Phoenix’s Rising (Iron Phoenix MC #1)

Chapter 1 - Phoenix

I'm back in the warehouse. Blood on concrete. The smell of copper and gunpowder thick enough to choke on. My hands are slick with it as I turn over another body. Marcus, I think, or maybe it's someone else, and the dead man's eyes stare through me like I'm not even there.

The Vipers stand in the shadows, laughing.

Demon stands at the center of them, the president who turned a brotherhood into something rotten.

He's watching me with those cold eyes, that slight smile playing at his lips like this is all some kind of game.

Like the bodies at my feet are just pieces he's moved across a board.

In the dream, he speaks, though his mouth doesn't move. *You could have stopped me.*

I know. God help me, I know.

I jerk awake, heart pounding against my ribs like it's trying to break free.

The bedroom is dark. Silent. Empty except for me and the ghosts I can't shake.

Three-fourteen a.m. Close enough.

I drag a hand down my face, feeling the rough line of the scar along my jaw. A knife I didn't see coming, wielded by a man I'd called brother. That was before I understood what the Vipers had become. Before I learned that some rot spreads from the head down, poisoning everything it touches.

Demon did that. Slowly, he turned good men into monsters or corpses.

We tried to stop him anyway. My brother Carter and the good men who still believed in something beyond money and power and control. We tried to pull the club back from the edge, tried to cut out the cancer before it killed us all.

Demon killed us for it. One by one, the men who stood with us disappeared or turned up dead in ways that sent a message to anyone else thinking about growing a conscience.

Only Carter and I walked away from that massacre.

Only us.

I swing my legs out of bed, knowing sleep won't come again tonight.

It never does after the dreams. The floor is cold under my bare feet as I cross to the window, looking out over the compound.

The Iron Phoenix clubhouse sits quiet in the predawn darkness, bikes lined up like sleeping beasts in the lot.

Everything I've built. Everything I've tried to make right.

I built it clean. Built it right. Every member vetted, every recruit tested, every decision filtered through one question: would my parents be proud?

The phoenix on my chest, the club crest inked over my heart, burns sometimes like a brand. *From Ash, We Rise.* The words curve beneath the bird, permanent as the promise I made to the dead.

This club would be everything the Vipers wasn't. No trafficking. No hard drugs. No preying on the vulnerable. We'd protect our own, serve our community, and maintain relationships with law enforcement where possible. We'd be the club my parents died believing in.

Most days, I think we've succeeded.

Tonight, at three-seventeen in the morning with the taste of nightmares still coating my tongue, I'm not so sure.

I pull on jeans and a T-shirt, not bothering with boots.

The clubhouse is mine, and I can walk it barefoot if I want.

Heavily tattooed arms, the Iron Phoenix colors blazing down both sleeves.

Ink on my neck, my chest, covering the scars underneath.

Some battles leave marks you can't hide, so you might as well make them mean something.

The hallway is quiet. Most of the brothers are asleep in their rooms or gone home to their own places. We're not a live-in club unless someone needs it. Another way we're different from the Vipers, who kept members trapped in the clubhouse like prisoners who didn't know they were locked up.

The common room is dark except for the light over the bar. I'm halfway across the floor when I realize I'm not alone.

Judge sits at the bar, a glass of whiskey in front of him, looking like he's been there awhile.

"Can't sleep either?" My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by the dream.

He glances up, and even in the low light I can see the understanding in his eyes.

Judge has his own nightmares. Ex-military, the kind that saw things overseas that no one should have to see.

He's forty-three, the oldest member of the Iron Phoenix, and the steadiest man I've ever known.

When my rage takes over, Judge is the voice of reason that brings me back.

"Thought you might be down," he says, pushing the bottle toward me. "You were shouting."

Shit. "Sorry."

"Don't be." He watches me pour two fingers of whiskey into a glass. "Same one?"

"Yeah." I don't have to specify which nightmare. We've been brothers long enough that he knows. The warehouse. The bodies. The guilt that sits on my chest like a stone, crushing me a little more every night.

I should have stopped Demon. Should have put a bullet in him and burned the whole thing to the ground instead of just walking away. How many people suffered because I chose escape over destruction? How many victims could have been saved if I'd been willing to do what needed doing?

