Blaze of Glory: Dark Leopards MC Read online

  Blaze of Glory

  Dark Leopards MC

  Liberty Parker

  Contents

  Note to readers

  Acknowledgments

  Blurb

  Prologue

  1. Blaze

  2. Blaze

  3. Glory

  4. Blaze

  5. Glory

  6. Blaze

  7. Glory

  8. Blaze

  9. Blaze

  10. Blaze

  11. Blaze

  12. Blaze

  13. Glory

  14. Blaze

  Epilogue

  Liberty Parker Follow Links:

  Also by Liberty

  Co-written series

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Blaze of Glory

  (Originally part of the Dark Leopards MC Anthology)

  Copyright 2020 © Liberty Parker

  Published by: Liberty Parker

  Editor: Darlene Tallman

  Formatter: Liberty Parker

  Cover by Tracie Douglas of Dark Water Covers

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from Liberty Parker, the author / publisher.

  This was originally part of the Dark Leopards; Tall Dark and Dangerous Anthology. Kane is used with permission from Lauren Firminger and Bolt with permission from Grace Brennan. They were original characters from the West Texas anthology piece. Any use of their characters or mine without written permission and consent is punishable by law.

  Note to readers

  This has been changed and expanded from the first release. Most of the story is the same as it was in the Anthology, but as I went in and added here and there, I had to redo the Epilogue to complement the changes. You will notice added scenes and expanded paragraphs. Not all have changed, it is the same story, just longer than it was originally. There will be two books to accompany this piece, it’s still a short story, but answers will be tied up into a pretty bow by the third book.

  Have to have some suspense right?

  I don’t as of yet have titles to the next couple of books, but the characters will be Echo and Maritsa in one, and another will have Angela and Jake. I don’t yet know which will be released next, but you will be getting both of these couple’s HEA’s. Until that time comes, please enjoy Blaze and Glory’s story.

  Love always,

  Liberty

  Acknowledgments

  I want to acknowledge Grace and Lauren for joining me in the journey of the West Texas chapter. Working with the two of you was so much fun, I hope we can do it again in the future.

  To my PAs, Nicole Lloyd and Sharon Renee, thank you for always standing beside me and joining me on my next adventure. You always leap in headfirst and ask questions about my craziness later. Love you both to pieces.

  To all of the ladies who joined forces in the original anthology, you all will hold a special place in my heart, thank you for all of your hard work.

  To my support teams; Liberty’s Luscious Ladies, Twisted Iron Groupies and Rebel Guardian Insiders, without you all, none of this would be possible.

  To all of my readers and supporters, I hold you all with the highest regards. Thank you for believing in me and falling in love with each character.

  Dedication

  This is dedicated to all MC and shifter lovers everywhere. Combining the two was fun and I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey.

  Blurb

  Blaze Montgomery, the president of the West Texas chapter of the Dark Leopards MC, is up against his biggest challenge he’s faced yet. Women and men are missing from his town, he’s beside himself trying to figure out who they are and what they’re up to. Why his town? Why his people? When he discovers the truth behind these questions, how far will he go to save them all? Betrayal unlike any he’s ever come up against slams unceremoniously into him. These were trusted members of the shifter community. He believed in them and supported them, but now, what will that end up costing him?

  Glory Montgomery is on a mission. As the mate and old lady to Blaze, she must overcome her personal feelings and support him no matter what. Her best friend has lost everything, and Glory must sit idly by and watch as her friend struggles through her latest tragedy… one that ends up being the club’s worst nightmare come to fruition. Can she keep their secrets closely guarded? Or will she end up hurting her mate and club while caring for her friend?

  As secrets unfold and life turns their world upside down, will these two mates make it through? Will they hold strong to one another and come out on the other side unscathed? Only time will tell.

  Prologue

  Blaze

  “Son of a motherfucking bitch,” I furiously hiss in despair when I see the mounds of papers spread out in front of me. Another human woman has been kidnapped, taken from our territory, I’m fucking livid and ready to blow some shit up. Human women have been vanishing in our town for the last six months or so, and I’m fed the fuck up with it.

  We’ve been swarmed by the local law enforcement, begging us to assist them in this investigation. Folder after folder sits on my desk, stacked on top of one another, all containing pictures and information on what’s been gathered and processed so far. The women have absolutely nothing in fucking common with one another, and I’ve wracked my brain trying to come up with a solution to capturing these assholes.

  Yet, I have nothing to work with, no place to begin and start my search. No leads are staring me in the face; causing my skin to crawl as fur breaks out, covering my arms and hands. My leopard is angry, vengeful, ready to annihilate the threat to his brethren and town folk.

