Diesel? Diesel slashes his hand and then mine, making me gasp, and presses our bleeding palms together as he kisses me. “Forever, Little Bird.”
I pull back and look between them all, having to smile.
I’ve got the rest of my life to make them pay for it. I can’t wait, and judging by the expressions on their faces, neither can they.
I’ve learned a lot since I met them.
Like that life is not guaranteed, it’s made up of thousands of tiny moments that span a lifetime. Choices, actions, each and every one leads us down different paths. My path, my choice, led me to them. Four men who saw past my skin and armour, past my smart mouth and anger, to the woman underneath. The beautifully flawed survivor, because that is who I am.
A survivor.
A warrior.
A queen.
A Viper.
I am all of those and so much more. When my path took me down the darkest of roads, I found the strength to go on at the very blackest of times. When I knew my parents didn’t love me, when they broke my heart, I went on. When I was alone for the first time, when fear was my constant…I chose to go on.
Or when I held the hand of the first man I ever loved, the man who helped save me, as he died, I chose to fight. As I watched regret and wishes fill his tear-soaked eyes as his frail hand clutched mine, his voice raspy and skin grey…I chose to go on. But from that moment, I learned a lesson that lives with me always. Death comes for all of us, and until it does, we have to do our fucking best to live. To live our lives to the fullest, to never regret. To love so deeply it could fill an ocean, to not let fear stop you from being who you want to be.
Because if you don’t, if you let fear win, regret will eat you up and it will be all you have at the end.
I refuse to be that person, I refuse to regret my life or who I am. So I choose them every goddamn day that I wake up. Four flawed, scarred, powerful men. Even when it’s hard, even when the world is against us, I choose them every time, over and over, and they choose me. My heart is theirs, and theirs are mine.
We aren’t perfect. We are criminals, gamblers, fighters, businesspeople, and assassins.
But these four criminals? They are my happiness.
They are my life.
They are my home, and wherever our path leads us now, we do it together.
Just five Vipers entwined in a den.
Until the end.