***Trevor***

"So why did you agree to this?" Alice and I have been stuck, waiting for about an hour now.

She looks up at me and then scoots closer to lay her head on my chest. "He had to know that I was the one saying no to him. I had to make him realize that I know he isn't perfect and that he's a liar." My arms rest on her sides.

We sit in silence, and eventually I hear her lightly snore, a sure sign that she's asleep.

Ring. Ring.

I pull my phone out of my pocket. "Yeah? What's going on?" It's at that moment I start to hear gunshots overhead.

"We're here." I hear James' voice over the phone along with more gunshots. "Where are you?"

"Get us last. Capture Cutter. Alice is in no shape to be running around." He grunts a 'yes sir' and the line cuts off.

Alice shivers against me and I run a warm hand along her arm.

There's a pounding outside the room before the door swings open. "Get the hell up!" Cutter nearly has smoke billowing from his ears, he's so angry. He marches over to me to see Alice protectively hidden behind me. "You dare to send fighters into my house, while you're locked up in one of my cells? And you don't even respect the laws of my house?! She is supposed to be strung up for three days with no food or water. What's your excuse for taking her down?"

Instead of answering, I lift myself off of the floor. I swing for his head and he almost gets it. "My excuse?" Cutter starts to swing at me and I pull a punch at his gut. "You literally whipped her." I throw another hit at his face, and this time he gets the full force. "My baby." He staggers backwards and I catch the front of his shirt. "Do you know how angry that makes me?"

"Trevor." I hear Alice move behind me and a hand lands on my shoulder. Just as I turn around, she starts to fall.

My hand reaches out to grab her but Cutter nails me in the head with his fist.

Red. That's all I see. My hands move on their own, and I can vaguely hear myself yelling. When the red is gone, Cutter is passed out, his face a bloody mess.

I remember Alice and turn to see her crumpled on the ground, a good bit of blood on the ground around her. "Alice, baby. Wake up." She doesn't even try to fight when I thump her nose. She is out cold from blood loss.

Careful not to hurt her, I pick her up and hold her to my chest, hiding her face.

My phone rings and I pull it out of my pocket. "Talk fast." I know it's James. He's the only one that calls me.

"They're all subdued. Some put down their guns as soon as we came in the doors, but we can't find Cutter. Where are you so we can get you out?"

"Don't worry about it. He's unconcious." I look at the open door, courtesy of  Cutter. "I'll be up shortly. See if there is a doctor on hand."

"Yes sir. Anywhere specific you want us to meet you?"

I think for a second, contemplating. "Meet me in Cutter's office."

"Will do sir." He hangs up the phone and I walk out the open door and back the way Cutter had led me. Surely enough, I reach the bottom of the stairs. Alice is breathing slowly, and I can tell she's struggling.

I press a kiss into her hair and make a quiet prayer, to any God that's listening, to let her be okay. Hopefully they're listening this time.

I carry her up the stairs and through the house. Cutter's office comes into view and I open the door with a light kick.

"Good God, what happened this time?" James asks as he rushes over to us. I use one hand to rid Cutter's desk of everything, then I lay her across it.

"She willingly took her punishment." I say as I sweep a bit of her hair off of her face.

"What on earth was she being punished for?" He asks, just as angry as I was when I saw her.

"She left his gang, for me." I sit down in a chair close to her, then look at him. "A doctor?"

James nods his head and steps aside to show the girl Alice had been friends with before all of this.

"I asked for a doctor, not a kid." I turn away from her and face Alice again.

"I actually have a doctorate and can perform medical treatment. I can do anything from performing surgery to prescribing medicine for your common household cold." She takes a step forward, looking at me. "Please, let me at least look at her."

My eyes turn to James and he shrugs. "May as well give her a chance. Neither of us has any idea how to deal with whatever is wrong with her."

I nod my head and she runs over to Alice's side. "I'm gonna need thread, a lighter, and a needle." She looks at Alice's back and shakes her head. "Never mind. I can't stitch it up with it looking that mangled. Get me a white cloth, and that bottle of rum." Her hand points to a liquor stand. There's a bottle of old rum, and I almost feel hurt that she'd use that to disinfect a wound. "Hurry the hell up." James runs and grabs it, then hands it to her. She pops the cork and places her lips against the opening of it. A few seconds later she looks to us. "Hello? Cloth? Anything?"

Again, James runs to do her bidding. I don't do anyone's bidding. "What are you going to disinfect her back with?" I ask, watching her.

She raises a brow at me, then turns to Alice. "I'm going to take this bottle of rum, and drink it, if that's what you're thinking I'm going to use." She chuckles then grabs a bottle out of her brother's desk. "Then I'm going to use this hydrogen peroxide to thoroughly clean her back." With that, she takes another swig from the bottle. "I told her to be careful. What do I get? A whipped back, and excessive blood loss. Speaking of which, hurry up! I need to get this done before she starts to shake!"

