Epilogue #2
"But he didn't lose his way," Logan continues, his eyes flicking briefly toward me before snapping back to Tyler. "He found his anchor. He found his true north. He brought the intel home. He dismantled the enemy's Hollow Routes operation without firing a single shot, and he secured the perimeter."
Logan reaches out. His large hands grip the stitched 'PROSPECT' rocker on the back of Tyler's vest. With a violent, tearing sound that echoes across the silent courtyard, Logan rips the patch off the leather.
He tosses the discarded rocker into the blistering heart of the bonfire. The flames consume the word instantly.
Austin Gunnar steps forward, holding a folded piece of black fabric. He hands it to Logan.
Logan unfolds the fabric. It is a three-piece back patch. The winged Broken Halo logo.
"You’re a ghost no longer," Logan declares. The finality in his tone shakes the dirt under my boots. "You are blood. You are bone. You are patched."
Logan slaps the patches against Tyler's chest. Tyler grips the leather, his knuckles turning stark white.
"The club recognizes your sacrifice," Logan shouts, turning to face the surrounding circle of men. "The club recognizes your claim!" Logan raises a fist into the air. "Welcome your brother! CIPHER!"
The courtyard explodes.
The roar of forty violent men shatters the freezing mountain air. Fists pound against truck hoods. Boots stomp against the gravel. The sheer volume of the celebration vibrates in my teeth. They scream his name. The callsign. The marker of his identity within the hierarchy of the Broken Halos MC.
Cipher.
The man who decodes the lies. The man who operates in the shadows. The man who erases the threat.
The brothers surge forward, ready to clap his shoulders, ready to drag him toward the kegs, ready to celebrate the end of his prospect phase.
Cipher ignores every single one of them.
He doesn’t raise a fist in victory. He doesn’t turn to his President. He doesn’t acknowledge the roaring crowd.
He turns on his heel, his dark eyes locking back onto me.
He stalks through the shifting crowd. Men step out of his way instinctively.
The territorial energy radiating off his frame demands submission.
The firelight catches the sharp angles of his face as he closes the distance between us in long strides.
My breath catches in my throat. I drop the paper plate of barbecue onto a nearby wooden crate. I grip the vintage Fleetwood Mac record with both hands.
Cipher stops inches from my boots. The heat rolling off his black leather and denim is overwhelming.
He smells of black coffee, gun oil, and raw testosterone.
The deep-cover alias is gone. There’s no performance left in his eyes.
There’s only the ruthless monster who claimed my body, shattered my isolation, and tore down the Syndicate to keep me breathing.
He stares down at me, his chest rising and falling. The brothers behind him continue to roar, the bonfire continues to rage, but inside our shared pocket of space, the world goes dead silent. The fated Ignition hums between our bodies, locking our gravity together.
"Mine," Cipher says. His voice is a low scrape that hits me straight in the center of my chest. It isn’t a question. It’s fact.
"Yours," I confirm. I refuse to back down from the dominance in his gaze. I survived the Vinyl Vault. I survived the extortion. I can survive the obsession of this prospect.
He looks down at my hands. His dark eyes trace the edges of the worn cardboard sleeve I’m gripping to my chest. He knows what this is. We packed the shop into boxes. We dismantled my trap. I left everything in the back room except this single square of cardboard.
"What's this?" His voice remains low, his focus consumed by the object keeping my body an inch away from his.
I trace my thumb over the faded blue Sharpie signature across the top right corner. The ache in my chest dissolves, replaced by a fierce, grounding warmth.
"The only piece of the Vault worth keeping," I say, my voice steady, devoid of the trauma that defined my life for years.
I slide the cardboard forward, pressing it flat against the immovable wall of his chest. "My mother signed it.
She wanted the music to keep playing. But I was playing it in a graveyard. "
Cipher looks at the faded signature. His calloused hand comes up, his fingers wrapping over mine, pinning the record tightly between our bodies. The heat of his skin burns through my knuckles.
"I cut the chain to that building," I tell him, staring into his dark eyes. "I'm playing the music here. With you."
The muscle at his jaw flexes violently. The devotion in my words hits the deepest, most fractured part of his soul. He spent four years as a ghost. I spent years as a ghost. We collided in the soft rock section of a dying shop, and the impact brought us both back to life.
Cipher leans down. His frame crowds in, blocking out the bonfire, blocking out the celebrating club, blocking out the world. His hand slides from the record, moving up to grip the back of my neck in an inescapable hold. His thumb presses over my jumping pulse point.
"No covers," he commands, repeating the words I demanded of him in the cramped back room of the Vault before our first feral claiming.
"No covers," I echo softly, my hands sliding up the heavy black denim of his chest to grip his broad shoulders. "Just us. Just Tyler and Wendy."
He doesn't wait another second. He drags my mouth up to his, sealing the vow.
The kiss is brutal and devoid of hesitation.
He claims my mouth with the same ruthless authority he uses to dismantle a Syndicate operation.
He tastes like black coffee and fire smoke.
My lips part on a soft gasp, surrendering to the dominant slide of his tongue.
He consumes my breath. He devours my independence.
He overwrites every single memory of my lonely, terrified survival with the certainty of his protection.
I sink into his overwhelming heat, my hands tangling in the dark hair at the nape of his neck. The roar of the Broken Halos celebrating their newly patched brother echoes in the background. The bonfire blisters the night sky. The Syndicate is reeling from a digital ghost they can’t fight.
The trap is broken. The music is playing. And the man holding me possesses me.
Want a bonus scene of Tyler and Wendy? Get the Bonus Epilogue here.
P.S. True-crime podcaster Nikki gets a flat tire on the wrong mountain road with a Syndicate bounty on her head—and the massive, silent tracker who finds her first has no intention of letting her go. Turn the page for a sneak peek…