I'd kept fighting. Took down two more of Cross's men before Axel hauled me back, before Hawk's voice in my earpiece ordered the retreat, before theburning warehouse started to collapse and there was nothing left to fight for.
I hadn't been fast enough. Hadn't been strong enough. Hadn't beenenough. Danny's knife caught the light from the bedside lamp—the worn handle, the blade I'd carried since the day I buried my brother. I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, felt the familiar weight settle into my palm like a handshake from a ghost.
I failed you too, Danny. I couldn't protect you. Couldn't save you. And now the same thing is happening again, and I'm sitting here with blood on my hands and nothing to show for it.
My fist connected with the wall before I realized I'd swung. Plaster cracked, dust sifting down like snow, and pain exploded through my knuckles—sharp, clarifying, almost welcome. I pulled my hand back. Blood welled from split skin across two knuckles, mixing with the dried brown flakes already caked into the lines of my palm.
I pressed my forehead against the cracked plaster and stood there, breathing, bleeding, holding Tyler's jacket against my chest. I would get him back. Whatever it cost. Whoever stood in my way.
I would burn the whole desert down if that's what it took.
Church convened the next morning, after a full day of forced rest that Rosa had mandated for thewounded and that I'd spent pacing my room like a caged animal—counting the hours, cleaning weapons that were already clean, pressing Tyler's jacket against my face until the scent of him blurred and I couldn't tell where comfort ended and torture began.
The chapel felt wrong—too many empty chairs, too much space around the table where bodies should have been. But it was fuller than I'd feared. Hawk sat at the head, his wounded arm immobilized in a sling that Rosa had fashioned from a strip of clean linen, his face carved from granite. At his right, Axel occupied the VP's chair with a stillness that radiated authority even through the exhaustion and the bandaged shoulder. The rest of us filled in the gaps: me, Declan, Vega, Santos, and half a dozen other patched members—some from the warehouse, some who'd held the clubhouse during our absence. Ghost sat at the far end, his crutch against the wall, his young face harder than it had been a week ago. Outside the chapel doors, prospects kept watch on the perimeter, maintaining the security rotation that hadn't stopped since we'd ridden out.
Irish leaned against the wall behind Hawk's chair, arms crossed, weight shifted off his injured leg. He'd insisted on being present. Nobody had argued—the look in his eyes made it clear that trying to keep him out would cost more energy than anyone had to spare.
Blade's chair was empty. Rosa was still with him in the infirmary, fighting a battle measured in heartbeats and blood oxygen levels.
Hawk opened without preamble, his voice carrying the flat authority of a man who'd already processed his grief and moved past it into strategy: "Tyler is alive. Cross didn't take him to kill him—he took him because he wants him. That gives us time, but not much."
My hands curled into fists beneath the table. The stitches in my shoulder pulled. I barely felt it.
"Cross has resources." Hawk leaned forward, his gray eyes sweeping the room. "He was running the Wolves' pharmaceutical operation through Henderson—distributing product through legitimate channels, laundering the profit through shell companies. And he wasn't doing it alone. He's got corrupted federal agents backing him, same playbook as Michelle Chen's trafficking ring. Agents on the payroll, marshals turning a blind eye, people inside the system helping the product move and making sure investigations go nowhere. The pharmaceutical operation isn't just the Wolves—it's a joint venture between the club and whoever's pulling strings inside federal law enforcement."
"Which means he's got eyes and ears we can't see." Axel's voice was measured, the VP parsing the problem the way he parsed everything—systematically, without emotion getting in the way of logic. His eyes flickered to me, and I saw something there that wasn't logic at all. Concern. Compassion. The understanding of a man who knew what it felt like to almost lose the person who mattered most.
"We have Sarah." Hawk placed both hands flat on the table. "She knows Cross's operation better thananyone. She helped Tyler escape him in the first place, she organized the FBI support that took down Chen, and Cross tried to have her killed for it. She's been recovering here since the extraction, and she's ready to help us end this."
"Then get her in here." The words ground out of me like metal on stone. "Get her talking. Every minute we sit here?—"
"Every minute we sit here is a minute we spend not riding into another ambush." Hawk's gaze locked onto mine, steady and unyielding. "You saw what happened at the warehouse. Cross knew we were coming. He knew about the drainage pipes, knew the exact route of our insertion. He was ready and waiting. If we ride out blind, we die, and Tyler dies with us."
The truth of it settled over me like a weight. I wanted to argue, wanted to flip the table and put my fist through something, wanted to be on my bike heading into the desert with nothing but rage and Danny's knife. But Hawk was right. The warehouse had been a trap, and we'd walked into it despite the warnings.
"We do this smart, brother." Axel, his voice low, meant only for me. "For Tyler."
I unclenched my fists. Nodded once.
Hawk continued laying out the situation—the Wolves' remaining forces in the area, the damage we'd inflicted at the warehouse, the pharmaceutical supply chain that was now disrupted but not destroyed. Santos reported on the weapons and intel they'd recovered. Declan gave a terse account of theguards they'd interrogated before pulling out of the warehouse.
The picture that emerged was incomplete but useful: Cross had been operating semi-independently from the Wolves' main chapter in Montana. His pharmaceutical empire was his pet project, sanctioned by the Wolves' president but run almost entirely by Cross and a small loyal crew, with corrupted feds greasing the wheels from inside. The warehouse assault had decimated that crew. Cross was wounded, operationally—fewer men, a burned distribution hub, his supply chain in chaos.
But he had Tyler. And a wounded animal with a hostage was the most dangerous kind.
Hawk brought the meeting to a close with a single directive: "Sarah briefs us this afternoon. We identify Cross's bolt-holes, we scout them, and we move. Forty-eight hours, maximum."
The gavel fell. Church was over. I was the last one out. Hawk caught my arm as I passed his chair.
"Stay."
The room emptied. The door closed. Just the two of us, the president and a patched member, surrounded by empty chairs and the ghost of everything we'd lost.
Hawk studied me for a long moment. The granite expression softened—not much, not enough for anyone else to notice, but I'd known this man long enough to read the micro-shifts in his face the way I read engine diagnostics.
"You love him." Not a question.
"Yeah." The word came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep. "I can't lose him, Hawk. Not like?—"
