Saber’s Claim (Ash Valley Hellborn Kings MC #1)

Chapter 1

SHELBY

Every morning, I tell myself not to look at the door.

Every morning at seven-fifteen, I look.

Three weeks, and the biker hasn’t missed a single day.

He leaves twenty dollars on a four-dollar coffee, and he’s never said anything to me.

The patch on his leather vest has a crown and a skull. I should be afraid of a man who wears death on his back.

I’m not.

And that’s the part that keeps me up at night.

The bell above the door rings.

I’m already reaching for the coffee pot before I turn around. Black, no sugar, booth by the window. I have the mug down and poured before he sits.

His blue eyes follow my hand the whole way.

Not my chest, not my ass, not the strip of stomach my t-shirt rides up to show when I reach for the syrup. My hand, pouring four-dollar coffee in a diner that smells like bacon grease.

No thank you. No good morning. He picks up the mug, drinks, and watches me.

And I can’t get past that he doesn’t pretend he’s not looking. He holds my gaze until I’m the one who turns away.

I always turn away.

Tiffany bumps my hip with hers on her way past. “Your boyfriend is really hot.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

She grabs the ketchup bottles and heads for the back. “He’s the Prez of the Hellborn Kings. So, if he’s not your boyfriend, he’s your problem.” She shuffles through the kitchen door. “Either way, good luck with that.”

I don’t tell her that in my experience, boyfriend and problem have always been the same word.

The breakfast rush fills the counter, and I lose myself in it. Refills. Orders. The fryer sizzles behind the kitchen window.

I stay busy. My feet keep moving. This is the version of myself I came to Ash Valley to build—a girl with a job and a routine and nobody waiting at home to ask where she’s been.

Three weeks of freedom. Eighteen years in the system as a foster child, six years with Kyle, and then one move to a town I picked because the name sounded like it had already burned down and had nothing left to lose.

I fit right in.

By nine, the rush clears.

And he’s there. My silent biker. His mug is empty, and those blue eyes are pinned to whatever is outside the window in the hot Arizona sun.

He’s in his early thirties. The t-shirt under his leather vest fits like a second skin—biceps straining the sleeves and shoulders broad enough to block the booth behind him. He’s muscular and big, the kind of big that makes the booth look small and the coffee mug look like a toy in his hand.

The diner is almost empty now. Two truckers sit at the counter nursing their third cups of coffee. Tiffany is in the back, restocking.

It’s him and me.

I grab the pot and cross the floor. He slides his mug forward without looking up, and his fingers brush mine. Skin against skin for half a second, his knuckles against the inside of my wrist.

My whole body responds like he put his mouth on my neck. Heat pulses between my legs and climbs, and my hand tightens on the pot.

He’s looking at me now. And I swear he knows exactly how my body reacted to his seemingly innocent touch.

I pour the coffee. Walk away. And this time, I don’t look back.

When I circle past a few minutes later, he’s gone. A twenty-dollar bill is tucked under the mug. The coffee is cold.

I press my palms flat against the Formica where his arms were.

Still warm.

The dinner crowd is thin. A couple is splitting a plate of fries. A guy at the counter is reading a paperback. Tiffany is counting down the minutes until closing time.

My feet ache. My apron is stained. I’m thinking about the biker’s hands and whether he’ll come in tomorrow.

The bell rings, and my whole body goes cold when I see who just walked through the door.

Kyle.

He’s standing in the doorway in a polo shirt and khakis. He’s clean-shaven, and his hair is combed. All charm and smiles on the outside, but I know what he’s really like behind closed doors—controlling and manipulative.

He tracked me. Thirteen hundred miles, three weeks of silence, and he tracked me to a diner in a town that barely exists on a map.

My hands go still on the rag I’m holding. My shoulders pull in. My chin drops. Six years of muscle memory kicks in before my brain catches up, and I hate it.

I hate that my body still knows how to shrink for this man.

“There she is.” He says it warmly, like we’re old friends. Like I didn’t leave in the middle of the night with two bags and no note. “You’re a hard girl to find, Shelby.”

He slides into a booth. The biker’s booth. And the wrongness of him sitting where that man sat this morning is so loud in my chest I can’t breathe.

I don’t move from behind the counter. “What are you doing here, Kyle?”

Whatever he is about to say, I won’t like the answer.

“I came to bring you home.”

He folds his hands on the table. It’s the patient gesture; the one he uses when he’s explaining why I’m wrong about something.

“You’ve made your point. You’re independent. Congratulations. But this—” He gestures at the diner, at my apron, at the life I built from nothing. “This isn’t you.”

“You don’t know what I am.”

“I know you better than anyone on this planet.” He leans back.

Spreads his arms across the top of the booth.

Taking up space the way he always does, so there’s none left for me.

“Who pays your rent, Shelby? Who’s helping you out here?

Because I know what a waitress makes, and I know you didn’t leave with much money. ”

He kept track of every dollar I spent for six years. It didn’t matter whether it was my money or his money. Everything was his. The apartment. The furniture. My phone plan.

