Gorgon stood on the porch of the Kings of Anarchy clubhouse with the collar of his cut turned up and a cigarette unlit between his fingers. He didn’t smoke much, not anymore. But sometimes he liked holding a bad habit in his hand, just to remind himself he could still choose it if he really wanted to.
The yard was lit by a handful of floodlights and the low glow of lights spilling from the shop. Bikes sat in a row like beasts at rest, their chrome dull under ice dust. Somewhere inside the clubhouse, laughter rolled—deep and rough, from the sound of men and women who’d learned how to find warmth in each other when the world offered none.
Gorgon didn’t laugh much anymore, either. Not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t find anything in life worthlaughing about. It just seemed like a waste of his energy these days, and he needed all the energy he could muster.
Buck pushed through the clubhouse door behind him, his boots heavy on the old floorboards. His breath hit the air like smoke, even indoors, with the heat at his back. “West fence cam’s lagging again,” Buck said. As the second in command of the Manitoba Kings of Anarchy, it was Buck’s job to run the perimeter with the club’s enforcers to make sure that they were secure. He was as loyal as they came, and Gorgon couldn’t ask for a better VP. Buck was built like a wall and quiet enough that most people didn’t realize he’d walked into a room until it was too late.
Gorgon didn’t turn his head. His gaze stayed locked on the road beyond the tree line, where the highway cut through the darkness like a scar. “Fix it,” he simply ordered. Buck made a sound that meant that he was already on it. He seemed capable of reading Gorgon’s mind at times, and that made him a damn good second in command. Buck leaned on the railing, as if he knew the president wasn’t watching the road for entertainment, and waited him out. He seemed to know when Gorgon needed quiet to process his thoughts, and now was one of those times.
“You feel it too?” Buck asked.
Gorgon’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yep,” he breathed. That was the thing about running a club like Kings of Anarchy—you didn’t just watch your territory, you listened to it. You learned the way it breathed and could pick up on the subtle warnings it gave. It had become second nature for him to pick up when it went still, right before something was going to go sideways. And Manitoba had been too still all day.
He’d felt it in the silence around the tree line and in the way the ravens flew higher in the sky as they were watching the humans below. He also felt it in the way the air tightened around the clubhouse when trucks rolled past without slowing.Something was moving under the surface, but Gorgon didn’t believe in ghosts. He believed in patterns and signs, though, and they were screaming into the air at him.
A headlight glowed through the trees. He saw them—first one and then the second. It was a car, not a truck, because the lights were too low. The car looked too clean for the back dirt road it had found itself on. It slowed when it reached the club’s turnoff, tires crunching over ice-packed gravel, and for one moment, the driver hesitated like they could still choose to keep going. But they didn’t, turning into the parking lot anyway.
Buck straightened. “You expecting company?” he asked. The last thing Gorgon wanted or even expected was company, but it looked like they were going to have some anyway. Gorgon’s hand lifted slightly, a signal for Buck to be quiet, and he immediately obeyed.
Two shadows moved in the yard near the shop. They were club members who’d been talking, suddenly no longer casually shooting the breeze. They seemed to know that their visitor wasn’t a welcome one, and started for the car. They didn’t rush or show any signs of panic, even if Gorgon felt them from the clubhouse porch.
The car rolled up to the front of the clubhouse and stopped, but the driver left the engine running. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign, but he was sure that they were about to find out. He knew one thing for certain, though—whoever was inside the car wasn’t here to visit. They were here to survive long enough to leave. Or they were here because they had no choice. If he were a betting man, he’d go with the second one because no one just showed up to the Kings of Anarchy’s clubhouse willingly.
The driver’s side door opened first, and a woman stepped out. She seemed to shiver as though the cold hit her like a slap, but she didn’t retreat. She pulled her jacket tighter around herslight frame. Her coat was too thin for this weather, but that didn’t seem to deter her. She shut the door behind her and started for the porch.
Her head turned slowly as she took in the yard, the bikes, and the men and women watching her from the light and the shadow. Her posture said she knew where she was, but her eyes said she hoped she wasn’t.
Gorgon didn’t move. He didn’t need to because the world usually came to him. The woman started walking slowly, her deliberate steps crunching over the icy gravel. She kept her hands visible, which was smart. People lived longer around there when they were smart.
She stopped at the base of the porch steps and looked up. Her gaze met his, and everything inside Gorgon went still—not with surprise, but with recognition. It wasn’t the kind of recognition that came from knowing a face, but the kind that came from seeing a truth in someone else’s eyes. Hers were dark, wide, and far too steady for someone who’d just driven into Kings of Anarchy territory alone. There was a hardness there that hadn’t come from comfort. He also saw a softness, too, tucked behind them. It reminded him of something that she was trying to protect. protected. Like something that she wanted to keep buried—like a secret.
Gorgon’s stare didn’t waver because he didn’t make mistakes, and letting her think that it was okay to walk into Kings of Anarchy territory would be a mistake. He also didn’t make exceptions—ever, but something about her didn’t fit, and that made her dangerous, because people who didn’t fit were the ones who brought trouble along with them.
Buck murmured, barely moving his mouth. “She’s not one of ours.”
“No,” Gorgon said softly.
The woman cleared her throat and lifted her chin at him. “I’m not here to cause problems.” Gorgan might have been able to accept that, but nobody ever came around his clubhouse for peace.
Gorgon stepped forward, the boards under him creaking once in warning. He stopped at the top of the steps and let the height difference help him keep control. He was towering over her, using intimidation tactics that didn’t seem to be working.
His voice came out low and calm. “Name,” he barked.
Her throat worked again. “Kimi.” The way she said it was careful, like she’d weighed the sound of it before letting it go into the air. It was almost as though she didn’t want to give her name away for free.
Kimi meant secret in Cree. He had learned the Cree language from his grandmother while growing up. She was from the Cree nation—something that he was proud of, even if he had no right to be. Her name touched something old in his chest. Something his grandmother had once told him in a kitchen warm with Bannock and cedar tea. Some names are shields. Some are warnings. He wondered which was the case for the woman standing in front of him.
Gorgon kept his face unreadable. “Where you coming from, Kimi?”
Her eyes shifted toward the road. Like something might appear there if she looked away too long. “South,” she said.
That meant nothing and everything all at once. He watched her breathing. Slow and controlled. Like she’d practiced it. Like panic was a luxury she didn’t allow herself.
“You lost?” he asked.
Her mouth tightened as if she didn’t want to give him anything. “No.” He waited because he knew that she was lying. Anyone out in this part of the country was either lost or trying to be. Silence was a tool. People filled it when they couldn’t standthe quiet any longer. But Kimi didn’t seem to feel the need to fill the silence, and that impressed him more than he would ever admit.
“Then why are you here?” Buck asked, his voice hard.
