Chapter 2
AMANDA
The clubhouse kitchen smelled like coffee strong enough to burn a hole straight through the counter. Someone had left the pot on too long again, and Brutus was muttering about it under his breath as he stirred something questionable on the stove.
Coming down from my room felt like stepping into a storm. Loud voices, heavy boots, the scrape of metal, Smoke pacing in circles like he was late for a meeting no one told him about.
Someone was arguing near the back hallway about a missing wrench.
Another voice barked back that it had been returned last night and if it wasn’t where it belonged now, that sounded like a personal problem.
A chair scraped loudly against tile. Laughter followed.
The kind that came easy when you trusted the people around you to have your back.
The kitchen wasn’t just loud, it was layered.
Sounds on top of sounds. Conversations that overlapped and cut each other off.
Familiar rhythms I was only just beginning to recognize.
Someone slammed a cabinet too hard. Someone else complained about it.
Smoke barked once, sharp and impatient, like he thought the whole thing was inefficient.
I took another step inside, letting it wash over me.
For a second, my breathe hitched in my chest. There were too many voices coming from too many directions. My body braced out of habit, waiting for something to go wrong.
But nothing did.
No alarms. No raised weapons. No sudden stillness.
Just noise. Normal, messy, alive noise.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until it was there.
I hovered in the doorway for a second. The noise rattled in my skull, but the silence upstairs had been worse.
I shifted my weight, feeling the solid press of the tile under my feet.
Cold. Real. The smell of burnt coffee and grease clung to the air, sharp enough to cut through the lingering haze in my head.
My pulse was still a little too fast, my shoulders a little too tight, but my body wasn’t folding in on itself the way it had upstairs.
Down here, there was nowhere for my thoughts to echo unchecked.
I focused on small things. The scrape of a chair leg. The rhythm of boots crossing the floor. Smoke’s nails clicking as he paced like he was tracking invisible orders. Each sound anchored me, stacking one on top of the other until my breathing slowed without me consciously telling it to.
Noise meant people. People meant witnesses. Witnesses meant I wasn’t alone with my own fear.
I pushed my fear away the best I could and stepped fully into the room, choosing chaos over quiet. Choosing this over hiding.
“Morning,” I called out.
No one looked up. Typical.
Smoke noticed me first.
I still wasn’t used to the dog. He was big, bigger than he needed to be, with solid black fur, high pointed shepherd ears and these sharp, intelligent eyes that tracked everything.
Ranger had rescued him from a military kennel years ago, and once Smoke imprinted on someone, that was it. They were marked. His.
Apparently I’d been added to his list.
He let out this low excited bark and charged toward me, nails clicking hard on tile. I braced myself as fifty-something pounds of muscle and anxiety skidded into my legs. He pressed his head into my stomach like he was checking I was still breathing.
“Hey,” I whispered, rubbing behind his ears. “I’m okay.”
He didn’t look convinced.
Ranger sat at the counter behind him, sharpening a knife with long, steady movements. I’d learned yesterday that Ranger didn’t cook much, but he cut everything, meat, vegetables, the occasional intruder. The man had a talent.
He nodded once at me and went back to the knife. That was basically a hug from him.
Brutus scowled into his pot again. “It’s stuck.”
“That’s because you burned it,” Doc said from his chair across the kitchen. He had a medical magazine open but wasn’t reading a single word. “Maybe don’t put the heat on high like you’re trying to weld it shut.”
Brutus ignored him and kept stirring.
“Where’s Ariel?” I asked.
Cap had moved her back to the clubhouse yesterday. He said there was too much heat at the safe house and wanted her protected by the entire club, which was understandable given what she’d been through.
The bruises she’d tried to explain away still flashed behind my eyes.
The way her voice went flat when she talked about the worst parts, like distance was the only way to survive remembering them.
Before the elevator, before the Watcher’s gaze locked me in place, that had been enough to steady me.
Enough to make me believe I could walk straight into the fire and drag the people responsible into the light.
Now, all I could think about was the moment my body hadn’t listened.
The way my feet had rooted to the floor while a girl was pulled screaming out of sight.
