Free Wild: Tiger's Blood MC by Heather West

venom left her lips. “That’s rich, Brienne,” she snapped, wiping her mouth and nose. Her brown arm came away streaked with blood and tissue. “So much for you! You used to be loyal!”
     
    “Not to you,” Brienne replied. “To the club, that’s where my duties are. Like Persephone, I always want what’s best for all of us, not just you. You’re too proud, Vero. You need to remember your place.”
     
    My injured chest swelled with pride at Brienne’s words. I couldn’t tell how she felt personally, but it meant the world to have one of my girls stick up for me like this. It was like someone was finally coming to her senses. Maybe we wouldn’t have to call the cops after all. Maybe everything would be okay, maybe everything would work out.
     
    “Fuck no,” Vero said. She swaggered over to me and stuck her hand out for a shake. “This is over, even if we disagree.” She sucked her teeth and looked at me with a prideful expression on her face. “We gotta agree to disagree, boss.”
     
    I swallowed hard. It wasn’t the apology that I’d been hoping for, but I got the impression that it would have to do. “Fine,” I said softly. “Fine, it’s over.”
     
    And we shook on it.

Chapter Nine
 
     
     
    Elliot
     
     
     
    As soon as Minnie told me that the girl was a member of the Amazons, I knew what I had to do. The Amazons were an all-female MC headquartered in LA. We’d bumped heads with them before—just like us, they ran guns—and I wasn’t looking forward to this confrontation. My stomach twisted nervously. What if the woman had been grilling me about our supplier? Were they planning to steal our business and decimate our group from the inside out? I felt nauseous: if we didn’t have buyers for our guns, our revenue would dry up and the club would be finished.
     
    I knew I had to hightail it over to their hideaway and convince them not to talk. Of course, that was easier said than done. Much like Nero and Tony had told me, the Amazons didn’t love male visitors. Half of them were dykes, and the other half of them had basically sworn off men. While I was aware of my charms and how well they worked on normal women, the Amazons weren’t normal women. They were a fierce bunch of harpies who rode like they were on their way out of hell. I knew that I was going to have to do some serious bribing in order to get them on my side—or to even be neutral.
     
    There were tons of MCs around LA, but the Amazons and Tiger’s Blood had been at each other’s throats for years now. You wouldn’t think that the market would be so small, but it always was. It was like we couldn’t exist peacefully together, especially not since we were always doing the same line of business. I hated it, but it was a fact of life.
     
    Back in the day, I was sure that Tiger’s Blood had no problems putting the Amazons down in…well, in ways that weren’t exactly condoned now. My predecessors would have had no trouble swaggering into their clubhouse and raping and pillaging everything in sight. But that wasn’t how we worked, and that definitely wasn’t how I wanted to take revenge. After all, the Tigers had a code. A moral code, and part of that included no rape. I’d seen too many bikers go to jail for assault on women, and I’d decided as soon as I became leader that I wouldn’t support that kind of behavior. If one of my guys acted out of turn, I’d turn him in myself. Personally. I didn’t take pleasure in punishment, but I wanted my men to behave and act like decent citizens. After all, we were already gunrunners. We didn’t need to be rapist pigs on top of that.
     
    As the clock crawled closer and closer to midnight, I hopped on board my bike and pointed it in the direction of the Amazons’ clubhouse. They had just recently been awarded a top-charter status, and I knew they’d had cause to celebrate. Hell, that may have even been the party that Tony and Nero crashed. Bunch of morons , I thought. Now