Chapter Forty-Eight
Breaker
Pain wakes me before the light does. It is white-hot and bone-deep, a punishing force that rips through my unconsciousness and drags me awake.
Breathing hurts. My ribs are a hive of angry hornets.
My left wrist is immobile, wrapped so thick that it feels like a separate entity.
There’s a tightness around my head, a bandage, probably keeping my skull from splitting apart.
My mouth tastes of blood and metal. Every muscle feels like I’ve been beaten with rebar. I wish that were the case.
I open my eyes. Ceiling tiles, off-white and uneven. A beige curtain, half-pulled around my bed like a shroud. Someone’s drawn a marker smiley face on the IV bag. It was probably Mayhem. I want to hit him for it.
I brace myself, grit my teeth, and try to sit up. My core rebels immediately; a spike of agony bolts through my chest and into my back, paralyzing me halfway up.
I drop back onto the pillow, panting.
“Lie. Down.” A nurse appears like a tiny, furious angel of death and shoves me back against the mattress with surprising strength.
“You have a dislocated wrist, three cracked ribs, deep tissue bruising, several knife wounds, and a concussion. Oh, and dehydration. And stupidity, but that’s not covered by insurance.
You’re lucky you’re not in a body bag, and you are not getting out of this bed. ”
“Watch me,” I growl, already trying again.
She plants her palm in the center of my chest. “Test me, Marine. I dare you. Test me and find out what it’s like to be sedated… again.”
I glare. She glares harder.
I consider it just long enough to make her nervous. “What hospital is this?”
“Ironwood Memorial,” she says, checking the chart. “And before you ask, yes, you have visitors. And yes, they’re already causing trouble.”
Before I can decide whether to call her bluff about sedating me, the door swings open and Rabid steps inside. “Give us a moment, please,” he says.
The nurse nods and leaves the room.
He walks to the foot of my bed, arms crossed over his cut, eyes tracking every inch of me, assessing my injuries, assessing the man who survived betrayal.
“You look like shit,” he says.
“Feel like it, too.”
He drags a chair over and sits, his expression carved from stone. “You wanna tell me what the fuck happened?”
I do. I tell him everything. I tell him about Viper, about Pike, about the two of them working together as some kind of murderous team, about the betrayal, the basement, the fight — all of it in details that make my stomach roil to repeat.
By the time I finish, Rabid's knuckles have gone white around the armrests.
In his eyes, I can see a murderous score being kept and know that the bartender who drugged Riley and anyone else who helped or knew about it and did nothing is in for a rude awakening.
After a second, he shakes his head, and something approaching kindness settles into his eyes.
“Viper was your brother,” he says quietly. “But he was a monster, too. You didn’t kill a man. You put down an animal.”
I swallow hard. “He saved my life. More than once.”
He lifts a hand to stop me. “And you saved Riley’s.
That’s what matters.” Rabid leans forward, his elbows folding onto his knees, bringing him closer, as if we’re no longer prospect and president, but two battered survivors in the same trench.
“We protect our own. That’s what family means.
You lived that before you even had the patch. ”
The words hit me sideways. “Before?” I echo, voice hoarse. There’s a ringing in my ears, a kind of swelling pressure, like the whole world is about to tilt.
He cuts me off with a sharp nod.
“You’re patched in.” My breath stops, and before I can say anything, Rabid goes on. “We voted while you were unconscious. After everything you did… killing two predators who were ready to tear apart our town… there was nothing to debate. The vote was unanimous.”
A silence grows in the room. Heavy, but not empty. Full of the weight of things I never thought I’d have—acceptance, belonging, purpose. My vision blurs at the edges, and I wonder if it’s the concussion or the tears that refuse to fall.
“Where’s my cut?” I ask, the words as fragile as the memory of my mother’s voice.
“Waiting at the clubhouse,” Rabid says. He stands, looming, but there’s a pride to his posture, a kind of fatherly weight that makes my throat tighten. “Try not to bleed on it again. Took a lot of work to clean it.”
I bark out a laugh, sharp and unfiltered.
It hurts my ribs, and I clutch my side, but the pain feels less like punishment and more like proof of survival.
I keep laughing, my voice echoing off the hospital walls, until I taste salt and something like gratitude.
Then the moment passes, replaced by a single thought. “Where’s Riley?”
Rabid’s face flickers with something close to warmth.
The lines around his eyes soften. He’s seen death a thousand times, and he’s never flinched, but now, the mention of her name seems to thaw him.
“She’s fine,” he says, enunciating every syllable as if he’s reading a line from scripture.
“Awake. Healing. Worried sick about your ass.”
My shoulders sag with relief. “I need to see her.”
Rabid stands, stretching his back. “She’s already on the way. Along with a few others.”
That makes me frown. “What others?”
A glimmer — an actual, honest-to-god glimmer — dances in Rabid's eyes. If there’s ever been a time the man looked close to joy, it’s now.
“You’ll see,” he says. “Consider it a surprise. The good kind.”
I narrow my eyes. “Rabid, what did you do?”
“Relax, Breaker.” He claps a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Focus on what matters. Riley’s alive. You’re alive. She wants to see you.”
Those words ground me. Riley. Alive. Wanting to see me. For the first time since that basement, I let myself breathe.
Rabid opens the door, steps halfway out, then glances back at me. “And Breaker?”
“Yeah?”
“You earned that patch. Don’t forget it.”