Ariel had survived worse than that, and I’d frozen.
The anger was still there, hot and vicious under my skin, but it no longer felt clean.
It tangled with shame and doubt, with the terrifying question of whether wanting to take them down was enough if my body couldn’t back me up when it mattered.
“Upstairs,” Doc said cutting through my spiral of thoughts. “Cap doesn’t want her going anywhere without an escort.”
“I’m sure Ariel loves that,” I replied. Knowing my sister, I had a feeling she had been complaining about that since Cap brought her back here.
“She’s pissed,” Ranger added. “Keeps trying to sneak out the side porch. Cap caught her twice this morning.”
I laughed. “She’ll try again.”
“Yep,” Ranger said, stone-faced. “She’s upstairs right now planning new routes.”
That actually sounded right.
A mug clinked lightly on counter beside me. Wrecker must’ve slipped in while I was distracted; he had a way of filling a room without making noise. He handed me the mug without comment.
“You need to drink,” he said.
“You all treat me like I’m gonna pass out at any moment,” I muttered.
“You did last night,” Doc said.
“That was one time.”
Doc raised an eyebrow. “Once is enough.”
Before I could argue, Smoke dropped a tennis ball in at my feet.
“Not now Smoke,” I told him gently.
Smoke’s tail wagged harder.
“Throw it,” Ranger said without looking up. “He won’t leave you alone otherwise.”
I tossed it down the hall, and Smoke bolted after it so fast his paws slid across the floor. Brutus looked at him, then back at his pot.
“If that damn dog knocks into me and make me spill my chili…”
“No one wants your chili anyway,” I said.
Brutus glared at me. “You want lunch or not?”
“Not if it’s whatever’s in that pot.”
He pointed the spoon at me like a threat. “You’re banned from eating it.”
Doc snorted. “Lucky girl.”
The kitchen settled into its usual chaos. The guys bickering over nothing, cabinets slamming, a smoke alarm chirping like it had a personal vendetta. No one rushed to fix it. No one needed to.
I found myself tracking everyone without meaning to.
Brutus grumbling at Ranger while making sure he stayed between me and the back door. Ranger sharpening blades like he wasn’t listening, even though I knew he caught every shift in the room. Doc hovering just close enough that if my breathing hitched, he’d be on me in two steps.
And Wrecker.
He leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, gaze steady and unblinking. Not crowding. Not hovering. Just there.
My shoulders loosened before I noticed they’d been tight.
Safe.
That’s what he felt like. Even with everything that had happened, even with my nerves burned raw.
He was safe.
I didn’t question it. Didn’t pick at the edges of that feeling to see what it was made of.
Wrecker watched everything. Everyone knew that. He tracked movement the way other people tracked conversation. I’d caught him checking exits more times than I could count, adjusting his position without thinking, placing himself between me and open space like it was instinct.
Surprisingly, it didn’t feel controlling.
It felt comforting.
Like if I stayed close enough to him, nothing bad could reach me.
I told myself that was strength. His strength. And maybe, by proximity, some of it could rub off on me.
I didn’t stop to wonder what would happen if he wasn’t there.
Didn’t ask myself whether safety that depended on someone else standing guard was real at all.
I looked down at my hands, picking at a loose thread on my shirt. “Anything I can do?” I asked.
Doc lifted his magazine without looking up. “Eat something.”
Ranger: “Stay where we can see you.”
Brutus: “Don’t insult my chili.”
Wrecker: “Just breathe.”
That one scraped something deep in my chest.
But being told to sit and exist wasn’t helping. I needed to be useful. Needed to feel like I wasn’t dead weight dragging the whole club down with me.
So I grabbed a cutting board and moved next to Ranger. “Give me something to chop.”
“You’ll cut your fingers off,” he said.
“I won’t.”
He slid an onion toward me. “Try not to bleed.”
Ghost entered then with no sound and no warning. One blink he wasn’t there, next blink he was leaning over the laptop, black mask with a skull on it reflecting the kitchen lights. He didn’t acknowledge anyone, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop a degree when he arrived.
“Morning, Ghost,” I said anyway.
He didn’t respond.
