SNEAK PEEK DEADLY PERMAFROST
Chapter 1
The poachers had made their first mistake when they ran trap lines through Boundary Waters without permission.
They made their second mistake when they told Tundra to go fuck himself.
Permafrost killed the engine on his Harley and swung off the bike in one fluid motion, his boots crunching through the frost-hardened pine needles that carpeted the forest floor.
October in northern Minnesota meant temperatures that would kill a man by morning if he wasn't prepared, and these three assholes standing in front of their rust-bucket truck clearly weren't from around here.
California plates. City jackets. Hands already shaking from the cold.
They had no idea what cold really meant.
"Asked you nice the first time." Tundra's voice carried that Finnish flatness that made everything sound like a death sentence. He stood with his arms crossed, shrapnel scar catching the weak afternoon light, looking like he could wait out a glacier. "Now I'm asking with my president present."
The biggest of the three poachers—a thick-necked bastard with a patchy beard and prison ink crawling up his hands—stepped forward like he had something to prove. "Look, man, we don't know what kind of hillbilly bullshit you're running out here, but these are public lands. We got every right—"
"No." Permafrost's voice cut through the clearing like a blade through ice. One word. Quiet. Final.
The poacher's mouth snapped shut.
Permafrost moved forward, and his brothers parted for him without conscious thought—Tundra to his left, Ironside to his right, the massive Swede's missing fingers not slowing him down as he palmed the sledgehammer he'd pulled from his bike.
Behind them, Ice and Whiteout formed a second line, blocking any retreat to the truck.
Five Savages. Three poachers. Math even a flatlander could understand.
"This is Savage territory." Permafrost stopped three feet from the big talker, close enough to see the fear starting to bloom behind his eyes.
Good. Fear kept men alive—when they were smart enough to listen to it.
"Everything north of Hibbing to the border.
Everything from the Iron Range to the Boundary Waters.
You want to breathe this air, you ask permission first."
"We didn't know—"
"Now you do." Permafrost let the silence stretch, watching the man's throat work as he swallowed.
Twenty years of running this club had taught him that violence was a tool, not a pleasure—but like any tool, it needed to be demonstrated before men believed in its effectiveness.
"You've got illegal trap lines strung across six miles of wilderness that belongs to me.
Steel-jaw traps that'll take the leg off a wolf, a dog, or a man's kid walking through the wrong stretch of forest."
The poacher's face went pale. "We were just—the pelts are worth—"
"I don't give a damn what they're worth." Permafrost's voice never rose. It never had to. "You're going to pull every trap. Every snare. Every piece of shit you've scattered across my territory. And then you're going to get in that truck, drive south until you hit Iowa, and never come back."
"And if we don't?"
The question came from the skinny one in the back—younger, stupider, that particular brand of reckless that came from never having faced real consequences.
Permafrost didn't answer. He just looked at Ironside.
The big Swede moved faster than a man his size should be able to, sledgehammer swinging in a controlled arc that shattered the truck's driver-side window into a thousand glittering pieces.
The sound was catastrophic in the forest silence—an explosion of glass and violence that made all three poachers flinch backward like they'd been shot.
"That's one window," Permafrost said, his voice still calm. Still quiet. "You've got five more, plus a windshield. Ironside's got all day."
The big talker's hands were up now, palms out, the universal gesture of a man who'd just realized he was outmatched. "Okay. Okay, Jesus Christ, we'll pull the traps. All of them. We're going, alright? We're gone."
"Smart choice." Permafrost stepped back, giving them room to scramble for their ruined truck. "Tundra, you and Ice follow them. Make sure every trap comes up. They miss one, break something that doesn't heal."
Tundra nodded once, already moving toward his bike with the easy grace of a man who'd spent his life in terrain that killed the unprepared. "On it, Prez."
The poachers couldn't load into their truck fast enough, the skinny one cutting his hand on the shattered window in his haste.
Permafrost watched them go with those cold blue eyes that had never learned to warm, cataloging faces and plates and the particular quality of fear in men who'd learned a lesson they wouldn't forget.
This was what he did. What he'd been doing for twenty years, since the mines closed and killed his town and left behind men with nothing but their hands and their rage.
He'd built the North Star Savages from those ashes—gave them purpose, gave them family, gave them something worth fighting for when the world had written them off.
The engine rumble faded into the forest as Tundra and Ice followed the retreating truck. Permafrost turned to find Whiteout already scanning the tree line with those thousand-yard sniper's eyes, and Ironside cleaning glass fragments off his sledgehammer with a rag.
"Flatlanders." Ironside's Swedish accent thickened with contempt. "They think Minnesota is just cold Wisconsin."
"They'll learn." Permafrost moved back to his bike, leather creaking in the cold air. "Or they'll die. Either way, not our problem anymore."
The ride back to the compound took forty minutes through frozen lake country and endless pine forests, the rumble of engines the only sound in a wilderness that swallowed noise like it swallowed everything else.
Permafrost rode point, as he always did—the president's position, the first man into whatever waited ahead.
Behind him, Ironside and Whiteout fell into formation with the automatic precision of men who'd been riding together for years.
This late in October, the lakes were starting to freeze at the edges, thin ice creeping out from shorelines like fingers reaching for the center.
Another month and they'd be solid enough to support a truck.
