Butcher’s Blade (Savage Bastards MC #1)

Chapter 1

BUTCHER

The Huntsville night was thick with smoke and tension, the kind that clung to your skin and made every breath taste like gasoline and rage.

The Royal Bastards’ clubhouse pulsed with music and laughter, but Butcher wasn’t hearing any of it.

His focus was locked on Savage—the man who’d been his brother, his leader, his anchor in the chaos, who was now standing across the room with a look that cut deeper than any blade ever could.

And what hurt the most was that Savage believed everything he was told about Butcher, all the fucking lies. He bought them hook, line, and sinker.

“You crossed a line,” Savage growled, his voice low but carrying enough weight to silence the chatter around them.

His eyes burned with the kind of fury that usually made men step back, but Butcher didn’t flinch.

The rest of the guys stood around him and Savage, ready to take sides, but he knew the score—if things went south, they’d have their Prez’s back, no questions asked.

“I did what had to be done,” Butcher shot back, jaw tight, fists clenched at his sides.

“You think I’m gonna sit back while you play king and let the rest of us bleed for your pride?

” The room shifted, his brothers watching and waiting.

Loyalty was currency here, and tonight it was about to be spent in blood—probably his.

Savage stepped forward, standing chest to chest with him now. “You don’t get to question me. Not here, not ever.”

Butcher’s laugh was sharp and bitter. “That’s the problem, Prez.

You think this club is yours alone. But it’s ours.

And I’m done being your weapon.” Butcher knew what he was getting into when he agreed to be the club’s Enforcer.

If Savage or the other guys had an issue that was going to be messy, he’d go in to clean it up.

He was in charge of keeping his Prez and his brothers safe, but he was done with all that now.

The first punch landed before anyone could move.

Savage’s fist cracked against Butcher’s jaw, sending him stumbling back into a table.

Bottles shattered, voices rose, but Butcher came back swinging.

His knuckles split against Savage’s cheek, the taste of iron flooding his mouth as the fight turned ugly in more ways than one.

Brothers tried to intervene, but the two men were fire and gasoline—unstoppable, inevitable. Chairs toppled, curses flew, and the bond that had held them together for years snapped like a chain under too much strain.

Finally, Butcher shoved Savage back, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his busted lip.

He looked around the room—at the faces of men who’d once been his family, and he saw nothing but judgment, hesitation, and betrayal.

That was the moment he knew. For months now, he couldn’t decide what to do, but now he knew for sure.

He needed to strike out on his own, and the Royal Bastards be damned.

Without another word, Butcher ripped off his kutte, the Royal Bastards patch heavy in his hand. He threw it down at Savage’s feet, the leather hitting the floor like a gunshot.

“I’m done,” he said, voice raw and final. And then he walked out of Savage Hell, into the night, into the unknown, into the kind of freedom that tasted like shit and promise all at once.

The roar of his bike split the silence as he tore down the Huntsville back roads, leaving behind the only home he’d ever known. Butcher wasn’t sure where he was headed, but one thing was certain—he was done with Savage and the Royal Bastards.

The highway stretched out like a scar across the night, endless and unforgiving.

Butcher rode hard, the roar of his bike drowning out everything except the storm inside his head.

Every mile he put between himself and Huntsville should have felt like freedom, but instead it felt like exile.

Sure, it was self-imposed, but it was exile, nonetheless.

The fight replayed in his mind on a loop—Savage’s fist connecting with his jaw, the taste of blood, the look in his brothers’ eyes when he threw down his kutte. All he saw was judgment, betrayal, and now, he lived with the silence that followed him everywhere.

He’d told himself he was done being Savage’s weapon, done bleeding for a man who treated loyalty like a leash. But now, with the wind clawing at him and the night pressing in, doubt crept in like poison.

The what-ifs were playing through his mind at warp speed. What if I was wrong? What if I just burned the only family I had left?

Butcher gritted his teeth, twisting the throttle harder, as if speed could outrun regret. He’d lived his whole life by the patch, by the brotherhood, by the code. And now he was nothing but a man with a bike. He didn’t belong anywhere anymore, and that thought both thrilled and terrified him.

The guilt cut deep, but beneath it was something sharper—his longing to find a place where he belonged again.

He was going to miss the clubhouse—the laughter and the sense of belonging that came with knowing someone had your back no matter what.

He was going to miss the family he’d just walked away from.

Butcher had always believed the Bastards were unbreakable. Tonight proved otherwise.

He slowed as the highway bled into backroads.

They were the kind of forgotten places where men like him disappeared.

The night was quiet here, too quiet, leaving him alone with the truth he couldn’t escape.

He wasn’t just running from Savage. He was running from himself.

And sooner or later, he’d have to face both.

Ten Years Later

Butcher hadn’t expected the news to hit him the way it did. Savage was gone.

Hell, the man had always lived like he was bulletproof, like nothing could touch him—not cops, not rivals, not even time.

But time had a way of collecting debts, and Savage had been living on borrowed minutes for years.

His wife and husband both knew it. Everyone did.

The old Prez’s heart had been a ticking time bomb, but Savage was too damn stubborn to let anyone fix it.

Butcher sat on the edge of his bed, the phone still feeling much too heavy in his hand. He was almost twenty years younger than Savage, but it didn’t matter. Death didn’t care about age. It cared about pride, about choices, about the kind of man who thought he could outrun his own body.

He should’ve felt nothing. He had left Huntsville and the Royal Bastards ten years ago, and Savage had been the reason he walked away, the reason he’d spent a decade carving out a life without the patch, without the brotherhood.

He had gone it alone and told himself that was what he wanted.

But instead, guilt twisted in his gut. Because once upon a time, Savage had been more than a Prez.

He’d been a brother. He was a friend, and a man whom Butcher had bled beside, fought beside, and believed in. And now he was gone.

He didn’t really regret running from the Bastards that night.

He had landed in a little town called Natchez, Mississippi.

Butcher opened a body shop, and business was booming from the very beginning.

People loved that they didn’t have to drive three towns over just to have their vehicles worked on.

His specialty was bikes, but he worked on everything over the years to pay the bills.

He was able to buy a little piece of land on the edge of town and build his dream home.

Those things wouldn’t have happened if he had stuck around Huntsville and stayed with the Bastards.

But leaving his friends and club behind was the hardest thing that he had ever done.

He had become a loner, and looking for a new club wasn’t even on his to-do list.

Butcher dragged a hand down his face, the weight of his memories pressing him harder than he wanted to admit.

He thought about the fight, the betrayal, and the way he’d thrown his kutte down and walked out into the night.

He thought of the silence that followed, the years spent pretending he didn’t care.

But the truth was, he did care. He always had.

Savage’s death wasn’t just the end of a man’s life. It was the end of an era. And for Butcher, it was the beginning of something he couldn’t yet name—something that felt like reckoning, like unfinished business clawing its way back to the surface.