Hella
His tongue was all fucked up.
That was the first thing that hit me when I found him swinging under that tree behind the shitty roadside motel. Too swollen, too dark. Eyes bulged out like he’s still trying to say something and ran out of air before he got to the punchline.
It’s quiet. Just the creak of rope and the sound of farm animals. No gunfire, no engines, no chaos to blame. Just him. Just the choice.
That image keeps looping, even now, sitting at the Chapel table like a good little soldier.
I stare at the empty chair to my left and keep seeing him hanging there instead.
Beast rests his elbows on the carved wood, fingers laced so tight his knuckles have gone bloodless.
Candle’s gavel is in front of him, but he hasn’t touched it once.
There’s a cigarette burning down between two fingers, ash long, smoke curling toward the ceiling and disappearing into the old timber.
“We’re not gonna bullshit this,” he says, voice rough. He drags in a breath that sounds like it hurts. “Nyx checked himself out.”
Checked himself out.
My jaw tightens. Checked himself out. Like it’s a motel room, not a body on a branch with its cut folded neat at the base of the trunk.
I keep wondering whether his hands shook.
If he hesitated. If he thought about his ma and younger sister.
Even as the thoughts pass through my mind, I shove them away.
It ain't about that when it's that bad. I understand that.
“He did it on a run,” Beast goes on. “Away from home. Away from his ma. Away from the clubhouses.” His eyes sweep the table, catching on every single one of us. “You know what that tells me?”
Frost shifts in his seat, jaw clenched. Bull’s staring at his big hands like answers might be tattooed there. Ripper’s just still. Too still.
“He didn’t want to bring in anyone here who wasn't the club, our charter. He didn't want Jada finding him hanging off a rafter where her kid plays. So he waits till we’re on the road long enough to need to stop for the night, and he goes and picks a fucking tree.”
The word tree hits my stomach like a boot.
I see rope burns on bark. His boots a few meters away, like he kicked them off and changed his mind.
“Prez,” Bull rumbles, low. “We don’t know what was in his head.”
“Exactly.” Beast points at him with the cigarette.
“We don’t know. We never fuckin’ know. So I’m saying this now, and I’m saying it straight.
” He leans in, eyes flaring. “You feel alone? You feel like you’re losing your shit?
Like the walls are too fuckin’ close and your own head’s trying to choke you out? ”
He thumps a hand on the table. “You go to Toke. You talk. To him, to me, to Frost, I don’t give a fuck who. You don’t get to decide we’d rather attend your funeral than hear your pain. You hear me?”
His gaze snaps to me like he knows I keep seeing purple skin and bad angles behind my eyelids. I've seen some shit. Bad shit. Done it too. But nothing comes close to what it feels like to see your own brother like that.
I curl my fingers into my thighs under the table until my nails bite through denim. “Yeah,” I say. It comes out steady, which is a miracle, because my gut feels like sandpaper.
Around me, the others grunt their agreement, a low rumble of yeah, got it, sure.
Across from Beast, Toke sits with his arms folded, half-face moko watching all of us, the other half lined with age and something softer. Old man’s got a stillness that makes you wanna talk.
Beast jerks his chin toward him. “He’s Chaplain for a reason. Not just ‘cause he tells old stories to the kids during a Hangi,” Beast says. “He’s been around since before half of you were fuckin’ born. He’s seen this shit. He knows what sitting in your own head can do.”
Toke clears his throat. “There is no shame in struggle, toku tēina,” he says, looking at each of us in turn. “Shame is for hiding. You bring it to the light, it loses teeth.”
I look down at the wood grain, jaw ticking. I dragged Nyx down myself. Cut the rope with a hunting knife, which slipped more than once. His body was heavier than it should’ve been. I almost vomited when his head lolled and his chin hit my shoulder. I can still feel it. Still smell it.
Light, huh?
Didn’t look much like light out there to me.
Beast snuffs his cigarette in the ashtray with more force than needed, the glass scraping against the wood. “I failed him,” he says suddenly. No theatrics. Just a flat line of words that land wrong.
The room goes silent. Even the old fridge in the corner shuts up.
“Prez,” Frost starts.
“No.” Beast lifts one hand. “I did. We chased ghosts. Russians, a fucking useless tip for up north, Baranov, all of it.” His mouth twists. “Chased my old man’s shadow halfway up the island, looking for a bullet that never fuckin’ existed.”
There it is. Candle.
My chest tightens as the air in the room changes. Not heavier, just…familiar. This table’s had more grief soaked into it than beer.
Beast clears his throat. “We’ve got the coroner’s report now.
Toke went through it line by line with me.
And I’ve been fighting it, you all know that.
Because in my head, Henry ‘Candle’ Burns doesn’t drop dead on a lounge floor while the game’s on.
” His fingers tap restlessly against the gavel.
“In my head, he goes out in a hail of bullets or swallowing a grenade or doing something loud and stupid that makes a good story.”
A couple of the older boys snort, small, because yeah. That’s Candle.
“But that’s not what happened,” Beast says. He’s staring straight ahead now, as if he looks at any of us he’ll lose it. “His heart seized. Years of smokes, stress, all the shit he carried for all of us caught up. He hit the floor. Hit it hard. That’s it.”
The words sit there between us, ugly in their simplicity.
No Russians. No hit. No betrayal. Just a body that gave up.
Bull blows out a breath through his nose. “Old man was a stubborn bastard. Figure even his heart wanted to argue with him on the way out.”
