CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
MICHAEL
In a poker game, the best liar wins.
I open my eyes and the world slowly comes into focus. The first thing I see? A mess of pink curls spilled across my chest.
Alicia.
She rolls off me with a satisfied sigh, her breath still uneven.
“So. Fucking. Good,” she says.
I rest my arms behind my head, taking a good look at her lying next to me, bare from the waist down. She’s gorgeous. A hell of a distraction.
I look up at the ceiling, where the peeling paint flakes off a little more every night. Sarah’s been trying to clean up this old fire station all week, lighting candles, hanging blankets, trying to make it feel like home.
She even tried scrubbing the graffiti off the door on the second floor: “The world’s not safe anymore.” But the paint’s soaked in deep, stained like dried blood clinging to skin. No matter how hard she scrubs, the message won’t fade.
Maybe it’s not supposed to.
Maybe it’s a reminder. A warning. A truth we can’t ignore.
We weren’t supposed to stay in Denver this long.
James’s shoulder has healed by now, and we’ve already got everything we need to leave.
Sarah made sure of it, checking off her things-we-need list at the department store like she was prepping for doomsday.
Our dad used to do the same thing, and honestly, some days it really does feel like we’re living through doomsday.
But James has been helping Alicia get the people Tyler hurt out of the city, giving them supplies so they can start over somewhere far from the Reed brothers’ rules. That’s why we’re still here. And I respect his decision.
He saves people.
He’s gone before sunrise and doesn’t come back until after dark. Alicia sets up distractions all over town, pulling Frank’s men—the last gang still working for Tyler—out of position while James sneaks people out, one group at a time.
The country’s been gone a long time now. No government. No real laws. But that doesn’t mean there’s no control. Most of the towns have a gang running them, each with its own set of rules. You either follow them… or you run.
Countryside communities and places like my dad’s ranch don’t always last either. They’re just wiped out. Burned, raided, emptied. So people end up crawling back to the cities, forced to live under someone else’s rules.
But Tyler’s different. He’s the only one James has ever heard of who controlled other gangs too. His territory isn’t just Denver. Alicia said he runs half of Colorado, and anyone who breaks one of his rules is dragged into the city. And once they are in Denver, they never leave.
Alicia found a group of them, and every single one said the same thing Ryan told us back at the lake house.
Tyler and his brothers are fucking ghosts.
James has never even seen Tyler out in the city. Not once. And I gotta admit, every time I look out the window of the fire station, I search for him.
After everything we’ve heard—the things he’s done, the lives he’s wrecked, the homes he’s burned… fuck. That son of a bitch deserves to die.
But you don’t find him.
He finds you.
All those people Alicia rescued are hiding in the department store.
James says most of them are too scared of Tyler to even hold a gun.
So he spends time teaching them how to hide in the woods, take shelter in small towns, set up barricades and traps, and keep food safe from thieves at night.
Basically, everything we’ve been doing since we left the ranch.
It reminds me of when he helped Nathan and his brothers at the school last year. The way he talked to them. The way they listened. The way their eyes changed, like they were seeing a future they didn’t think they had. One where they didn’t have to follow some twisted rules.
James gives people something they think they lost.
Hope.
It’s rare these days. Maybe that’s why James fights so hard to protect it, even when he doesn’t think he deserves it.
The man’s lost… a lot.
He’s told me some stories about his past—not everything—but it’s not hard to piece it together. Just look at his scars. You don’t get those by accident.
The day I found him on the edge of our land, he didn’t say much. But I saw it in his eyes. He needed peace, even if just for a while. And somehow, deep down, I knew he wasn’t gonna find it alone.
I think he found it in Sarah.
James might give other people hope, but it’s my sister who gives it to him.
Being hunted isn’t new to me, but it never sits right.
The hunter becoming the prey? That’s not who I am.
I know Sarah’s a target, not because of anything she’s done, but because people are after James.
Axel made that crystal clear in the parking lot that day.
They wanted revenge on James for being an Outsider, and she got caught in the middle of it.
Yeah, that shit messed with my head.
But I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to her on my watch.
We’ve done a lot of damage to Tyler without even realizing it.
He’s already lost a lot of power. Aaron isn’t alive to give him cars.
