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  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Guardian copyright @ 2019 by Brook Wilder and Scholae Palatina Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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  BOOKS IN THE SOUTHERN BIKERS SERIES

  WRECKED

  SHATTERED

  DEFILED

  PROTECTOR

  GUARDIAN

  SENTINEL

  MONSTER

  SAVAGE

  HELLION

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  GUARDIAN

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  PREVIEW – SENTINEL

  A Word from Brook Wilder

  Books in the SOUTHERN BIKERS Series

  OTHER BOOKS BY BROOK WILDER

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  BOOKS IN THE SOUTHERN BIKERS SERIES

  WRECKED

  SHATTERED

  DEFILED

  PROTECTOR

  GUARDIAN

  SENTINEL

  MONSTER

  SAVAGE

  HELLION

  GUARDIAN

  Chapter One

  Derrek

  “Hey, man, you gonna eat that or just stare at it?”

  I pushed the plate across the table.

  “Nah, you can have it.”

  Andrew gave me a grin as he pulled the plate close to him and picked up his fork.

  “I just… When I don’t have a fix… I get hungry, you know?”

  I settled back in the booth, glad to see him eating at least.

  “Sure, man, go on. Eat your heart out.”

  He dug into my untouched eggs, and I sighed, wishing it could always be like this. When Andrew was sober, he reminded me of the guy who had become my best friend in high school, the same one who had snuck in the girl’s locker room with me to catch a glimpse of them showering, or the same guy who had enjoyed tearing up the dirt roads on our four-wheelers, not giving a shit how muddy we got.

  But a lot had changed since those days, and the only time we got together was when he wanted something from me.

  Usually money.

  I always refused at first, forcing him to get sober before I would even entertain the idea. Andrew had an addiction to cocaine, one started by the damn Cazadores when they moved in with their ‘free’ drugs, roping dumb fucks in and causing them to rack up a shit-ton of debt in the process.

  Once they had them under their dirty thumb, no amount of money could buy them out.

  I had tried; oh, I had tried. Short of giving up the bar, the Legionnaires, I had tried everything to get Andrew out of their clutches, but the cocaine kept calling him back, starting the vicious cycle all over again.

  But recently, the shit had really hit the fan. One of the Cazadores main men, Hector Chavez, had gone missing, and they were blaming the Grim Legion and all of its known associates for the kidnapping. I wasn’t officially part of the motorcycle gang, but my recent antics to help them rescue a Russian beauty had put me in the fold with the second-in-command, Fox.

  Why had I helped him? I was still trying to figure it out, but it wasn’t a bad thing to have a favor over his head for a rainy day.

  Nah, Fox wasn’t a bad sort, even if he had grown a bit softer now that he was sleeping with his Russian beauty. I couldn’t blame him. She was hot, and they seemed to be in love. I was happy for the fucker. In our line of work, it was hard to find a woman who was willing to put up with you.

  But back to the Grim Legion. Yeah, I wasn’t officially a member, nor had I ever tried to be. My father had been one of the founding members of the club, starting it before I was born. He had knocked up my mother and done the right thing: marry her so that I would have his last name. John McMurray wasn’t a bad sort, and he had given me the best childhood he could.

  When my mother drank herself to death, he had never recovered and spent most of his time at the club. I had learned to raise myself, and while I had stayed more in trouble than I had out of it, we had come together when we needed to.

  After all, it was he who had taught me how to use my charm to get myself out of any sort of scrape I was in.

  And to woo the ladies.

  When he was diagnosed with lung cancer, I had thought he could beat it. Gone was the glamour of the club and of the brawny man who always had a grin on his face and in his place was this frail person who had lost the fight long before he had a shot. The day I buried him next to mom was the day I realized I had lost the one person who loved me, no matter what I did.

  Fuck the club. Fuck my friends and everyone else that had pretended to care.

  My da was the only man who had understood me.

  So, I had resorted to running the bar the Legion profited from instead, choosing to stay out of the club’s way as much as I could, and only getting my hands dirty when I needed to.

  Which was part of the reason we were there today.

  “Shit, man, I don’t understand why we got this gig. You know, watching the strip joint and that Becky White would have been far more fun, you know? I’ve been in there a time or two. Them girls, they will do anything for a twenty.”

