I will, Hound thought.

“We’ll be there for your boys,” Dog said.

It was like Dog didn’t speak.

She kept at them.

“And who’s gonna bring me a shit ton of ibuprofen when I get period cramps so bad it makes me sick to my stomach and I can’t move?” she pushed. “Who’s gonna make up the hot water bottle for me and rub my back until they’re gone? Who’s gonna do that? Tell me, who?”

I will, Hound thought.

No one said anything.

But she still wasn’t done.

“And who’s gonna fuck me breathless, make me come so hard I think the world is ending? Who’s gonna give it to me again and again and again, night after night after night, just like I like it? Exactly like I like it,” she bit out.

I will, Hound thought.

“Keely, honey—” Hop tried gently.

“It’s not done,” she spat, leaning toward Tack, her gorgeous face twisting with an agony no woman should be forced to bear. “It’ll never be done.”

“I used the wrong words, darlin’, I’m so sorry,” Tack whispered.

“How done is he?” she demanded to know.

“Very done,” Boz answered firmly.

“Who did it?” she asked Boz.

“We all did,” Hop answered.

But her eyes went right to Hound.

And he looked right into them.

She knew.

There was a reason he was called Hound.

It started out as a joke, the guys digging into him about his unusual first name.

But with the hell Crank had thrown them into, it became other things.

Loyalty, one.

Stubbornness, another.

Difficult to rein in, and when he got the scent, impossible to hold back, yet another.

Not giving up and going the extra mile until the job was done, the last.

She was an old lady and she’d been around a long time.

But she was Keely, her heart as open and giving as her mouth was smart. She was Black’s and she was Chaos’s and she loved it like that. She knew every brother down to his soul. Even if they didn’t give her that, she watched, she looked after them in any way she could.

She knew.

Because the first part that made Hound a hound was the most important.

“We’ve lost Black, but you, Dutch and Jagger haven’t lost Chaos,” Tack told her, and she turned her attention to him.

Hound felt his entire frame tighten when the change started coming over her features, and he felt his brothers experience the same as the air in the room went flat.

“I can’t do it,” she said quietly.

“You can,” Tack said firmly.

“The boys are lost,” she whispered, the agony of a woman who’d lost her man melting into something far more difficult to witness.

The anguish of a mother whose boys lost their father.

“We’ll keep them steady,” Tack vowed.

“I’m—” she cut herself off and swallowed.

“We got you,” Tack said gently. “We’ll always have you. We’ll always be there.”

Keely said nothing, she just stared in Tack’s eyes like she was waiting for him to clap his hands, she’d wake up, and the nightmare she was living would be over and she could rest in the knowledge it was all a bad dream.

Tack didn’t do this because he couldn’t.

So she looked away.

“You want me to get Bev over here?” Boz asked.

Bev was Boz’s old lady, and Keely and her were tight.

It took visible effort but she looked at him. “No. If I’ve gotta go it alone, I gotta learn how to do that.”

That was when Hound spoke.

“You’ll never be alone.”

She turned to him.

“You don’t get it,” she whispered. “He wasn’t the other half of me. He didn’t complete me. He wasn’t my old man. He wasn’t my husband. He wasn’t a dick I fell on. He wasn’t the father of my sons. He was,” her voice suddenly got scratchy, “my life. He was my reason to get up every day and breathe. He’s gone and losing that, losing him, I’ll always, always be alone.”

Hound made no reply because he didn’t have one but also because he again felt like he’d been punched in the throat.

“We’re gonna look after you,” Tack told her, and her gaze went to him. “Please, darlin’, he’d want it this way, so will you let us look after you?”

She tossed her head and the sheet of her hair glistened in the light by her couch that was the only lamp lit.

“He’d want it that way, you’re right. So…yes,” she agreed.

“Let me get Bev over here,” Boz again suggested.

She looked to him.

Then she nodded.

“Boz, go. Call,” Tack ordered then turned to Hop, Dog, Brick and Hound. “Just go. I’ll stay until Bev gets here.”

Hop, Dog and Brick nodded and moved to Keely.

Hound just moved to the door.

He turned to her and caught her eyes before he walked out.

He had no idea if she read his promise.

But it wouldn’t matter.

He was still going to keep it.