the boy she’d held hands with through the high school halls.

She’d expected to feel something when she saw him—a tug, some memory of the time they’d been together, when she’d been living in some kind of bizarre universe where she’d been important because her father killed people. In reality, knowing that made her want to sink further into invisibility.

Liv bore bruises on her cheek, even as she glared at Tru.

I
was right to leave this place.

“What don’t you understand about what Caspar said?” Tru asked as Silas blocked the doorway.

“I’m a little higher on the food chain than he is,” he told her, and somehow, it hadn’t felt that way back in the crowd.

“I’m going inside, like I was told to do.”

Silas snorted at that. “If you’re doing this to try to make me jealous...”

“I’m not,” she said coolly. But he was. She could see it in his eyes. She could feel the anger rolling off Liv as well, the woman’s hands fisted like she was hoping for a fight. “I want to bond with Caspar.”

“Why would you do that, Tru? That’s not your place.”

“You have no idea what my place is,” she told him.

Before he could say anything, Liv reminded her, “Silas is mine now, so this little ploy to get him back won’t work.”

Tru smiled, said, “Like I give a shit, bitch.”

Liv practically growled, moved forward, but Silas caught her and held her back. “Need to watch your step, princess. Things are different now.”

“So am I,” Tru warned.

“What the fuck’s goin’ on?”

Caspar’s voice rattled through her and she dropped her head automatically, squeezed her eyes shut. She opened her mouth to say she was sorry, but his heavy hand dropped to the back of her neck, silencing her.

“Didn’t interfere with your bonding decision, did I?” Caspar asked Silas.

“You can’t be serious about this,” Silas said, but Caspar was leading her inside, slamming the door behind them instead of answering.

Tonight, as she’d walked, she’d seen some of the original gang here—her generation—childhood friends, and some enemies, but most had survived in the darkness.

Whether any of them would accept her back didn’t matter to her, not as long as Caspar did.

“I saw the sun last month, and it wasn’t the satellite that made it happen,” she told him, standing next to him, staring out into the darkness through the window.

“It was out for fifteen minutes,” he agreed. “It was four in the afternoon. Most everyone else was still sleeping.”

The fact that they’d seen the same thing, no matter how many miles had separated them, had to mean something.

BOOK: Defiance
10.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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