Chapter 16 #2
Blaze’s breathing is ragged in my ear. “Shotgun’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“This is on you.”
“Fucking hell, Blaze!” I fire back. “They hit all our compounds to pull us thin. You think this is about Charlotte? No. It’s about them wanting our trade. Our territory.”
“I don’t fucking care!” he spits. “They were silent until your sister—” He mutters a curse, pausing his rant to probably save himself from another rain of bullets.
Ryder props up his gun and fires again, keeping two advancing shooters pinned behind a concrete barrier. “Argue later,” he mutters. “We’ve got movement on the left side.”
The first truck lurches forward. I step out to get a clean shot at the driver and a wall of bullets cascades. I’m forced back instantly, but not before a stinging burn starts to pulse through my left arm.
Fuck, I’m hit.
Blaze tries the same from his side. Same result.
Suppression fire is so heavy it’s surgical. They don’t want us dead. They want us helpless, pinned.
The first truck barrels toward the north gate. Gone. The second follows. I empty half a magazine toward the tires—sparks fly, but the driver swerves and disappears through the exit.
The third truck revs hard. Ryder moves again, trying to flank. More bullets. Closer this time. Concrete chips bite into my cheek.
We can’t move. We can’t advance. We can’t even fucking retreat. We are locked in place while they take everything.
The third truck tears through the gate. Silence follows. Not complete silence—just the ringing kind. The hollow aftermath.
Hell’s Army shooters melt back into the treeline like they were never here. They stop firing, just like that. Because they’re done.
Blaze’s voice is hoarse in my ear. “They just took our lifeline.”
Yeah. They did. Three trucks. Shotgun dead. Reapers alliance gone. Nomads crippled. And we’re standing in the dust, alive only because they allowed it.
Ryder lowers his gun slowly, almost hesitantly. I stare at the empty gate.
This wasn’t about Charlotte. It wasn’t about a bargain. It was a message: We can reach you anywhere. We can take whatever we want. And there’s nothing you can do to stop us.
??????
“You need to let me patch this up, Wolf.”
I groan and continue pacing the length of my living room on club grounds. Ryder called Healer the second he noticed blood dripping down my arm during the ride back. I hadn’t given a fuck, not even a little.
My head was still spinning from what we’d lost. The precision. The statement Hell’s Army made with that strike.
All I wanted was to get back and see Charlotte with my own eyes. Make sure she was breathing. So when Ryder suggested I get stitched up before going anywhere near her, I’d nearly taken his head off.
Until he’d said, flat and brutal, “What? You want her to see you bleeding so she feels sorry for you? You think she’ll give a fuck?”
That shut me up, so I relented.
Now I’m here, restless, waiting for Ruin’s call while Healer stands in front of me with a medical kit and a look that says he’s two seconds away from sedating me.
He left Heath in the infirmary—bullet to the shoulder. Took it protecting Lana, Hound’s Ol’ Lady. One of Hell’s Army’s intruders is dead. The other is chained up in our basement.
None of that is enough to pull my focus from my phone. I need confirmation there were only two attackers. That no one else slipped through. That no one reached the cottage.
“Christ, Wolf. Sit the fuck down.” Ryder’s exasperated growl finally stops me mid-stride.
With a heavy sigh, I drop onto the couch, phone still clutched in my hand. Healer steps in immediately, cleaning the wound with efficient, no-nonsense movements. He shakes his head every time I lean forward to check if my screen lights up.
“She’s fine. Relax,” he mutters. “And stop moving.”
I don’t. From the corner of my eye, I see Ryder scanning the boxes stacked along the walls. Most of it is my father’s junk. Years of hoarded cables, busted radios, half-finished projects. Things he never got to fix once the wheelchair made even simple tasks impossible.
Ryder crouches in front of one bin overflowing with wires and old electronics. Of course he does. The man can’t resist a circuit board even after we’ve just survived a firefight.
Minutes pass in tense silence.
I grab a wipe and clean the dried blood from my forearm while Healer finishes bandaging my bicep. The bullet went clean through—deep enough into my bicep to make my entire arm throb and tingle. I hiss when I shift it wrong.
“You good?” Healer asks, eyes narrowing.
“It’s just a graze,” I mutter, staring at my phone. “Burns, that’s all.”
He sighs. “I’d say distract yourself, but you’re already obsessed.”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I’ll take some Advil.”
“Want me to send for Bel? Just in case?”
I shake my head quickly. “Don’t bother her.”
A sharp intake of breath cuts through the room. Ryder’s sitting stiff in the armchair, ears red, shoulders tight with… fury?
I don’t know what the hell that’s about, but he recovers fast and turns back to my laptop—when the hell did he grab that?—typing something with sharp, focused movements.
Finally, my phone rings. “Ruin?”
“Update?” he asks immediately.
“Ryder and I are back. Is Charlotte okay?”
“Yeah, she’s… okay. You want us to head to the clubhouse?”
I pause. Think. “No. Stay there a few more hours. I’ll sweep the compound fully before lifting lockdown.”
“Works. I’ll call if anything changes.”
A beat.
“Did she… see the place?” I force out. “I mean—”
“I’m sorry, Dane. I don’t think it went the way you expected.”
The words land heavy. Fuck.
“Okay. I’ll see her soon. Stay safe.”
I stare at the dark screen long after the call ends. I don’t know how to reach my sister anymore. The only thing she’s willing to talk about is the active threat against her. Anything else—us, the past, our relationship—is cut off clean.
I close my eyes and start mapping out the next few hours. Scar, Hound, Ryder, Spike. Split up. Clear every building, every blind spot. I’m still running through it when Ryder stands abruptly.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters.
The laptop sits open on the coffee table, forgotten. He’s staring at something in his hand. Then he looks at me and my stomach drops.
He looks pale, like the ground just shifted under him.
“Wolf…” His voice trembles.
Every instinct in me goes on high alert. “What is it?”
“He… Savage didn’t sell Charlotte.”
The words don’t land at first. Of course he didn’t, or maybe he couldn’t. But he’d planned to, I know that much.
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly.
Healer looks between us, uneasy. Ryder swallows hard. His jaw works like he’s chewing glass. If my father didn’t sell my sister, then why does Ryder look like he’d rather swallow gasoline than say the next words?
“I mean he didn’t sell her,” he repeats quietly. “He… he saved her.”
What?
He walks toward me and places an old phone in my hand. Almost dead, likely because he just charged it. There’s no service. Screen cracked at the corner. My heart drops at the sight of this phone. Because it’s familiar.
A message thread is open. I know this thread. I know it without even reading the name on top. And I also know what I’ll see if I turn the phone over.
My hands start shaking violently anyway.
No. It can’t be. Please.
I flip it. There, peeling at the edges, faded from years of disuse, is the handwritten sticker. A sticker I know.
A + L
My breath leaves me in a slow, hollow exhale. I remember the day she stuck that on there. We were seventeen. Nervous, glowing. So sure of something that felt eternal—our naive love that she had ended.
Her eyes were so bright when she pasted this, so full of love.
She had written it herself. L for her. A for me. Her Alexander.
My thumb brushes the worn edges of the sticker.
My father didn’t sell my sister. He saved her. But he didn’t just save her, did he? He traded Charlotte.
For my Leila.