Hunter (King’s Men MC #1)

1. Ryleigh

1

RYLEIGH

Five Years Later

I woke up with a start.

Sweat coated my forehead, even though goosebumps came across my exposed skin from how I was lying on the bed.

I shivered, pulled the cover up my shoulders, and looked around at my surroundings.

It would take a while for my body to come back from wherever I had been trapped while sleeping, like it always did.

I had hated going to bed at night since I was fourteen, and it wasn’t like I had such good sleeping habits to begin with.

I looked over at the clock sitting on my nightstand. One hour before my alarm was set to ring. One hour before I actually needed to get up and ready for school.

I could usually fall into a very deep sleep at night, but I could never sleep past six in the morning.

I hated it .

I was still tired, but I knew there was no point in just lying there and attempting to go back to sleep.

It would never work.

With a tired sigh, I climbed off the bed and stumbled into the bathroom, grabbing my bath caddy on the way.

The apartment I shared with three other girls was quiet.

The sun wasn’t even up yet. I doubted they would be either. Plus, I knew they took classes later in the day.

A huge part of me was relieved I wouldn’t run into any of them soon.

The other part…

Well, I was lonely.

I was in my second year at UC Berkeley and hadn’t made any lasting or strong connections with anyone. Least of all my roommates. They had all been friends since high school, leaving me to feel like nothing more than an unwanted but necessary roommate.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t connect with other people.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t sleep in past six in the morning most days, like a lot of normal people around. I didn’t know why I always felt like I was nothing more than a zombie walking around the world of the living and trying to hide this terrible, frightening identity from everyone else.

I just wanted to be normal.

I closed my eyes when I climbed into the shower, letting the hot water rain down my body.

Memories of my spotty past haunt me.

Even if I didn’t remember everything that happened, the feeling of it was enough to get to me in ways that were beyond normal.

Fear of that day had followed me around since I woke up in the hospital five years ago.

I had only been fourteen at the time.

My biggest worry then was whether I could convince my mom to let me go to the mall with my friends.

All of those things seemed so…

Innocent and simple now.

It hadn’t felt like it at the time. It felt like the biggest thing in the world, and I missed that time of my life so much.

I quickly stripped off my clothes, turned on the water for a morning shower, and got in before the water had a chance to warm up, letting it wake me up even more than I had been, and relaxing into the heat when it finally warmed.

I closed my eyes and let the water rain down on my face.

I had time before school started, and if I wanted to stay here for a while and pretend everything was okay, I could…

Couldn’t I?

The knock on the door startled me out of my thoughts, and I opened my eyes and looked toward the doorway. The curtains were in the way, and I couldn’t see much. The knock sounded again.

“Ryleigh. Hurry up! I need to use the bathroom, or I’m going to be late,” the shrill voice of Angelica Vaughn, one of the three girls I lived with, said through the door.

I let out a tired sigh and quickly did my cleaning routine.

Fifteen minutes later, I hopped out of the shower stall and looked at the fogged-up mirror.

I towel-dried and wrapped it around my body, then wiped some of the fog away from the mirror and took in my reflection.

Same tired gray eyes greeted me in the reflection.

My dark black hair fell down in a messy array on my head, the length coming down all the way to my navel, seeming to have taken all the attention away from my too-small face.

My eyes roamed down to my torso, taking in the slight dip near my collarbones from my weight loss since starting school away from home .

My childhood home was about one hour away from campus, and though I had been excited about leaving my worrisome mother and workaholic father behind, trying to find my own place in the world where I wasn’t Vivian and Judge Bennett Hudson’s daughter, there was something about being thrust into a new environment that had taken its toll on my appetite.

I stood about five foot four, had a slight frame that had only gotten more gaunt in the recent months, and pale skin.

Looking away from my reflection, I brushed my teeth and set about getting ready for my day.

Another pounding on the door, and I gritted my teeth to keep from saying anything.

I opened the door when I heard her footsteps receding. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation this early in the morning, especially with someone with such a mean attitude as Angelica.

