pop, baby girl,” Dagger chided, and because he meant well, I didn’t smack him, just reached up and ran a finger along the wrinkle that had formed between his brow.
“He wasn’t my pop.”
His eyes flared for a second. “What do you mean?”
I could have shrugged it off. Said that Bomber had never acted like my dad, which was the truth, but what was the point in lying? I hadn’t come back here to withhold shit that mattered.
“Bomber wasn’t my dad.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Wolfe ground out. His stomping feet approached and, within seconds, he was there, beside me, glowering down at me.
“I’m talking about shit that doesn’t leave this room.” My top lip curled a little. “Well, you can tell Flame and Axe, of course, but no one else. I’m Bomber’s to the rest of the MC, and that will make them accept us when—”
“There is no ‘us.’ Not yet,” Wolfe growled. “Now, what the fuck are y—?”
I reared up, my knees digging into the leather seat on either side of Dagger’s hips as I used my momentum to stick my finger in Wolfe’s chest. I prodded to punctuate each word as I declared, “There is an us. The second you accept it is the second your life gets a fuck ton easier.”
“If you think you can hold Amaryllis against me…”
Though inside, that was like he’d taken a knife to my belly, I just snorted at him. “You’re digging your own grave where she’s concerned. I don’t have to do a fucking thing to turn her against you, Wolfe. She may be five, but she’s smart. She sees shit. Just because she’s quiet, you’d be a dick to underestimate her.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he spat, his cheeks burning with a heat that was sourced in his outrage.
“It means that you’re a dick, so you probably won’t see her for what she is—a clever little girl who’s beyond sensitive. Who sees more than you or me. She’s protective of me. You should take that into account when you talk to me like shit in her presence.”
Dagger growled, “What have you been saying in front of her, Wolfe?” And I loved him for defending me, for snarling at Wolfe and not letting him get away with his shit.
See, Wolfe and me? We were like two rabid pit bulls shoved together in a ring. Just before we killed each other, we’d stop to fuck, but we were two Alphas, always butting heads. Flame, Axe, and Dagger were no less Alpha than us, but for some reason, we just never argued as much.
I spent half my time wanting to throat punch Wolfe, and the other half, wanting to kiss that beautiful mouth of his. The others? I felt like I could surgically attach myself to them and never want to hurt them. That wasn’t to say they didn’t get my back up from time to time, but they were the peace in my endless war with Wolfe, who couldn’t seem to accept that I was theirs, not just his.
It was a war he was foolish to think he could ever win.
Wolfe’s jaw tensed at Dagger’s anger. “Nothing,” he bit off. “I didn’t say shit.”
I sniffed. “And what was that yesterday in the kitchen?”
“I was just saying it how it is,” he replied, with that irritating as fuck smirk on his face. The one that made me want to smack it off him.
“What? That I’m a lazy bitch?”
Dagger’s eyes flashed. “Baby, you’re many things, but lazy ain’t one of them.”
“Well, apparently traveling as much as we did and in less than three days with no fucking sleep makes me a lazy bitch for taking some time to get over the journey these past few days.”
“Women help out in the kitchen,” was all Wolfe said.
My brow puckered. “I was helping out in there, you dumbass. Why the fuck do you think I was in there? Having fun? Who has fun in the fucking kitchen?”
He frowned. “What?”
“Which part didn’t you understand?” I sneered.
“You were just sitting at the table when I came in.”
“After I’d been helping Dorie make breakfast sandwiches for everyone.”
Wolfe’s mouth softened. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. I’m not lazy, Wolfe. Never have been and never will be, and you accusing me of that didn’t sit well with me or with Amaryllis. The only reason I didn’t lay into you was because she was there. I don’t want her to see us arguing. But if you talk to me like that in front of