The question hung in the air, ugly and unanswerable.
Tyler opened his mouth to respond, but I was already speaking.
"He stays."
The words came out hard, flat, leaving no room for argument. I felt the room's attention swing to me—Blade's eyebrows rising, Hawk's expression flickering with something I couldn't read.
"Tank—" Blade started.
"He stays." I didn't raise my voice, didn't need to. "Three months ago, Tyler fed us the intel that let us hit Chen's operation before they could move the victims. He bled with us. Fought with us. He's part of the reason many of us are still breathing and the women and kids from that disgusting trafficking ring aren't on a ship to somewhere worse."
"That doesn't?—"
"I'm not finished." I leaned forward, holding Blade's gaze. "You want to talk about liability? Fine. Let's talk about the time you brought your ex-wife's problems to the clubhouse door. Or the time Irish's gambling debts almost cost us a supply route. We've all been liabilities at one point or another. That's what family means—you carry each other's weight."
Blade's jaw tightened, but he didn't look away.
"Tyler's not a member. Fine. But he's not nothing either. He's earned his place here, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend otherwise just because the situation is complicated." I turned to Hawk. "He stays. That's my vote."
The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Hawk looked at me for a long moment—measuring, considering. Then his gaze swept the table, taking in each face, reading the room the way he always did.
"Tank's right." His voice carried the weight of finality. "Tyler stays. He's earned that, and we don't abandon people who've bled for us. End of discussion." His voice hardened. "Anyone who has a problem with that decision can take it up with me privately. But as of now, this club stands together. All of us."
He stood, signaling the meeting's end. Bodies rose, chairs scraped, conversation started up in low murmurs. But I wasn't paying attention to any of it.
I was watching Tyler.
He hadn't moved from his seat. His face was still carefully blank, but something in his eyes had shifted—something that looked almost like surprise, almost like gratitude, almost like something else entirely.
He met my gaze across the table.
I nodded once, short and sharp, and turned away.
The sun was setting by the time I found Tyler.
He was outside, at the far edge of the property where the lot gave way to scrub grass and the first scattered oaks of the tree line. He stood with his back to the clubhouse, looking toward the road where Cross and the Wolves had disappeared hours ago.
I stopped a few feet away, not close enough to crowd him, close enough to be present.
"You didn't have to do that." He spoke without turning around, his voice quiet against the evening air.
"Do what?"
"Defend me. In there." A pause. "What Blade said—he wasn't wrong. I am a liability. Cross is here because of me, and everyone in that clubhouse is at risk because I'm still breathing."
"That's not your fault."
"Fault doesn't matter. Results do." He turned finally, and the fading light caught his face, hollowed his cheeks, made him look older than thirty-one. "If I left—disappeared—Cross would follow. He'd have no reason to stay, no reason to threaten the club."
"And then what? You spend the rest of your life running?"
"I've been running for eight months. What's a few more years?"
"That's not living. That's surviving."
"Sometimes surviving is enough."