The hallway was blessedly empty, and I returned to my room without incident.

I closed the door and leaned against it, looking around.

Just three more months until Christmas break, and perhaps I could convince my parents that I was more than capable of living on my own instead of being with roommates.

That was the only reason my mom reluctantly agreed to let me go to school an hour away from home, and why she had agreed to let me move out.

But this living situation was taking its toll on me with each day that passed, and I didn’t know how much more I could handle being so uncomfortable in my own home.

It was hard enough living with three strange girls that I didn’t know at the start of the semester. It was worse when they had known each other since high school and were close friends .

Most of the time, I felt like an outcast in my own home, and it wasn’t like I was out making friends left and right.

I found it hard to make friends since the incident, when all my friends I had made since middle school gave up on me and moved on with their life due to my extended hospital stay.

Then, when I was given the all-clear to return to school, everything and everyone felt different.

Or perhaps it was me who felt different.

If there had been one person I would feel comfortable connecting with, it was Brent Ledger, the man who had been considered a part of my family since I was little.

But he had moved to Chicago for a job some years ago.

He was ten years older than me, so it wasn’t like that would have helped any when I was in school, and I doubted he had wanted to hang out with a high school girl while she was recovering from her trauma.

It was just as well, though I knew it would have made things bearable, a little less lonely, had I had someone in my corner who wasn’t my overbearing parents.

Perhaps things changed, and I didn’t know how to connect to any of my old friends again, and what was more, they didn’t want to connect with me.

So I became an outcast at the start of my high school year, and that didn’t change throughout the four years.

I had been at college for three semesters now.

Things didn’t change in college like everyone said they would.

I took off the towel and hung it up on the hook on the wall to dry as I looked in my closet for clothes for the day.

I settled on jeans shorts and a white t-shirt.

California was warm on a good day, but we were starting into the Fall. I would have thought the weather would get better. I thought wrong .

The forecast today was hot and humid.

Since I woke up so early, I still had time before I actually had to get to campus, but it was better to go to a coffee shop than be around my roommates and watch as they talked in hushed whispers, only to quiet once they noticed me passing.

It always made me feel like I was intruding in the space whenever they did that, even if the living room was supposed to be a shared communal space.

I looked at myself in the body-length mirror hanging by my door.

My hair was still damp, and my skin was pale from the lack of sleep, but I figured this was as good as it would get.

I grabbed my school bag and walked out the door.

And sure enough, as soon as I got out to the living room, all of my roommates were there, still in their pajamas.

I looked at Angelica.

I thought she needed the bathroom, and that she was in a rush.

It didn’t seem like it, considering she was sitting on the couch with her hair rollers in, putting on makeup.

They all quietened as soon as they noticed me.

I pretended not to be bothered about it and walked up to the cabinets to get my coffee mug and shoved it in my bag.

I usually buy my coffee, but I preferred bringing my own mug since it would keep the coffee hot for me most of the day.

I turned, and all three of them were looking at me.

Angelica seemed to be the “leader” of their little group, as Kylie Collins and Marren Lang seemed to defer to her on most things.

And Angelica had that “aura” of a leader.

She was beautiful and confident.

With long, naturally curly blonde hair and big hazel eyes that stood against her fair complexion, she was hard not to notice.

She was tall and curvy, having me beat by at least five inches and a good twenty pounds.

With naturally big and perky breasts that she liked to show off with low-cut shirts—which I didn’t blame her for since I thought most girls would do the same if they had her assets—there was just something about her that made you want to get closer to her, despite having such a mean personality.

“Morning,” I muttered, flushing slightly when none of them returned my greeting.

I didn’t even know why I bothered trying.

It had been like this since the first day I moved in, when they decided I would get in their way of living together.

But it wasn’t like I did it on purpose.

This was a campus apartment, and they put four people in together.

I just happened to be the fourth person.

I looked away and was about to head out the door when Angelica stopped me.

“Ryleigh, wait.”

I paused and looked back at them.

Angelica smiled. It wasn’t a mean smile, per se, but there was something about it that I didn’t trust.

