Chapter 5
I feel nothing but Legion—inside me, around me, holding me up when my legs have gone liquid. When it's over, I press my forehead against his shoulder, breathing in steam, and copper, and him.
"Stay with me," he murmurs, mistaking my silence for the drugs pulling me under again.
"I'm here," I whisper, though I'm not sure where here is anymore. Not the Savannah who wears diamonds. Not the Savannah who smiles for cameras. Just... raw. Unfiltered. Stripped down to bone and breath.
Legion carries me from the shower, sets me on the closed toilet lid, wraps a towel around my shoulders. Not the Egyptian cotton I'm used to, but somehow softer. He doesn't speak while he dries my hair with another towel, his touch gentle like I'm something that might break.
"We need to go," he says finally, his voice low. "I've got clothes you can wear."
I nod, watching him open the medicine cabinet. He takes out gauze, medical tape, a tube of antibiotic ointment. I stare at the brand on his chest. An angry red B surrounded by blistered, weeping skin.
It's infected. Anyone can see that.
He follows my gaze, touches the edge of the burn with his fingertips. "It's fine."
It's not fine. Nothing about that thing is fine.
It's deliberate mutilation.
What makes a man allow other men to burn their mark into his flesh like he's cattle? Like he's property?
Course, I don’t say any of this out loud. What right do I have? I let my mother photograph every private moment of my childhood. I let Marcus believe he owned me.
Legion quickly dresses the wound, wincing the whole time. Then he gives my wrists and ankles the same treatment.
I was tied to a bed. I was violated. Not as bad as it could've been, but that's like saying drowning is better than burning. Either way, something precious gets taken.
"This might sting," Legion murmurs, dabbing ointment on the raw circles where the zip ties bit into my skin. His hands are steady, but his jaw keeps clenching, unclenching. Little earthquakes of rage he's trying to contain.
"How long was I there?" My voice sounds strange to my own ears. Sandpaper wrapped in cotton.
"Three days." Legion's fingers pause on my wrist, his thumb brushing over my pulse point. "What do you remember?"
Flashes. Marcus's voice, sticky-sweet like syrup left too long in the sun. The smell of cherry pie. The drugs making the world tilt sideways. His hands on me, washing places that weren't his to touch.
"Enough," I whisper. "Not everything."
Maybe that's a blessing.
Maybe it's worse not knowing.
Legion leaves for a moment before coming back with clothes.
White t-shirt with some kind of picture on it that's faded nearly to nothing. Jeans, soft but too big and too long. And a hoodie - black with the Badlands name splashed across the front. “I don’t have no shoes for you,” he says.
“I only have the one pair of boots—no time for shopping these days. And Mercy’s shoes are too small.
But you’ll be OK, right? Until we can get you settled? ”
I nod. Shoes are the least of my worries.
He helps me dress, careful not to brush against the bruises blooming like ink stains across my ribs. All of it is too big, but I'm instantly warm. Wearing Legion's clothes is like being hugged by him and it all smells like leather and smoke and something darker.
"They're gonna be looking for us," he says, pulling on jeans. No underwear. I watch the denim slide up his thighs, catching on still-damp skin. "They'll look here first. So we’re goin’ to the clubhouse. Mercy's there. We'll go there too, figure out next steps."
The clubhouse. Where men with knives, and guns, and criminal records drink, and fight ,and plan whatever men like that plan.
Where they branded Legion like property.
"Marcus will call his father," I say, the words tasting sour. "Senator White has friends in the police. He'll call Cash and Wyatt. They'll say I'm unstable, that I need to be brought home for my own safety."
Legion's face hardens. "You're not going back."
"I know that," I snap, sharper than I meant to. "But they have resources we don't."
He steps right up to me, hands on my face. His palms are callused, warm. "The club has resources too, Savannah. Different kind, but just as effective."
I want to believe him. I want to believe we can outrun this—my family, Marcus, the carefully constructed cage they've built around me since birth. But I've spent thirty years being Savannah Ashby, and I know better.
"I'm tired," I say instead of arguing. "Can we just... go?"
Legion nods, helping me walk. My legs feel disconnected from my body, like I'm a marionette with half the strings cut. He steadies me with an arm around my waist.
"I need to grab some things first," he says.
I lean against the wall in the hallway while he moves through the trailer, gathering what we need. Through the small window, I can see the moon rising over the prairie, painting everything silver-white. The same view I've seen my whole life, just from a different angle.
Once he’s got what he needs, he shrugs on his leather cut—the vest with patches that marks him as Badlands. Property of. Member of. Belonging to. Then the jacket. All black leather and zippers. Covered in Club patches that document a life I know almost nothing about.
We step outside into the night air that smells like coming rain. His motorcycle sits under the porch light, waiting like a black matte beast. Legion hands me his helmet—he's only got one—and I take it and put it on as he swings his leg over and kicks the bike to life.
The engine growls, hungry.
Legion nods to me. I climb behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. The bike roars beneath us, vibration climbing up through my bones as we pull away from the trailer, away from what just happened in the cabin, away from the person I was three days ago.
The highway unfolds like black ribbon, just moonlight to guide us. Wind cuts across my neck where the hoodie doesn't cover. I press myself against Legion's back, arms tight around him. His hand finds mine, squeezes once, then returns to the handlebar.
The drugs still fog the edges of my mind, but the night air and the rumble between my thighs burns some of it away.
I hold tighter to Legion's jacket, feeling the patches under my fingers.
Wondering what I'm riding toward.
