“How long do I have to play this goddamned charade? Ain't a single one of them paying attention to us, we said our hello's, we might as well just go.”
His uncle was the other misfit of the family, with much the same life Thian had lived. When forced to attend the family gatherings to keep up appearances, they sat on the outskirts, alienated from the very people who'd demanded their presence. He didn't know why they even bothered.
“I'm giving it another half hour, then I'm headed up to Crystal Lake for the week. Fishing, camping, off-grid... that's the life. These fuckers can't get ahold of me if the cell ain't working. You should try it sometime.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Ah, I wish I could, Uncle Jake. I got a meeting to attend to, one I can't miss. Feel free to have a few drinks for me, though.”
His uncle sobered, watching him with careful eyes before he spoke. “You be careful, Thian. I know they took you in when the rest of the world cast you out, but you and I both know loyalty can be bought and sold just like anything else. Watch your back. I don't want to have to visit you behind bars again, son.”
Thian sighed, sitting down the bottle he'd been drinking from. He understood his uncle's concerns, he did. The shit he did now was even shadier than what he'd gotten charged with in his late teens. Still, he had a family behind him. What they did, in the end, they did for good reason. They never went after someone who didn't deserve it. People may look down on them or judge their methods, but the fact was, in a lot of cases, they ended up saving lives. You couldn't argue with the results.
He knew his uncle was worried, but he didn't have cause to be. The club had rescued him before he'd gotten himself into some deeper shit. They'd held out a lifeline, and he'd taken it. “I promise, we're careful. I trust them at my back, and they trust me at theirs. We may not be a family in the traditional sense, but we're family in the ways that matter. They ain't going to let me get caught up again, I promise you that. Hell, one of 'em would take the rap for me if it came to that, same as I'd do for them.”
He meant it, too. After the fiasco in his late teens, he'd realized he didn't want to stay in Grand Haven. Why bother? His family didn't want him, the town didn't want him. There was nothing there to keep him hanging around. He'd drifted through the US, finally landing himself in Texas. It wasn't where he planned on settling, but it was a decent distraction for a while, and that's what mattered at the time.
As expected, when you're a drifter, honest employment doesn't come easy. He had very few options, and washing dishes under the table didn't appeal to him in the slightest. Thian had gravitated to what he knew... the outcasts. The edges of society people pretended not to see until they ended up on the evening news. Then they sniffed in distaste, saying they'd known all along that person was no good. Or that they'd gotten what they deserved.
Hypocrites, the fucking lot of them. Thian didn't know a single person who hadn't done something they were ashamed of at some point in their lives. Hell, most didn't even have the decency to be ashamed, but still judged others. He'd learned the true irony there in Texas. The group he'd been running with sold whatever they could get their hands on. Drugs, guns, liquor. Even women. He found selling women distasteful, so he didn't participate, but he knew they did it.
Until one day he'd seen the gang 'leader' dragging a slight female across the room, towards the basement where they kept their goods for sale. She couldn't have been even sixteen. He'd guess thirteen or fourteen, if he had to pick an age. Thian had seen red. Grown women were one thing, they'd chosen to get into the life and chosen to get into the fucking cars with strangers. This was a child. Someone's daughter.
He couldn't sit by and watch as they held her in the room awaiting a buyer. Knowing what the buyer would likely be interested in made him sick to his stomach. He'd put up with a lot of bullshit and overlooked a lot of things, but this was his line in the sand. He wasn't crossing it. That choice had begun the trajectory of his life from that point on.
Thian had stood up to his group, and gotten shot for his troubles. The pain was indescribable, worse than anything he'd felt before. The force of it had thrown him to the floor, leaving him a bit out of it, but he hadn't been so far gone that he didn't feel and see the changes his body had made. His fingers had clenched tight, claws springing forth from between the knuckles. His hair on his arms lengthened, becoming thicker and darker as pain wracked his joints, his spine twisting. He was staring at a cat's forelegs where his hands had been just moments before.
The shock must have done something, as he'd felt the strain of his body shifting once more, leaving him panting on the cement floor. It was only then that he realized he could hear shouting and gunfire. What the fuck was going on now? Dragging himself up, clutching his side where the bullet had gone through, he glanced around, spotting a group of leather-clad men taking on
