For a second, she saw me.
Not the drugs.
Not Mandy.
Not fire.
Me.
“You,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“You bled first.”
A rough laugh scraped my throat before I could stop it. “Guess that makes us even.”
Her mouth almost curved.
Then her eyes closed again.
I looked up and met Callum’s gaze in the mirror.
His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were not.
He had seen it.
Whatever the hell that was.
Recognition.
Connection.
Trouble.
The truck shot forward, electric power throwing us back as Nate turned us away from the burning clearing and onto thedarker trail. Behind us, the desert pulsed red. Sirens wailed. Kids screamed. Smoke swallowed the stars.
Destiny Rourke lay bleeding in my arms, forbidden as a loaded gun and twice as dangerous.
I held her like something precious anyway.
And I knew, with the kind of certainty that only came before disaster, that the explosion behind us was not the one that would ruin me.
It was the girl breathing against my chest.
The second we hit the Royal Bastards’ gate, I knew this was going to get ugly.
Not bad.
Bad was smoke on the horizon, a stolen bike in the brush, kids screaming about ghosts and curses while cars cooked off in the desert behind them.
This was worse than bad.
This was family.
And nothing on earth went more feral than outlaw family when one of their own came home bleeding.
The Santa Fe compound lit up before Nate even slowed the Cybertruck. Floodlights snapped on across the yard, turning the clubhouse, garage, and line of parked bikes into a hard white glare of chrome, leather, and angry men. The gates rolled open before we reached them. Not slowly either. Fast, like whoever hit the button had been waiting with one finger already pressed against panic.
