Claimed By Werewolf (31 Days of Trick or Treat: Biker & Mobster)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Demi

The dive bar smelled like stale beer, cheap perfume, and secrets. The kind of place my brother would’ve hated. It was too loud, too dangerous, and too full of men with patches sewn on their backs that screamed don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.

But I had questions.

Six months ago, my brother was murdered. The cops called it “a random act of violence.” Wrong place, wrong time. End of story. Case closed.

They were wrong.

I knew it in my bones, the same way I knew the sun would rise in the morning. Tyler didn’t just stumble into something; he found it, tripped over it, and maybe even tried to stand up against it.

He’d been working nights at a warehouse on the south side.

The kind of place that paid in cash and didn’t care who clocked in as long as the crates kept moving.

I used to tease him for it, said it sounded sketchy as hell.

He’d laughed it off and told me it was just boxes and forklifts. But now I wasn’t so sure.

And whatever it was, it led me here, to the bar where whispers of the Broken Sons MC bled into the smoke-thick air.

I sat at a corner table, nursed a flat Coke, and pretended to scroll on my phone. Every so often, I glanced at the crowd. Men in leather cuts leaned against the pool tables. Women draped themselves over laps like accessories. Conversations slurred with whiskey and laughter.

And then I heard it.

“Wolf’ll handle it. He always does.”

The words came from two bikers hunched near the jukebox with their voices low but not low enough. My pulse spiked.

Wolf.

I’d read the name before in a thread buried deep in an online forum that linked the Broken Sons to Tyler’s last night alive. But reading it in cold text was different than hearing it in this place.

I forced my breathing to slow and leaned back in my chair. Wolf. The name rolled through my head, and every nerve ending buzzed.

The jukebox clicked, the men laughed, and my gaze slid toward the bar. That’s when I saw him.

He wasn’t laughing. Wasn’t drinking. Just… watching.

He leaned against the wall like he owned it.

Tall, with broad shoulders that stretched the leather of his cut.

His hair was long enough to curl around his collar, dark like the shadow stubble along his jaw.

His arms were folded, with tattoos inked into skin that looked carved out of something harder than stone.

And his eyes, God, his eyes found mine across the room like they’d been waiting.

Cold. Sharp.

Predator’s eyes.

I looked away too fast and nearly choked on my Coke. Smooth, Demi. Real smooth.

I told myself not to panic. Not to let him see I’d been listening. But when I glanced back up, his mouth curved, not into a smile, not even close. More like a warning. A curl of lips that said he’d caught me and wasn’t the least bit surprised.

The bikers by the jukebox clapped him on the back as if they’d just been talking about him. “Werewolf,” one of them said with a laugh. “Man, you scare the shit out of people just by standing there.”

Werewolf.

The infamous enforcer of the Broken Sons MC.

The one name that kept circling back to me no matter where I dug, and no matter who I questioned.

Tyler’s ghost whispered in my ear. That’s him.

I swallowed hard, shoved my phone into my bag, and stood. My heart pounded so loud it drowned out the Metallica song pouring from the jukebox. I told myself I wasn’t afraid. That was what I came here for.

Answers.

I followed him out when he pushed through the door. He didn’t look back and didn’t hurry. It was almost like he knew.

The night air slapped me in the face, cool and damp, and carried the scent of rain-soaked asphalt. He headed for a blacked-out Harley parked under a streetlight, and I told myself now or never.

“Werewolf!” I called. My voice was sharper than I expected.

He stopped just as he got to his bike. Slowly, he turned his head just enough for me to see the edge of his profile.

“Who the hell are you?” His voice was low and rough. The kind of sound that belonged to a man who smoked danger for breakfast.

I stepped closer and clutched my bag like it might shield me. “My name’s Demi. And you’re going to tell me what you know about Tyler Cross.”

His gaze slid over me, slow and deliberate, like he was cataloging everything about me.

Then he turned fully, and the streetlight caught the scar running along his jaw. His lips pulled into something that might’ve been a grin if grins could bite.

“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice dripped with menace and something else I couldn’t place, “you don’t want to know the kind of shit you’re asking about.”

Maybe not. But I wasn’t going anywhere until I got my answers.