"When Cross and I were together," Tyler's voice dropped, intimate in the fading light, "he used to talk about control. How the key to any operation was controlling the variables, controlling the environment, controlling the people around you." A hollow, bitter laugh escaped him. "He's still doing it. Controlling me. Making me afraid to sleep, afraid to ride, afraid to—" He stopped, shook his head.
"Afraid to what?"
Tyler looked at me, and something raw passed across his face. "Afraid to want things. To let myself have things. Because he always finds a way to take them."
The words landed somewhere in my chest, settled there like stones.
"He doesn't control you. Not anymore. And he's not going to take anything else. I won't let him."
"You can't promise that."
"I just did."
Tyler stared at me for a long moment. The last light of the sun caught his eyes, turned them toamber, and I realized I was standing closer than I'd intended—close enough to see the individual strands of hair that the wind was pulling across his forehead, close enough to smell the soap he used and the smoke that still clung to both of us.
"Why?" The question was barely a whisper. "Why do you keep putting yourself between me and everything that wants to hurt me?"
I didn't have an answer. Or I did, but it was buried somewhere deep, in a place I hadn't looked at in a long time—maybe ever. A place where instinct lived, and want, and things I didn't have names for.
So I said the only thing I could: "Because I can't seem to stop."
Something shifted in his expression. His lips parted, and I saw his breath catch, saw the slight widening of his eyes.
Then Axel's voice came from the clubhouse door—dinner was ready, did we want any—and the moment shattered.
Tyler stepped back, the space between us opening like a wound.
"We should eat." His voice was carefully controlled. "We'll need the energy for tomorrow."
"Yeah." I forced myself to turn toward the clubhouse. "We should."
We walked back together, not touching, not speaking, the distance between us electric with everything we hadn't said.
Tomorrow, we'd ride into battle. Tomorrow, we'd face the Wolves on their own ground, find out what they were protecting, take the first real step in thewar that had been declared this morning in fire and smoke.
But tonight, lying in my room, staring at the ceiling, all I could think about was the way Tyler had looked at me in the fading light.
The way I'd wanted to close that distance between us and never let him step back again.
Something was coming. Something bigger than the Wolves, bigger than Cross, bigger than the violence that waited tomorrow. Something I wasn't ready for.
But ready or not, it was already here.
And there was no stopping it now.
7
AMBUSH
TANK
We rode out at midnight. Eight bikes cutting through the darkness like a blade, engines growling in the kind of synchronized harmony that only came from years of riding together. The sound was a heartbeat, a war drum, the voice of machines built for exactly this purpose. Hawk led the formation, Axel at his right shoulder, the rest of us falling into positions we'd held through a dozen operations before this one.
The air was cold at speed, sharp with the promise of autumn, carrying the scent of sage and dry grass from the hills around us. Stars overhead were bright enough to cast shadows, the moon a silver blade hung low on the horizon. No headlights yet—we rode by moonlight and memory, the road a familiar ribbon beneath our wheels.
Tyler rode beside me on a borrowed Sportster—not the same one, never the same one, that bike was twisted metal and ash now. But close enough in feel that his body had adapted quickly. He'd been quiet during the briefing, absorbing Axel's intel about the route, the timing, the likely resistance. His questions had been sharp, tactical: How many riders? What weapons? What's their communication protocol?
FBI questions. The questions of a man who'd planned operations like this before.