"You did what you could," Judge says, reading my thoughts like he always does. "You and Carter both. You tried to save them, and when you couldn't, you saved yourselves. That's not cowardice, Phoenix. That's survival."

"Survival." The word tastes bitter. "While good men died."

"While good men were murdered by an evil one," he corrects. "There's a difference. You didn't kill them. Demon did."

Demon. Just thinking the name sends a cold rage through my veins. Three years since Carter and I walked away, and he's still out there. Still running the Vipers, still trafficking, still destroying lives, still calling it brotherhood while he poisons everything he touches.

The club I grew up in is unrecognizable now. Demon's made sure of that. Recruited men who are loyal to money and violence instead of principles. Men who laugh at the idea of honor, who see women and children as commodities instead of people worth protecting.

The Vipers used to mock me for not hurting innocent people. Called me soft. Weak. Said I'd never make it as a real MC president.

I took it as a compliment.

"You still think about going back?" Judge asks. He's not looking at me, just studying his whiskey like it holds answers. "Finishing it?"

"Every day." The truth comes out flat and hard. "Every single day I think about loading up the brothers, riding back to that compound, and putting an end to Demon myself."

"But you don't."

"But I don't." I knock back the whiskey, feeling it burn down my throat. "Because that's what he would do. That's who he is. And if I become that, then he wins. He turned me into him, and everything we built here means nothing."

Judge nods slowly. He's heard this before, this internal war I fight. The balance between justice and vengeance, between protecting the innocent and becoming the monster you're fighting against.

"Your parents would be proud," he says after a moment. "Of what you've built. Who you've become."

I have to look away, blinking against the sudden burn in my eyes.

At thirty-eight years old, I shouldn't need my dead parents' approval.

But I do. Every decision, every choice, every line I draw in the sand, it all comes back to them.

To the club they believed in. To the son they raised to be better than the darkness surrounding us.

"I hope so," I manage.

We sit in silence for a while, two men haunted by different ghosts but bound by the same purpose. The Iron Phoenix was built on the ashes of our separate traumas, forged into something strong enough to hold us all.

Nine members total. Small, compared to clubs like the Vipers. But every single one of them is a man I'd trust with my life. Men I've vetted, tested, measured against the standard my parents set.

Judge. Brick. Wraith. Canvas. Diesel. Saint. Ranger. Echo.

And me.

Carter could have been ten, would have been my VP if he'd chosen to stay.

But he needed to step out of my shadow, needed to be his own man instead of Phoenix's little brother.

I understood that. Supported it completely.

Told him the offer stands forever, and if he changes his mind, I'll have a patch with his name on it within the hour.

He's happy with the Savage Riders. I can hear it in his voice when we talk, see it in his face when we visit. He's found his place, his purpose, maybe even his peace.

I'm glad one of us has.

"It's almost four," Judge says, breaking the silence. "You gonna try to sleep again or just brood until sunrise?"

"Brooding seems safer." I pour another finger of whiskey. "At least I'm conscious for it."

He snorts. "Fair point."

I've never told Judge the worst part of the dreams. The thing that haunts me more than the bodies, more than the guilt.

In the nightmares, I'm always alone.

Standing in that warehouse surrounded by dead men who trusted me, Demon watching from the shadows with that cold smile, and there's no one there to stand with me. Carter's gone. The brothers are gone. I'm the last one left, the sole survivor of a massacre I should have prevented.

When I wake up, the loneliness follows me.

The club is enough, I tell myself. My brothers are enough. I don't need anything else. Don't need softness or comfort or someone waiting for me when the nightmares come. I've built a life on hard edges and sharp purposes, and it's enough.

It has to be enough.

Because the alternative… Opening myself up to someone, letting them close enough to matter, that's a vulnerability I can't afford.

I only know how to fight, survive, build.

I don't know how to be with someone. Don't know how to let my guard down or trust someone with the parts of me that are still bleeding.

The string of one-night stands that litter my past are proof enough of that. Women whose names I barely remember, whose faces blur together in my memory. I end things before they can begin, before anyone gets close enough to see the damage underneath the ink and muscle.

It's better that way. Safer.

