My world has always been about choices with no good options.
Prison or my sisters.
Club or Savannah.
Now this—Destiny with Colt's baby, my gun, my sister, my woman, my club.
Thirty-nine men behind these walls just voted to protect what's mine. But Destiny's mine too. Blood of my blood. The one I failed by going inside, by not being there when she needed me.
I don't need to ask to know that every member of Badlands is rethinking that decision now.
Even Diesel. He’s my best friend, but this right here—this intrusion, this drama, this… impossible situation with Destiny and Colt…
Church, and the decisions that come out of it, aren’t about friendship.
They’re about survival.
The skin between my shoulder blades prickles and I can feel those eight pairs of dissenting eyes boring into my back likebullet holes. I don't need to turn around to know exactly who's watching—becauseeveryoneis watching.
The shift in the air behind me is subtle. The moment when respect starts bleeding into doubt. Every second this gun stays raised, I'm burning through the goodwill my three years inside earned me.
The brand on my chest throbs with my heartbeat, still raw, still healing.
What does it mean, it's asking.
What am I willing to give up to respect that brand.
I'm at a crossroads here. Every single member of Badlands is watching. Waiting to see which Legion Kane I really am.
The disciplined soldier who earned his patch in blood and silence?
Or a fool who'll burn it all down for a woman and a sister?
The fact is, in this moment, I'm not really sure.
"Give me one reason," I say to Colt, "why I shouldn't paint this parking lot with whatever's inside your skull."
The baby makes a small sound—not quite a cry, just a reminder it exists. That it didn't ask to be born into this war.
Destiny Kane used to be all sharp edges—black eyeliner so thick it looked painted on with a Sharpie, red lipstick smeared like a wound, hair dyed whatever color she could steal from the drugstore that week. A walking "fuck you" to the world that made her.
This girl standing in front of me looks like she walked straight off Savannah's Instagram. Her hair is clean and shiny, falling over her shoulders in soft waves. No makeup except something that makes her skin glow. She's wearing a white sundress with tiny flowers on it. Like motherhood washed all the rage out of her and left something fragile behind.
She's thinner though. Hollow in the cheeks where there should be fullness. Her eyes dart between my face and the gun I'm still holding on Colt.
The baby protests again, and Destiny shifts the bundle in her arms. "Do you want to meet your niece?" Her voice is quiet, careful. Not the Destiny I remember at all.
I don't answer. Can't answer. But she takes a step forward anyway, pulling back the yellow blanket.
"Her name's Marigold. Marigold Ashby."
The baby blinks up at me with dark blue eyes. Blonde wisps of hair catch the light. She doesn't look anything like my sister.
She looks like Savannah.
Something twists in my chest, hard and painful. This child isn't a Kane. She's an Ashby through and through. Golden and perfect where we've always been dirt and struggle.
Even me. This gold hair of mine has always been the other side of clean. Never bright like the sun, but tinted with shadows.