  “Even suck your tiny cock?” I grinned as he polished off my food.

  Andrew shot me a bird, a grin on his face as well.

  “Don’t be jealous. The ladies fucking love it.”

  “You wish,” I said, throwing a napkin at him.

  Andrew grinned, and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. He was starting to look some better, now that I had been feeding him for two days. The dark circles under his eyes were lightening and his skin was starting to fill out.

  He had gotten too fucking skinny lately.

  “We are here for a reason,” I said, resting my arm along the back of the booth. “Just keep stuffing your face.”

  He grabbed his coffee, and I turned my attention back out the window, knowing that she would be walking by any time now. After two weeks of watching her every move, I just about had her routine down. Our mark was not one to deviate for any reason, which made me wonder how she didn’t get bored from doing the same thing every single fucking day.

  Out of her apartment by seven thirty.

  Stop in the coffee shop for a small cup of black coffee, two creams, two sugar.

  First class at eight, followed by an hour in the library.

  After the library, three more classes and more time in the library.

  Then lunch: half a sandwich and an apple while studying
some more.

  More classes, more studying.

  Apartment by eight thirty, lights out at ten.

  The routine was fucking boring. There was never a time she would pick up a cell phone or stop to talk to anyone in particular along the way… Well, except the one time, when she did talk to an older woman who was apparently lost on campus. Every day was the same, and I was starting to feel like interrupting her, just so she would have something exciting happen in her life for once.

  After all, I could be quite charming with the ladies.

  Still, though, I didn’t know why we were following her, other than because Jack Carry, the leader of the Grim Legion, had deemed it necessary. Truthfully, our mark was nothing more than a nerdy college student, though she was pretty damn hot when she adjusted her glasses and let her hair down. Hell, more than one man would be interested if she didn’t dress in clothes three times the size they should be.

  I chuckled. I was getting fucking turned on by a nerd. I needed to get laid and quickly.

  “Why the fuck did Gary get to guard the strip joint anyway? He’s nothing but a damn prospect, not even a member.”

  “You aren’t, and neither am I,” I reminded him, picking up my own coffee. “So, get over it.”

  “It just aint fair,” he grumbled, picking up the last bit of toast from his own plate.

  I shrugged, taking a sip of the lukewarm coffee with a grimace. Hot, it was barely tolerable.

  Still, when Jack had asked for a favor, needing some extra hands, I had volunteered us both, hoping it would get Andrew’s mind off the drugs that ravaged his system. Jack was paranoid that the Cazadores were going to come after his own, but how this chick fit into the mold, I didn’t know.

  But Jack had been my da’s best friend, and I wasn’t about to let him down when he needed me the most. My da would have beaten me were I to turn my back on the club he had loved.

  Besides, it was a nice change from the bar and the same old people that frequented it. Lately, I had started to get restless, wondering if I was doomed to running the bar for the rest of my miserable days. I didn’t know what I wanted or what I was even looking for, but something was off in my life, something I was starting to realize that I didn’t have. Hell, I was more of a babysitter most days, trying to keep Andrew’s ass alive when he was so determined to kill himself off.

  He wasn’t going to die on my watch, and if this was a means to getting back at the Cazadores, I was all in. While the Grim Legion were no saints, we’d had a peaceful existence until the Cazadores had moved in and started ramping up the drug trafficking.

  And ruining people’s lives, including that of the man in front of me.

  “I tell you, we got screwed,” Andrew was saying as I watched two familiar looking men walk past the window.

  Their necks were exposed, showing off the series of tattoos that the Cazadores favored.

  Shit!

  There could only be one reason they were here, and it wasn’t going to look good for my mark if they didn’t keep moving their asses past the doorway out of which I knew she would appear.

  Looking down at my watch, I was already halfway out of the booth, adrenaline pushing me to move my ass.

  “Where are you going?” Andrew called after me.

  I didn’t have time to answer.

  They were going after my mark.

  As I rounded the front door, I saw the truck and the two Cazadores with a woman between them, books strewn about the street as they forced her toward the truck.

  Shit. They had gotten to her.

  Without a second thought, I ran toward them. I wasn’t about to lose my mark.

