Chapter 16
Oisín
I wake sore enough that the first breath of morning feels like an accusation.
I let my body report itself in slow, aching pieces, the tender places where Saint’s mouth stayed too long and his hands held too tightly.
The previous night comes back through sensation, Saint’s rage turning into something he could put on me instead of his father.
The problem is, it worked.
Saint is still in one piece.
He didn’t storm out of this room and tear into Sol.
He didn’t take that monstrous aftermath back into the clubhouse and find some poor idiot to break apart because the warehouse hadn’t been enough.
He used me until there was nothing left in either of us but breath and exhaustion, and sometime after that, he slept.
Not the shallow half-rest he usually takes like an insult, but heavy and warm behind me, one arm locked around my waist as if even unconscious he didn’t trust the world not to take something from him.
I had lain awake longer than he did, with my back against his chest and his breathing against the nape of my neck.
I’d watched enough men go to Canon angry and walk out maimed to understand what I’d done, even if I didn’t know what to call it.
Maybe it was a poor attempt at keeping Saint in one piece.
Maybe it was selfishness. Maybe I just didn’t hate whatever this had become, which was the most dangerous possibility because it made me responsible for wanting it.
Though, the bed beside me is empty now.
I roll carefully onto my back and stare at the ceiling until the ache settles into something I can move through. Daylight presses around the curtains in thin pale lines, and somewhere beyond the door, the clubhouse is awake far earlier than it should be.
That’s my first warning.
The second is Saint.
My gaze flicks toward the dresser, Saint dressed in dark dress pants, boots, and his cut, the black leather sitting across his shoulders like it belongs there more than skin.
There’s no shirt beneath it yet, just the ink over his chest and arms, the muscle moving under tattooed skin as he fixes one cuff around his wrist. He looks too awake for a man who slept after violence and fucked like he was trying to punish the world through my body.
His head is shaved close, jaw clean, mouth already curved like he knows exactly how long I’ve been looking.
“Morning, Sín.”
My voice comes out rough. “Why are you dressed like that?”
His smirk deepens. “Because we’re getting married.”
I frown, wondering if I misheard him. Then the words arrange themselves properly, and every ache in my body seems to wake at once. “We’re already—”
“Contract-bound, yes. Official, no.” He shrugs off his cut, reaches for a shirt laid over the chair and shrugs into it with infuriating calm. “There’s one for you too, hanging in the bathroom. Dress pants, shirt, cut. Two Tylenol on the counter.”
Sol’s words from last night hit me all at once as I just sigh. I push myself up on one elbow and immediately regret it when my body protests. Saint watches the movement with a satisfaction that makes my face heat before I can stop it.
“Fuck,” he says, stepping closer. “I really marked you, didn’t I?”
I look down despite myself. The sheet has slipped low enough to reveal fingerprints blooming faintly along one hip and a dark mark near my ribs. I don’t need a mirror to know my throat is worse. I feel the pull of it every time I swallow.
Saint comes to the side of the bed and reaches down, his fingers brushing along the side of my neck. The touch is lighter than I expect, his thumb tracing the edge of a bruise, and something in his face shifts for half a second, before the hard mask comes back down over it.
“Hurry up,” he says, hand falling away. “Both clubs are already waiting.”
I blink at him. “It’s not even time for breakfast.”
Saint shrugs as if morning weddings under duress are normal scheduling inconveniences. “What Sol wants, Sol gets until I become president. After today, I basically will be.”
I sit up slowly, keeping the sheet around my waist because some foolish part of me still thinks modesty matters after everything Saint has seen, taken, and left on me. “Is this because of the warehouse?”
“It’s because my father decided waiting gives Canon room to be stupid.”
“And you agree?”
“I agree with removing room from stupid men.”
That is as close to an answer as I’m likely to get. I climb out of bed carefully while Saint watches with a kind of lazy ownership that does absolutely nothing to steady me. He doesn’t touch me again before I reach the bathroom, which feels deliberate enough to be its own kind of touch.
I take a quick shower, just enough to be presentable before taking the meds, brushing my teeth, and stuffing myself into the clothing laid out for me. I hesitate with the cut, though. Yesterday, wearing it felt like betrayal. Today, it feels like a door closing.