  Innocents lives are being shattered, bringing out the protector side of me. I can’t sit idly by and watch families being torn apart, women being stolen out of thin air. It’s as if they’ve vanished… never to be heard from again. And that’s wrong as fuck. It’s this sort of situation that has had me scared witless to bring cubs into our world. People vanish without a trace, and that’s a parent’s worst nightmare come to fruition. I won’t put my mate through that… not now, not ever.

  My name is Blaze Montgomery, and I’m the president of the West Texas Chapter of the Dark Leopards Motorcycle Club. This club is my family, an indestructible brotherhood of shifters, some leopards, some not. Either way, I could care less if my brothers were purple unicorns, as long as they abide by our laws and enforce our ways.

  We aren’t what you’d call a lovey-dovey sort of MC, we get down and dirty. We take no prisoners, and we make no apologies for the way we live. Our existence to the humans has been a well-hidden secret for generations.

  We know what could happen to our kind if we were discovered. Scientists would use us as a way to weaponize the world. Each and every shifter is unique, have their own brand of specialized gifts, some that could end world kind, and some that would always keep us ahead of the enemy. Shifters will never sit back and allow ourselves to become used in an evil capacity. We’re all… one way or another, protectors… it’s written in our DNA.

  There are some evil shifters born, they usually turn rogue and we have to hunt them then irreverently put them down. Not somethi
ng we take lightly, not something that’s easily done. We weigh all of our options and try to reform them if we can. But sometimes, it’s impossible to do.

  When our abilities are used against, instead of for humankind, they must be put down, for the better good. It hurts my soul every time we’re informed by the council that another shifter has been sent above. Some of our brethren’s shifter races are dwindling; they’ll be extinct soon; we need to figure out how to save their breeds.

  There’s been talk of starting some sort of reform sanctuary. The details are still being worked out, however, but we’re supposed to be voting on it… and I’ll vote yes as long as it’s not torturing our kind in any way.

  When the club was first started, you could only hold an officer’s patch if you were of the leopard breed; now, we’ve slowly begun changing that. If you are not a leopard, you can hold an officer’s patch, unless it’s that of the president or vice-president. It’s worked out in our favor, seeing as most of my officers are other breeds of shifters, my most entrusted group of men.

  I couldn’t imagine my table missing these men. The shift that has happened in our club is the best thing that could have happened in my personal opinion. It’s a closely guarded secret, only being passed down to the two heads of each club.

  Everyone else is left in the dark for a reason. It’s not that we enjoy keeping secrets from our brothers, it’s to ensure the survival of our club. We can’t have a shifter war happening, we have to protect our own at whatever that cost may be. It’s never to be written down or spoken of, it’s an unwritten rule that death will occur if our reasons get out.

  We’re typically all cats of one type or another, it’s the only way we could co-exist with each other. My door flies open and I see my beautiful mate, Glory, come rushing in, fear consuming her as she runs to me. My body stiffens in alertness as she makes her way to me.

  “Blaze. Oh my God, Blaze,” she cries out, planting her ass in my lap and her tear-stained face into my chest.

  “Talk,” I bark out from fear and worry.

  “My friend, Angela, just called me,” she sniffles.

  “Your human friend from work?” I inquire.

  “Yes, her daughter, Maritsa, is missing. She just vanished into thin air walking home from school today. The police aren’t taking her calls of worry seriously. They say she’s probably just hanging out with some friends or not wanting to come home. They won’t file a missing person report for forty-eight hours… it’s atrocious, Blaze. But we know that she didn’t just not show up at home to hang out with friends, they had plans to go shopping for a prom dress. Maritsa has done nothing but research stores and dresses looking for the perfect one. She wouldn’t miss it, it’s all she’s been able to talk about for the last two weeks since they began planning it. Something’s terribly wrong, Blaze, I can feel it. We have to do something!” She hysterically babbles through her sobs.

  All I can think about is my latest report, the one that says a young lady on her way home from a college class disappeared without a trace. The cops assumed it was the same scenario that was dished out to Angela. They can take that dirt and shovel it down their damn throats.

  I’m tired of these lazy as fuck assholes who’d rather shove a donut in their mouth than do some authentic police work.

  “I’ll look into it,” I promise her, knowing in the back of my mind that we have yet another young victim in our midst.

  Glory

  I just can’t believe it! Disappeared walking home from school. How does that even happen without one person witnessing an abduction of a young woman? No one has come forward stating they saw something; my friend is beside herself. The entire reason she called me, other than a shoulder to cry on, is because she knows my man is the president of the club.

  He’d do anything for me, as I would for him. I’ve known Angela for going on ten years now; she’s human, but she’s got a heart of gold. I was instantly attached to her upon our first meeting.