“Yeah?” I asked.

The girls all shared a look before Marren spoke. “We were wondering if you’re free tonight.”

I blinked. “What?”

She smiled. “Are you free tonight? I know you don’t have class tomorrow, and we don’t either. We wanted to go out to this new club that had just opened. Would you like to come?”

For a second, I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Then a small smile overtook my face, and I nodded .

“Yeah, I’m free. That sounds like fun,” I said shyly.

I didn’t think of myself as a shy person.

If anything, I thought I was just reserved, but I was obviously out of practice when it came to socializing, but for some reason, I was feeling shy.

Angelica smiled. “Perfect. Why don’t we all meet back here around eight, and we could leave together?”

“Yeah. That, uh, that sounds good.”

There was a small moment of awkward silence, and I shifted a little on my feet. “Right, well, I’m gonna go.”

They nodded, and something moved in Angelica’s eyes, but it was gone before I could figure out what that might be.

I turned and walked out the door awkwardly.

I smiled on my way to the car, suddenly excited about my day.

And to think it had started out so crappy.

I turned on the car radio as I drove to campus.

The day was a little cloudy, but it wasn’t windy, and I didn’t mind it much as long as it wasn’t windy. Berkeley wasn’t anywhere near as crowded as Los Angeles, but it was compared to other places in the US. Thankfully, the campus wasn’t too far from the apartment. I could get there within fifteen minutes, even running into minor traffic.

My phone rang just as I pulled into the parking lot, and my car’s Bluetooth system kicked in, showcasing the word MOM in capital letters on the screen.

I was half-tempted to ignore the call, but knowing how worried and paranoid she got, I knew it was better to just pick up.

I sat in my car and left it on as I answered the call.

“Hey, Mom, I can’t talk long. I just got to school.”

There was a small beat of silence on her end before she said, “I thought your class doesn’t start until nine-thirty. What are you doing at school so early? ”

“I thought I would come to the coffee shop and brush up on my studying before a big test,” I lied.

“Oh,” was all she said for a moment. She didn’t sound like she believed me. I didn’t blame her, but she wasn’t going to call me out on the lie, and I was going to pretend that she did believe me.

“Well, all right. I’ll let you get to it. I was just checking up on you.”

The worry in her voice took away any snark I might have made at that moment. She was just worried about me, in her own way, her only child.

“I know,” I said softly. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, dear.”

I waited until she hung up before letting out a tired sigh.

We used to be close.

When I was little, I had wanted nothing more than to be just like her when I grew up.

Vivian Hudson was born a society princess. She grew up to be a society queen, easily taking her place in marriage and in that world.

There was something delicate but strong about her.

Something elegant and mesmerizing.

There was no way she would have married anyone who didn’t elevate her status, which was why she married my father.

Growing up, I didn’t know that.

My parents had always seemed to get along well. Unlike my childhood friends’ parents, they never fought.

Despite the state our family was in, my parents—and me, to some extent—were really good at projecting the image we wanted others to see.

Everyone always commented how great it was that we seemed to bounce back from such a horrible incident.

Those people only said that because they weren’t around when the nightmares hit. When I finally understood that my parents weren’t perfect like I had thought when I was little. Worse yet, that they weren’t the heroes in my life but flawed, almost caricature representations of who I had made them out to be.

I had long known the truth about my family.

We didn’t bounce back as well as my parents’ friends seemed to think, and my parents never fought, not because they got along so well but because they didn’t care enough to fight.

They weren’t two people who fell in love and got married.

They were two people who married each other because each had a goal and knew it would only be accomplished with their union—my mom for her status, and my dad for his inheritance from my grandparents for having married the girl they approved of.

Perhaps they loved each other in their own way, but they weren’t in love with each other, and that just seemed so…

Wasted.

All these wasted years, spending your time with someone who didn’t make your heart flutter simply because they were looking at you.

I didn’t want that.

Call me na?ve, but I wanted to love the person I marry, no matter his social status.

