Property of Raze (Kings of Anarchy: New Hampshire #1)

Chapter One

RAZE

The mountains don’t bow out of respect. They bow because they remember what happens when they don’t. I'm a dragon shifter who lost his fire, who now breathes ice as cold as the snow capping these mountains. I have a grudge with this wilderness, and it knows to yield to me.

As President of The Kings of Anarchy MC, New Hampshire, I own this stretch of the world the same way I own my men, through blood, silence, and the kind of violence that teaches lessons no one forgets.

The Appalachians cage me in frozen stone and snow, mile after brutal mile of wilderness designed to keep the rest of the world out and my kind buried.

The cuts were Scar’s idea. In the late seventies, human biker clubs were multiplying everywhere, carving up territory that was already ours, and it had been ours for centuries before the first of them ever kicked an engine to life.

We could keep killing them as they crossed our borders, or… we could look like one of them.

Turns out humans stop asking questions when you give them a category to put you in. We took the name, took the structure, and suddenly, hunters and cops went looking for human criminals instead of whatever we actually are.

Smart.

Practical.

The kind of thinking that keeps a brotherhood breathing across centuries.

Big Daddy and the national club charter called what came next, exile.

Sent us to rot in the mountains after I burned too hot, pushed too far, gave them a problem they couldn’t explain away with leather cuts and road names.

I call it territory.

The cold rips along my scales like broken glass, as I tear through the November sky on wings meant to burn, not freeze.

Frost crusts over armor forged for fire, ice spiderwebbing along my blue scales where flame should live.

Every breath drags out white, sharp, and fucking useless, a mockery of what once rolled from my lungs in roaring heat.

The sky doesn’t welcome me.

It parts because it has learned better.

Below, the forest sprawls thick and black, skeletal trees clawing at nothing, stripped bare, and starved by winter’s advance.

No roads.

No lights.

No witnesses.

That was the point.

A place where a chapter like mine could rot in peace, far from curious eyes and louder mouths.

A place where monsters don’t have to pretend to be men.

They shoved us into the mountains because I burned too hot.

Because my fire didn’t stop when it should have.

Because arrogance and rage make poor companions when paired with power.

So, the witch broke me.

Now the clubhouse squats against the mountain’s spine like a scar that never healed.

Stone, steel, and timber soaked in old sins.

From the air, it looks less like shelter and more like a warning, its heart buried deep beneath rock and wards.

Down there, beneath layers of magic and ice, my fire still lives.

Trapped.

A living flame sealed inside a crystal dome at the center of the clubhouse, dwindling year by year, breath by breath, waiting on something I don’t believe in anymore.

Peace.

Contentment.

Redemption.

Words meant for men who haven’t burned cities to the ground and called it justice.

I bank hard, my wings snapping against the wind as the mountains scream around me. The sound rattles through my skull, but it doesn’t touch the hollow beneath my ribs.

Flight isn’t freedom.

It’s patrol.

It’s an obligation.

It’s making sure everything that belongs to me stays exactly where it should.

My eyes sweep the western border, the land carved into my memory by decades of bloodshed and rule. Valleys, ridges, kill zones, every inch accounted for.

Then the air betrays itself.

Not with sound, but with scent.

Heat bleeds into the cold, thin at first, then unmistakable.

I turn, angling left as my vision narrows, and cutting through the twilight like a fresh wound, smoke coils upward from the forest floor, thick, dark, and fucking arrogant.

It stains the sky as it rises, carrying the stench of human fire, oil, and the sharp metallic bite of gunpowder.

Someone lit a flame on my goddamn mountain.

My wings drive harder, frost cracking along my scales as something old and vicious shifts beneath the ice. This land is marked, claimed, and protected by teeth, magic, and men who don’t ask twice.

Every rule here is simple and final.

You do not trespass.

You do not burn.

And you sure as hell don’t hunt on my territory.

Whoever’s down there didn’t miss the warnings.

They decided to test me.

I fold my wings and dive, plummeting toward the clubhouse with enough velocity to shatter bone if I were anything less than what I am. The ground rushes up to meet me, but I pull up at the last second, my massive form casting shadows across the clearing as I transform mid-descent.

