Chapter Twenty-Two
The compound smelled like a garden.
Blast stood in the lot at five p.m. and stared at what Becca had done to his world.
Flowers. Everywhere. On the picnic tables, the bar, the brick ledges, the fence posts.
Roses in mason jars lined the walkway to the clubhouse door.
Wildflower bundles hung from the garage rafters.
She'd even put a small arrangement on the seat of his bike — daisies, because of course daisies — with a note tucked into the stems.
Fourth bouquet. Last one you'll ever need.
His chest did something that probably required medical attention.
"You're grinning like an idiot," Razor said, passing him with a case of whiskey.
"I'm grinning like a man who's about to claim the most stubborn woman in Chicago."
"Same thing." But Razor's mouth twitched. "Chapel's ready. Alpha wants you in ten."
Ten minutes. In ten minutes, he'd walk into the chapel and say the words that made Becca his in front of every brother who'd ever ridden beside him. The words that meant she was Wolf property — protected, claimed, permanent.
His hands should have been shaking.
They were steady.
Brothers filled the lot as the sun dropped.
Bikes lined up in rows, chrome catching the fading light.
The fire pit was already going, flames throwing shadows across the flower arrangements that Becca had spent the entire morning placing with the precision of a woman who understood that beauty wasn't decoration — it was architecture.
She'd turned a meatpacking plant into something alive.
Blast found her in the common room, adjusting a rose arrangement on the bar with hands that were rock-steady and eyes that were anything but.
"Nervous?" he asked.
"Terrified." She didn't look up from the roses. "You?"
"Not even slightly."
She laughed — short, sharp, the nervous sound of someone who was about to jump off a cliff and had already decided to enjoy the fall. "Liar."
"I don't get nervous. I get excited." He moved behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her back against his chest. "Nervous is for people who aren't sure. I've been sure since you sold me flowers for a dead man's grave and didn't flinch at my scars."
"I flinched a little."
"You didn't. I was watching." He pressed his mouth to her ear. "You looked at my hands and you didn't look away. That's when I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That you were going to be trouble."
She turned in his arms, and the sight of her knocked the breath out of him.
She'd found a dress somewhere — dark green, simple, the kind of thing that looked unremarkable on a hanger and devastating on a woman with curly hair and strong hands and the backbone of someone who'd survived arson and armed assault and still arranged flowers the next morning.
"You're staring," she said.
"Get used to it."
"Blast." Alpha's voice cut through the common room. "Chapel. Now."
He kissed her forehead — quick, firm, a promise — and walked toward the chapel.
The room was full.
Every patched member of the Windy City Wolves stood around the table — Alpha at the head, Razor to his right, Scout and Fang and Stockyard and Lakeshore filling the remaining seats. The chapel smelled like leather and whiskey and the particular gravity of men who took ritual seriously.
Blast walked to the head of the table and stood beside Alpha. The president studied him with that measuring gaze — the one that weighed a man's readiness against his conviction and decided whether both were sufficient.
"You sure about this?" Alpha asked. Low enough that only Blast could hear.
"More sure than I've ever been about anything that wasn't attached to a detonator."
Alpha's mouth curved. "Bring her in."
The chapel door opened, and Becca walked in.
She moved through the room of hard-faced men with her chin up and her shoulders back, and Blast watched every brother in the chapel register what he already knew — this woman was not afraid of them.
Not intimidated by the leather, the scars, the violence that lived in these walls.
She walked into the Wolf chapel like she'd earned her place there.
Because she had.
She stopped beside him, and her hand found his under the table. Cold fingers lacing through scarred ones. Holding on.
Alpha stood.
"Brothers." His voice filled the chapel with the quiet authority that made men stop breathing and listen. "Blast has claimed a woman. He's bringing her before the club to make it official."
Blast looked at Becca. She looked back at him. And the words came — fast and loud, because that's how he did everything, because slowing down meant thinking and thinking meant doubting and he had never been less doubtful about anything in his entire chaotic, explosive, too-loud life.
"I met her in a flower shop on a block that was burning down.
She sold me roses for a grave I visit once a year, and her hands were steady even though someone was trying to destroy everything she'd built.
I came back the next day. And the next. And the next.
