Vice and Void (The Savage Wolves Brotherhood #1)

Prologue

Callum

Twelve Years Ago

“ I t’s about time you two showed up! It’s fucking graduation night!” The voice soared over the bass thundering from the house’s front porch speakers. Ace McCoy tumbled down the stairs before he righted himself and crossed the front yard, stopping beside the motorcycle with a wobble. He pointed a finger at Dakota Montgomery. “You should know, valedictorian—your speech was the only one I listened to.”

Callum Reynolds rolled his eyes at his best friend, whose concentration had shifted to lifting the plastic cup to his lips. Ace stumbled to the side, and beer foam slopped over the rim, staining the front of his white T-shirt.

“Smooth,” Callum replied as he held a steady hand toward his future wife. Dakota took it without hesitation and swung her leg over the side of his bike. “Do you think you could spell the word valedictorian ?”

Dakota grinned as she stood, sliding off the black helmet and fluffing her fingers in her hair to tousle the matted blonde curls. “Cut him some slack—at least he used it right. His ability to think is in there somewhere.”

Ace lurched forward to press a finger into Dakota’s shoulder. “That’s why I like you. Always the first one to—“ He trailed off, his hazy eyes dropping to where Callum had intertwined his hand with Dakota’s. Slowly, they lifted, studying every facet of Callum’s jeans, his black t-shirt, and the leather jacket he had taken to wearing. “Did you change your clothes after the ceremony? ”

“Why are you checking me out?”

“And you…” Ace leaned forward to sniff Callum’s hair.

“Come on, man—“

“Did you put gel in your hair?”

“Yeah, I did,” Callum replied, pushing Ace away. The beer slopped again, landing on Ace’s riding boots. “Because I’m not a fucking slob.”

Dakota laughed as she lifted onto her toes and kissed his cheek. “I’m going for beers. And to find Lyra and Raven.” Her hand slid from his, and Callum already missed its warmth.

Dakota walked away, the waves of her hair tumbling down her back and brushing against the sway of her hips. Callum almost groaned. Those fucking hips . He had been worshipping those fucking hips for a better part of two years, and when she wriggled her ass into her shorts earlier that night, it took everything in him not to rip them back off.

“Is there something in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?” A hand clapped on Callum’s shoulder, and he turned his head to scowl at his other best friend, Rocco Moretti.

“What is with you dickbags?” Callum glanced toward Dakota, who had climbed the stairs of the small house and was being handed a beer from Ace’s twin sister, Raven. Safe enough of a distance, he decided, since he was still in the shadows of the street lamp. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the small velvet box.

“So tonight’s the night, then?” Rocco asked, taking the box and flipping the lid open. The sapphire ring glinted against the dim, orange glow of the light. “Graduation night and Callum Reynolds is already tying himself down. Don’t want to see what other pussy Norwich has in store for you?”

“Nah,” Callum replied, plucking the box from Rocco’s hand and shoving it back into his pocket. “She’s always been it.”

Dakota was the only reason he finished school rather than dropping out to work at his father’s mechanic shop. He wanted to do better for her…and he needed to do better for her.

“I’m happy for you, brother,” Rocco said as Callum leaned against the seat of his motorcycle. “You know how I feel about Dakota. She’s good for you.”

“Did you ask Daddy yet?“ Ace interjected, raising a sardonic brow.

Callum snorted. “Her dad caught me in her bedroom just last week. What do you think? ”

Despite needing to escape naked through the window, John Montgomery’s gun drawn and pointed at him, Callum still snuck in later that night to finish what they had started. After all, Dakota wanted to experiment, and who was he to deny her whatever she wanted?

Though things had been hard between her father’s disapproval and his mother’s insistence on their break-up, the last two years with Dakota had been the best years of his life.

The way he fell for her didn’t happen on the walks to the corner store to get a slice of pizza and a case of illegally obtained beer. Or in the banner he spent hours painstakingly drawing to ask her to go to the school dance after Brian Winkler cornered her in the cafeteria.

No.

