Nomad's Baby Excerpt

Hey all - here's the cover reveal for Nomad's Baby

Also check out the excerpt below.

Thanks for reading:) And I can't wait to share Whisper's Story with you.

*side note, this is an updated post but thanks to previous commenters.

Coming Soon

Excerpt

Nomad's Baby

Death Skulls MC Book 2

By

Rachel Cade

Chapter One:

There’s No In Between

At some point, he would get used to all this, right?

Nevada.

This bizarre small town.

It had been almost a year since the Death Skulls started a chapter here, and he still couldn’t pull up on his bike without getting stares.

Granted, he was good-looking, but these people didn’t know how to give it a rest.

With a frown, Ignacio ‘Whisper’ Dragavei shut off his bike engine.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Scott Langley, the son of the town’s rich man, watching him across the street. He was with two other boys that were also built like string. Whisper made eye contact and the teenager raised a thin arm as if to say hi.

Did fearless leader Noa wave at kids when he came into town?

He’d have to ask him.

But in the meantime, since he was not Noa a.k.a. Skorpio, he proceeded to lower the kickstand with his foot before dismounting his prized possession, which gleamed indigo in the high desert sun. Whisper’s mouth stayed flat under his beard.

And he didn’t wave.

He entered Carl Baker’s pizza shop on a food run that should have been anyone else’s job.

In fact, Chaos usually did this shit.

Apparently the old man knew it too because his eyebrows raised from behind the counter.

“Afternoon,” he offered with a nod. “You here for the pick-up?”

“Yes.” Whisper tried to shake out of his mood. The shop owner was one of the few people around here that acted normal.

“That’s a — cool tattoo.” Whisper saw the young girl in the doorway behind the counter who’d spoken. She was visible now that Carl had moved to get the stack of pizza boxes.

She had a brown face and a bunch of curly hair tied up with a ribbon and couldn’t have been more than eight.

“Thanks,” he answered.

Her dark eyes squinted as she stepped forward. “Is it a dragon?”

Carl lowered the pizzas on the counter in front of him. “My granddaughter.”

“It’s a serpent,” Whisper answered in reference to the artwork that coiled around his arm.

“That’ll be 37.08.”

Whisper gave the man a crisp fifty-dollar note. The young girl continued to stare at his ink, resting her small elbows on the counter.

“Keep it,” Whisper said as Carl moved to change the bill.

“Um, thanks,” the older man answered.

“That’s the same as a snake?” she asked, meeting his eyes.

Whisper had to smirk before picking up the pizzas.

“In old world religions,” he began to the girl, “serpents are considered smarter than snakes.”

She stared at it a little longer, her lips twisting a bit before she spoke. “Are they bad, though?”

His brows lowered and he pretended to think about it. “If they choose to be.”

He turned on his heel and strolled out of the shop.

Outside, he was barely able to fit the large pizzas in his side car. And the stack was high enough that he had to put the cover down to hold them. Now it was going to smell like sausage and peppers.

Whisper rolled his eyes hard.

He should’ve taken the van.

*

“God damn, you took the scenic route?” A deep voice rang out.

After driving back across town, the first words he heard when he walked into their clubhouse threatened to irk him again.

It sounded like Bleed.

Whisper set the pizzas on the bar and watched the pile quickly disappear.

A few new faces were hanging around now, new nomads from California, some were from Texas. About five men in total. And hopefully, that turned out to be something. This fledgling chapter needed all the help it could get.

Bleed swallowed down a slice of pizza from an open box before he even sat down. “Thanks, though,” he said around a full mouth.

Whisper didn’t respond to the sarcasm.

Bleed was the military guy, a former marine.

Not to mention the biggest bastard out of all them. If it came down to them in a fight Whisper would likely have to run him over.

It was a good thing they were on the same side.

“Pizza. Yessss.” Whisper turned to see Chaos coming through the front door.

Now his annoyance was back in full force. “So nobody’s busy now?”

“Good grief, man, I was tied up at the shop,” Chaos began. This week, half his hair was dyed blond, cut hawkish like his face. Whisper knew the look wouldn’t last. “Those sisters from town brought their car up. I needed to get the chatty grandmas outta here.” He flipped open the last box. “Fuck. Who took my Hawaiian?”

Whisper rested an arm on the bar. “Where’s El Presidente?”

Sipping beer, Bleed thumbed behind him.

“Here.” A voice rang out at the same time.

**

Whisper took heavy steps across the floorboards, making his way to the half-opened doors. He slipped through, entering hallowed church grounds.

A heavy oak table was in the center of their meeting room, and light was streaming in from the one window on the right. The deep carving that almost filled the surface of the table was a fire breathing skull; the symbol of the Death Skulls MC.

And working on the carving was Skorpio, ID’d by the government as Noa Callas; a much different man now than the one he’d known in Mexico. But even back then, Whisper understood there was a leader quality in him.

“They were gonna start eating each other if you hadn’t gotten here soon.” Skorpio brushed his wild hair back as he lifted his head.

Women had a tendency to gush over his president.

It might have been the hair or the goatee that dripped a spike underneath his chin. None of it really mattered though, since he was a faithful family man now.

“If you’d told me that, I would have stayed longer.”

Skorpio cut sharp blue eyes at him, but Whisper could make out the hint of a grin.