A couple of low laughs, humor edged with hurt. Toke smiles with half his mouth, eyes wet.
“I kept saying it had to be something else,” Beast goes on, voice getting rougher. “Couldn’t stomach the idea that a king falls ‘cause his life throws a tantrum.” His knuckles whiten again. “Turns out, that’s exactly what it was. Just biology and bad habits.”
Ripper mutters, “Same thing’s gonna take half of us, Prez.”
“Maybe.” Beast shrugs one shoulder. “But here’s the problem. I couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t accept that shit. So I sent us running after Baranov, after smoke. Took us away from home, away from our people.”
My throat tightens. I see the cheap motel sign again. VACANCY flickering. Nyx lighting a cig the night before, laughing at some stupid meme he showed me that Melissa tagged him in, his beard hiding half his smirk.
He didn’t look like a man rehearsing knots.
“What Nyx did,” Frost says quietly, meeting Beast’s eyes. “That choice was his, brother, as much as we don't like it, it was his choice to make.”
Nyx was the first one to throw himself at a problem. First to back you in a bar brawl, first to snatch you off a bad idea before it turned lethal.
The table goes quiet again.
Beast looks at me. There’s something broken around the edges of his stare. “You found him,” he says. Not a question.
“Yeah.” My tongue feels thick. “Went out for a smoke. Thought he’d beat me to it. Took me a second to figure out why his boots were under the tree with nobody in ‘em.”
“What was he holding?” Toke asks.
His question prickles under my skin. “Nothing.”
Toke nods slowly. “Then what he needed to say, he took with him.”
Ripper swears under his breath.
I look back at Beast. “You’re gonna drive yourself insane going ‘what if’ over this and over your old man,” I tell him. “Nyx made a call. Candle’s heart made a call. You throwing us at Russians didn’t tie that rope or clog that artery.”
His eyes flash. For a second I think he’ll snap, but he doesn’t.
He just looks tired. Proper, bone-deep tired.
The same way Melissa looked when she whispered she couldn’t fight anymore.
I knew deep down that she'd wear his choice, the same way most do when their loved one takes the same path.
Is the saying true that all suicide does is hand your pain onto someone else?
Or is that another selfish statement to make against someone who struggled to fucking surface from the weight of the world.
Beast's hand moves toward the gavel for the first time since Candle's passing. “If my brother feels like death’s a better option than asking me for help, that’s on me. On us. On the culture we built.”
Frost nods once. “Then we fix the culture,” he says. “We don’t fix it by rewriting what killed Candle.”
Bull grunts in agreement. “Old man went out watching the game, Prez. We won too. You know how fucking jealous Ripper is of that? He’d rather that than bleed out in a ditch.”
Ripper flips him off silently, but there’s no real heat in it.
Beast huffs a humorless sound, somewhere between a laugh and a choke. “Yeah. He would.”
Toke leans forward, resting his tattooed forearm on the table. “Henry died as a chief,” he says. “In his home. With his whānau close, even if you weren’t in the room yet. That is not less than a bullet. It is just…different.”
“Nyx died alone under a foreign tree,” Toke continues, not flinching from the ugliness.
“That is not shame. That is pain he hid. Pain we did not see. We carry him by doing better with the next brother who starts to slip. We carry Henry by learning when a fight is done, even if we didn’t choose the end. ”
Beast scrubs both hands over his face, rough. When he drops them, his expression’s carved into something closer to acceptance. No peace. I doubt he’ll ever know peace. Just…a ceasefire with reality.
“Alright,” he says. “Alright.” He looks around the Chapel, at every patch, the empty chairs that should be full. Candle’s old spot. Nyx’s. “We call it. No more chases for Candle. We deal with real threats, not ghosts. We honor him by not spinning out on fantasies.”
A few short laughs, because yeah, we’ve all heard his wilder theories.
“And Nyx?” Beast’s voice drops. “We honor him by making sure nobody else thinks they gotta go hang themselves behind a motel ‘cause asking for help makes them less of a man.”
His gaze hooks onto mine again, hard. “That goes for you too, Hux.”
My throat works. “Yeah, Prez.”
I’m not about to sit on a circle mat with Toke and talk about the way Nyx’s neck looked caved in.
Or the taste of bile in my mouth when his weight hit me.
Or how fast I checked his pockets, like maybe he’d left a note that made any of this make sense, and felt like a grave robber when I didn’t find one.
I’ve spent a lifetime hiding under noise, under girls, under speed and dumb jokes. Under chrome and rumble and the next distraction. Might be why Melissa’s eyes cut straight through it and make me feel like I’m walking around without skin.
Beast pushes back from the table. The chair legs scrape harsh over concrete.
“Church is closed,” he says. “But this door?” He slaps his hand on the Chapel wood behind him.
“It stays open. Any hour. You need me, you come through it. You need Toke, you find him. No more brothers dying in the dark on my watch.”
Beast finally lifts the gavel, slamming it down on wood.
We all stand, chairs scraping in a broken chorus. Patches shift. Boots scuff.
As we file out, I glance back at Nyx’s empty spot.
I picture him there, grinning, talking shit, slapping my shoulder too hard. Then I see him under that tree again, wrong.
Maybe Beast is right. Maybe the only way we win this one is by dragging the ugly into the light, one fucked-up piece at a time.
Because none of us are bulletproof.
Not one.