It happened in the sunny afternoons when she would roll down the windows of his red truck, and her hair would go flying. Her infectious smile cut straight through the bullshit shield he guarded himself with. It happened on rainy weekends when his parents were out of town. She would fall asleep on the couch, and he would tuck a blanket around her in case she was cold. It happened in the cookies she insisted on baking for his seventeenth birthday. She showed up at the mechanic shop with flour still on the tip of her nose and her eyes so bright he thought his heart would give out.

It was real. They were real. When life was overwhelming, he looked at her. When life was filled with endless joy, it was because of her.

It was her. It was always her.

Yet, Dakota Montgomery didn’t need him like he needed her. But she wanted him. She wanted him despite the beginnings of his tattoos covering his arms and hands, where he had already inked her name into the skin between his forefinger and thumb. She wanted him despite him being from the wrong side of town, that he was dirt fucking poor and would never be able to give her the life she had grown up living. More importantly, she wanted him despite his father being the leader of The Savage Wolves Brotherhood, a motorcycle club that Callum would one day inherit.

Out of every impossibility of their relationship, Callum knew he loved how Dakota wanted him more than she needed him. There was an immeasurable depth to them, an infinity that even the most brilliant people in the city couldn’t assign an equation to. It all happened despite who they were—two people who shouldn’t have fallen for each other and did just that.

A smug smile split Ace’s lips. “When you both move to Blackdon for her mender’s training and get the fuck away from this city for a while: do you think he’ll follow you, or do you think he’ll order the Iron Guard to stalk you from afar?”

Callum chuckled as he reached forward to grab Ace’s cup. Ignoring his protests, Callum gulped the beer back, finishing it with a tip of his chin before dropping it back into Ace’s hand. Ace tossed the empty cup to the ground, where it landed with a soft swish against the grass.

“You owe me a new one,” Ace grumbled, petulantly crossing his arms over his chest as though an entire keg wasn’t seated on the old, sunken porch.

“That one was warm anyway. You held onto it too long. I did you a favor.”

“I just got that one when you pulled up!”

“You’re either drunk, a gods-damned liar, or both—“

“Boys, boys, boys,” a woman said as she sidled to the trio. Callum didn’t miss how Rocco stood a little straighter. “What’s all the fuss about? I could hear you from clear down the street.”

“Lyra,” Ace tried to purr, but it came out as a drunken hiccup. “I didn’t know you were invited to my party.”

A dimple appeared on Lyra’s right cheek as she smirked up at him. “I live three houses down, you asshole. Where Dakota goes, I go. And besides…” She trailed off to reach into the pocket of her maxi skirt, pulling out a small, corked vial. “I’m the one with the goods.”

Ace’s eyes lit up, and he surged forward to grab it from her, but Lyra yanked it away. “Don’t be a tease. Give it up. I haven’t had a Euphoric distill in fucking ages,” Ace whined.

“That’s because our dads will end you if they find out,” Callum noted.

“What Red and Tex don’t know won’t hurt them. They make enough smuggling the stuff. They’ll never miss a vial or five,” Ace retorted, swiping his hand toward Lyra again. “Lyra. Seriously?”

“What were you were saying?” Lyra asked as she pinched the distill between her forefinger and thumb, dangling it between them. “That I wasn’t invited?”

Ace dropped to his knees, his hands clasped at his chest. The discarded cup cracked beneath his weight. “Of course you’re invited, you beautiful creature. What do you want? I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” Her smirk grew, and that dimple deepened. Her soft, brown eyes sparkled with malicious intent. “Anything I want?”

“Well, I’m not going to kiss your fucking feet. Why aren't you wearing shoes?”

Callum's attention lifted from Ace and locked onto Dakota through the party that had spilled onto the narrow lawn. She held a plastic cup to her lips, slowly sipping on the contents as Raven chatted animatedly at her. Though Dakota's smile was hidden behind the cup, he knew from the tilt of her head and the darkening of her eyes that she was not listening and had no plan to return to the conversation.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Callum said, not taking his eyes from Dakota as he pushed off his motorcycle, “I’ve got other shit to do.”

“You don’t want any of this?” Lyra asked. "Feel more alive?"

“He’s proposing tonight,” Rocco cut in before Callum shook his head. “He doesn’t need to feel any more alive than he already does.”

