Dark Ink Tattoo: Episode 2 by Cassie Alexander

Chapter 1
     
    I sat down in a plastic chair on the other side of a bulletproof window and held a phone to my ear. “You wanted my attention. Well now you have it.”
    Gray, my ex-boyfriend and my son Rabbit’s father, sat on the other side, holding his own phone to talk to me. “Hey baby,” he said, grinning broadly.
    I waited there to see what he’d say next. I didn’t want to give him anything. They’d taken my coat, but I made sure what I was wearing showed neither curves nor skin. And my expression was flat. He was nothing to me. And there was nothing he could do to me, behind bars – which was where he was going to rot. Forever.
    Except a month ago he’d started sending letters – and last night, he’d sent someone to bust the windows of the tattoo studio I owned, I was sure.
    “You look tired,” he said. “Long night?”
    There was a point in time when I would’ve thrilled at his concern. When I’d been eighteen, when I’d started running with the Pack, when I’d seen him – I knew I’d had to have him in that obsessed-teenager way. That my life wouldn’t be complete without him. He was six-four, broad-shoulders, Viking-arms, and – yeah, given my now-boyfriend Mark I clearly had a type.
    But Mark was a lawyer, not a drug-dealing-murdering-son-of-a-bitch-behind-bars who I hated every day. 
    I crossed my legs and stared off into middle distance, ignoring him. I knew he hated that. As leader of the Pack, he expected utter loyalty – and with the exception of me, he’d mostly gotten it. Werewolves and bikers had an inherent sense of hierarchy.
    “Angie,” he said, his voice just a croon, the husk of his wolf coming through. He knew what I had inside me, how much the wolf-part of me still wanted to please him.
    “Don’t try,” I told him. “It won’t work.”
    My wolf was a fickle bitch. Luckily I took silver every day, so that I was always the one in control. I’d learned it from the Pack – smuggled colloidal silver into prison was the only way Gray could stop from wolfing-out on moon-nights too.
    He leaned back, surveying me. “I just wanted to see you again, Angie. That’s not a crime.”
    “Breaking Dark Ink’s window is.”
    “If I did that, it’s just petty vandalism. Plus I’d have I had my guys make sure no one was inside. All completely theoretically, of course.”
    I gestured to myself. “Well, you’ve seen me now. I’m going to go –“ I hung up the receiver and brought my eyes up to stare at him blankly like he didn’t count.
    He waited until I’d almost stood to ask, “How’s my son?” – I didn’t hear it, so much as I read his lips through the glass.
    Blood rushed in my ears. If I could keep going, walk on out like I hadn’t heard him – but I’d waited half a second too long, and I knew he knew I had. I sank back into the chair, trying to appear indifferent, and when I picked the phone back up I made sure to say, “What?” in an incredulous tone.
    Rabbit was the only good thing to come out of my time with the Pack. And when I’d gotten out, I wasn’t even late yet – and then he’d been born late, besides. There was no way they could know anything for sure, unless –
    “I’m not stupid, Angie. He looks just like me. I have photos.”
    Bile rose at the thought of some drug-running biker following my son around with a camera. “Rabbit isn’t yours. He’s mine and some other guy I fucked. I fucked a lot of guys after you. Still do.”
    “Looking for a cock big enough to replace mine?”
    “Hardly,” I laughed sharply. “Let’s just say that when you’re not a virgin, you have a lot of catching up to do – and that those experiences put earlier ones in… perspective.”
    He was still looking at me with that trademark killer-grin. “I’d forgotten how feisty you were.”
    “Did your masturbatory fantasies leave that out?”
    Gray leaned forward. “I know you’re afraid of me, Angie. I can see it in your eyes. You don’t have to