8. Alas
Alas
The brass deadbolt slides home with a sharp, metallic crack.
The sound echoes in the cramped hallway of the farmhouse.
I stand on the inside of the door. Susan stands a few feet away.
She wears a thick flannel shirt over her leggings.
The sleeves are rolled up past her elbows.
Her hair is messy from the truck ride back from the compound.
She smells like warm beeswax and defiance.
She stood in front of the President of the Broken Halos MC today. She looked Logan Gunnar in the eye and refused to abandon her grandfather’s land. She refused to run. She anchored her boots into the dirt and claimed her territory.
She claimed me.
My chest tightens. A violent, white-hot pressure builds right behind my ribs.
It’s a loaded gun with the safety snapped off.
I’ve spent my life waiting for a target worth shooting at.
A lifetime of aimless rage burning holes through my own skin because I had nothing to protect.
I slept with a knife under my pillow in the prospect bunkhouse.
I kept my knuckles bruised and my teeth clenched.
I was an attack dog waiting for a reason to bite.
Now I have one.
"Get some sleep," I tell her. My voice is a low, rough scrape in the quiet house.
She watches me from the kitchen archway. The single overhead bulb casts warm yellow light over her face. She doesn't ask where I’m going. She doesn't tell me to be careful. She understands the violent hum vibrating under my skin. She accepts it.
"The back door is locked," she says quietly. "The windows are latched."
"Good." I adjust the combat knife in my boot sheath. The leather sheath creaks. "Keep the shotgun on the nightstand. If anyone tries the handle, you don't ask who it is. You shoot through the wood."
She nods. A single, sharp dip of her chin. Complete trust.
I turn the deadbolt. I step out onto the front porch. The mountain wind hits me instantly. It’s freezing, sharp with the scent of high-altitude pine and coming frost. The door clicks shut behind me. I wait until I hear the throw of the lock sliding into place. She’s secure inside the perimeter.
I walk down the steps. The dirt crunches under my boots.
The moon is a thin, pale sliver hanging over the jagged peaks of the eastern ridge.
It casts just enough silver light to outline the white wooden boxes of her hive line.
The windbreak I built stands tall, a dark barricade against the downdraft.
The farm is silent. The aggressive Russian hybrids in Colony D are asleep. The mountain is asleep.
I’m wide awake.
The energy in my blood demands motion. It demands destruction.
The county clerk's office in town holds a piece of paper.
A legal easement. A right-of-passage. The unnamed Syndicate lieutenant operating out of Crimson Hollow thinks he can weaponize civil law to steal my woman's land.
He thinks a laminated notice and a few neon markers turn her south trail into his personal highway.
He’s going to learn a very hard lesson about the difference between paper and violence.
I cut across the wild meadow. The tall, frost-deadened grass whips against my jeans.
The tree line looms ahead, a wall of black pine and underbrush.
This is the edge of her property. This is the start of the dense pine corridor that stretches eight miles down the mountain toward the rival territory. The south trail.
I step into the trees.
The darkness swallows the moonlight. The temperature drops ten degrees instantly. The smell of decaying pine needles, damp earth, and frozen sap fills my lungs. The terrain pitches downward, rutted and steep. There’s no cell signal here. There are no witnesses. It’s a blind spot on the map.
I stop. I let my eyes adjust to the pitch black.
The predatory stillness takes over. The same lack of motion that keeps the bees from stinging my bare hands now turns me into a ghost in the woods.
My breathing slows. The frantic, chaotic static in my head disappears.
The bond did this. It took the unanchored madness of my life and forged it into a single, lethal weapon.
I belong to her. This trail belongs to her. Therefore, this trail belongs to me.
I move forward.
My boots find the solid edges of the rutted dirt track.
I track the surveyor's logic. If I wanted to run armored SUVs up this mountain under the cover of darkness, how would I mark the path?
The Syndicate used a local surveying crew to establish their legal fiction.
They drove stakes. They tied ribbons. They mapped a route for their soldiers.
A flash of unnatural color catches the faint ambient light.
Neon orange.
I step off the dirt track and approach the low-hanging branch of a Douglas fir. A strip of neon orange plastic ribbon flutters in the mountain breeze. It’s a garish, arrogant violation of the dark woods. A flag planted by an enemy.