When I step out of the bathroom, Saint’s eyes move over me from head to foot.
My skin prickles under the attention. “What?”
His mouth curves. “Looks better on you than your old one.”
“My old one had my family on it.”
The smile doesn’t fade, but something behind it sharpens. “So does this.”
Saint crosses the room, adjusts the front of the cut with one firm tug, then fixes the collar of my shirt where it sits unevenly against my throat. His knuckles brush a bruise he left, and my breath catches before I can bury it.
“Ready?” he asks.
“No.”
“Good. Means you understand the room.”
Both clubs’ officers are already gathered when Saint brings me into the room.
Obsidian stands on one side, Rogues on the other, not neatly enough to look formal but divided enough that anyone blind could feel the line between them.
Sol is at the center near the long table, cigar absent for once but the smell still clinging to him.
Canon is near the Rogue side with Varina beside him, Rook at her shoulder, their faces carved into different versions of anger.
I hate this. All of it. It feels… off. The room goes quiet as we approach.
I’ve imagined weddings before, in vague, embarrassing ways that belonged to a much younger version of myself.
Not white flowers or churches, exactly, but something warm.
Someone choosing. Someone looking at me in front of other people and making the choice sound less like obligation than joy.
That old, foolish image dies quietly in the smell of smoke, coffee, and gun oil while Sol opens the folder and gestures us forward.
This is not a wedding. It’s an execution with better paperwork.
Sol doesn’t waste ceremony on romance. “We’re here to formalize the alliance already signed between Obsidian MC and the Rogues MC through marital bond.
Oisín Caolan Ward transfers legal and club affiliation by agreement of both presidents and the signature of both parties.
Saint Solomon Masters accepts the bond, assumes responsibility, and binds Obsidian’s protection and claim to the terms already recorded. ”
Accepts. Assumes. Binds.
Every word sounds like it belongs in a shipment ledger.
Saint stands beside me, close enough that his sleeve brushes mine, his gaze firmly on me. I can feel Canon watching from the other side of the room, Varina’s anger and humiliation, and every Obsidian member wondering whether I’m going to shake when the pen hits my hand.
Moth taps the document on the table and sets the pen beside it. “Signatures where marked. Saint first.”
Saint takes the pen and signs without looking at the paper, his eyes on me the entire time.
Moth turns the document toward me. I grab and quickly sign my name, needing to move along this gathering as quickly as possible.
When I set the pen down, Saint’s hand brushes the small of my back, enough to remind me he’s there.
Sol looks at the signatures, then closes the folder with a final sound. “It’s official.”
Breakfast follows because criminals apparently enjoy making violence and paperwork share a table with eggs.
The clubhouse rearranges itself into a strained, ugly kind of hospitality.
Tally moves through the room with the efficiency of someone who can feed enemies without letting either side forget she owns the food.
Obsidian and Rogue officers sit in clusters that pretend to mingle and fail.
Bricks takes a chair where he can see both entrances.
Moth eats standing up with his tablet balanced in one hand until Tally threatens to take the plate away.
Demo tries to make polite conversation with one of the Rogue prospects and nearly chokes on his coffee when the man asks whether Obsidian always holds weddings before breakfast.
Saint stays close for the first ten minutes, then gets pulled toward Sol, Moth, and a low conversation near the far side of the bar. His attention keeps finding me in the same way it always does, crossing the room without his body moving.
Varina waits until he’s speaking to Moth before approaching, her hair pulled back tightly, her face sharp with lack of sleep or too much anger or both.
For a second, I remember her in our mother’s kitchen, younger and barefoot, stealing toast from my plate because she said mine always tasted better.
Then she speaks, and the memory goes cold.
“So this is it.”
I look at the eggs in front of me. “Apparently.”
“You look good in their cut.”
I hear the insult hidden under the words and choose not to pick it up. “You look tired.”
Her mouth tightens. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like we’re still allowed to have normal conversations.”
I look up at her then. “Are we not?”
She doesn’t answer quickly enough. Rook calls her name from near the Rogue side, and her jaw flexes as if she resents the interruption more than my question. “I need to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me.”
“Alone.”
“No.”