Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
KYLO
We move as one, stalking through the woods with practiced ease, boots barely disturbing the forest floor. The trees part for us like old friends. Every ridge, every trail, is etched into my memory. We know this place like the back of our hand.
Braun, Coast, and I used to play out here in the woods as kids. It was our playground—still is—a place where we can run wild and free, without the constraints of society. Here, we’re all just animals, giving in to our instincts and preternatural urges.
Growing up, we were smothered by the chaos and carnage of the city and neighboring towns.
Raised by the Saints, an MC that used to run Deadwood, we knew nothing but damage and destruction.
Blood stained the streets, crime was rife, and we didn’t want an active part in the unnecessary pain that came with a name like Deadwood.
The Heathens were born the day we decided we were done living by someone else's rules. We carved out our own territory on the east side of Deadwood, leaving the Saints to rot with their outdated codes and endless bloodshed. It wasn't about becoming better men.
It was about becoming our own.
That’s why the Run was created: to give in to our desires of hunting.
We never hurt people in the Run, but we do use it as an opportunity to exorcize those demons, the ones that still yearn to cause damage.
It’s our own morals that keep us from becoming the very thing that tries to swallow us whole, but the monster still needs to be fed.
People think the Midnight Run is about violence.
They’re wrong.
Violence is easy. Any coward can hurt someone weaker than themselves. What we wanted was something harder—an outlet that let us strip away the masks we were forced to wear every day without losing ourselves completely. A place to bleed off the darkness before it turns us poisonous.
So we made rules.
Real rules. The kind men like us don’t break.
No one is forced to run. No one is touched without consent. No one leaves these woods broken. The fear is real, the chase is real, the adrenaline is real—but the line is real too. That line is the only thing separating us from the monsters people already believe we are.
Most of Deadwood never bothers to learn that distinction.
They hear whispers about masked men hunting through the forest and fill in the rest themselves. They need us to be villains because villains are easier to understand than damaged men trying to survive.
The truth is, Deadwood is never going to be clean. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves. Drugs will always find their way into a town like this, just like gambling, guns, and greed. You can't kill the demand.
But you can control the supply.
That's what we do.
Every dealer operating on our side answers to us.
We know who they are, what they're selling, and where they're selling it.
There are lines they don't cross because they know exactly what happens if they do.
No pushing product near schools. No dealing to kids.
No cutting drugs with the kind of shit that leaves bodies piled up in the morgue.
Break those rules once, and they don't get a second chance.
People mistake that for righteousness.
It isn't.
We're still criminals. We're just the kind that understands chaos without boundaries eventually comes for everyone—including the men creating it.
I've always enjoyed the Midnight Run for the simple fact that out here, I don't have to pretend.
I don't have to be anyone but myself.
In Deadwood, I’m just known as the man who can’t talk.
The boy who lost everything and crawled out of the wreckage with more scars than words.
People lower their voices when I walk past, their eyes lingering just a little too long before darting away.
Some offer sympathetic smiles. Others stare outright, trying to piece together the story they've built in their own heads.
They think they know me.
They think trauma carved me into the man I am.
Except they don't know the half of it.
Pain doesn't build a person.
Choice does.
Every scar, every setback, every piece of myself I lost along the way forced a decision. I could've become bitter. Cruel. Hollow. I could've let grief consume me until there was nothing left but the shell everyone expected to see.
Instead, I adapted.
I learned to listen instead of speaking.
To observe instead of react.
To survive instead of complain.
Silence became my language long before people decided it was my weakness.
Unfortunately, fear rules the people of Deadwood like a disease.
It spreads from one whispered conversation to the next until fiction hardens into fact.
They fear what they don't understand, so they invent stories that are easier to swallow than the truth.
It's simpler to believe I'm broken than to accept I choose silence.
Simpler to call us monsters than admit they're the ones who need something to fear.
Fear makes people predictable.
Predictable people are easy to read.
“This way!” Braun says, veering toward the creek.
While we all know the lay of the land, it’s Braun that’s the tracker.
The rest of us can navigate these woods blindfolded, but Braun sees things the rest of us would walk straight past: a bent blade of grass, mud disturbed by a heel instead of a toe, bark rubbed smooth where someone's shoulder clipped a tree in their haste.
He doesn't just follow tracks—he reads them, piecing together every step like the forest is telling him a story only he understands.
The sound of the creek grows louder as we approach the edge of the trees. To our right, there’s a bridge that heads to the other side of the Hollow. The wood is weathered, a dangerous path to cross if anyone decides to venture across it.
“Well, well, well,” Braun chuckles, crouching and brushing his fingertips in the grass. “Flag’s gone.”
I follow his finger as he points to the riverbank, the sand and gravel disturbed by something, or someone.
A smile curls beneath my mask.
Coast bounces on his feet, his arms swinging at his waist. “Game on, Siren.”