Chapter 11
The Back Door
“Shadow was there,” the dragon whispered. “The one who opened the gate.”
“We’ll find him,” Ren whispered back.
The wind took the words, carried them into the dark ahead.
They rode for miles. No headlights, no talking. Just the roar of engines and the ghosts chasing their taillights.
By the time they hit the ridge outside town, the others started peeling off—small groups vanishing into backroads and shadows.
Eagle gave the hand signal, split formation, standard protocol.
Ren stayed tight behind Tater. Her leg was screaming now, every heartbeat a pulse of white fire under her skin.
They didn’t stop until they reached the overlook—the one above the quarry, where the club used to meet when things got bad enough that walls couldn’t hold it.
Tater killed his engine first. The sudden silence hit harder than the wind. Gravel popped under his boots when he swung off and turned to me. The glow from the distant town barely touched his face, just enough to catch the sharpness in his eyes.
“Let me see it,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
His voice carried that low, dangerous calm—the kind that said argue and you’ll regret it. Ren sighed and slid off the bike, leg wobbling. When she pulled her hoodie up, his jaw tightened. The bandages were soaked halfway through, blood dark against her side.
“Ren—”
“I said I’m fine.”
He didn’t answer. Just tore open one of the med packs from his saddlebag and started working in silence. The night around them buzzed with cicadas and faint radio static from somewhere down in the valley.
When he pressed the gauze down, she flinched. Not from the pain. From his hands—steady, careful. Too careful.
“You held your ground back there,” he said finally. “But you froze when that back door opened.”
Ren met his eyes. “Because I knew them.”
His fingers paused. “Them?”
“Shadow,” she said. “From before.”
Something in his expression shifted—anger, recognition, maybe both. He stepped back, fists clenching.
“He’s supposed to be dead.”
“Guess he didn’t get the memo.”
“Who was the other one?”
“You ain’t gonna like it, it was one of our own, one of our prospects.”
Tater turned, staring out at the lights below. The muscles in his shoulders coiled tight, like the world itself had just spat in his face.
“Then this ain’t just a betrayal,” he said quietly. “It’s a reckoning.”
The dragon stirred inside her again, restless, and cold. Ren could almost feel its approval—like it fed off his rage, his promise.
“Then we burn it down,” she whispered.
He looked at her. Long enough for something dangerous to pass between them.
“Yeah,” he said. “We will.”
The wind slipped through the trees, brushing her hair across her face, and the smell of oil and gunpowder clung to her like a ghost that wouldn’t let go. The adrenaline’s gone, but the ache stayed—a deep, low pulse that didn’t belong entirely to her.
The dragon’s still awake. Watching through her eyes.
It likes him.
That thought unsettled her more than the wound ever could.
Tater stood a few feet away, arms crossed, cigarette ember flaring red in the dark. He looks carved out of something older than the road, older than this world. His kind of stillness is dangerous—it’s the calm before a man chooses who dies next.
And gods help her; She finds comfort in it.
She shouldn’t.
She’s seen what happens when she trusts men who live by vengeance. The burn scars on her shoulder still remember the last time she believed someone’s promise meant safety.
But Tater isn’t safety.
He’s a storm with rules.
And maybe that’s the difference.
Ren stared at the faint glow of town far below them, the place where normal people are probably laughing over cheap beer, where no one’s bleeding out behind locked doors. For a heartbeat, she wished she could be one of them.
But the dragon moved beneath her skin, restless. It doesn’t dream of peace. It dreams of the hunt.
And when she thinks of Shadow—his smirk, the way he slipped out into the dark while their brothers hit the floor—her pulse turns sharp and cold.
Tater’s voice broke the quiet. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
she glanced at him. “Depends how bloody your thoughts are.”
His mouth lifted in half a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Bloody enough.”
The dragon purred in approval.
And just like that, she stopped pretending she’s the girl who ever wanted out of this life.
After Tater walks off to make the calls, Ren stays where she is—on the edge of the overlook, gravel cold under her palms. The world felt too wide all of a sudden. Too loud in its silence.
The dragon inside her stretched, scales whispered against bone. It wanted to run, to hunt, to finish what started back at the club. Ren closed her eyes and breathed through the hunger, but it didn’t fade. It never did.
“You think this is about vengeance,” she whispered to it.
A low rumble answers from somewhere deep in her chest.
It is survival.
Maybe it was right. Maybe it had nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with what’s left of Ren trying to stay whole.
Shadow’s name still burned at the back of her throat. He used to laugh when she swore she’d never kneel to anyone. Said freedom was just another kind of leash. He said monsters like her always find masters who smell like smoke and ruin.
He wasn’t wrong.
Just early.
Ren pressed a hand to her side, feeling the new bandage, still warm from Tater’s touch. There’s something dangerous in that memory, something softer than she deserves.
For a second, she almost let herself believe in it.
But softness doesn’t last. Not in this world.
The dragon’s voice curled through her thoughts again, silk over steel.
“He will come for you. And you will not hide this time.”
“No,” she whispered. “Not this time.”
A storm brewed in the distance—lightning crawled across the sky like veins. She pulled her hoodie tight, watching it roll closer, tasting rain and iron on the wind.
Every instinct said run.
But she’s run enough for one lifetime.
So, she sat there, bleeding and breathing, and let the storm find her.
If Shadow’s alive, then fate’s already chosen sides.
And this time, she’s the fire.