And somehow, I'm still breathing.
I need to find Legion.
I need to tell him I've finally chosen my side.
CHAPTER 3
I move through the clubhouse like I'm already dead. Eyes slide past me, conversations die, and I keep walking. No one speaks. No one touches.
Outside, the sun cuts low across the compound. The whole world laid bare from this vantage point—the Yellowstone River winding like an artery through the valley floor, Terry, Montana, the closest town, is a sad cluster of buildings looking like toys someone forgot to put away.
The Terry Badlands unfurl beyond like a violent dream, their twisted rock spires and clay formations rising from the earth like ancient bones. Wind and water have carved this landscape into something unnatural—ridges sharp as knife wounds, valleys deep as regrets, colors bleeding from rust-red to bone-white under the merciless sun. A terrain that's been tortured by time and elements, sculpted by pain into something both beautiful and wrong.
Something deep in my chest cavity vibrates in recognition, like my body knows its twin when it sees it. This land and me, we're made of the same broken stuff.
And this high up, I can see everything that matters and nothing I need.
I keep walking. My boots drag gravel with each step. The compound spreads around me—cinderblock buildings, chain-link fences topped with razor wire, outbuildings that started as storage and became whatever was needed. Ratchet's garage. The armory. The laundry room.
I pass the laundry building and notice a stack of spiral notebooks on the front desk. Small ones, pocket-sized. The kind you can hide. The kind that holds secrets.
I take one. And a pen. Both disappear into my pocket.
The brand on my chest throbs with each heartbeat. Infection or belonging, I can't tell the difference anymore.
Mercy. I need to find Mercy.
The guilt sits like lead in my stomach. I should have gone to her first after the vote. Before the drinks, and the dancing, and the tattooing. Before Colt. Before Destiny. Before the gun and the baby and the choice I had to make for the sake of the club, for Savannah, for my sanity...
I head toward the playground—a sad collection of rusted equipment where clubhouse kids sometimes hang out. It's where Mercy's been spending her days while I've been busy trying to keep us all alive.
She's there. But she's not alone.
Two boys. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Circling her like they're playing some game, but I know that look. I wore that look once, watching Savannah from across the church playground when we were kids. Before I knew what hunger was.
These boys are too young to understand the thing growing in them. But I'm not.
Fury bubbles up from somewhere deep and dark. Three days. I looked away for three fucking days, and already they're circlingher. The world doesn't wait. It doesn't forgive. It doesn't give little girls time to be little girls.
Destiny's face flashes in my mind. Fourteen and nothing but hard edges remaining of her childhood. Seventeen and pregnant. Eighteen and someone else's.
I failed her. I let her slip through my fingers while I was inside, paying for crimes that weren't mine, thinking I was protecting her by staying silent.
And now she's gone. With a baby that has Ashby eyes.
Never again.
I make a vow right there, standing in the dirt with the sun at my back and the taste of metal in my mouth. Mercy will not suffer the same fate. She will not be another Kane girl broken by men who take what isn't theirs to take.
I will burn this whole fucking world to the ground before I let that happen.
I whistle, sharp and low.
Mercy's head snaps up. She sees me. She knows that sound.
I get a hold of my anger before she reaches me, forcing a smile. Not my real one—the one that says I'm fine when I'm not. The one that doesn't scare children.
She smiles back, but it's thin. Careful. Too much like mine.