Another month after that and the bikes would be stored, replaced by snowmobiles and the particular kind of madness that came with trying to survive a Minnesota winter.
But for now, the roads were clear and the cold was manageable and Permafrost could still feel the therapy of asphalt under his wheels, the meditation of miles unwinding beneath him like a rosary.
The compound appeared through the trees like it always did—sudden and solid, a converted iron mine headquarters that had been repurposed into something that kept men alive when the world tried to kill them.
The main building's industrial heating was already pumping, sending plumes of steam into the frigid air.
Bikes lined up outside the garage like chrome soldiers.
Smoke rose from the president's cabin chimney, which meant one of the prospects had remembered to start his fire.
Good. The chill made his bones ache in ways that reminded him of his father's last years, when the black lung had settled into Erik Lindgren Senior's chest and slowly drowned him from the inside out.
Permafrost parked his bike in the garage, taking the time to check the fluids and the tire pressure like he always did. Machines kept you alive up here. You didn't neglect machines.
Inside, the clubhouse was warm and loud with the sounds of men who'd survived another day in territory that wanted them dead.
Brothers were scattered across the main room—some at the bar built from old mining equipment, some around the pool tables, some clustered near the massive fireplace that dominated the north wall.
The smell of woodsmoke and diesel and leather wrapped around Permafrost like a familiar embrace.
"Prez!" Coldstart looked up from the engine he was rebuilding at a workbench near the back. Grease was embedded in his knuckles, permanent as the frostbite scars on his fingers. "Poachers handled?"
"Handled." Permafrost moved through the room, accepting backslaps and crude greetings, the brotherhood's way of acknowledging his return. "Tundra's making sure they pull their traps. Should be clear by nightfall."
"Dumbasses." This from a prospect near the bar, a kid named Jensen who was still earning his patch. "Who runs trap lines in Savage territory without asking first?"
"Dead men," Ironside rumbled, dropping onto a barstool that creaked under his weight. "Or men smart enough to run."
Laughter rolled through the clubhouse, rough and genuine—the sound of brothers who'd stared down a threat and watched it crumble. Permafrost allowed himself a small nod of acknowledgment before moving past them all, toward the fireplace and the shadows at its edge.
This was his spot. Had been since he'd claimed this building and made it the heart of Savage territory.
A place where he could watch his brothers without being in the center of their chaos, could think without interruption, could carry the weight of leadership without letting them see how heavy it had become.
Twenty years. Twenty years of keeping these men fed and focused and alive when the Iron Range tried to swallow them whole.
Twenty years of solving problems with violence and grim efficiency because that's what the North demanded.
Twenty years of building something from nothing, of turning abandoned miners and displaced loggers into a brotherhood that meant something.
He'd buried seventeen men in that time. Brothers who'd died in fights, in accidents, in the slow grinding death of winters that didn't forgive weakness. He remembered every name, every face, every funeral where he'd stood in front of a grave and told himself he should have done more.
The fire crackled, and Permafrost stared into the flames, seeing ghosts.
His father's face, gaunt and gray in those final months, coughing up pieces of his lungs while the company that had stolen his health sent lawyers to deny the disability claim.
His uncles, scattered across Iron Range cemeteries, their graves marked with crosses that rusted a little more each winter.
The men from his graduating class who'd gone into the mines expecting forty years of honest work and gotten pink slips and black lung diagnoses instead.
He'd built the Savages to save them. To give them purpose when the world had deemed them worthless. And most days, he believed he'd succeeded.
But lately, something had been gnawing at him. A wrongness he couldn't name, centered on Hibbing and the bar where his father used to drink.
The Pickaxe.
Permafrost had been avoiding the thought for weeks, pushing it down every time it surfaced. But tonight, with the adrenaline of the poacher confrontation fading and the fire's warmth seeping into his bones, he let himself examine it.
New faces in Hibbing. That's what Coldstart had mentioned last week, casual and offhand, like it didn't mean anything. Strangers buying drinks at the Pickaxe, asking questions about local business owners, about who ran things in the Iron Range. The kind of questions that preceded bad things.
And Maren Halvorsen—Nils's daughter, the stubborn Norwegian woman who'd inherited the bar five years ago and kept it running through sheer force of will—she'd seemed off the last few times he'd stopped in.
Tense. Jumping at shadows. She'd deflected his questions with the same efficiency she used on drunk miners, but Permafrost had been reading people since before she was born.
Something was wrong at the Pickaxe.
Something he'd been ignoring because handling it meant wading into problems that weren't strictly club business, meant taking responsibility for a woman who wasn't his, meant opening doors he'd kept firmly closed for years.
But the Pickaxe was Savage territory. Had been since his father drank there, since Nils Halvorsen had served miners and bikers with the same quiet respect. And if someone was threatening what was his—
Permafrost's jaw tightened, cold blue eyes reflecting the firelight.
He'd let it slide too long. Let rumors fester while he focused on poachers and territorial disputes that were easier to handle. But whatever was happening in Hibbing, whatever had put that haunted look in Maren Halvorsen's gray eyes—
It ended now.
Tomorrow, he'd ride into town and find out exactly what kind of problem had wandered into his territory. And God help whoever was stupid enough to be causing it.
The fire crackled.
The brotherhood laughed behind him.
And Permafrost stood alone at the edge of the light, already planning violence.