"Should you really be drinking this much?" James asks as he hands her the cloth. She snatches it from him and begins to work.

"If I did this without alcohol, you'd wish I hadn't volunteered at all." She says as she pours the sterile alcohol on Alice's back.

"Why's that?" James's curiosity is just overflowing today.

"Because I'd be yelling and stressed out. Now, leave me the fuck alone." She doesn't even spare him a glare and he walks over to sit beside me.

"What's her malfunction?" He asks as he crosses his arms over his chest.

I shrug and watch her carefully. After a minute or two, Alice's back looks fairly blood free. The girl looks up and at James. "Thread, needle, lighter, now." I pull a lighter out of my pocket and hand it to him.

"That's one item down." I say to him.

He pulls a suture kit out of his coat pocket. James stitches himself back up. It isn't surprising that he's interested in all of this medical stuff.

"And that's all three." She says as she snatches the items out of his hands.

She quickly goes to work at sewing up Alice's back, and I have to admit, she's really good. Much better than a kid would be.

Once the larger gashes are stitched up, she stands, the bottle of rum gone. "Let her rest. She seems to have stopped bleeding before she got here, but my brother definitely did a number on her." The look on my face says it all. I want to kill him. I really do.

"Cutter's knocked out in the basement. Have a group of men go collect him." I say to James.

He glances at Alice, then turns to me. "On it." With determined strides, he leaves the office.

"If I don't sit down, I may fall." The girl plops down on a couch, the alcohol catching up to her. "I'm only fifteen you know."

Fifteen? She doesn't look, nor act like it. I mean, she just stitched up a bloody back, and drank an entire bottle of rum.

"I lied, I'm not a doctor, but I've stitched her up enough times to know what to do." I look to Alice, worried. My baby has been through so much. "She'll be alright. She always is. E has a thing for dying. She likes to get real close to it, and almost dies. Never does though." She snickers. "Obviously."

"What do you mean?" I ask, my curiosity peaking.

The girl lays her head back and closes her eyes. "E doesn't care about pain. She could get a finger cut off and continue fighting. I don't know how she got like that. She's been like that ever since she joined."

I nod. "I'm guessing everything she told me is a lie, so how exactly did she get brought into this world?"

"Cutter kind of took her in. From what I know, he's been friends with her since they were teenagers. He taught her everything and gave her a family, me and him." She sighs. "She doesn't have any family. All she remembers is her mom's name and what she looks like. There was always a joke that she was the old Don's daughter, considering she shares some of his qualities, but she isn't. Cutter knew Slaughter Reed. He would've known his daughter."

I cough. "Actually, she is his daughter." Her head snaps up and she stares at me, wide eyed.

"You can't be serious." She says, expecting me to say I'm joking, but I don't. "You're serious." I nod. "Well dang. How do you know?"

"I, uh, well, when we were kids, our dads hung out a lot, and because we were kids, we'd take baths together. I remember her birthmark, on the back of her upper thigh. Alice has that same exact birthmark."

She stands up. "You guys had sex!" There's almost a smile on her face.

"I never said that." She waves a dismissive hand at me.

"The only way you would've been able to see it was if you guys got down and dirty." She wriggles her brows at me then her face gets serious. "You're her first you know."

That's shocking. "And last."

"Oh my God, are you engaged or something?"

"No." Not that I haven't thought about it. "There's just no way I'm going to let her need someone else."

"You aren't that good Romeo." Alice props herself up with a grunt
and the girl runs over to her.

"E!" Alice is trapped in a hug, and I see her suck in a breath before wrapping her arms around her friend.

"How long have I been out?" She asks once she's let go.

"About an hour." I say, standing up.

"And Cutter?" She asks.

"Knocked out, being held by my men." I walk over to her and pull her to me. "Next time, call me before you decide to go and almost die."

"I'll try, but I may have my hands full." I kiss her hair and she lays her head on my chest. Not even a second later, she pulls her head away and tries to stand. "We still have work to do." Before she can place her feet on the ground, I lift her up.

"You aren't walking anywhere." She rolls her eyes, but doesn't argue. I carry her out, and to where James is currently standing against the wall, eyes closed. "Where's Cutter?"

James opens an eye. At the sight of Alice, they both open. "Follow me."

We walk out of the house and into the courtyard. My men are dragging a few guys into suvs, and others are moving around, helping to get everyone back home. This was a lot simpler than it should have been. Cutter was not well prepared for an ambush.

There's a group of men standing in the center of the courtyard.