And it was with the realization that I didn’t want to be like my mom in this way—or any way—plus the fact that she had turned into a helicopter parent since the cliff incident that I found it hard to maintain closeness with her.

The person I thought she was as a child was slowly but surely being stripped with each year that I got older, and what was left was a woman I didn’t understand very well.

I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat and climbed out of my car, looking over at the bustling coffee shop filled with college students. Some were in a group, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, and something about that sight caused a slight sting to form in the center of my heart.

I could put on a front all I wanted, but even I couldn’t lie to myself about how much I wanted a friend to call my own.

I rubbed away the small ache in my chest and walked through the doors, getting in the back of a very long line to the front.

My eyes roamed about the small cafe, coming to a stop when I found a boy in the corner, surrounded by a group of people, yet seeming so distant from everyone. He might as well be an outsider.

Not that any of his friends seemed to notice, or perhaps they didn’t care. They just wanted to be seen hanging out with him.

I didn’t know him personally, but even I knew who he was.

It helped that my roommates were all obsessed with him, along with most of the female population—and even male—on this campus.

Kai Madden was hard to ignore.

It would be enough to say his good looks were what got him noticed. But that was not why he was so well known on campus.

Kai Madden was the heir to the infamous King’s Men MC here in Sacramento.

His father, Dominic Madden, was the president, and his name had been linked to multiple crimes in the city, mainly relating to drugs and arms trafficking, though there was never any evidence held against him. In fact, the members of the MC were pretty good at avoiding the law.

The King’s Men MC had been a thorn in my dad’s side for most of his time in the judge’s chair .

I didn’t know why Dad hated the MC so much, but I knew better than to ever say anything nice about them in our house.

I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

I didn’t know much about it, only what Dad would sometimes say when things at work became tense, and he had a little too much to drink.

But everything that I have come to know about the heir to the MC came from the gossip around campus, mostly from girls who had “claimed” to have gotten him for the night.

And if what they were saying was even half true, then Kai was considered nothing short but a God in bed.

The rest came from my obsessive roommates—especially Angelica, who, uncharacteristically, had proclaimed they were meant to be, one drunken night in the apartment. Not that I blamed her.

There was just something about the boy that demanded attention.

And I could see why he was so popular.

He was probably one of the most beautiful human beings I had ever seen, physically speaking, with dark blue eyes that perched on high cheekbones, a sharp jawline covered with stubble, and short brown hair that stood messy atop his head. He was tall, too. He towered over everyone in the school by at least a head, with broad shoulders and a wide frame.

He looked like he was years older than everyone else.

Hell, he looked like he was older than me when I knew we were about the same age.

He started school the same year I did.

But the way he looked at everyone and everything…

I swallowed and slowed down a bit when his dark gaze landed on me for a quick second before he looked away .

His friends laughed obnoxiously about something, but Kai didn’t join them. It had always been like that with him. He was in with the crowd, yet it seemed like he didn’t belong or cared enough to belong.

I didn’t think he had ever dated anyone for longer than a few weeks.

He was just so detached about anything and everything, it was hard not to be fascinated by the boy behind those dark blue eyes.

Kids just gravitated toward him. They couldn’t help it. They wanted to be near him as much as they wanted to keep their distance from him, afraid they would burn if they got too close to his fire.

He was angry.

I didn’t know why.

Perhaps at his family, or his life, or the world. It didn’t matter. I just knew he was, because I see the same feeling expressed in my own eyes every morning in the mirror. I was just better at hiding it than he was.

Or maybe he just didn’t care to hide it.

But because of this, I found that I had a soft spot for him, even if we had never spoken a word to each other.

He turned his eyes on me once more, and we held our gaze for three long seconds—mine in surprise, while he had the usual detachment that made it hard for me to tell what he was thinking—before he looked away from me, taking a sip of his coffee.

The line moved up, and I moved along with it.

By the time I put in an order for my coffee, Kai was no longer in his spot. The place where he had been remained vacant, almost as if none of his friends dared to take up the spot.

I caught sight of his broad shoulders moving through the doors, people leaving enough space for him to pass.