He didn’t.
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, not hard, just enough to let him know there was a difference between thinkingyou’re tough and being it. “You got business, you take it outside. Otherwise, keep your hands to yourself.”
He swung around, half-drunk and full of piss. Tried to say something witty, but it caught in his throat when he looked up at me. I could tell the instant he recognized what I was, or what he thought I was. Wolves can always smell each other, even when they’re hiding under tattoos and leather and the stink of cheap whiskey.
He swung anyway, because idiots always do. I stepped into the punch, caught his fist in my hand, and drove my forehead into his nose. I felt the cartilage crunch, the wet shock of blood on my face, and he went down hard, blinking up at the water-stained ceiling tiles.
I crouched, close enough to smell the rot in his teeth. “Touch her again,” I said, low and even, “and you’ll be eating through a tube. Got it?”
He nodded, blood running into his mouth. I let him go.
The waitress had shrunk back, hand covering her own mouth. Her eyes flicked from the man on the ground to me, and for a second, she looked more afraid of the cure than the disease. She wasn’t wrong.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said, voice softening. I fished a crumpled twenty from my pocket and pressed it into her hand. “For the trouble.”
She tried to thank me, words tripping over themselves, but her eyes never left mine. I saw the moment it happened, the pupil dilation, the way her heartbeat sped up, the animal logic of fear and awe. My reflection in the bar’s cracked mirror showed why, just for a second, the gold in my eyes caught the light and burned. Not a trick of the neon, not human. I blinked it away, but the damage was done.
She backed up, nearly knocking over a tray of empties. “You—your eyes—”
“Bad lighting,” I lied, then finished my whiskey in a gulp. The bartender watched all this like someone watching a documentary about a species she’d only ever heard about.
The man on the floor dragged himself up, dabbing at his nose with a filthy handkerchief. He glared at me, murder in his eyes, but I saw the tremble in his fingers. He wouldn’t try it again. Not tonight.
I left cash on the bar, enough to cover the drink and the mess. As I headed for the door, every pair of eyes in the place tracked me. The old men at the pool table were suddenly very interested in their game. The bartender just nodded, maybe in thanks or maybe in relief.
Outside, the cold was waiting for me, sharp as a knife. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the bike, letting the smoke do its work. My hands still shook a little. Not from the fight, never from the fight, but from the other thing. The part of me that slipped when I wasn’t watching close enough.
The world was getting smaller. Or maybe I was just getting easier to spot. The thing is, what they don’t tell you about being an outlaw biker, the road can be lonely. Sure, there are old ladies waiting in the wings, but most of the time, most of us are looking for the one, the one who will accept and rock our world. That there is the challenge for us.
I ground the cigarette under my boot and straddled the Harley. As the engine caught, I looked back at the bar. The waitress stood in the alley, silhouetted by the neon, one hand pressed to the glass.
I gave her a nod, something halfway between apology and warning, then let the wolf in me take the throttle, heading into the night with nothing but the road ahead and the taste of blood and whiskey in the air.
Scarlette
The air in my chamber stank of lye soap and resignation. Mother always insisted on a thorough scouring before any important event, which meant that by the time the seamstress arrived with her arms full of white silk, the floors were slick as river stones and the walls reeked of vinegar. My toes, half-numb on the cold flagstones, curled involuntarily each time the seamstress circled me. She moved with the single-mindedness of a predator, pins clamped between her lips, never making eye contact. Her hands fluttered—soft, almost apologetic—over the silk where it met my collarbone. Every so often, she would jerk the fabric tighter, and the sudden pressure would steal the breath out of my chest, as if the dress itself meant to choke me before Sir Aldric could have the satisfaction.
Mother drifted in and out of the room in her customary hush, pretending to busy herself with nothing while her gaze flicked like a razor across each exposed inch of my skin. She woreher hair under a linen cap today, tight as a death shroud, and the only hint of color on her was the crescent of ink staining her thumb. She’d been up half the night, cross-checking the household ledger, and the numbers still clung to her like a second language.
“Stand up straighter, Scarlette,” she said, not unkind but with the crispness of someone who’d forgotten how to speak otherwise. “You will not have the opportunity for poor posture once married.”
The seamstress made a thin sound—agreement or amusement, I couldn’t tell. She knelt to fuss at the hem, lifting it just high enough to expose my ankles. My skin crawled at the scrutiny, but I forced myself not to flinch. Obedience was currency here. I intended to be rich by the end of this day.
Mother’s mouth twitched. “Mind you don’t leave it dragging,” she said, “Sir Aldric finds untidiness offensive.” There was a note of calculation in her voice, as if my cleanliness could somehow tip the scales of the Ashburn fortune. “He will want you pristine. You know what that means, yes?”
“Yes, mother,” I said, careful to keep my eyes on the cracked window. Beyond, the courtyard thawed in slow agony, brown frost breaking into slush, and somewhere a raven picked apart the remains of last winter. The forest past the stone wall was still dead, still colorless, but in my mind I could see the first soft green of wild garlic, the hopeful prickle of nettles poking through the snowmelt. If I could have vanished out that window and run into the trees, I would have done so naked and bloody-footed, trailing silk like molted feathers.
The seamstress pulled the bodice taut, binding my ribs in a vice. I exhaled as quietly as I could, trying not to draw attention, but the breath caught in my throat and came out as a tiny gasp.
“There,” Mother said, satisfied. “A woman is meant to be beautiful, not comfortable. Isn’t that right, Tess?”
The seamstress, Tess, made another noncommittal hum. Her hands, chapped and red, betrayed the lie of the dress: it was not meant to make me beautiful, only to make me palatable.
“Sir Aldric’s messenger will arrive by midday,” Mother went on. “He expects a likeness sent. This will do.” She stepped close enough that I could smell the old rosewater clinging to her skin, a desperate echo of younger days. “You will thank me for this, Scarlette. One day, you’ll see I have saved you from ruin.”
I nodded, as if the gratitude were already blossoming in my chest.
In truth, I kept my real feelings locked behind my teeth. I’d mastered the trick by thirteen, when Father started selling off parcels of land to cover his gaming debts. At sixteen, I could smile at a suitor who called my hands “too clever for a lady” and imagine, with perfect clarity, the shape of his liver after three more years of drink. Mother called it “pragmatism.” The women in my line called it “survival.”