Doc leaned in. “He heard you. That’s the closest you’ll get to affection.”
“That tracks.”
I chopped the onion exactly twice before my eyes started burning.
“Jesus,” I muttered, blinking hard.
Ranger glanced over. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I said, even as my eyes watered. “Just didn’t need tears today.”
He snorted quietly and went back to what he was doing.
I rolled my eyes and wiped at them, which Ranger stopped immediately by catching my wrist. “Don’t touch your eyes.”
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“You’re welcome. You’re still doing it wrong.”
Scout would’ve been all over this.
Not because we’d ever done this together.
But because that was just how he was. Always drifting into the middle of things, filling space like he belonged there.
He would’ve leaned against the counter behind me, close enough to be annoying, making some comment about how I looked like I was preparing for combat instead of chopping an onion.
He liked being where the noise was. Liked stealing food when Brutus wasn’t looking and denying it badly when caught. He had a grin that said he knew exactly how much trouble he was in and didn’t care.
I hadn’t known him long. Not really.
But in the week that I had started working with the Iron Battalion MC to save Ariel, he’d treated me like I belonged from the start. No pity. No hovering. Just casual inclusion, like it was obvious I was supposed to be here.
The thought warmed something in my chest.
Then burned.
Because we hadn’t even gotten the chance to see what that could’ve been. Before I could snap back, the thought hit me like a punch:
Scout should be here. He’d be chirping at me for holding the knife wrong. He’d be making fun of Ranger. He’d be stealing food from Brutus’s pot and getting yelled at for it. He’d be laughing.
My throat felt tight again. I set the knife down carefully and wiped my palms on my jeans.
“Any word on Scout?” I asked.
Silence hit the room instantly.
Ghost’s hands froze on the keyboard.
Brutus stopped stirring.
Ranger set the knife down.
Doc lowered his magazine.
Wrecker stepped closer, just enough that I could feel the heat of him at my back.
Cap walked in a second later, as if pulled by the shift in the room. He looked at all of us, then at me.
“No,” he said. “But we’re closer.”
The room stayed frozen anyway.
Closer didn’t sound like good news.
It sounded like maps spread out on tables. Long nights. Missed turns.
Scout wasn’t the kind of man who vanished quietly.
He filled space. Took up air. Made noise just by existing.
If he was gone long enough for “closer” to be the best answer, then something had already gone wrong.
Taken.
The word slipped in without permission.
Not missing. Not lost.
Taken. And the longer he was out there, the harder it would be to get him back. My chest squeezed around something sharp. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t—I should’ve—”
Wrecker’s voice cut in behind me. “You didn’t cause this.”
Ghost’s mask turned my way. His stare was unreadable, but the air around him crackled. He wasn’t angry at me.
He was angry at whoever hurt the kid he’d mentored.
Cap stepped farther into the room, voice steady in that quiet way that made people stop breathing. “Scout wasn’t grabbed because of you.”
I blinked at him. “But the timing—”
“The ring took Scout,” he said. “Because they thought he saw something. Because they wanted leverage. Not because of you.”
My stomach twisted anyway.
“I still feel responsible,” I said softly.
Doc shook his head. “Guilt’s easy. Blame’s lazy. Don’t take on shit that isn’t yours.”
Brutus nodded at that which was a rare agreement.
Ranger exhaled slowly. “We’ll get him back.”
Ghost didn’t say anything, but the tension rolling off him was darker than anything else in the room.
The silence settled like smoke. Thick, low, hard to breathe through.
I swallowed, pushing past the tightness in my throat. “What can I do?”
Wrecker stepped beside me. Close enough that his arm brushed mine. “Just stay with us,” he said.
It wasn’t a plea.
It was an order wrapped in concern.
But underneath it, buried deep, I heard something else:
He expected things to get worse.
The kitchen noise slowly returned. Brutus clanking the pot. Ranger picking up the knife. Doc flipping a page he wasn’t reading. Ghost typing again like nothing could distract him.
But something had shifted.
A line had been crossed.
And the room wasn’t just a kitchen anymore. It was a war room waiting for someone to light the fuse.