I nodded and moved.

I walked through bikers and when I arrived at Tack, I moved right in, sliding my arms around him, pressing my front close to his, my cheek to his chest, closing my eyes, holding tight.

His arms moved around me and held tighter.

“She’ll be okay,” I whispered.

“Okay, Peaches.”

“She’ll be all right.” I kept whispering.

“Okay, babe.”

I opened my eyes and looked down the hall through the bikers.

Standing at the end, Hawk had his arms crossed on his chest, his face blank, his eyes locked to me. Brock had his arm around Tess’s shoulders, tucking his wife tight to his side, her head resting on his shoulder. Their eyes were on Tack and me. Mitch had both arms around Mara, hers were returning the favor and her cheek was resting on his chest. Their eyes were also on Tack and me. Elvira stood beside Hawk. The fingers of both her hands were pressed to her mouth. Her outfit was killer. And her eyes were on Tack and me.

As I watched, Hawk moved to slide an arm around Elvira’s shoulders and when he did, she leaned full body into his tall frame, giving him most of her weight and, as usual with my man, he stood strong and took it.

“Everything will be all right,” I whispered and gave Tack a squeeze.

I knew he’d already lost hope when Tack didn’t squeeze back.

* * * * *

Tyra

I felt a hand at my throat.

I opened my eyes.

Tack’s handsome face was all I could see.

Weirdly, except his hand wrapped light at my throat, I felt nothing. Not a thing.

Until his rough, gravelly voice came at me.

“Welcome back, Red.”

Then I felt my lips smile.

Epilogue

Dreams Come True

I stood at the basin in our bathroom wearing my bra and panties, my eyes moving over my body.

Nothing there.

This was because, when I got out of the hospital, approximately half a second after Tack carried me into the house (even though I could walk, just not very fast) and he laid me in bed, he’d started researching. He found the best plastic surgeon in the country and since then I’d taken two trips out to Los Angeles to have procedures to erase the scars from the five stab wounds Grigori Lescheva’s henchman had given me.

“Got that day burned in my brain,” Tack had growled after he’d handed me the plane tickets and explained our destination. “Do not need to look at your beautiful body and have it burn deeper. But you definitely are not gonna live with the scars ‘a that shit in your head and on your body. No f**kin’ way.”

After his explanation, I decided, who was I to argue?

So I didn’t.

It was just over nine months since that day and all physical remnants of it were gone.

My man saw to that.

I shifted so my back was to the mirror and looked down. Above my hipster panties was Tack’s dragon. His tattoo artist was just that, an artist. The tattoo was the… freaking… coolest. All in black, its wings spanning the small of my back, the tips skimming my hips, spiky head turned to the side, the dragon’s body curled up as if to attack with its feet, its talons pointed to my behind.

It hurt like hell to get but Tack was right, it was worth it. I liked having his mark on me.

I liked how much he liked it more.

And boy did he like it.

These thoughts made me turn back around. I leaned into the counter and both my hands slid along my belly, my eyes dropping there and I caught sight of my rings.

The second day I woke up in the hospital, I did it with a huge-ass diamond ring on my left finger. It was a raised princess cut diamond, two carats with smaller round diamonds surrounding it, more diamonds set in the gold in the rise up to the bigger one.

The minute I saw it, regardless of the drugs pumping numbness through my system , I smiled.

Pure Tack.

The biker boss to end all biker bosses, his woman was unconscious when we officially became engaged. He did what he did and got what wanted however that had to come about.

I didn’t argue about that either. When Tack walked into my room five minutes later, I just lifted my hand (albeit weakly), wiggled my fingers and whispered, “I accept.”

Tack had just smiled back, came right to me, bent in and kissed me.

It kind of sucked that our engagement kiss was soft, gentle and brief seeing as I was highly drugged, had five stitched holes in my body, IVs and was recovering from an alarming loss of blood.

But none of that made that kiss any less sweet.

We didn’t have a huge-ass wedding and we didn’t delay in that either.

Lying in a hospital bed, my dream changed. After what I endured, what Tack endured trying to find me and the fact that my heart had stopped beating for one minute and forty-six seconds, my priorities changed.

Live life. Do not delay. Ever.

That didn’t mean our wedding didn’t kick ass.

It so did.

The minute I was up to it, Tack put me on the back of his bike and we lucked out that the weather was good the whole way as we rode over the Rockies and into the Napa Valley.

It was a long ride.

I loved every f**king minute of it.

Everyone met us there, Chaos, Mom and Dad, Aunt Bette and Uncle Marsh, Tabby and Rush, Hawk and Gwen, Brock and Tess, Mitch and Mara, Elvira and even Tack’s Mom.

I discovered that Tack’s Mom was not surprisingly beaten looking. But she was also friendly and loved her son if in an unusual distant, hesitant way I didn’t exactly get and I didn’t like all that much. But that distance meant she went right back to San Diego and kept distant. We rarely ever heard from her. Tack was used to this and it didn’t bother him so I decided not to let it bother me.

As for my Mom and Dad, they had met Tack when they came to Denver after my incident. While I was drugged up, Tack left Mom with me and took Dad for a cup of coffee. There he laid it out, all of it about Chaos, the Russians and how that made me a target. There he also laid it out about the fact we loved each other and he intended to spend the rest of his life with me and make a family.

This was also very Tack, up front and honest and apparently my father appreciated it.

I knew this when I was less whacked out and more lucid and I approached my father about his talk with Tack hoping to head him off the path to judgment.

I shouldn’t have worried (though I didn’t know that).

“Honey, God makes those decisions, I don’t,” Dad shocked the shit out of me by saying. “I just know it wasn’t him who stabbed you with a knife. I also know it was him who nearly got riddled with bullets to get you out. And I know he got you out alive. And last, I figure the path to redemption is thorny but I’m guessing that man will make it through mostly because he’s got a strong woman at his side. And I know that because I raised that woman.”