  Chapter Two

  Alice

  I hefted the books in my arms, wondering if I needed to invest in a bigger bookbag. It seemed that every time I walked into the library, I came out with another book that would help with my research, and while I could stay in the library and use it there, I much preferred the comfort of my bed and my fuzzy socks.

  Besides, I already spent too much time at the library.

  But it wasn’t like I had anything to go home to. Well, except Chester. Chester was always there, meowing and demanding food as soon as I walked into the door.

  Speaking of… I needed to get food for him, or he was going to be really pissed. Chester had been my mom’s cat, one that she had raised from a kitten. I could still remember the way she had fed it with a baby-bottle, dripping milk into its pink mouth until the kitten was full.

  It was no wonder that Chester had put up a fit when I had to take him to my apartment. Only recently had he started to come around more often, sleeping with me in my bed, waking me up with a loud meow when he was hungry.

  I was starting to think he was lonely like I was, missing my mom.

  Or at least the way she used to be.

  No, she wasn’t dead. Cheryl was very much alive, and I visited her whenever I could, at least three times a week, so that she would remember me. Being diagnosed with an early stage of dementia at fifty wasn’t what any of us wanted to hear, and with me being her only child, it was left to me to now take care of the woman who had taken care of me all my life. She had shrugged it off, stating that she was going to overcome the disease and nothing would change, but in reality, everything had changed.

  Now she didn’t work at all, unable to remember sometimes what she was doing or who she even was. It was heartbreaking to see her like this.

  There was no father to help, no loving husband to pick up and carry on where she had left off. I didn’t know my father, didn’t know if he was still in town or even alive at this point. When I was little, I used to think that maybe he was some secret agent who jet-setted around the world, or a celebrity that couldn’t be seen in Greenwood, Nevada, for fear that he would be mobbed.

  All in foolish, childish dreams of course.

  But if he had come home, he would have seen that his daughter was going to get her Master’s in social work even if it killed her, driven by a desire to help people like my mom and others. I wanted to help those who couldn’t help themselves, especially those with mental disorders.

  I had a vested interest in those.

  Shifting the books in my arms, I walked down the hall and used my hip to push open the door to the outside. My stomach growled angrily, and I tried to ignore it, knowing I had probably already eaten my days’ worth of calories for breakfast.

  I couldn’t help it. The powdered donuts had not been on my diet plan, but they had called to me far too strongly for me to ignore. I had started to watch what I was eating the moment my best friend, Nataliya, had asked me to be her bridesmaid. I had been ecstatic, of course, and started to damn near starve myself so that I could look great in the gown she had picked out.

  Of course, all of that was derailed for the moment. Nat was no longer marrying an asshole but a wonderful man by the name of Fox Lawrence instead, a man that made her deliriously happy, in her own words. I had never seen her glow the way she did when she came to visit, a change that being with Fox apparently had brought about in her. She was more carefree, thoughtful, not so wrapped up in the material things than she had been in the past.

  Not that I had held anything against the previous Nat. Nat had always had a heart of gold, but the way her mother was, the pressure she had put on her daughter to be this perfect woman, had clearly changed her for the worse. Our being friends was odd enough, but I had stood by her through everything, including this change in her relationship, though the wedding wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  Not until some outfit called the ‘Grim Legion’ could end some ‘war’ against some other outfit called the ‘Cazadores’. I didn’t know anything other than what she had told me about this ‘war’, but it didn’t sound good.

  So, I had tried, really tried, to stick to the original plan.

  Except today.

  And yesterday.

  And every day this week.

  Ugh, I sucked at this whole diet thing.

/>   Nat would be so disappointed. Yet another thing I needed to do. I needed to talk to my best friend. I had been so tied up in schoolwork that I hadn’t answered her calls.

  I was surprised she hadn’t come to my apartment, demanding I talk to her. Nat was that way, and I loved her for it.

  Sighing, I walked under the canopy of trees on campus, hoping I hadn’t missed the bus for this evening. My apartment was quite the walk from here, and as much as I probably needed the exercise, I was tired and these books were heavy.

  A man stepped in front of me, and I stopped abruptly, nearly upsetting the load in my arms. He wasn’t just another ordinary college student like me. His leather attire and the gleam in his eye made my heart shoot straight up into my throat.

  Well, that and the knife that was in his hand.