Axel isn’t breathing to do his dirty work.
Brandon isn’t around to run guns for him.
If Tyler ever finds out it’s James Hill screwing with his grip on Colorado, Sarah will be his next target.
I wanna protect her. God, I do. But every day, it feels like I’m losing more ground.
I can’t lose her.
I already lost Dad.
I already lost the ranch.
I already lost O—
Shit! Don’t go there, Michael.
Alicia’s pink nails draw teasing circles over my bare chest, her touch dragging me out of my thoughts.
“We should do this more often, blondie,” she says, smiling to herself. “We’re good together. Alicia Phillips and blondie. They’d make movies about us.”
I smirk, grab her by the nape, and crash my mouth against hers. My tongue slides over hers, hot, needy. She tastes like ice-cold beer and trouble.
Her fingers skim down my stomach, nails scratching just enough to send a shiver through me, and my cock thickens.
“Let’s go another round, blondie,” she says, her voice all sex, all sin.
She takes my hand and guides it under her shirt until I’m cupping one of her breasts. The second I squeeze, a breathy whimper slips out of her. Her nipples are hard, her body already begging for it.
I grab her hips and pull her into my lap, guiding her until she’s straddling me.
“Take off your shirt. I wanna see your tits,” I growl.
Alicia licks her lips as she hooks her fingers under the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head. No bra. Just perfect tits on full display with dark pink nipples peaked and begging for my mouth.
“Jesus, your tits are a fucking dream.”
I cup them and roll my thumbs over her nipples. She arches her back, grinding against me. I feel the slick heat of her pussy against my cock. But just as I’m about to flip her over and take her, something stops me.
My eyes catch the ink on the side of her belly, and everything inside me goes still.
A bird.
A fucking bird tattoo.
Tyler’s mark.
My grip tightens, and before she can react, I twist her off me and pin her to the blankets, flipping us in a heartbeat.
I pin her wrists above her head, my body caging hers in. My pulse is pounding like a war drum, anger boiling up fast.
“Why do you have his mark?”
Alicia shifts, pulling against my hold, but I don’t let her go.
Then she fucking giggles.
Giggles!
“Answer me!”
“Because I was one of his birds,” she shouts.
The air in the room turns thick, suffocating.
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“You’re funny sometimes, blondie.” Alicia laughs, shaking her head.
Her body relaxes under me, and she stops fighting.
“What do you think happens when someone breaks the Reed brothers’ rules, huh?
James knows. That’s why he won’t let Sarah show her face outside this building.
If Tyler finds out it was James who took out the gangs doing his dirty work…
he’ll take her. Make her one of his birds, just like I was.
That’s what he calls us—his birds, like we’re some kind of fucking pets. ”
Her words are flat, detached, as if she’s talking about someone else’s life. Not her own.
I’m fucking speechless.
My hands ease off her wrists, and I trace the tattoo on her side, fingertips skimming her skin under the ink.
My touch is careful now. Then I really look at her.
Teeth marks on her left thigh. Two scars above her right breast. Another near her neck, just below her ear.
And faint ones trailing from her shoulders down to her forearms, her pale skin making every mark look fresh.
How did I not see this before?
I cup her face and make her look at me. “What did he do to you?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just lifts a hand and plays with my messy hair, brushing it back from my forehead.
“Tyler…” Her voice drops, and something about the shift sends a warning through me. “Tyler doesn’t just own things. He consumes them. Uses them up without a second thought. He and his brothers… they make you beg for death, and they never give you what the fuck you want.”
Nobody says something like that unless they’ve lived it.
I reach up, tuck a loose strand of pink hair behind her ear, then ask the real question.
“How did you become his bird?”
“My brother was an Outsider. The first one who tried to take down Tyler. One day, they caught me as punishment for him breaking the rules. He tried to rescue me… and Tyler killed him for it.”
I stare at her face, fingers tracing the damage Tyler left behind on her skin, lost in thought.
Her brother was an Outsider. And Tyler killed him.
My jaw clenches.
She lost her brother because he did exactly what I’d do for Sarah. No hesitation. No questions. Just straight into the fire if it meant saving her. And James? He’d do the same. Hell, I’ve seen it in his eyes.