Property of Royal (Kings of Anarchy MC: Kentucky #2)

Chapter 1

Becki

I wake up chained to a bed.

At first the fact doesn’t land. I feel the cold bite around my wrist before my mind crawls toward the truth. Metal. Locked tight. Thick enough, it could hold a wild dog or something worse. The cuff scrapes when I pull, and the chain rattles against the steel frame bolted straight into the floor.

It ain’t tight enough to cut bone. Just tight enough to keep me owned.

A low, animal sound rolls out of my throat. I push myself upright and blink until the cracked ceiling stops swimming. Smoke, leather, bourbon, and something male cling to the sheets. Every inch of this place breathes him.

This ain’t a nightmare. Ain’t a drunken memory scrambled with fear.

This is Royal’s room.

Royal.

The dark one.

Legend’s blade in human form. The quiet brother who glides through the Lockup like a ghost with a heartbeat. The biker who dragged me out of Paradise Falls last night without a word. The bastard actually chained me to his bed.

Naked.

Waking up nude in a biker’s bed ain’t nothing new.

Anger hits first. Hard. I yank on the cuff so violently that the metal bruises my wrist in seconds. Fine. Hurt me. Better that than the shame boiling up within me. But the chain doesn’t budge. Whoever installed this setup meant business. This wasn’t put here for fun. It was forged for control.

My mouth tastes like acid. My head throbs. My throat burns. I swing my gaze across the room. Royal doesn’t decorate. He occupies. Bed. Nightstand. Bars on the window from when this place was still a jail. The walls are bare concrete. No pictures. No softness. Just a warning.

And now I’m part of that warning.

A folded stack of clothes sits at the foot of the bed. My black tank top. Denim cutoffs. Nothing else. Not even my panties. My humiliation prickles my chest.

He folded these.

After ripping them off.

He kept my panties.

I dress anyway. Best I can. Dignity is thin as tissue paper in this place, but I cling to it with both hands.

As I pull the tank top over my head, the long chain finds a home in my shirt and memory strikes fresh and sharp.

Sophie’s stupid stricken face. Her trembling perfect hands down to her manicured nails.

My own voice cutting her down with that threat.

I told her I would marry her daddy. I told her that the Reverend would officiate.

I told her she would lose Paradise Falls because I would hand it to my daddy on a silver plate.

Then, when he found out, Legend’s face went cold.

The cold-hearted king I used to worship.

I thought his teeth might break. He aimed to hit me.

I saw it. He never would, but he wished to.

The king of Hell, Kentucky, eyed me like he was imagining where to bury my body.

Not literally. Legend doesn’t kill women.

But he stared at me like I wasn’t even a woman, or that he wished like hell, his own rules were different.

Royal didn’t flinch. He stepped forward as if he had been waiting for that moment all his life. He grabbed me, hauled me off the ground, and threw me onto the back of his horse like a bag of sin he planned to hide. He locked me in here like the club’s filthiest secret.

Now I’m here, chained like a monster he intends to slay. I sit on the bed, breathing through the humiliation, when the shadows shift.

Royal ain’t just a man. You feel the biker before you see him.

He steps out.

No knock.

No hello.

Fucking makes me jump out of my skin.

He fills the room like smoke thick enough to choke on. A shadow leaning against the wall, long legs braced, tattooed arms folded like he’s trying to hold the whole world still.

When my eyes adjust, he comes into focus.

His tongue ring catches the light when he licks his bottom lip, slow, tense, controlled. He tosses a folded blanket onto the bed like that makes this room less of a prison.

Biker’s tall and cut lean, all prison-yard muscle, the kind of body built to fight or cage someone against a wall without breaking a sweat.

His skin is ink, poppies blooming up one arm, skulls and saints battling on the other, a chain of script winding down his throat like a spell.

Even his fingers are marked, rings glinting black against the dim light.

His face is worse. Or better. There’s a tiny cross tattoo under one lined eye. Another word, impossible, curves above his pierced brow, like he carved his own prophecy into his skin.

Biker’s fucking impossible, alright.

Sharp cheekbones. Sharper piercings. Full mouth.

Black-lined eyes like midnight glass, flat, unreadable, watching me like I ain’t a person but a puzzle he intends to take apart slowly.

His hair is dark and slicked back, a knife-blade part that makes him look less like a biker and more like something dangerous that crawled out of the gutter.

Dangerously sexy, that is.

Dressed all in black, always. Black boots, black jeans that fit too well, black tank or mesh shirt clinging to tattooed muscle. Longish, pointy, black-painted nails tip his fingers.

Even his jewelry is dark, rings like knuckle weapons, a chain around his throat that looks part fashion, part warning. Nothing about him is accidental. Every piece he wears says don’t touch unless you want the consequences.

His clothes shouldn't appear costly, but they seem to on him. The mesh clings to the ink on his shoulders, the flowers and skulls shifting with every slow breath he takes. His jeans hang low on narrow hips, a blade holster strapped against his hip like a second skin. He always looks half-dressed and fully dangerous, like he walked out of the kind of nightmare girls pretend they don’t have.

Royal doesn’t dress like a biker. He dresses like a rock star at a funeral, beautiful, dark, inevitable.

I shouldn’t notice any of it.

But I do.

And he moves too slow. Deliberate. Every step controlled. Predatory. Like a man who never lifts his voice because he never needs to. This is Royal. The Kings of Anarchy’s quiet menace. The poet with blood on his hands. The man who put a chain on my wrist. And the worst part?

He doesn’t look a bit sorry.

Biker looks like he’s been waiting for me to wake up. Suddenly, he moves like something half feral. Stares at my bare feet, then at the fresh bruise on my wrist, then at my chopped hair like each detail is a clue he is assembling.

