Smoke and Honey (Book of Legion: Badlands MC #4)

Chapter 1

My name has always felt like a warning.

Prophetic and foreboding at the same time.

There are demons inside you, Legion.

Not one or two, but Many.

We are many…

I get it. It's not a good start to life, I do agree. But at least I understand it, this demon thing. Because most people think demons are entities. Ghosts. Evil spirits.

But that's not what they are at all.

Demons are regrets. Mistakes. The time you spent off the path because even though you knew—you fucking knew—you were goin' in the wrong direction, you went anyway.

That's what a demon is. It's a mistake that turns into a regret.

And it comes due, the consequences of these mistakes.

Always. They always come due.

I wake flat on my back. My eyes crack open slow, like they're weighted with lead. The world's a blurry smear, and I blink twice, three times, strugglin’ to focus on anything solid.

Light cuts through the wooden slats above me in sharp, dusty beams. Grain dust hangs suspended in the air, swirlin’ like smoke in the morning light. Each particle catches fire in the sun—thousands of tiny stars drifting in slow circles. I've seen this ceiling before.

I smile despite the pounding in my head.

This place. This goddamn place.

Outside the silo, there's a faint sound threadin’ through the quiet—the distant buzz of a dirt bike's engine winding up and down the hills. The sound hits me in the chest harder than any fist.

That sound meant freedom once.

My first bike was a piece of shit Honda with faded plastics and a bent clutch lever, but she ran. Fifteen years old with nothing but that bike and a pocketful of hard-earned cash I'd scraped together nickel by fucking dime.

Most of the time I worked the feed barn. Stackin’ fifty-pound bags until my shoulders burned, sweepin’ out corn that stuck to my sweat-soaked skin. Sleepin’ in the loft some nights when things got too bad at home.

Builds character, hard work like that does. But more importantly, if you're fifteen and a boy who just wants to be a man, it builds muscles. I was always lean, but after that year in the feed barn, I was a monster.

In the spring and summer, I picked up work at the grain co-op.

Sweepin’ out grain bins in a dust mask, sweatin’ in ninety-degree heat.

Shovelin’ out pits when they got plugged up because no one else would fuckin’ do it.

It was a terrible job. But it paid. Spring and summer in Drybone was like a salve over the burn of winter.

It soothed ya. Made you forget about the minus-forty windchill comin’ around the corner.

Then there was the livestock auction in the fall—sortin’ calves in freezing wind, moving cattle with hot shots, walking through frozen shit.

And at the end of all that character building that gave me muscles, was the dirt bike.

It was everything to me that summer.

I can still hear it in the distance. Just for a moment, I'm fifteen again. Counting out six-hundred and seventy-five dollars in hard-earned cash. A fist-full of wrinkled bills I'd hidden in a coffee can under the trailer. That feelin’ I got when I kick started the engine the first time was somethin’ like clarity.

Somethin’ that was mine.

Bought and paid for.

Somethin’ no one could take from me.

I blink again, harder this time, trying to clear the fog from my head.

Somethin’s not right.

I try to sit up, but my body feels wrong—disconnected, like I'm wearing someone else's skin. Not painful, just... off. Like someone took me apart and put me back together with pieces missing.

I look down at my hands. They're mine. Callused palms, knuckles that have seen more fights than I can count, the faded "MERCY" inked across them.

The letters worn and blurred from years of throwin' punches and grippin' handlebars.

My boots are still on—scuffed leather. Jeans too, faded and ripped. Worn to perfection.

But I'm shirtless. Bare chest risin’ and fallin’ with each breath, the sprawlin’ tattoos of angels and demons locked in eternal combat across my skin, catchin’ the dim light filtering through the silo's rusted walls.

No blood. No bandages. And no brand.

I run my fingers over the spot where the Badlands B should be burned into my flesh, just above my heart.

Nothing. Just smooth skin where that iron pressed against me, where Chains held that glowing metal while the brothers stomped their boots in rhythm.

