Justiss And Graver

Chapter 1 Aaron Graver—Graver to his MC—stared down at his brother, Justiss. For a second, he just stood there blinking because what his eyes were telling him was outside the realm of possibility. Was that blood? It couldn’t be. Seriously. It couldn’t be. Even as his mind scurried through several further denials, more ruby red liquid spilled from a source unseen on Justiss’s prone form, and the man’s body seemed to be shrinking before him as though his essence, his very power was disappearing with every lost drop. A croak escaped Graver as terror flooded him. He’d known fear before, but this went beyond fear. Justiss couldn’t die. He just... he couldn’t. Letting out a bellow that merged both halves of his soul, bear and human, his sensitive ears picked up on the clatter of dozens of feet running toward him in response to the cry that was meant both for battle as well as his grief. There’d been a celebration of sorts happening in The Nomads’ MC rec room. Earlier that evening, Justiss had challenged and beaten a sorry SOB called Logann. Against the current Prez, Mars Donner, Logann had been spreading s**t around better than a farmer did come sowing time. As Mars was newly mated, he couldn’t fight in a challenge. If he died, the nature of the mate bond would take his woman with him. So, Justiss had stepped up to the plate to take down the threat to the club’s leader, and he’d survived, mowing Logann down like the sorry sack of s**t he was. But now, here Justiss was. He wasn’t partying like the rest. He wasn’t celebrating the fact that as thanks from the Prez, he now sat on the MC’s council. Instead, he was here. On the floor. Gasping for breath. Dying. Graver choked on the thought, and it was what he needed to drop to his knees and seek the source of the blood. His paralysis shamed him. He’d wasted precious moments gawking when he should have been putting pressure on the injury. Hell, he knew to do that. Why hadn’t he been stemming the blood flow from the start? But more terror rushed through him like a bad acid trip as the stench of death suddenly became overpowering in the air. It clung to the atmosphere with a scent that was impossible to define and yet unmistakable. He gulped air in through his mouth, trying not to inhale the smell of Justiss’s death, as his MC brothers finally reached him, tens of them yelling and hollering the instant they saw the downed man on the floor. “What the f**k is wrong with him?” Mars, the club’s current Prez, barked, falling to his knees too and helping Graver look for the wound that was causing such heavy blood flow. “I don’t know. I just found him like this,” Graver bit off, then moaned when he finally found the source of blood. It was thin but deep. A stiletto blade. “Moses,” Mars hissed. “That f*****g knife of his. Hicks, Shark, and Jarvis, you bring me that motherfucker alive. I want to slit his throat for taking Justiss down like this. Lowlife cowards.” He let out a sigh as more blood pooled around the hands Graver held tight against the tiny wound. It was deep in Justiss’s belly, right in the soft tissue where the most damage could be done with the smallest of incisions. “It’s too late, Graver,” he murmured softly, moving his blood-stained hand to Graver’s wrist and squeezing gently. But Graver wouldn’t hear of it. “f**k off, Mars. It isn’t too late. It’s never too late.” He’d lost too many people, lost too much family to lose J. Justiss wasn’t blood, but he might as well have been. He was one of the brothers who had come around when Graver’s siblings had been slaughtered. Who’d held Graver’s ma while she wept and had been the one to take the fists she’d beaten against his chest as rage and sorrow and horrendous woe had flooded her until her only outlet had been violence. He and Mars had been the ones to come and deliver the news of his elder brothers’ deaths—both of them—but Justiss, more than Mars, had taken the grief Graver had been too young to handle. He’d watched, horrified, as his mother had sobbed out her heartbreak, not seeking her youngest but finding comfort in the strong arms of some of the Clan’s eldest. Justiss had become a source of strength to the Graver family, and a world without Justiss was no world at all. He gulped down his fear. How could he…? What could he even…? The idea of telling his ma that another MC member had been slaughtered froze him to the core. He couldn’t do it. Josephine Graver was already looking thirty years older than she ought to. Grief had worn her down from the bright and vivacious beauty she’d been for most of Graver’s years, to the bitter, withdrawn stick insect that now lived at home. His pa was almost as bad—drinking himself to an early grave that would take his mate down with him. Losing Justiss would be the final nail in the coffin that had been looming for both his parents ever since his bros had passed on. Jesus, he was tired of losing people. Why did they always f*****g leave him? Graver was sick and f*****g exhausted of having to be the strong and silent one while the entire world fell about in grief, expecting him to keep it together when he was just as broken as they. Only Justiss had understood. Only Justiss had been his rock. “Blood sacrifice,” he whispered. Then, clearing his throat, he repeated himself a little louder. Now that the words were out there, his head seemed to clear and his mind could focus. He realized it was what he needed to do to save his brother, and by saying it aloud he’d breathed life into the words. Mars winced. “Are you sure, Graver? You know we only do that with mates. It’s not…” “Don’t even f*****g say it, Mars. I don’t care if it’s not right, or if it’s not done. I’m doing it. I can’t lose Justiss. My ma can’t lose him. If he goes, she goes. And that’s it. The whole pack of cards comes tumbling down.” Mars let out a deep sigh. “I know things have been hard since your brothers