"Let go of me you infernal swine! I am the Don of the seven families! This is war!" Cutter's awake, yay. Note the sarcasm.

Alice places a hand on my face and I look down at her. She doesn't say anything, just let's me know that she's here.

I nod and look back up to walk to Cutter. "War seems like an awfully difficult way to handle this, for you at least." I say as I stand Alice up. She stands, but allows me to hold up the majority of her weight. "Seeing as the majority of your men laid down their weapons, and those that didn't are either on the way to my holding cells, or they will be soon."

Cutter spits at me, failing to actually spit. "I still have six other families to lean on."

I look to Alice. "Is that true?" I ask, knowing our deal.

"Well, for now, but once I tell them who you are, they'll drop Cutter like the boss nobody wanted." She says, smirking down at him.

"Bitch." He spits.

"James." I pass Alice off to him and walk over to Cutter. Two of my men hold him on his knees, and I grab his hair. "I didn't think you were such an idiot as to disrespect her. Now I know how wrong I was." I hit him square on the jaw and watch as he spits blood out of his mouth. He seethes at me, but stays quiet. "Take him to the cage. I'll decide what to do with him later." I say to the two standing on either side of him. They nod and roughly pick him up off the ground. I turn back to Alice and she happily presses into my side.

I watch over my men, making sure no one is slacking off, or hurt.

"Good evening, son." I turn to look into the doorway of the house. Alice stays beside me, unfazed by my dad.

"Father." I nod at him and we stare at each other, neither of us willing to back down.

Eventually he turns his head to look at Alice. "And you are?"

She straightens slightly and pulls away from me to hold out her hand. "Alice"

His face morphs into one of intrigue. "You look familiar. Any relation to Julia Treck?"

Alice's eyes widen slightly before she nods, dropping her hand. "Yes, that was my mom."

"Hm, interesting." He turns to me. "Is this why you were so interested in his daughter a couple of weeks ago?" I nod, pulling her back to me.

"Can we talk inside?" I ask, gesturing to the door.

He nods. "Very well." He turns on his heel and walks back into the house. He doesn't walk far though, seeing as there's really no where private to go. "Well?"

I shake my head. "Not here, follow me." I pick Alice up and lead him to, what used to be, Cutter's office. We walk in and it's completely empty. Not a single soul here. I set Alice down on the couch and place myself beside her. My father sits in a chair across from the couch. "Alice, you know how I told you that I needed to tell you something?" She furrows her brows, but nods her head.

Well here goes nothing. "Promise not to, I don't know, freak out?" She nods and I nod too. "Well, I did a little searching into Slaughter Reed's daughter."

"You do know that was all a story, right?" I nod. "And this still means something to me?" I nod again and she goes quiet.

"As I said, I did a little searching. My father and Reed were very close when he was still alive. I was actually friends with her when we were children." I turn to my dad. "Did you bring it with you?"

He nods and takes out a folder. "Reed and I decided that it would only benefit us to marry our only legitimate children to each other, seeing as they got along so well." She holds out her hands and he gives it to her.

"Alice, you have a birthmark on your upper right thigh, right?" I ask her.

"You'd know." She says looking through the papers. My dad holds in his amusement at her blunt response.

"Well you do." She keeps flipping. "Reed's daughter had the same exact mark, in the same exact place." She freezes, mid flip. She doesn't look up, nor does she move. "Alice?"

All of the sudden, she's standing. She holds her hands out to keep herself from falling. I immediately catch her to keep her from falling, but she pushes me away. "You're telling me that you knew who I was, this entire time? You knew that I was, and we, oh god!" She puts her hands in her hair, sitting back down on the couch.

"Alice, baby." I kneel in front of her. "I thought you'd want to know."

"He killed her!" Tears start rolling down her face, leaving me completely confused.

"Baby, what are you talking about?" I ask her.

"He killed my mother!" She stands up again, more steadily this time, and runs out.

"That could've gone better, son." My dad says, leaning back on the couch.

I glare at him. "You could've sent that with someone, instead of bringing it yourself. She wouldn't have run if you weren't here."

"I think she would have." He says, smug.

"I'm leaving." I say, turning to the door.

"Good." His words stop me. "I always thought you two would be a good match." I don't respond, and instead go to find her. 

I do too, but does she?

A/N

So, I've been getting a lot of requests to update this book. I sort of gave up on it, for a long time, and I'm still not loving what I've written. I've had this book finished for a long time, but I just don't like the ending, and I can't find a way to change it that makes sense. Honestly I don't think the ending of this makes sense either, but I'll post the last few chapters anyways, because it's wrong of me to just leave this unfinished with no resolution, whatsoever.

So, here you go, the next to last chapter,

Renegade Druid