Maybe he was right.
After a while, the fire started burning hotter, the noise from the boys gettin’ louder, but none of it hit right. My skin felt too tight. My head felt too full.
I stood up.
“Callin’ it?” Gearhead asked. “Fire’s just gettin’ good.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just ain’t feelin’ it tonight.”
I turned toward the clubhouse—and that’s when I saw her.
Lark.
She was standin’ in the upstairs window—her room—light spillin’ behind her, turnin’ her hair into somethin’ damn nearhalo-bright. One hand rested on the glass. Her shoulders were relaxed, but her face…
Her face wasn’t.
Even from down in the yard I caught it, that quick flicker of somethin’ raw and painful in her eyes. Maybe jealousy. Maybe disappointment. Maybe she saw that blonde on my lap and assumed things that weren’t wrong but weren’t right either.
Then she moved back, slow, the curtain floatin’ closed like she was shuttin’ me out on purpose.
And it hit me hard.
Low.
Somewhere I’d never taken a punch before.
I wanted Lark more than any woman I’d come across. Wanted her clean, not tangled up in smoke and lies.
I stood there in the dark, a woman I didn’t care about still hoverin’ behind me near the fire, the scent of smoke in my clothes, and Lark’s ghost sittin’ heavy in my chest where it had no business bein’.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.
Inside, the hallway was quiet, the sound of the party muffled behind the walls. I paused halfway to my room, glancin’ back down the hallway, at where she’d been. Wonderin’ how much she saw. Wonderin’ why it mattered so damn much.
But that look she’d given from the window—that cut-deep flicker filled with somethin’ raw—followed me into my room. And for the first time in a long damn while, the night didn’t feel easy.
It felt like somethin’ had been broken.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I HADN’T MEANTfor Chain to see me.I hadn’t meant to see anything at all. I’d only caught a flicker of orange through the curtains, the kind of light that once meant danger, and curiosity pulled me toward the window before I could think twice. But the second I looked out, everything inside me went still.
The bonfire below roared high, sparks drifting like tiny stars as they rose into the dark. Men crowded around it, shadows moving in and out of the flames, their laughter rough and brash in the night air. Women drifted between them, dancing, drinking, leaning into hands and bodies without hesitation, bare skin catching the firelight in flashes. And for a moment, my mind couldn’t separate what I was seeingfrom what I remembered. The yard blurred at the edges, the flames stretching too high, the voices sharpening into something crueler.
The smell of smoke curled through the closed window and twisted into another scent entirely, burning oil, scorched flesh, the metallic bite of fear. My pulse stumbled. My hands tightened on the curtain. And before I could stop it, I was somewhere else entirely.
Back in the compound.
Back in the punishment circle.
Back where fires weren’t for warmth or celebration, but for obedience.
Jasper’s voice surfaced first—soft, coaxing, poisonous. My second Shepherd. The one they sent me to when they said I was too defiant, too mouthy, too unwilling to kneel. He’d stood by the fire that night with the poker glowing white at the tip, smiling like he was doing me a favor.I’ll mark you so no one else will ever want you,he’d whispered, and the memory still scraped raw along my bones.
My palm lifted to my cheek before I realized it, tracing the uneven skin that never fully softened. For a moment, the heat of that night flickered across my face, the hiss, the scent, the bright, blinding pain, and my breath caught hard enough to hurt.
“No,” I whispered, forcing the word past the tightness in my throat. “You don’t own me. Not my skin. Not my memory.”