“Finally!” Lyra called out. Ace lunged to his feet and nabbed the vial from her hands in her distraction. “You’ve been carrying that ring around for damn near a month now.”

“Hey, where you going?” Ace said through a mouthful of distill as Callum pushed past him. Something clicked through the brain fog because he followed it up with, “Don’t you fuck in my bed! Cal. Callum. I fucking mean it, man .”

Callum had every intention of fucking Dakota in his bed.

The wood sagged with each step up the porch, and Callum didn’t miss a beat as he took the cup from her hand, plopped it into Raven’s arms, and intertwined his fingers with Dakota’s. The callouses of his palm rasped against her soft, smooth skin, and he had never felt anything so right in his whole fucking life.

Ace’s bedroom door was barely shut before Dakota was plastered against him as though she were trying to meld their bodies into one. Callum shed his leather jacket, and his lips slammed against hers, tasting the beer that was still on her tongue. He swallowed her mewls as he threaded his hands under her ass and lifted her into the air, pressing her against a poster of a bikini model.

Amber. Vanilla. A hint of raspberry. Dakota. It was intoxicating. She was intoxicating. He didn’t need a euphoric distill when he had her .

Her legs wrapped around his waist, ankles hooking behind him as her heels dug into his lower back. Tongue against tongue, mouths colliding, and hands searching. It was hungry and fierce and needing and them . It was always them . It would always be them . All she needed to do was send him a look, and he crawled home to her.

“ Callum !“ Ace shouted through the locked door. A fist pounded against the wood, rattling the door in the frame. “What are you two doing?”

“What do you think they’re doing? Mathematics?” Raven’s cool voice followed in Ace’s wake. “They’re having sex. ”

“Go somewhere else if you’re doing that!”

“Do you think they need a third?”

“Raven, gods-damn , shut the fuck up.”

The door rattled again, more vigorously this time, and Callum pulled away from Dakota to rest his forehead against the hollow of her shoulder. “I don’t think he wants us to fuck in his bed,” he groaned.

Dakota’s laugh awakened something in him that had slumbered for an eternity. She slid her hands over his biceps and skirted them up to his shoulders before resting her fingers against the stubble on his jawline—stubble that he had cleaned up just for her but left a hint of because he knew she liked it.

“What clued you in?” Dakota asked, unwrapping her legs from around his waist.

Callum held her hips as she set her feet on the floor, but not before he brazenly grazed a hand over the curve of her ass, letting his fingers linger against her skin. Her green eyes flashed up to meet his gray ones, and he felt a heat roar to life inside him. She was an addiction, something that eased the tension in his chest and cooled the inferno of agitation that always threatened to burn him to ashes.

“We should go,” Dakota mumbled, her gaze dipping to his lips, mere inches apart from hers.

“Go where?”

Dakota smiled as his fingers curled under the waistband of her shorts, circling the small tattoo he knew was secretly inked there. She hooked her fingers into the belt loops of his jeans, pulling him closer to her. “Well, first, to the party. Then, Blackdon.” The door shook again—Ace was not giving up without ripping it from the frame first. “Then…who knows.”

“You know how I love your plans, princess,” Callum said, kissing her softly. “But there is one thing we should do before any of that.”

“Oh?” she whispered against his lips, tipping her head back to expose the column of her throat. Callum couldn’t resist clasping his other hand around her neck, and, in response, he felt her fingers move to the button of his jeans to pop it loose. “Something like this, perhaps?”

It wasn’t long after that, despite their gaggle of friends still lingering outside the door, Dakota was on her back against the thinned, faded carpet, and Callum’s hand was tight over her mouth to stifle the moans spurring him on.

Maybe he would propose next month when it was her birthday. Tonight, surrounded by their drunken friends, didn’t seem like the right time. He had all summer. They would move to Blackdon in autumn to start a new life. Away from Norwich, away from the Head Ranger of the Iron Guard, away from the Savage Wolves Brotherhood. It would be her and him, and Callum couldn’t fucking wait.

But he didn’t have all summer. He didn’t even have until her birthday. He barely had two weeks. His father, Tex Reynolds, was murdered, and Callum’s life changed in the blink of an eye.