Lonelier, but safer.

"You're doing it again," Judge observes.

"Doing what?"

"Disappearing into your head." He taps his temple. "The brooding thing. I was joking before, but you're actually doing it."

I shake my head, trying to clear the thoughts. "Sorry. Long night."

"They all are lately." His eyes are sharp, seeing too much. "You need to talk about it?"

"No." Yes. Maybe. I don't know anymore. "I'm fine."

"Phoenix—"

The knock on the front door cuts him off.

We both freeze. It's four-seventeen in the morning. No one knocks on the clubhouse door at four-seventeen in the morning unless something's wrong.

Judge's hand drops to his waistband, where I know he keeps a gun even in the middle of the night. Old habits from old wars. I move toward the door, every sense suddenly focused.

Another knock. Softer this time. Almost hesitant. Not a threat, then. Threats don't knock hesitantly. I flip the locks and pull the door open.

A woman stands on my doorstep.

She's small. Shorter than me by almost a foot with auburn hair cut short in a choppy style that looks recent and self-done. Green eyes that are currently wide and locked on my face, and curvy in a way that makes me think beautiful, though I shove that thought down immediately.

She's also covered in bruises.

Her jaw is purple-yellow. Her wrists show finger-shaped marks that make my hands curl into fists. She's wearing a jacket despite the warm night, and I'd bet money there are more bruises hidden underneath.

Someone did this to her. Someone put their hands on this woman and hurt her, and the violent thing that lives in my chest wakes up with a roar.

"Can I help you?" My voice comes out harder than I mean it to.

She flinches. Barely, but I see it. And that tiny movement, that evidence of fear, does something to me I don't have words for.

I take a breath. Soften my stance. Try again.

"Are you okay?" Better. Gentler. The voice I use with victims, not threats.

"I'm—" She stops. Swallows. Tries again. "I'm looking for Eli Blake."

"You found him."

Her eyes widen slightly. She's looking at me like I'm not what she expected, though I don't know what that means. I'm exactly what I look like: a six-foot-three biker covered in ink and scars, built like someone who's been fighting his whole life.

"I need help," she says. Her voice is steady despite the fear I can see in her eyes. Brave. She's terrified but she's here anyway, and that takes guts. "Someone told me you might be willing to help people. People running from the Vipers."

The Vipers. Everything in me goes still and cold. Behind me, I hear Judge stand up. The scrape of the barstool is loud in the sudden silence.

"Who are you running from?" I ask, though I think I already know. There's only one man in the Vipers who would put those kinds of bruises on a woman and think nothing of it. Only one man Demon keeps close because they share the same sickness.

She meets my eyes, and I see her weighing something. Trust, maybe. Or hope. Or just the calculation of whether telling me will make things better or worse.

"Cole Briggs," she says finally. "I was… I was his fiancé. I ran the night before the wedding."

Cole Briggs.

I'm not surprised. The name confirms what the bruises already told me.

Cole is Demon's senior member, his right hand, the enforcer who takes pleasure in the work.

I've heard things about him over the years.

Whispers and rumors that made my hands ache to wrap around his throat.

A man who smiles at strangers and makes your skin crawl, who treats women like property and violence like love.

"What's your name?" I keep my voice gentle.

"Ivy," she says. "Ivy Mason."

Ivy. The name fits somehow. Soft but resilient. The kind of plant that survives by holding on when everything else lets go.

"Come inside, Ivy," I say, stepping back to give her room. "You're safe now."

She hesitates for just a second, and I realize she's weighing her options. Trying to decide if coming into a strange clubhouse with a man she doesn't know is better or worse than whatever she's running from.

The fact that she steps inside anyway tells me everything I need to know about how bad it must be.

Judge is standing now, his face neutral as she crosses the threshold. To his credit, he doesn't react to the bruises, doesn't let his expression change. But I know him well enough to see the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw tightens.

I close the door behind her and throw the locks. The sound makes her jump slightly, and I curse myself for not thinking. She's running from a man who locked her in, controlled her, hurt her. Of course the sound of locks engaging would spook her.

"The locks are to keep people out," I tell her. "Not to keep you in. You want to leave, you can leave. Anytime. No one here will stop you."