Six days, seventeen hours, and forty-two minutes.

That’s how long it had been since Ángel was able to take you home from the hospital, and even longer since he’d been able to sleep longer than two hours at a time. Every time he tried, nightmares plagued him—visions of this little family being stripped from him, of your struggles becoming too much, and of coming home to find the consequences of his failure to insist you let him in.

He hadn’t wanted to leave your side—had refused to when you were in the hospital, club be damned—but he’d received a call from AJ that he couldn’t ignore, no matter how badly he wanted to. One of the patch bunnies had come forward about the rat, who it was, and it required his immediate attention. So he’d left you at the house, alone with the weight of their tipped world on your shoulders and an even heavier guilt on his.

Lauren—the bunny—was sitting in his office with her wrists cuffed to the oak desk when he arrived, preventing her from bolting at the first chance she got. Wolf stood next to her with a particularly dark look in his eyes while AJ leaned against the wall next to the door he’d just walked through. Her eyes were wide and fearful, as if speaking up might get her taken out instead of protected. Ángel didn’t care, though. He just wanted to get this over with.

“Alright, chica. Speak up,” the president ordered as he leaned over her and against the desk, his tone low and carrying the threat of violence should she waste his time. Lauren flinched under the weight of his gaze before she quickly nodded.

“The rat,” she began, glancing between his vice president and Wolf—a silent plea for help. Neither of them stepped forward, nor said anything in her defense. “I saw Jersey, t-the nomad for the Reapers, talking to someone by the warehouse.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed, checking over the woman for any hint of a lie. She looked afraid for her life, but as far as the president could tell, she wasn’t making it up. Slowly, he turned his head to look back at AJ—a silent request for his input—but all he received was a shrug in response. Reluctantly, he straightened up and folded his arms over his chest.

“You saw Jersey, as in my brother’s Jersey?”

Lauren nodded frantically, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks like the single act of speaking to Ángel had been traumatizing enough. He scoffed, shaking his head slowly in mild disbelief.

“You’re either very stupid, or my brother isn’t as good at reading people as he thought he was,” he muttered under his breath, loud enough for the room to hear but not directed at anyone specifically. After another beat of watching Lauren’s facial expressions, he clicked his tongue and nodded.

“What’d he look like?”

“What?” Lauren choked out, brows furrowing with confusion.

“The other man, chica. What’d he look like?” Ángel tried again, slowing his words in cruel mockery that made the undertones clear. She frowned, sniffling lightly before she nodded along.

“Tall. Dark hair. He had a birthmark on his right wrist.”

Ángel exhaled through his nose and craned his neck to look back at AJ again—though not for confirmation this time. “Make the call,” he ordered without sparing the bunny another glance. “I want Jersey under the warehouse on Fifth in the next two days. I don’t care if you have to burn half of North America to the ground to find him.”

He shot a sharp nod to Wolf, who immediately crossed the room to Lauren with the key to the cuffs as Ángel walked out of the office. He didn’t spare another glance back—didn’t care to, and nobody dared even consider stopping him for anything, no matter how important it might have seemed. He left without uttering another word to any of the club members, caring only about getting home to the woman who was relying on him.

The ride back to their shared home was much faster than usual, like Ángel was terrified you wouldn’t be there when he arrived if he didn’t return as fast as he possibly could without getting himself killed. And when he finally passed through the threshold into the apartment to find that you weren’t on the couch where he left you, he felt the ice-cold splash of fear wash over him.

“Mi amor?” he called out, his echo doing nothing to hide the desperation in his voice. “You still in here?”