"Is she alive?"
"Barely," I say, voice hardening. "Someone tried to kill her on the ridge. I’m invoking the protection protocol."
Silence on the other end. Then, the heavy, dangerous tone of my brother, the President. "Sit tight. We're coming to you. And Tristan?"
"Yeah."
"If you brought a stray to the loft, you better be ready to keep her."
I look at the ring of bruises beginning to form on her neck where my mouth has been. "She's not a stray, Logan," I say, my voice vibrating with absolute certainty. "She's mine."
I click the radio off before he can respond. The hourglass has turned. The brothers are coming. The war is coming. I walk back to the bed and sit on the floor beside it, my back against the frame, my gun within reach. I rest my head back against the mattress, near her hand. I close my eyes and listen to her breathe, hoarding every second of the remaining silence. I won’tleave her side. If the shooter came, if the cops came, if the devil himself came... they’d have to go through me.
And I am a very big mountain to climb.
7
ALEXANDRIA
The engine roar hits the loft like a wrecking ball. It starts as a low vibration in the floorboards, a tremor traveling up the bed frame to settle in my broken bones. A dull, throbbing ache. Then the noise swells. A tearing mechanical scream shatters the fragile peace of the last three days. The storm outside broke, but a worse one just arrived.
Tristan stands by the window, peering through the blind slats. Fully dressed. He wears his cut now—the leather vest with patches marking him as something other than the man who held me through the night. Road Captain. Broken Halos MC. He turns. The soft, liquid heat that melted me an hour ago is gone. His gaze is opaque. Impenetrable.
"They're here." His voice rumbles, stripping away the tenderness he used when washing my skin.
I pull the heavy quilt to my chin, painfully aware of my nakedness. The makeshift splint on my leg feels like a lead weight anchoring me to the mattress. "Who?"
"My brothers. Logan. Austin. Shane."
He stalks to the bed. I brace for a kiss, an anchor in the coming chaos. Instead, he grabs a t-shirt from the laundry pile and tosses it. "Put this on. Cover up. Don't speak unless asked directly. Even then... let me handle it."
The command stings. "Tristan?"
He checks the Sig Sauer in his waistband, movements efficient. Lethal. "No more bubble, Allie. This is club business. You're a civilian in a splash zone. Trust me and do exactly what I say."
"I thought I was..." Yours. The word dies in my throat. I thought I was more than a civilian. The way he touched me, claimed me... surely that changed the definition.
"Just cover up." The growl brokers no argument.
He unlocks the steel door as boots stomp up the metal stairs. I scramble to pull the oversized black shirt over my head, wincing as the movement jostles my fracture. Fabric barely covers my hips before the door swings open.
The room shrinks. Three men fill the space, bringing the smell of exhaust, cold mountain air, and violence. I recognize the frontrunner from town. Logan Gunnar. I’ve seen him at the hardware store, a towering wall of muscle with eyes that could strip paint. The President.
Logan ignores Tristan. His gaze pins me to the pillows. A threat assessment. He scans my face, the bruising on my temple, the splinted leg, and finally, my hands clutching Tristan’s shirt against my chest.
"You've got to be kidding me, Tris." Logan's voice is a deep, gravelly rasp vibrating in my chest. "Three days? You've had acivilian stashed here while half the town wonders where the hell the 'Bird Girl' went?"
"She's hurt." Tristan steps between us, back wide and rigid. A human shield. "Broken tib-fib. Concussion."
"So you take her to the clinic." The second man wears a charming, dangerous smirk. Austin, the VP. He leans against the doorframe, thumbs hooked in his belt, eyes razor-sharp. "You don't play doctor in the club loft and go dark on coms. Do you know how messy this looks?"
"She was targeted," Tristan says flatly.
The room goes dead silent. The third man, Shane—quiet, brooding, scary—steps forward. "Explain."
"She was tracking near the eastern ridge," Tristan says. "Off-trail. Didn't slip. Someone took a shot at her. Impact blew out the rock next to her foot."
Logan’s eyes narrow, shifting to me. Suffocating intensity. He steps around Tristan, ignoring a low growl of warning, and looms over the foot of the bed. "Is that true?"
