CHAPTER 12
My name has always been plural.
Legion.
For we are many.
My mother named me after demons cast into swine. After spirits that spoke as one voice. Tonight, the many have spoken for me. A democracy of demons choosing mercy when they could have chosen exile.
The brand on my chest pulses with my heartbeat. Still infected. Still raw. Blood brotherhood isn't supposed to be clean.
The hall's quiet follows me like a ghost as I exit, lighting up a smoke. I pause, inhale, blow it out.
Forty-seven patched brothers.
Thirty-nine said yes.
Eight said no.
The numbers in my head feel like bullets left in a magazine after a firefight. Each one measured. Each one a threat or a promise.
Diesel walks beside me, quiet, like me. That's why I like him. That's why he's my number one, no matter what.
I'm a thinker and he's a thinker too.
Problem is… there's a thing called over-thinking. And that's what I'm doing now.
Eight.
Eight.
Eight men said no.
I push open the door to the bar and the light hits me like judgment. Not the burning kind. The kind that shows you exactly what you are, scars and all.
Do the objections of eight men really matter when thirty-nine agreed?
Yes. Yes, they do.
Savannah will stay. She will be protected, even by those eight.
But there's always a cost. Always a debt.
I've never owned anything worth having that didn't eventually get taken away.
Not this time.
When I walk into the bar, everything stops. Not because of me—I'm just a vessel now, a conduit for what comes next.
She stands in the center of the room, transformed.
Savannah. But not Savannah. Not the Ashby princess I've known since she was twelve. Not the Instagram queen with the practiced smile. Something else entirely.
The denim jacket hangs off her shoulders, a single patch above her heart with the Badlands logo. Her feet, bare last night while she stood trembling, now anchored in biker boots. Her hair's pulled back, messy but deliberate.
The Sharpie marks on her chest peek out where the t-shirt cuts low. PROPERTY OF DEMON.
My claim in black ink.
