Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Werewolf
People said my name like it carried weight. Like it meant something more than just a word stitched onto a leather cut.
Werewolf.
Most of the time, I let them believe the stories because fear was better than respect. Fear got doors opened quicker. Fear kept knives out of my back when I walked into rooms where I didn’t belong. Fear was survival.
But the woman who’d followed me out of the bar tonight? She wasn’t afraid enough. Not of me, and not of this life.
I leaned against my bike, arms crossed, and watched her fight to keep her chin high. She tried not to look rattled, but I saw the tremor in her fingers and the way her bag strap cut into her white-knuckled grip.
“Tyler Cross,” she said again, like the name was supposed to mean something.
It did.
More than she realized.
But I wasn’t about to tell her that.
“Sweetheart, you need to turn around and walk your sweet butt back to wherever you came from.”
Her shoulders squared. “Don’t call me sweetheart.”
Christ. She had a mouth on her. The kind that would get her killed in places like this.
I pushed off the bike and closed the distance between us. Not much, just enough to let her feel the difference in size and the weight of me blocking out the flickering streetlight. She had to crane her neck to keep eye contact, and damn if she didn’t. Brave. Stupid. Maybe both.
“Then don’t ask questions you’re not ready for the answers to,” I said, low enough that she’d feel the warning more than hear it.
For a second, silence stretched between us except for the distant hum of the highway. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
Instead, she said, “Six months ago, my brother was murdered. The cops called it random. I don’t believe that. I know he was with someone tied to your club the night it happened. And every lead and whisper I’ve followed since then comes back to one name. Yours.”
She might as well have pressed a knife to my throat because Tyler Cross was a ghost I’d hoped would stay buried.
Tyler hadn’t been some random drunk who picked the wrong fight. He’d seen everything he shouldn’t have. The guns in the back of the van and the wrong men at the wrong time. The order had come down fast: clean it up with no witnesses.
I kept my face blank, but inside, gears turned. Tyler had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, sure, but not random. Not to me. And if this woman had half a clue what she was poking her nose into, she’d be running back to whatever safe little life she’d crawled out of.
Instead, she was standing here with fire in her eyes and demanding I hand her the truth like it was a receipt she could fold up and shove into her purse.
I stepped closer and crowded her space. She took half a step back, but she didn’t run.
“Let me give you a piece of advice, Demi,” I said and tasted her name on my tongue. “Walk away. Forget my name. Forget the Broken Sons. If you keep chasing ghosts, you’re going to end up lying in the ground next to your brother.”
Her jaw clenched. Stubborn as hell. “You think you scare me?”
I almost laughed. Not because she was wrong—I scared plenty of people—but because of the way she said it. Like she hadn’t spent a second wondering if maybe she should be scared.
“You should be scared.” I leaned in until my breath brushed her hairline, until I could see the quick flutter of her pulse at her throat. “You have no idea what kind of monster you’re dealing with.”
She swallowed hard, but her voice didn’t break. “Then maybe you’re exactly who I need.”
That one hit me like a sucker punch.
For a heartbeat, I just stared at her, caught between wanting to shake sense into her and drag her the hell away before anyone else noticed. Her stubborn eyes locked on mine and dared me to deny her. To laugh in her face, and to walk away.
I should’ve done all three.
Instead, I turned, swung a leg over my bike, and fired up the engine. The roar shattered the tension hanging between us, and exhaust smoke curled in the cool night air. “You don’t want me, sweetheart,” I said over the engine’s rumble. “Trust me.”
And then I gunned it, leaving her standing in the street with her bag clutched to her chest.
If Demi wasn’t going to protect herself from me, then I would do it for her.
The clubhouse was twenty minutes down the road, tucked off an old county highway where the trees pressed in tight and the only light came from the neon skull sign that buzzed over the front door.
I parked, killed the engine, and sat for a second with my hands still on the grips. My knuckles itched from holding back. Every instinct in me screamed that Demi Cross was a problem and a wildfire that would burn through the Sons if I didn’t stomp it out now.
And yet I’d walked away.
Inside, the place smelled like smoke and leather and the faint metallic tang of oil that never really washed out of the floorboards. A few of the brothers were crowded around the pool table, arguing over a shot. Music blared from a speaker in the corner, and laughter rolled like thunder.
But the Prez’s office door was cracked open, with light spilling out into the hall.
I knocked once and pushed it open.
Prez looked up from the paperwork spread across his desk. Tank-sized, bald, and scarred from a dozen knife fights. He was the kind of man you didn’t lie to without a damn good reason.
“Wolf,” he said and leaned back in his chair. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost.” I dropped into the chair opposite him. “A girl.”
His brow furrowed. “What girl?”
“Tyler Cross’s sister.”
That got his attention. He set his pen down slowly, and his eyes narrowed. “She sniffing around?”
I nodded once.
“What’d you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
He studied me for a long moment, the way he always did when he was weighing whether to believe me. “Nothing, huh? You didn’t scare her off?”
“She’s stubborn.” I thought of her chin tilted up and the fire in her voice. “Doesn’t scare easy.”
“That makes her dangerous.”
I didn’t disagree.
“Handle it,” Prez said finally. “If she keeps poking her nose where it doesn’t belong, she’ll end up like her brother. We can’t afford cops sniffing around again. You understand me?”
I nodded, but my jaw clenched. Because I understood all too well.
Handle it.
Which meant one of two things: scare her so bad she ran, or make sure she never asked another question again. Dead.
The second option left a sour taste in my mouth.
I left the office with the Prez’s warning echoing in my head. The sounds of laughter and clinking glasses hit me again, but none of it sank in.
All I saw was Demi Cross’s face.
The way her voice didn’t waver when she said my name.
The way she looked at me like maybe I was the monster who’d killed her brother or the one who could find the truth for her.
And the sick part?
I didn’t know which one I was, either.
Later that night, I stretched out on my bed in the back of the clubhouse.
Sleep didn’t come easy. It hadn’t for years. Too many ghosts. Too much blood.
But tonight wasn’t about old wars or past sins. Tonight, every time I closed my eyes, I saw her.
Demi.
Her stubborn chin. She tried to hide her trembling fingers. The way her eyes caught the light and refused to look away from me.
And the thing I hated most? The part that would get her killed faster than anything?
I didn’t want her to walk away.
I wanted her to come back.