Chapter 2
Hannah couldn't stop seeing him kill those men.
Fifteen seconds. Maybe less. Two men with guns, military training, the kind of muscle that made her skin crawl when they'd walked into her clinic three hours ago—and Legion had gone through them like they were nothing.
She stood in the ruins of her waiting room, arms wrapped around herself, watching him through the shattered front window.
He was on the phone again, pacing the parking lot with that controlled energy that reminded her of the operators she treated.
The ones who never quite stopped scanning for threats, even when they were face-down on her treatment table.
Except those men had been broken.
Legion wasn't broken. Legion was something else entirely.
The rumble of motorcycles grew louder, and two bikes pulled into the lot.
The riders dismounted with the same economical movements she'd watched Legion use—no wasted motion, no hesitation.
They exchanged words she couldn't hear, then one of them climbed into the SUV with the bodies while the other started photographing the scene.
Like this was routine.
Like they'd done this before.
Hannah's stomach lurched. She pressed her hand against the cool glass of the window, steadying herself. She'd spent her entire adult life around military men. Knew the difference between training and trauma, between capability and violence.
What she'd just witnessed was neither.
It was precision. It was practice. It was a man who killed the way other people breathed.
And he was walking back toward her.
"Brothers are handling the cleanup." Legion pushed through the door, bringing the humid evening air with him. "SUV will disappear. Bodies too."
"Just like that."
"Just like that." He stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.
Silver hair, weathered face, scars she'd traced during PT sessions without understanding what they meant.
She understood now. "You have about twenty minutes before we need to move. Start talking."
"Move where?"
"Somewhere these people can't find you." His eyes swept her face, lingering on the bruise. Something dark flickered in his expression. "The pattern. You said they were targeting veterans. Explain."
Hannah wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him she didn't take orders from patients—former patients—motorcycle club presidents—whatever the hell he was. But the adrenaline was crashing, her cheek throbbed with every heartbeat, and everything she'd built lay in ruins around her.
"Three months ago, I lost a patient." She moved away from the window, unable to stand still. "Tommy Reeves. Rangers, two deployments, chronic back pain from a bad jump. I'd been treating him for eighteen months. He was doing well—reducing his medication, building strength."
"And?"
"Overdose. Fentanyl-laced pills the ME said he bought off the street." Hannah's voice cracked. "Tommy wasn't buying street pills. He had a prescription. He had me. He was getting better."
Legion's expression didn't change, but she felt the shift in his attention. The same focus he'd turned on those men in the parking lot.
"Two more deaths followed," she continued. "Scott Wiltern, six weeks after Tommy. Chronic knee issues from IED shrapnel. Then David Bueller, three weeks ago. Rotator cuff from a training accident."
"All your patients."
"All my patients. All with similar injury profiles—chronic pain requiring long-term management." Hannah stopped pacing, turned to face him. "And all three of them received phone calls in the weeks before they died. Calls from a 'pain management specialist' offering 'alternative treatments.'"
"Someone's using your patient list to identify targets."
"Not just identify." She felt the anger rising, the fury she'd been choking on for months. "They're hunting them. Finding veterans who are already in pain, already struggling, and offering them exactly what they think they need. Cheaper pills. Faster relief. No insurance hassles."
"And then they're dead."
"Then they're dead." Her voice broke. "Three men who trusted me with their recovery. Three men I was supposed to help heal."
Legion was quiet for a moment. His eyes tracked around the destroyed clinic—the smashed equipment, the scattered files, the wreckage of six years of her life.
"How'd they get your patient list?"
"I don't know." Hannah ran her hands through her hair, dislodging the ponytail she'd forgotten she was wearing. "My system's secure. HIPAA compliant. I don't share records with anyone."
"Someone got in anyway."
"Obviously." Frustration sharpened her tone. "I've been trying to figure out how for months. I reported the pattern to the VA, the local police, anyone who would listen. No one cared. Three dead veterans are just statistics to them."
"Not to me."
The words landed like stones in still water. Hannah looked at him—really looked—and saw something she hadn't expected.
Rage.
Not the hot, explosive anger she'd seen in damaged operators. This was colder. Deeper. The fury of a man who'd spent decades protecting people and was watching them die on his home ground.
"These men," she said slowly. "Tonight. They work for whoever's running this?"
"That's what we're going to find out."
"We?"
Legion stepped closer. Close enough that she could smell leather and gunpowder and something sharper underneath—the copper scent of the violence he'd just committed, still clinging to his skin.
"You've got information I need," he said. "Patient patterns, contact histories, anything that might lead to whoever's running this operation. And I've got the resources to do something about it."
"Resources." Hannah laughed, the sound thin and brittle. "You mean more men like you? More... whatever that was in the parking lot?"
"I mean a brotherhood of operators who spent their careers taking down threats exactly like this one." His voice dropped, rough with something that made her pulse jump. "Men who protect their own. And right now, whether you like it or not, you're one of ours."
"I'm not—"
"You treat veterans. Special operations veterans. Men who came home broken and needed someone to put them back together." Legion's hand came up, fingers brushing her chin, turning her face toward the light. Toward the bruise. "That makes you ours. That makes this our fight."
Hannah should pull away. Should remind him about boundaries and consent and the dozen reasons why letting a man who'd just killed two people touch her face was insane.
She didn't move.
"I've been handling this on my own for three months," she said. "I can keep handling it."
"Your clinic is destroyed. You've got a black eye. And whoever these people are, they're done asking nicely." His thumb traced the edge of her bruise, gentle in a way that didn't match the violence she'd witnessed. "You're smart enough to know what comes next if you stay here alone."
She was. That was the problem.
"So what, I just... go with you? Hide at your compound while you handle everything?"
"You share what you know. You let us protect you while we hunt these bastards down. And when it's over, you rebuild." His eyes held hers, dark and intense. "I'll make sure of it."
"You can't promise that."
"I can promise whoever did this to you is going to regret it.
" His hand dropped from her face, but he didn't step back.
"I can promise no one's going to touch you again without going through me first. And I can promise that when we find them—and we will find them—they're going to die the same way their product killed your patients. "
Hannah's breath caught. She'd grown up around hard men. Moved eleven times as an Army brat, watched her father deploy to places he couldn't name, learned to read the language of violence in shoulders and silences.
She'd never met anyone who spoke it quite like Legion.
"This is insane," she heard herself say. "I don't even know your real name."
"You know what matters." He pulled out his phone, checking something on the screen. "Brothers have the scene cleared. We need to move."
"I haven't agreed to anything."
"You haven't disagreed either." That almost-smile again, sharp and knowing. "Grab whatever you need from the back. We leave in five."
"And if I refuse? If I tell you I can handle this myself?"
Legion looked at her for a long moment. The club sounds faded. The ruined clinic disappeared. There was just him, silver and scarred and more dangerous than anyone she'd ever met, watching her with eyes that saw too much.
"Then I'd tell you that stopped being your decision the moment they put their hands on you." His voice was quiet. Final. "You're coming with me, Hannah. The only question is whether you walk to my bike or I carry you."
She should be furious. Should be screaming about autonomy and choice and every feminist principle she'd ever held.
Instead, something hot and complicated twisted in her chest.
"Five minutes," she said, and hated how much it sounded like surrender.
Legion nodded once, satisfaction flickering in his expression.
"Four and a half now. Move."
She moved.