COLE
BOOK FIVE
THE WOUNDED SONS SERIES
BY
LEAH SHARELLE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
Copyright © 2021 Leah Sharelle
COLE: The wounded sons – Book Five
By Leah Sharelle
All Rights Reserved.
Editing and Proofreading: R Corcoran
Photography: Chic Professional Photography
Cover Models: Louis Armitage
Cover Design: Formatting & Design by Jaye
Interior Design: Formatting & Design by Jaye
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This book is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
This author writes using Australian English and may include Australian diction
DEDICATION
To Pirate and all the members of my Flock. XX
PROLOGUE
COLE
“Mum is still crying, Dad,” I worried, glancing in the direction of my mother, who was being consoled by my Aunt Stella.
Looking over his shoulder, my father nodded his head. “Yep.”
That was Creed Stephens, a man of few words. It stemmed from his days as a sniper, being quiet came with the job. My father had been one of the best, second only to Cooper Steel, my uncle. Along with my other uncles, Deck, Booth, and Mannix, they made up the best and most successful commando teams in the Australian Army’s history. They set up the original Team Five, along with Ford, Lucky and Darth, who died before I was born. Their reputation was unsurpassed.
“She is going to be okay, isn’t she?”
“Don’t worry about Mum, mate, you know I will look after her. I need you to focus on what you are about to do. Your first deployment as a member of Gabe’s team requires you to be there, not back here with your mum.”
Dad was right, of course; in fact, I can’t remember a time when he was wrong. My father was my hero, my siblings and me, his MC brothers too, but Dad was the man I wanted to be like the most. Emulating his achievements from his commando days my ultimate goal. My older brother Zander chose to walk in his MC shoes and become a patched member of the Wounded Souls MC, and while I was a lifelong member, too, I wanted a different path.
“Dad, I have been to war a time or two,” I grumbled, feeling like a kid all of a sudden. “Two deployments in the SASR, remember? One with the Special Operations Engineering Regiment also under my belt,” I reminded him.
Dad eyed me in that way that made you feel like squirming; you know, when you realise you said something wrong, you just don’t know for the life of you what it was.
“Cole, don’t go believing you’re invincible. Special Ops is one thing, but being a part of an elite Tier One unit like Team FIVE is a whole other nightmare. It’s you and five other men; you go in where the other units have no business being. It’s an honour to fucking serve with men in the calibre you aspire to be.”
“Dad, I know that—” but Dad wasn’t finished, not by a long shot.
“You go in the man you are now, but you don’t come back the same way, son. Whether you know it or like it, what you come across over there is going to change you, Cole. It’s the man that you become, despite what you do and see, is the only thing I can impress upon you. Don’t let it overtake you, Cole, don’t drown in the horror. Will you do that for me, son?”
Staring at my father, his black onyx eyes mirrored mine. Out of all my brothers, I looked the most like our father. Zander, Dane and Chase inherited the same black hair, the same dangerous looks, the same black eyes, but my brothers had a lot of our mum in them. Me? I was Creed Stephen’s clone from the top of my head to the bottom of my booted feet.
Maybe that was why Dad was acting so concerned over my selection into the Wounded Sons; maybe he worried that I, too, was going to come back from war a different man as he had. Of course, Dad had some outside extenuating circumstances that helped that process along. The death of a fellow soldier and that of his first wife, both happening well before my birth and any of my four siblings.
Dad knew death, he faced it, and he almost let it beat him. Then, my mother happened and Dad found the peace her love offered him. Memphis Stephens was a force to be reckoned with, and I thanked God every day she was my mum. That didn’t mean that the same thing would ever happen to me. I thrived on being in the army, being a Special Operator. I loved the rush of being in the military, being challenged every time I stepped into a foreign country. Now I was part of a Tier 1 team with my best friends since birth, and I was ready for everything that offered me.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” I assured my father, “I’ve got this.”
Dad gave me his signature chin lift, but his eyes were still narrowed and worried.
“Don’t get too cocky, son, shit can go south quicker than you can blink, and when it does, because it will at some point, it can take a man out at the knees. War doesn’t have a script, Cole; it’s unpredictable.” Dad stared off into the distance, and I knew instantly he was thinking of his final deployment when Booth lost his blood brother and Steel lost his leg. It was also when my
