Blade by Aiden Bates & Ali Lyda

Author:Aiden Bates & Ali Lyda [Bates, Aiden & Lyda, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

15

Blade

“Yo.” Raven stuck his head into my office without knocking. “I’m ready if you are. You want coffee?”

I swiveled around in my office chair. “Yeah, definitely. Thanks.”

Raven flashed me an “ok” symbol and disappeared.

I closed my laptop. No news of note, and no suspicious police reports other than the ones I’d already gathered throughout the week. There’d been another sighting of Vipers at our borders, and another scuffle outside a bar.

A week ago I would’ve been chomping at the bit to get out there and knock some fucking teeth out.

But a week ago Logan agreed to stay in Elkin Lake. And not above Ballast—in my home. It was a temporary solution, he insisted. Just until he found his own place. But I wasn’t scouring apartment listings, and I didn’t see him searching either.

Waking up next to Logan every morning filled me with a swell of affection so strong it terrified me. My feelings for him sanded down my rougher edges, helping me tame the anger I’d held towards the Vipers into a productive, righteous determination. Against my white sheets, Logan’s skin was a stunning golden-tan contrast each night. His green eyes were red-rimmed and sleepy when they first blinked open in the early morning light.

Sometimes I caught him watching me when he thought I wouldn’t see. His face would twist slightly, his pink mouth curling down, a furrow in his brow. He carried a weight he didn’t want me to see. But I’d seen his scars, and heard a little of his story. I wasn’t going to push or force him like others in his life had.

When he was ready to tell me the rest, I’d be there.

Raven pushed the door open with his butt, so his backpack wouldn’t press against it, and then kicked it closed behind him. He set our steaming mugs of coffee on my desk. I slid coasters under them. Raven rolled his eyes.

“All right,” Raven said. “Let me pull up my map here.” He pulled his small, sleek laptop from his backpack and balanced it on the edge of my desk, his fingers flying rapid-fire across the keys.

Raven always got this intensely focused look when he was at his computer. His slate-blue eyes flicked across the screen and the slightest furrow formed in his forehead where his thick dark eyebrows knitted together. Sometimes his tongue would stick out the corner of his mouth, a cute remnant from childhood habits.

As he’d grown up, he’d started to look a little bit like Ankh. The resemblance was in his defined, angular cheekbones and the slight dimple in his chin. But, unlike Ankh, he was ivory-pale with just a few shadows of freckles across his upturned nose. His mother, Ankh’s sister, had passed during childbirth. Ankh had adopted him as a newborn without hesitation, and Raven had grown up with a family of foul-mouthed guys like me hovering over him like a bunch of mother hens.

Now, at twenty-five, Raven dressed casually, more like a city boy than a biker, in jeans and Henleys and non-leather jackets.

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