“Do you wave at the teenagers in town when you’re there?” Whisper accused.

“What?”

Whisper found a seat, resting his elbows on the wooden rests. He clasped his hands over his stomach. “One of those boys. He waved at me today.”

Now the grin wasn’t so slight. “Really? Did you burst into flames?”

Whisper eyed the tattooed hand that held the knife as Skorpio continued to work during his smart-ass reply. “Are you making special friends in town?”

“Did you wave back?”

“You already know the answer.”

“He’s a kid.”

“And?”

“Were you decent at Baker’s at least?”

“Yes. I gave him a nice tip and conversed with his granddaughter about snakes and serpents.”

“Then it was good you went.”

Whisper’s brows lowered. “Did you set me up?”

“No.”

“You think I need to socialize with people in town who don’t want us here? Is that why you sent me?”

Skorpio put the knife down. “I don’t want to send the new guys around there yet. And there’ve always been people that didn’t want us here. What difference does it make?”

“It could become a problem later. We do have a business to protect, right?”

“Yeah. And the same ones that don’t want us here are scared enough to keep their mouths shut about it. We protected this place when the chips were down. If it wasn’t for us, there wouldn’t be a downtown.”

“Yes, and they could also blame us for the trouble coming here in the first place.”

Skorpio closed his eyes. “Things have been quiet. Anyone that doesn’t like our presence is free to move.

We pay taxes like everybody else. It's not like this place was squeaky clean before we got here.”

“Yes, but they didn’t know that. I’m sure most of them would prefer that over seeing us riding through town or knowing we’re here.”

Skorpio completely jumped over the comment. “You don’t want them to stare at you or wave. Anything else I need to know before we hop on the tour bus?”

And he jumped over it because he knew he was right.

Typical.

“You like to mock me, Skorpio, but I don’t think we will ever fit in here. Some come to the auto shop but they still believe outlaws came and took over their town. We changed a town that didn’t want to change. They don’t want us here and that means they can’t be trusted.”

“We trust ourselves.” Skorpio barely let him finish; his voice heavy like the carvings on the table. “We have one another's backs. They go about their business, we go about ours, that’s the deal we made. And shit’s been quiet, so why are you bringing all this up?”

Whisper didn’t have a direct answer for him. All he knew was he felt frustrated, and it didn’t take much to set him off.

“I got a lot on my plate, man,” Skorpio voiced quietly after a stint of silence. “ We’re still trying to get established out here.”

Whisper nodded. “So you add Prospect to my list of duties? I can add that to being the secretary, road captain, chaplain—”

“Get the fuck out of here.” Skorpio laughed, shaking his head. “You’re nobody’s chaplain.”

“Chaos and I split being treasurer, I forgot to add.”

“You could pick a patch instead of pussyfooting around about it. So you're essentially complaining about a problem you created.”

“I took a patch.”

“It says ‘member’. That means you could be anybody.” A long finger pointed at Whisper’s cut.

Then Skorpio’s humor subsided. “I’ll pick up on the books. We brought new people in to pick up the slack but you know we have to be careful who we put in these roles. I want things done right. You know everybody’s watching us out here.”

Whisper did know.

They were a fledgling chapter that were initially a group of nomads brought in on a temporary job. Once the job was done, they were all supposed to go their separate ways, but they didn’t.

Maybe Whisper was having second thoughts about the whole thing.

Being here in Amber Falls, this backward small place with the blue-haired old ladies and kids eating lollipops on the street, he felt like he was in a movie he didn’t belong in.

Stretching his legs out under the table, Whisper turned his head to the window.

“Is something else bothering you?” Skorpio asked.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I need to take a ride for a bit.”

“What?” Skorpio’s naturally villainous features twisted. “We got the Phoenix run coming up.”

“I know. I’ll be there.” Whisper made it a point to meet his eyes.

Skorpio took a seat at the head of the table. The heavy chair creaked under his weight. Carved wooden skulls arched the chair behind his head.

“Getting this chapter going is a process. There’s a lot of work to do but Amber Falls belongs to us. This is our place.” He punctuated the words by stabbing his knife into the table. The hard thump barely shook it.

In the next few minutes, they stared each other down.

It wasn’t the first time.

“You want to stay a nomad?” Skorpio asked finally. “Because I’ve been feeling this moment coming for months.”

Whisper kept his face expressionless. “I said I need to take a ride, that’s all.”

“A lot of the time, ‘taking a ride’ just means running away. Trust me, I know.”

Whisper squinted instead of rolling his eyes. “Proper protocol is me asking permission, right?”

It was a running joke among the guys about how they could never see eye to eye. Whisper respected Skorpio, but he’d never been the type to take orders well.

“Us being here means we’re here.” His president stabbed his finger into the table next to the knife. “It means we’re committed to building this chapter. I need strong men that want to be here.”

Whisper sighed through his nose at the speech. It was hard but he had to stay quiet.

“Go early.” Skorpio sat back in the chair, visibly pissed. “Check in with Bleed so we know you’re still breathing and that you’ll be in Arizona.”

The chair squealed against the floor as Whisper pushed back from it to stand.

“One last thing.” The words stopped Whisper after three steps. “When you come back from the run, you better have figured out what you want. In or out. There’s no in between.”

**