“You get off on this, jailer,” I bite out.

He doesn’t speak. Royal rarely speaks unless he must, and when he does, it is rarely comforting. His silence is pressure. Weight. Heat.

“I want out,” I say.

“You stay,” he answers, voice low enough I feel it in my ribs. “Until the farm deal is dead.”

Paradise Falls. Always the damn farm. My daddy wants it. Sophie already survived hell keeping it. I’m the stupid girl wedged between two worlds that both want to use and abuse me.

“You think chaining me up will fix anything in this damn town?” I snap. “Legend should’ve killed me last night. Sophie probably begged him to. Why the hell am I here?”

Royal tilts his head.

“Because I’m leverage? Leverage doesn’t break. It bends. You think crazy Becki’s gonna cry?” My laugh is sharp as I answer my own question. “You really don’t know me at all.”

Still nothing. Those dark eyes burn steady.

“You want me to break,” I whisper. “But you ain’t Legend. You ain’t even the man in the mask.”

He freezes. A breath caught in his chest. A tiny shift, but enough.

I push harder. “You liked hiding.”

He moves so fast the air cracks. One hand slams into the headboard beside my face. The noise is violent and intimate. I flinch because my body immediately craves him, not because I fear him.

“I’ve never touched you,” he growls.

“You’ve always wanted to,” I whisper back. “You still do.”

Heat rolls through the narrow space between us. His chest rises and falls with effort. Close enough, I feel the truth vibrating off him. Something inside him reaches for me, but something bigger drags him back.

He steps away. Not because he wants to. Because he must.

“You’re staying,” he says again, voice like he’s reading a eulogy. “Not just because of the deal. Because you’re the only one who might know what the Reverend is hiding.”

A cold bloom spreads in my stomach.

“What is he hiding?”

Royal stares at the door. “Another girl went missing in Hell.”

“Who?”

“Marlena.”

Everything inside me goes still.

He leaves without waiting for my breath to come back.

The lock clicks.

Silence swallows me whole.

I slide down onto the floor, my legs folding beneath me. My hand curls around the chain, gripping tight as if I can squeeze answers out of it. I twist around my knees on the floor.

Girls from Hell have been disappearing for years. Some were from Pearly Gates. My daddy’s church. My daddy’s flock. My daddy’s property. But lately some are from the MC crowd.

My mind races through faces. Josie. Marlena. Cammy. Girls from Pearly Gates. Girls from town. Girls from the club. Girls who should’ve been safe. Girls my daddy preached over. Girls who vanished into fog.

Somewhere down the hall, I hear hushed voices. One man says something about “disappearing overnight.” Another mutters about “the ones from the Reverend’s list.” Someone else curses under his breath.

The Reverend’s list.

My stomach rolls.

I knew some of the girls. Josie with the soft hair.

Valerie, who used to steal communion wine with me when we were fourteen.

Cammy, who was barely old enough to drink.

They were trouble sometimes, but they didn’t deserve to vanish.

My daddy always had explanations. God’s punishment. God’s calling. God’s wrath.

The Reverend always said God called them home.

What if God’s not the one calling?

Asking for a miracle, I search in my pockets.

My fingers close around cold metal. I thank God it’s still there.

The basement key. My daddy’s key. The one I stole.

It might be nothing. It might be everything.

I stole it because I thought it might help me blackmail Sophie, or force Legend’s hand, or give me something to use in the power struggle.

But what if it is something else entirely? What if the secret beneath the Reverend’s church ain’t about business or land or inheritance?

What if it is about the missing girls? I hide the key in my frayed waistband.

Royal can chain my body. He can’t chain my mind.

My heart is pounding hard enough to shake my ribs.

I force myself to breathe slowly. Evenly.

Royal may think he has caged me. He may think I ain’t nothing more than leverage.

But he’s wrong.

I will get out.

I will find answers.

I will burn every lie to the ground if I have to.

Hours pass. I drift in and out of restless sleep until dawn creeps through the window. The lock rattles. My heart jumps, then sinks when it ain’t Royal.

Oaks steps in with a protein bar and a shit-eating grin.

“You’re prettier when you’re chained up, sweetheart.” He bites his lip. “Oh, what would you do, oo oo for a Cliff bar?” he sings with a wink.

“You flirting with me, Oaks? What would your Ol’ lady think about that?”

“You’ll never get a chance to run your mouth to Bethany.” He tosses the bar like he’s feeding livestock. “It’s a good thing Legend says you’re off limits.”

As he strolls out, I swallow the humiliation and the bar. I need strength.

Later, Royal returns. His steps are too soft for a man that big. His blade rests at his hip. His hood is low. He closes the door behind him, and the room shrinks.

“I want out,” I say. Calm this time. “I want to talk to Legend.”

He studies me for a long breath. Silent.

“I’m leverage,” I murmur. “Leverage only works if you let it speak.”

Still, he watches.

“You’re scared,” I add. “Not of me. Of what you will do if you get too close. Heard I’m off limits.”

He approaches slowly this time. His hand lifts, and I brace for impact, but he only brushes a strand of hair from my face, like he’s testing how soft I am. His fingers graze my cheek. My pulse stutters.

“You’re a dangerous creature,” he murmurs.

I smile without humor. “Takes one to know one.”

He pulls back. Turns. “Nothing’s off limits to me. You’re my prisoner.”

I smile coldly. “Then you should lock the door.”

He stops.

Just a second.

His hand pauses on the handle. Just long enough for me to see that he heard me. Felt me. Understood exactly what I meant. And when he leaves this time, I swear I see his hand tremble. Royal leaves me in the quiet, shaking with the truth neither of us can escape.

My fate is in his hands.