My hand shoots out. I wrap my fingers around the plastic.
The texture is slick, out of place against the rough bark.
I yank it down. The knot snaps. The violent motion floods my arm with satisfaction.
I crush the neon plastic into a tight ball and shove it deep into the left pocket of my canvas jacket.
One.
I keep moving. The trail twists sharply to the left, navigating around a boulder field.
The Syndicate needs this path clear for their chop shop runners.
I scan the darkness. Another ribbon. Ten yards down, another.
They tied them at eye level. Careless. Confident.
They assumed the legal paperwork would keep the MC off the trail.
They assumed the President's order to hold back would apply to an unpatched prospect who answers only to a beekeeper.
They calculated wrong.
I pull down the second ribbon. Then the third.
My movements become a methodical, punishing rhythm.
Walk. Spot the orange. Tear it down. Crush it.
Move. I don't use a flashlight. A beam of light is a target.
I operate by moonlight and instinct. The mountain guides me.
I know the shape of the land because I spent the last two nights outside her door, memorizing the contours of the ridge against the stars.
Fifty yards down the trail, my boot hits something hard. Wood.
I crouch low. The frozen dirt is disturbed. A wooden surveyor's stake is driven deep into the ground. The top is painted the same arrogant neon orange. They used a sledgehammer to sink it. They wanted it permanent.
I wrap both of my bare hands around the rough, splintered top of the stake. The wood bites into the calluses on my palms. I brace my boots against the frozen earth. I pull.
The stake doesn't move. It’s wedged tight in the frozen mud and rocks.
The rage flares. It’s a pure, clean burn.
I don't loosen my hold. I don't go looking for a tool.
I rely on the brute force of my own violent necessity.
I lean back, engaging the muscles in my back and shoulders.
I twist the wood violently to the left. A sharp crack echoes in the silent woods.
I twist it to the right. The earth groans.
I rip the stake out of the ground.
The force sends me stumbling backward half a step.
I stare down at the three-foot length of wood in my hands.
A physical manifestation of their claim.
I bring my knee up and snap the wooden stake in half over my thigh.
The sharp, explosive crack of the wood breaking sounds like a gunshot. The vibration rings through my bones.
I toss the splintered halves into the dense underbrush, off the trail. They belong to the rot now.
I kick dirt over the hole. I stomp it flat. The trail is erased.
I push deeper into the corridor. The incline grows steeper.
The air grows thinner. My breath plumes in white clouds in front of my face.
The cold numbs the tips of my ears, but my core is a furnace.
The physical labor demands everything. Sweat beads at my hairline.
It drips down my neck, soaking the collar of my shirt. I ignore it.
I find a cluster of markers wrapped around the trunks of four closely spaced pines.
A chokepoint. The Syndicate wanted their drivers to navigate this tight turn without slowing down.
I draw the combat knife from my boot. The steel blade catches the faint moonlight.
I slash through the plastic ribbons. I keep the edge off the bark.
No gashes. No bleeding sap. Nothing left for their crew to read but bare trunks.
I strip the trees bare. I crush the plastic. I shove it into my pocket. My left pocket bulges with the garbage of their invasion.
Two hours pass.
The mountain silence stretches on, broken only by the crunch of my boots, the snap of breaking wood, and the harsh shred of plastic.
I cross the invisible boundary of Susan's property line.
I don't stop. The threat doesn't end at her property line.
The threat ends when the trail is unusable.
I push another mile down the ridge road, descending closer to Crimson Hollow.
My knuckles are scraped bloody. The rough bark of the pines and the sharp edges of the splintered stakes tear the skin.
Warm blood trickles down the back of my hand.
It mixes with the dirt and the sticky pine sap.
My hands look like butcher's tools. I don't care. The pain is a grounding wire. It anchors me to the present moment. It reminds me why I’m out here in the dark.
For her. For the quiet, stubborn woman sleeping behind a deadlocked door.
I wrench another stake out of the ground. It shatters in my hand. A splinter drives itself deep into the meat of my palm. I don't flinch. I pull the jagged piece of wood out with my teeth, spit it into the dirt, and keep walking.
This is my devotion.