He never hit me. He never had to.

He just made sure I couldn’t survive without him, and then he reminded me of it every single day.

My hands are shaking. I shove them in my apron pockets.

“I’m not going back.”

“Shelby.” He’s using the voice that makes other people think he’s kind and makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. “Let’s not do this here. Come outside. We’ll talk in the car.”

In the car. Where nobody can see. Where the conversation becomes his, and the doors lock.

I’m not going outside with him. No way.

My mouth isn’t opening. I’m standing behind the counter with a rag in my pocket, and my chin tucked.

I’m twenty-four years old, and I am right back to being eighteen, sitting in his passenger seat while he tells me what to order for dinner because he thinks I’ll pick something I don’t like.

The bell rings.

Every head in the diner turns. Even Kyle’s.

Two men walk in. But walk in is the wrong phrase; they fill the doorway like they were built to block exits. My biker is in front. And those blue eyes that tracked my hands this morning are locked on Kyle, and there is nothing soft in them. Nothing patient. Nothing kind.

Behind him, a second man. Taller, leaner, with a jaw like a knife’s edge. He’s wearing a leather vest that matches my biker’s. He leans against the doorframe and doesn’t blink.

Kyle looks at them, swallows hard, and then looks at me. “Friends of yours?”

My biker crosses the diner in four steps. He doesn’t rush.

He stops at Kyle’s booth. Looks down at him. Kyle is five-ten and gym-fit. He has never looked smaller than he does right now, pinned under the gaze of a man who has sixty pounds, five inches, and a lifetime of violence on him.

“Get up.” It’s the only time I’ve heard my biker speak, except for the first time he ordered coffee. His voice is deep and rough.

Goosebumps spread over my skin.

Kyle’s mouth opens. The reasonable voice starts to form. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but we don’t have a problem.”

My biker takes half a step closer. “I said, get up.”

Kyle gets up. His legs are shaking. I can see it from behind the counter—his khakis trembling at the knees, his hand gripping the edge of the table.

My biker doesn’t touch him, but he leans in close enough that Kyle has to tilt his head back, and he says something low enough that I almost miss it.

“She’s under my protection. You leave. You don’t come back. You don’t call. You don’t write. You forget the name of this town and the road that brought you here. Nod if you understand.”

Kyle nods. Fast. Desperate. His face has gone the color of wet paper.

My biker steps back. Gives him room to move. And Kyle slides out of the booth and walks toward the door on legs that aren’t working right. I see a dark stain spreading down the inside of his left thigh, the khakis going dark at the inseam.

Kyle pissed himself.

For six years, this man controlled every breath I took. Six years, he made me believe I was nothing without him. And a stranger in a leather vest just made him wet his pants without even touching him.

The man by the door—the second biker—doesn’t move. He lets Kyle squeeze past, and I hear him exhale through his nose. Not a laugh. Worse. Dismissal. Kyle isn’t worth the air it would take to mock him.

The door swings shut. Kyle’s rental car starts in the parking lot. Tires on gravel. Gone.

Gone.

My hands are shaking so hard the rag falls out of my pocket. My eyes are burning, and my throat is locked. I’m gripping the counter because if I let go, my knees will give out.

My biker turns. Walks to the counter. Sits on a stool across from me, like he didn’t just dismantle six years of my life in under a minute.

The second man stays by the door. Arms loose. Watching the parking lot.

My biker looks at me. Really looks. Not the way he looked at me this morning. He’s checking for damage.

“Did he ever lay a hand on you?”

I swallow. My eyes are wet, and I don’t wipe them.

“No. He just… made every decision for me during the past six years. Where I went. What I spent. Who I talked to. He controlled me. But he never hit me.”

He’s quiet for a long time. “Then we won’t kill him.”

He says it the way someone might comment on the weather. Flat. Factual.

I can’t tell if he’s joking.

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. Pull the coffee pot off the burner. Pour him a cup without asking, because I already know. Black. No sugar.

He wraps his hands around the mug. Drinks. Looks at me over the rim.

“The coffee’s terrible,” I say, and my voice cracks on it.

One corner of his mouth lifts. Barely a movement, but I made his face do that, and it spreads warmth through me.

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

The second man calls from the door. “Saber. He’s gone.”

He finishes the coffee in one long pull, sets the mug on the counter, and stands. He reaches into his pocket and puts a twenty on the counter.

“Closing time.” He says two words, and everybody in the diner moves.

The couple grabs their check. The guy at the counter drops a ten and walks out with his book. Tiffany doesn’t say a word.

Then he walks to the door. Stops. Doesn’t turn around.

“If he comes back, I’ll know.”

And they’re gone. The sound of bikes that rumble like thunder cracks open the desert floor.

I lock the door. Flip the sign. Press my forehead against the glass and breathe until my hands stop shaking.

Saber.

His name is Saber.