Because I couldn't stay away from a woman who looked at fire and didn't run. "
His grip tightened on her hand.
"She's the bravest person I've ever met.
And I've met men who defuse bombs for a living.
" A rough laugh moved through the chapel.
"She climbed through a burning window to save a stranger's baby.
She tore up a buyout offer while standing in the ruins of her shop.
She sat in this compound and built flower arrangements while we rode out to war, and when I came back, she was still here. Still working. Still standing."
He turned to face her fully. Her eyes were bright, wet at the edges, but her jaw was set.
"I'm loud," he said. "I'm fast. I fill every room I walk into because the silence scares me more than any bomb I've ever faced. But you — you made the silence feel like home. You held my hands still when they were shaking. You saw the man underneath all the noise, and you didn't look away."
His voice dropped.
"You're mine, Becca Sawyer. In front of every brother in this room, in front of this club, in front of anyone who ever tries to take you from me — you're mine. And I'm yours. Every scarred, broken, too-loud piece of me. Yours."
The chapel was silent.
Then Stockyard pounded the table. Fang followed. Razor. Scout. Lakeshore. Every brother hammering the scarred wood until the room shook with it — the Wolf approval, the brotherhood's acceptance, the sound of a family expanding by one.
Alpha shook his head, but the smile on his face was real.
"She's claimed," he said. "Anybody got a problem with that?"
The table pounding intensified.
"Good." Alpha looked at Becca. "Welcome to the pack."
Becca squeezed Blast's hand hard enough to grind bone.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice was steady. Her eyes were not. "For letting me in. For protecting me. For giving him —" She looked at Blast. "For giving him a place to belong."
"He found that himself," Alpha said. "You just gave him a reason to stay still long enough to appreciate it."
The chapel erupted. Brothers rose, chairs scraped, hands clapped Blast's back hard enough to stagger him. Stockyard pulled Becca into a bear hug that lifted her off her feet. Fang shook her hand with the gravity of a man signing a treaty.
They spilled into the lot where the party was already building — music and fire and the smell of grilled meat mixing with Becca's flowers until the compound smelled like something that had never existed before.
A biker garden party. Leather and roses. Violence and beauty.
Them.
The old ladies surrounded Becca within minutes.
"You survived the chapel," Claire said, pressing a glass of champagne into her hands. "That's the hard part."
"The hard part was not crying."
"Nobody would have judged you for crying." Natalie's smile was warm. "These ceremonies hit different when you're the one standing there."
"The men in that room would die for you now," Molly said. Matter-of-fact, the way she said everything. "Not because of who you are, but because of whose you are. That's how the club works. You're Blast's, which means you're theirs to protect."
"And they're mine to feed, apparently." Becca looked at the food tables. "Is that Stockyard's third plate?"
"Fourth," Claire corrected. "Don't worry. You'll learn the feeding schedule."
The party rolled past midnight. Brothers drank and danced and told stories that got louder with every retelling.
Blast held court near the fire pit, his energy at full blaze, entertaining a circle of brothers with a story about a demolition job in Fallujah that was probably sixty percent true and a hundred percent entertaining.
But his eyes kept finding her.
Across the lot, through the crowd, over the heads of brothers and old ladies and the organized chaos of a Wolf celebration — his gaze tracked her like a compass finding north.
Every time their eyes met, his grin softened into something private.
Something that belonged to quiet rooms and still hands and the spaces between heartbeats.
At one a.m., he found her at the picnic tables, rearranging a centerpiece that didn't need rearranging.
"You're fidgeting," he said.
"I'm perfecting."
"You're stalling." He caught her wrist, pulling her away from the flowers. "Come with me."
"The party's still going."
"The party will survive without us." He pulled her toward the clubhouse door, his grip warm and insistent. "I've spent four hours sharing you with the brotherhood. That's my limit."
"Possessive."
"Claimed. There's a difference." He grinned over his shoulder. "Come on, wife."
"I'm not technically your wife."
"You're my old lady. In this world, that's bigger."
He led her up the stairs, past the sounds of celebration bleeding through the walls, to the room that had been his and was now theirs. The door closed behind them, and the compound noise faded to a hum.
The rose was still on the nightstand. The one she'd saved from the wreckage. Wilted now, petals drooping, but alive.