  We work together at the school’s resource office. Angela took off early to go and prepare for a much-anticipated outing with her baby girl. Her miracle. Angela was told from an early age that conceiving would be next to impossible for her. Her fallopian tubes are riddled with scar tissue, it was only discovered when she went to seek help from the doctor for the inexplicable pain she’d suffer during her menstrual cycle.

  The day my poor friend found out she was expecting, her husband was killed in a motorcycle crash on his way home from work. He passed without knowing that they’d managed to defeat the odds stacked against them. He never knew the joy of impending fatherhood.

  When we speak about Calvin, it always has a tinged of sadness attached to it, even when it’s a happy memory. I feel bad for Maritsa that all she knows of her father are stories from her mother and a photo album Angela put together for her. And now, Angela’s possibly lost her daughter to the hands of another. We have to find Maritsa and bring her home.

  As I burrow deeply into my mate’s embrace, I begin to fall asleep from utter exhaustion. I feel the toll from my emotionally charged mental breakdown. My poor, poor friend. I can’t even imagine how she’s feeling… losing the two most important people in her life in tragic ways.

  As darkness takes hold, I hear these words from Blaze. “We will find her and bring her home, love. I promise you; I will not stop until she’s home.”

  Blaze

  I relentlessly, and tirelessly, cover all land in my territory. Each and every day I’ve taken it upon myself to go out and look for clues, the missing link. The women may be disappearing from my town; but they sure as fuck aren’t being held here. I’ve left no stone unturned in my pursuit of tracking down these missing girls and women.

  I’ve reached out to our other Texas chapters, who’ve all promised to keep their ears to the ground and eyes wide open to intruders in their territories. The word has gone out, I’ve made sure it’s well-known that I am searching far and wide for these trespassers. No one will be left unpunished from the Dark Leopards MC once I get my hands on them.

  My men are riled up; ready for a fight. We don’t take indiscretions against women lightly. We may be a band of misfits who run drugs, weapons and a few other illegal operations, but we don’t ever hurt women or innocents. We take out the trash every so often for our town’s sheriff and chief of police. When their hands are legally bound, they call on us.

  We have an arrangement of sorts. Chief Anderson keeps his nose and men out of our business dealings, and we keep the town in order. Bliss Creek, Texas, a place we call home, used to be a meth town, but we came in and cleaned house. Not because we give a fuck about what they do on their own time, but because this is where we’re settling and choose to raise our families.

  I’ll be damned if that poison touches the ones I care about.

  It also was due to the fact that we wanted to be the only distributors in the area. Meth, cocaine, weed; we’re a one-stop shop. If you need it, we’ve got it. We use the cover of our chop shop, under the disguise of a legally owned junkyard. The drugs are transported inside of the used parts from vehicles in house. It’s been lucrative in supporting the club. The funds alone will ensure my great-grandchildren never have to work a day in their lives. The phone rings, bringing me out of my mind’s distraction.

  “Hello,” I pick it up and answer without looking at the caller ID.

  “Blaze, we’ve got another one it appears. Her name is Maritsa…” I don’t allow Chief Anderson to finish his sentence since I’m already aware of her status. He’s the one I deal with on a case by case basis. I don’t really tolerate the sheriff, he’s old school and a pain in the ass. Chief Anderson knows this and always takes it upon himself to keep me in the loop and vice versa with the sheriff.

  “Know this already, my old lady is friends with her mother, Angela. She’s already reached out to us for assistance, seeing as one of your men informed her that it’s just the wild act of a teenager. Tell me, why is it your men are sitting back and
allowing her to become just another statistic?” The accusation in my voice silences him for a brief moment before he continues.

  “We’ve kept the missing women quiet so you and your men can do your thing. I chose to keep things on the downlow so your investigation isn’t interfered with.” His excuses are just that… full of fucking bullshit.

  “Not good enough of an excuse, Chief!” I bark into the phone. “She’s a fucking teenager, goddammit! Just shy of her seventeenth birthday. At such a young age, her life will forever be changed. We need to broadcast this far and wide so that the public is keeping their eyes open and children coveted.” I inhale a deep breath, trying to reign in my explosive temper.

  “I’ll have a media press conference later this afternoon. Is there anything I should keep quiet?” In my pocket, I greedily smirk at his question and my after thought.

  “Keep it simple, Chief. Just announce that we have a random number of missing women from our territory. Let’s ruffle some feathers and announce that we have suspicions on who they are and that the local MC is assisting in this investigation. I want to see if it causes someone to freak out and make a mistake.”

  “If this gets in the hands of the FBI, we’re all in trouble, Blaze.”