Poverty wasn’t noble.
It was desperate.
It was ugly.
It made good people mean and mean people worse.
So I patched in as soon as I could.
The money was better.
So was the brotherhood.
People could say what they wanted about the club, and most of it was probably true depending on the day, but the first time a brother put food in my hand without making me beg for it, I understood loyalty in a way church people only preached about. The first time Callum looked at me and saw something useful instead of something broken, I would have followed him into fire.
Eventually, I did.
More than once.
He patched me.
Took me in.
Made me family.
I didn’t even know where my real parents were now.
Didn’t care most days.
They had never thrown me birthday parties. Never put up Christmas lights unless someone gave us a half-dead string from a box they were throwing out. Never wrapped presents that weren’t donated by some church drive with my age written on a tag by a stranger.
I used to tell myself I didn’t care about birthdays.
That was easier than admitting I had spent too many of them pretending I forgot the date so it wouldn’t hurt when no one else remembered either.
I looked down at the bottle.
“What the hell do I know about giving a girl a birthday?” I muttered.
Especially a girl like Destiny.
The Royal Bastards’ badass princess.
Edge’s daughter.
Regan’s baby girl.
Santa Fe’s beautiful little storm with blood in her story and ghosts in her eyes.
Someone like me was not good enough for someone like her.
Regan was right about that, even when she tried to soften it.
No man alive was good enough, she had said.
But that was what mothers said when they loved hard enough.
The truth was uglier.