passed,” he started, but Graver wouldn’t let him continue. “Hard?” he snarled, uncaring when Mars’s jaw turned white as the Prez reacted to his aggression. “Hard? You think it’s hard watching an MC brother die? What do you think it’s like watching your blood die? Justiss is the former, but he sure as f**k feels like he could be the latter. I have to save him, but you know I need your permission for this.” He winced again, tattooed fingers coming up to knuckle his nose in agitation. “You know I didn’t ask Jefferson when I saved Annette.” Jefferson was the club’s old Prez, as big a sack of s**t as the men who, even in death, supported him. Logann had just passed at Justiss’s claws, and Moses was the motherfucker who’d sought retaliation. There were a few left, but they were dwindling. Annette was Mars’s old lady, his blood mate and the woman who had been keeping the MC on track in the wake of Mars’s challenge of, and subsequent victory over, Jefferson. Because of the cocksucking SOB who’d led them before Mars, The Nomads were currently at war with at least four South American gangs. They had a cartel after them and huge internal pressures that were close to making the MC cave in. In the face of all that chaos, Annette had been an unusual bedrock of support for a biker gang. Not that Graver came into that much contact with her. He was a newbie, a patch, but still not considered old enough to do any of the tough s**t. He only saw Annette as she made her way around the clubhouse, resolving problems and causing more when Mars thought one of his men was looking at her with disrespect. He liked her though. She had balls. And she could stand up to Mars, which the arrogant fucker needed from time to time. He was meant to lead the MC, but that didn’t mean he was goddamn perfect. Even with terror filling him, he could sense Mars’s sheepishness. “I know you didn’t ask him for permission, but I’m not really a full member yet. I’m not old enough, am I?” Mars grunted, immediately dismissing that. “Bullshit. You’re tied in through family. You always have been. You’re patched, ain’t you?” “Yeah, but I never went through the ceremony.” It was true that the eldest and most powerful in the MC treated him like he was a full-fledged brother, but it was those on the ground level that caused him s**t. “Because you never needed to go through it. That’s why.” He hauled in a deep breath, peered around the crowd that had gathered about Justiss’s gasping form. Graver didn’t know what he was looking for, but whatever it was, it had him mumbling, “Do it. Save him.” As relief flushed through him, he closed his eyes, clenching them firmly to withhold the tears that wanted to fall but couldn’t, not with his brothers looking on. Justiss didn’t have to die. He could live. But Graver would have to be quick. He reached in his boot for his knife and slashed at his wrist. A hiss escaped him at the discomfort but he didn’t care. He leaned over Justiss’s gasping form, noticing he was growing stiller and stiller, his breathing turning into a death rattle that shook Graver to his core. Forcing his wrist against the dying man’s mouth, he waited for the blood gushing out of his wound to hit Justiss’s lips. The instant it did, the two-dozen strong crowd surrounding them froze. Graver peered around and saw the concern and shock on their faces. Justiss had been an outcast for too many years thanks to his outspokenness of the old Prez’s selfish and inhuman business practices. These bastards hadn’t been there for him then, but Graver had and always would be. This blood sacrifice would merely confirm the link. It felt right. Even though Mars had spoken the truth and technically what he was doing was ‘wrong’, he didn’t care. Blood sacrifices were rare for a reason. They drained a Shifter of his magic, gifted that magic to the Goddesses who had created them, born them, and breathed life into them, and they took that magic as a price for the life they spared. Blood sacrifices were tales that were passed over a campfire when Shifters were thirteen and out in the wilds for their first shift. They fed ghost tales and creepy stories. They were not something to f**k about with. Every Shifter knew that. That the MC would now have two recipients of a blood sacrifice in its midst made them beyond rare. Justiss sucked in a breath so deep that Graver and Mars as well as the rest of the crowd jerked in surprise. Then, he gulped. Graver’s blood had spilled over the corners of J’s lips, but now, he sank it back like the finest whisky he’d ever supped. And like that was what the Goddesses had been waiting for, Graver suddenly saw nothing around him. The worried men disappeared, and the stench of death and spilled blood and beer were no more. Crowds weren’t jostling behind him, and their mutters of fear disappeared with them. The sticky wetness on his hands was no more. He didn’t know if he’d passed out or if he was hallucinating, but before him was a woman… a gauzy figure cast in blurred lines that made her features and form impossible to make out. What made him think she was a hallucination was the fact she was huge, and for Graver—who stood at six-five and weighed nearly three-hundred pounds in his socks—that was a feat. A huge ball of gold shone at her back, making her silhouette even harder to discern, and Graver blinked, feeling woozy from the loss of blood, but also blinded by that orb of eye-watering light. Its purity was invasive. It seemed to seep through the air, staining it with its beauty so that everything the light touched felt reborn, renewed, cleansed. “Ma’am?” he garbled, uncertain of what to say but not wanting to offend. The blood sacrifice meant this had to be… But it couldn’t be, right? He was just having some kind of psychotic episode from the blood loss. That was all it was. That happened, yeah? Because this couldn’t be a goddess. It couldn’t be. Could it?