Page 59 of Nomad: Violent Devotion

The cemetery is packed with leather vests and family members. I stand back and off to one side. This isn’t my club and it’s not my war. That started long before I came on the scene. That Poppy came after me was the culmination of a lifetime of her father’s personal brand of terrorism toward her and the Sons. My heart aches for the child she was and the woman she’s become.

Words and music, soft and somber, flow over me. I don’t hear any of it, snatches and fragments at best. Then people are turning away, leaving, and the cemetery empties. I don’t know how long I stand there, beside a grave marked with a name I don’t recognize, babysitting the ghost of a man who’s been dead for over a decade who doesn’t know my name.

Fresh dirt lies on top of several mounds, lined mostly side by side in neat rows. My throat tightens at the sight.

I did this. By coming back and butting my ass into club business, this has been the result of my return from hermitage.

“No, it’s not.”

Poppy stands beside me when I look down. Her eyes are clean, and her hair is blown off her face by the afternoon’s warm wind.

“Isn’t it?” I glance away from her, toward the freshly turned earth. My heart squeezes the last fraction of blood from the stone organ. “You had a job to do because I came back. If I hadn’t returned—” I sweep a hand out, gesturing to everything before me. “—then none of this would have happened.”

“It would have eventually.” Her soft, warm hand slides into mine. “But if it makes you feel better...” She presses something cold and hard into my hand.

I glance down and find the blade I gifted to her days back pressed into my palm. “Keep it. Maybe you’ll find your logical brain if you dig deep enough.”

A hollow laugh erupts from my chest. “No fucking chance.” I catch her wrist as she withdraws, turning her back to me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

Her eyes darken, and her head tips downward. “I can’t imagine you being afraid of anything.”

“You’re looking at it right now.”

Her soft, indrawn breath is a giveaway. Hope blooms in my tight chest as she peeks up at me through thick, heavily made-up lashes. She’s beyond stunning and I want to crush her in my arms. But right now, that might not be what she wasn’t. Actually, I have no fucking idea what she wants. So, I wait.

“You thought I’d run again?” Uncertainty laces her voice. “When I promised you I wouldn’t.” She fingers the edges of my cut, and there’s no hiding the fact that the leather trembles a little at her touch.

I bare my teeth at her, my words short and sharp. “No. I promised you’d be safe with me. That you’d have a place to call home. That I wouldn’t leave. I never asked any of those things from you.”

“But I gave those promises anyway when I took your cut.” She’s soft and breathless and pressed right up against me.

My grin is wry. “I can’t fuck you in a graveyard, little toy.”

She gives me doe eyes, all innocence and leather and ... I lean in, dragging my nose up the slope of her neck, and she whimpers.

“Is that blood I smell on you?” I murmur.

She shivers. “I know I showered.”

“Not well enough.” I grip her jacket and yank the black leather back to expose a smear of red that covers her shoulder and across her back. “Cosita? I need an explanation. Now,” I growl as I back her toward a study elm.

“I went to my father’s funeral service and there were only a few people there. It’s okay, Walker, I’m not hurt. Stop that.” She bats at my hand where I slide my fingers through the blood, seeking her wound. “I mean it, I’m not injured. You don’t need to call Slipper.” Her joke falls flat, along with the doc’s name between us.

“Where’s the cut? Where is this coming from?” I squeeze her arm, reddening her skin. My breaths come short, my vision tunneling. “Who the hell hurt you, Poppy?”

“It’s not mine, okay?” she yelps. “The blood, it’s not mine!”

“What?” A breath blasts out of me as I lean into her, a handful of her hair in my fist as I pin her to the tree’s thick trunk. “Talk, girl.”

“The clubhouse was near empty. There’s no one left. No one except...” Her eyes squeeze shut.

“Keep talking,” I say softly, but with enough emphasis that her shoulders drop an inch.

“No one except Alex. My brother,” she mumbles, staring at the ground.

I frown. “I didn’t know you had a brother. I thought you were Samuel’s only child.”

She shakes her head. “He’s my half-brother. We share—shared—a sire. But he’s not in the life, so dear old Daddy disowned him. When he was ten,” she says flatly.