I hit the ground on two feet instead of four, my feet slamming into frozen earth hard enough to fracture the frost beneath them, ice splintering outward in sharp white veins.

Steam pours from my bare chest in heavy plumes, breath tearing free of my lungs as the last of the shift burns itself out beneath my skin.

I never bother with shirts when I fly. They don’t survive the transformation, and I stopped caring about the waste a long time ago.

The cold night air barely registers.

There’s too much ice coiled beneath my ribs for that, though my fury simmers hot and tight as bones grind back into place and my wings collapse into muscle, scales receding until all that remains is the man the world is allowed to see.

My dragon doesn’t leave.

It just settles deeper, waiting.

I grab my jeans, hanging outside the clubhouse door, and slide them on, the clubhouse doors slam open before I reach out to them.

Noise, movement, and urgency spill out in a rush, voices overlapping, feet scraping against concrete, the sharp tang of blood riding the air like a challenge.

Scar stands in the doorway, his presence filling the frame as completely as the violence he’s known for.

His red eyes gleam beneath the harsh interior lighting, his fangs already descended, lips pulled tight as though the restraint costs him something.

The scar that carves down his face, a souvenir from a berserker long since dead, looks darker beneath the lights, the old wound standing out against pale skin.

He isn’t alone.

Calder hangs in his grip, weight slack, head lolling with each step as Scar hauls him forward.

The fox shifter prospect’s eyes are dull, half-lidded, and unfocused, pain dragging him somewhere far away.

Blood seeps through his leather cut in slow, steady pulses, soaking deep enough to stain Scar’s arm.

A faint shimmer of fox-fire clings to Calder’s knuckles, a weak blue flicker that struggles to hold before fading entirely.

My jaw tightens as I take it in.

“Iron bullets,” Scar growls, dragging Calder across the threshold and into the light. “Hunter scum tagged him near the western perimeter. They didn’t even try to be subtle. They’re pushing, Prez. Testing how far they can go.”

I let out a low growl, which rumbles through the clubhouse and bounces off the walls.

Iron.

The word settles in my chest like a blade, sharp and unforgiving. Iron doesn’t just wound, it eats through magic, strips flesh and power down to nothing, leaving rot and ruin behind if it isn’t dealt with fast.

Whoever fired those rounds knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew whose land they were standing on when they pulled the damn trigger.

My feet move fast, long strides carrying me into the main club room as Scar drags Calder farther inside.

The space shifts around us in moments, the calm it held an hour ago stripped away and replaced by purpose and tension.

My men gather without instruction, drawn in by instinct and allegiance, eyes sharp, bodies strung tight, waiting to see how this plays out.

Scar lowers Calder onto the long oak table with a care that belies his reputation, hands steady despite the violence he’s barely holding back.

One of our club girls, Ivy, drops to her knees beside them, her bark-textured hands shifting as she reaches for her tree-nymph power, skin caught between wood and flesh as green light blooms from her palms.

The air changes with it. The sharp bite of winter gives way to the scent of growth and sap, fresh and alive, as if spring is pushing up through frozen ground. Ivy’s magic presses into Calder’s wounds, life answering damage, even as iron resists.

“I need him still,” she murmurs, her voice distant, layered with the deep resonance of ancient forests. Her autumn-colored hair spills forward, shielding her face as she works. “The iron is fighting me. It’s trying to bury itself deeper.”

Of course it fucking is.

Iron always takes what it can.

“Then burn it out,” another club girl, Ash’s voice cuts in from behind me, sharp with impatience.

I glance back to find the phoenix pacing the length of the room, unable to stay contained, flame bleeding from her, whether she wills it or not.

Fire ripples across her shoulders, licking along the edges of her leather vest before dissolving into smoke, her ember-bright eyes fixed on the table. “I can—”

“You’ll kill him.” Ivy doesn’t lift her gaze when she snaps the words, power flaring as her hands hover closer to Calder’s body. “Fire and iron together will tear him apart. I have to draw it out slow. Convince the metal it doesn’t belong here.”

Silence settles over the room.

Every pair of eyes shifts to me.

This is my club.

My territory.

And someone has decided to bleed on it.