Chapter 6 Detonation #3
The room considered that. I watched the faces around the table—anger banking into calculation, the primal need for vengeance shaping itself into something more strategic.
"When?" Hawk's voice was sharp.
"Tomorrow night. They move every Wednesday, like clockwork. Their arrogance is their weakness."
"Then we exploit it." Hawk straightened, his expression hard. "This is recon in force. We intercept, we see what they're carrying, we make sure they understand that what happened today has consequences. But we don't kill unless we have to. The goal is intelligence, not massacre. Not yet."
"And Tyler?" Blade's gaze shifted to the empty chair beside me.
"Tyler comes with us." The words came out before I'd fully thought them through, but they felt right. "He knows Cross's methods, knows how federal operations work. And after today, he's earned the right to hit back."
"He's not a member." Blade's voice was neutral, but I heard the question beneath it. "He's not even a prospect."
"He was almost killed on our property by our enemy." I met Blade's eyes, held them. "That makes him ours to protect. And to avenge."
Silence stretched. Then Hawk nodded.
"He comes. Tank, you're responsible for him. Keep him alive, keep him useful." Hawk looked around the table. "Tomorrow night, we ride. Rest up, check your weapons, get your heads right. This is the first real move we've made against the Wolves. It needs to count."
The meeting broke. Members filed out, conversations starting in low murmurs.
Tomorrow night, the war would truly begin.
And Tyler would be riding beside me into whatever came next.
I found him outside as the sun was setting, standing at the edge of the lot where the Sportster had been.
The debris had been cleared away, the crater filled with gravel, the scorched pavement hosed down until it almost looked normal.
Almost. If you didn't know what had happened, you might not notice the dark stains that hadn't quite washed away, the slightly wrong texture of the ground where fire had melted asphalt, the subtle wrongness that would take years to fully fade.
But we knew. We'd always know.
Tyler didn't turn when I approached, but his shoulders shifted slightly—acknowledging my presence without demanding anything. The golden light of sunset caught his profile, softened the sharp edges of his face, made him look younger than he was. More vulnerable.
"Church is over. We move tomorrow night."
"I know. Hawk told me." He paused. "You shouldn't have argued for me to come. You're injured. You should be recovering, not—"
"I'm going. And so are you."
"Tank—"
"You want to sit here while the rest of us ride out to face the people who tried to kill you? Wait by the phone like—" I stopped myself, took a breath. "That's not who you are. You don't hide. You don't run. I’ve watched you for over three months, Tyler. I know exactly who you are."
He turned then, something flickering in his expression that I couldn't name.
"Do you?"
"Yeah." I moved closer, close enough to see the faint tremor in his hands that he was trying to hide. "I do."
The silence stretched between us, thick with everything we weren't saying. The setting sun painted the sky in shades of blood and gold, and somewhere in the distance, a coyote called—a lonely sound, wild and untamed.
"When Cross and I were together," Tyler's voice dropped, intimate in the fading light, "he used to talk about control.
How the key to any operation was controlling the variables, controlling the environment, controlling the people around you.
" A hollow, bitter laugh escaped him. "He's still doing it.
Controlling me. Making me afraid to sleep, afraid to ride, afraid to—" He stopped, shook his head.
"Afraid to what?"
Tyler looked at me, and something raw passed across his face. "Afraid to want things. To let myself have things. Because he always finds a way to take them."
The words landed somewhere in my chest, settled there like stones.
"He doesn't control you. Not anymore. And he's not going to take anything else. I won't let him."
"You can't promise that."
"I just did."
Tyler stared at me for a long moment. The last light of the sun caught his eyes, turned them to amber, and I realized I was standing closer than I'd intended—close enough to see the individual strands of hair that the wind was pulling across his forehead, close enough to smell the soap he used and the smoke that still clung to both of us.
"Why?" The question was barely a whisper. "Why do you keep putting yourself between me and everything that wants to hurt me?"
I didn't have an answer. Or I did, but it was buried somewhere deep, in a place I hadn't looked at in a long time—maybe ever. A place where instinct lived, and want, and things I didn't have names for.
So I said the only thing I could: "Because I can't seem to stop."
Something shifted in his expression. His lips parted, and I saw his breath catch, saw the slight widening of his eyes.
Then Axel's voice came from the clubhouse door—dinner was ready, did we want any—and the moment shattered.
Tyler stepped back, the space between us opening like a wound.
"We should eat." His voice was carefully controlled. "We'll need the energy for tomorrow."
"Yeah." I forced myself to turn toward the clubhouse. "We should."
We walked back together, not touching, not speaking, the distance between us electric with everything we hadn't said.
Tomorrow, we'd ride into battle. Tomorrow, we'd face the Wolves on their own ground, find out what they were protecting, take the first real step in the war that had been declared this morning in fire and smoke.
But tonight, lying in my room, staring at the ceiling, all I could think about was the way Tyler had looked at me in the fading light.
The way I'd wanted to close that distance between us and never let him step back again.
Something was coming. Something bigger than the Wolves, bigger than Cross, bigger than the violence that waited tomorrow. Something I wasn't ready for.
But ready or not, it was already here.
And there was no stopping it now.