“Reaper, she’s safe. Let’s go.”
“Jay,” she cried, reaching for me.
Too late.
The door at the far end of the hall banged open. Bishop stumbled through, gun raised, two Fangs at his back.
Perfect.
I didn’t raise my weapon, I wanted it.
The first Fang aimed. I drove my fist into his throat, bone crunching under my knuckles. He gagged, staggered, and I slammed his skull against the wall again and again until the sound turned wet.
The second fired. The bullet scorched across my shoulder. I roared, ripped the rifle from his hands, and used it like a club, the butt cracking across his cheek until his jaw split and blood sprayed hot across my skin.
Bishop’s face drained of colour. His gun wavered.
“You should’ve run faster,” I grinned, taking a step towards him.
He bolted and crashed back through the door, more of his men dragging him up the stairs while his curses echoed down the hall.
I followed, blind with rage, until Lucy’s voice broke through the haze.
“Jay.”
My steps froze mid-stride, and I turned.
Lucy clung to Rox’s side, bloodied and battered, but her eyes were locked on me like I was the one she was afraid of.
For a heartbeat, the whole world tilted.
And I finally stopped.
Chapter 37
Lucy
I’d thought I understood what violent men looked like. My father’s cruelty had been cold, clinical. His enemies wore their brutality on their skin, tattoos like warnings.
But Jay? Watching him snap, watching him become something monstrous in defence of me, it was different. Terrifying. He hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t even thought. He moved with the kind of precision that only came from a life built on violence. For the first time since I knew him, I’d seen the Reaper behind the man.
My heart hadn’t slowed since. Not on the ride back, clinging to him as engines howled through the dark, his kutte whipping against my hands. He’d wrapped it around me as soon as we’d left the Fangs’ place.
By the time we pulled into the clubhouse lot, my muscles ached from clinging so tight. My boots wobbled when I climbed off the bike, but I straightened my spine before any of them could notice.
“Wait.” Jay’s voice was rough, tight with something I couldn’t read. For a second, I thought he was mad at me.
Then he pulled me against him, hard, his arms locking like steel bands around my waist. His chest rose and fell against mine, his breath hot with fury that he was trying and failing to swallow down.
“I’m okay,” I lied. My voice was steadier than my hands, which shook against the back of his top. “Come on. Let’s go inside.” I shrugged the Kutte off and handed it back to him, he opened his mouth but closed it again before he took it and guided me indoors.
The clubhouse was alive with low, restless energy, brothers patching wounds, wiping down guns, nursing whiskey in silence. But when Jay walked in with me at his side, the air shifted. Conversations slowed, and eyes shot our way.
Riot was the first to break it. “She alright?” His tone was clipped, already knowing the answer.
“She’s fine,” Jay snapped, daring anyone to push it further.
I wasn’t fine. My chest still ached from the hands that had dragged me from the motel, from the memory of steel toe boot against my ribs. If Jay hadn’t come, if Rox, Riot, all of them hadn’t...