Wondering what I've left behind as Legion takes me away from the only life I’ve ever known. Barefoot on the back of a Harley doing seventy on a Montana back road. The pegs are cold against my soles, and every bump jars my bruises like fruit in a basket.
I left whatever was left of Savannah Ashby, ranch princess, back in that cabin.
What I am now is a girl in borrowed clothes with asphalt grit between her toes.
After what seems like a long time of nothing but wind, we turn off the highway onto a dirt road. The bike kicks up dust that fills my mouth and coats my skin.
We slow as a chain-link fence appears, topped with barbed wire that catches the moonlight like fish hooks. Floodlights cut through the darkness, illuminating spray-painted words across a metal gate: NO MERCY, NO MASTERS.
A figure emerges from shadows—lanky, nervous hands. He slides the gate open without a word, and Legion nods as we pass through. The young man's eyes catch on me, widen, then drop away quick.
The clubhouse sprawls before us at the end of a dust-packed main street, a two-story structure built from weathered timber and corrugated steel.
The front porch stretches the length of the building, its boards sun-bleached and warped.
Heavy wooden doors the color of brown rust host the club emblem—a skull wrapped in barbed wire.
Rows of motorcycles gleam in formation, chrome and black, lined up like soldiers. The building hulks against the night sky, more bunker than home.
But this is home to Legion. I can feel it in how his shoulders relax, how his breathing changes.
Legion cuts the engine, kicks the stand, and silence rushes in. He swings his leg over, then helps me off. My legs wobble, still weak from whatever they pumped into me. His hands take off my helmet, then steady my waist.
For a moment it's just us, breathing together in the dark.
Then they appear.
Men materialize from doorways, from shadows, from around corners. Big men with hard eyes and leather cuts like Legion's. A few women hover at the edges, but an older lady with silver hair down to her waist waves them back inside. Her eyes catch mine, measuring, judging.
"Legion!" A small voice cuts through the tension. Mercy barrels across the lot, all knobby knees and flying hair. "You left me! You said you wouldn't leave me again!"
Legion catches her, lifts her up against his chest. "I know, Merce. I'm sorry."
"You promised," she says, pounding tiny fists against his shoulders. "You promised!"
Then Mercy sees me. Her fists stop mid-air. "Savannah?"
The silence shifts. Every pair of eyes turns to me—really looks at me. At my dead eyes. At Legion's clothes hanging off my frame. At my bare feet on the cracked blacktop.
Little stones dig into my soles. The collective gaze of a biker gang weighs on my skin, heavier than any camera my mother ever pointed at me.
"I've got no shoes," I say, because it's all I can think to say.
Something in the air changes. The edges of everything go soft. The silver-haired woman's face shifts from suspicion to something else.
"Mercy, go on up to bed," she says, her voice surprisingly gentle.
"But—"
"Now, honey. Go on."
She does. She leaves. But something else remains.
I can't really put my finger on it, it's more of… an aesthetic. Something gloomy and gray. Something… woeful remains behind.
I've complicated things.
I've ruined Legion's homecoming.
Now they all just look sad, these dangerous men with their tattooed knuckles and knife scars.
Legion bends suddenly, scoops me into his arms like I weigh nothing. My head rests against his chest, right over the infected brand that marks him as theirs.
He kisses my cheek, smiles at me with a gentleness that doesn't reach his eyes. "You're OK," he tells me, though we both know that's a lie. "I've got you now."
Then he carries me inside, past the ring of watchful outlaws, into the dark heart of the Badlands where a neon skull sign flickers blue-white-blue against the far wall.
Legion's arms are steady beneath me, but my thoughts scatter like prairie birds. Tryin’ to see everything at once. This room isn't just a bar, though it has one—long and gleaming with bottles that catch the neon's pulse. It's something more.
Couches line the walls, worn leather cracked in places that tell stories of men too drunk to stand.
A pool table dominates the center. Video games—the old kind with joysticks and pixelated screens—stand sentinel in the corner like artifacts from another time.
Every surface tells a story I wasn't meant to hear.
Everyone follows us in, silent as church. Their boots make less noise than they should on these old boards. One steps forward from the pack. Older, with eyes like winter and a beard that's seen more summers than I have birthdays.
Legion says, “Brick.” Like that’s enough. Like evoking his name is an explanation all its own. The name fits—he's built like something that could crush you without trying.
Brick doesn't look at me. He points to something across the room—a door, maybe, or another hallway—but his eyes stay locked on Legion.
"Now," he says. Just that. One word that hangs in the air like smoke.
Legion nods, understanding something I don't. He moves to a couch with faded paisley upholstery and sets me down gently, like I might break.
I might, actually. I’m not sure yet.
He crouches in front of me, his eyes finding mine. There's a softness there that doesn't match the rest of this place, or these people.
"I'll be right back," he says, voice low enough that only I can hear. "You stay right here—no one will fuck with you. All right?"
I realize I'm still clutching his motorcycle helmet against my chest like it's the only thing keeping me together. Maybe it is. My knuckles have gone white around the edges.
Legion smiles, just barely, and brushes a piece of hair from my eyes. His fingers linger against my temple, and I lean into the touch without meaning to. The brand on his chest must hurt, but he doesn't show it.
"OK?" he asks again, searching my face.
I nod because speaking feels impossible. My throat's gone dry, and the words that used to come so easily—the perfect captions for perfect photos—have abandoned me.
What would I say anyway?
I'm scared. I'm lost. I don't know these people. I don't know myself anymore.
His thumb brushes my cheek one more time, and then he stands. The space between us suddenly feels vast and cold.
I hold the helmet tighter.