The place that had been raw, angry red, still weeping when Savannah touched it last night.

This has got to be a drunk blackout. Wouldn't be the first time I woke up in this silo with gaps in my memory. But this doesn't have the cotton-mouth, head-splitting quality of a hangover. No taste of stale whiskey, no churning stomach. This is somethin’ else.

How the fuck did I get here?

I close my eyes, trying to pull the pieces together from the fog.

The last thing—the very last thing I remember—was lying in the bunkhouse in room 3 with Savannah's head against my shoulder.

She was breathing slow and even as she drifted off.

The hum of nothing in the hallway outside our door, just the distant sounds of the club settling for the night.

We'd just gotten back from dinner at the Duns'. Havoc’s ribs and warnings. June givin’ Savannah a soothin’ tour through biker-wife life.

The far-side of twenty-three looking the near-side in the eye.

It was a nice time.

Then back to the clubhouse. Savannah in the shower with me, water running down her body, steam rising between us.

Then bed. Sleep.

But how did I get from there to here?

From warm sheets and her breath on my neck to a dirty floor and empty air in this abandoned silo?

I sit up fully, ignoring the protest in my ribs. The sound hits me again—a dirt bike engine, revving hard, then skidding to a stop just outside. My hand doesn't reach for a weapon. My pulse doesn't spike. That sound is wired into me different.

It carries no warning. No red flags. No flashing lights lettin’ ya know that you're about to create regrets.

That sound is freedom.

Then he walks in—me. Fifteen years old. Lean, but not skinny.

Not as tall and broad as I am now, but gettin’ there.

All those new muscles from hauling feed bags.

He’s wearin’ a t-shirt and those faded jeans that came from the Goodwill in Glendive.

No tattoos, not yet. Not many scars, either.

Shaggy blond hair falling across blue eyes that haven't seen Whitefall yet.

Wow. I haven't thought about this kid in years. Over a decade, easily.

He's got no idea what's coming.

My younger self has a pack slung over one shoulder, canvas and dirt-stained.

I know what's in there without looking—a ratty blanket stolen from the hall closet, two warm beers lifted from Deacon's stash, and an orange soda for Savannah, because she loves oranges.

If she had a pack or a purse back then, there was always an orange in there.

He chose those items deliberately, planned every silo meeting like it was the most important moment in his life.

There are no demons in this memory, so me, Legion age 32, smiles.

The kid drops his bag in a practiced move I still use—one fluid motion, controlled fall, lands exactly where he wants it. He studies the silo, looking… landing. His eyes catch on a folded piece of paper stuck on a nail in the wooden ladder.

His whole body shifts, shoulders relaxing, mouth curving up at the corners. That smile—fuck, I'd forgotten I ever smiled like that. Like the world might actually be good for five consecutive minutes.

He crosses the concrete floor and pulls the note free. Unfolds it carefully, like it might dissolve if handled wrong.

The smile gets bigger as he reads. I know what it says without seeing it. Savannah's home from that fancy private school on the west coast, and she's already been here looking for him.

For me.

Every day at noon when she's home, that's our time.

Our ritual. I came yesterday, first day of her summer break, but she didn't show. Ranch obligations, probably. Eleanor parading her around for photos, Cash makin’ her ride the fence line with him.

But she came later, found my note, left one of her own.

I wrote: Missed you. Got a surprise. Gonna be a great summer with you at my back.

I always signed them: Me. Not a name or an initial. Just Me.

Like there was no one else in the world who could be writing to her.

I find myself smiling along with the kid. Remembering the weight of that pen, the careful way I would print each letter, trying to make my handwritin’ look better than it was.

And her reply—I can see it in my head now, the looping script she'd perfected years ago.

Dear You…

Couldn't get away. Hovering mother and older brothers demandin' my time like they own it or somethin'.

She always wrote like that. Complete sentences in an accent.

I thought that was the cutest fucking thing ever, how she dropped that g and added a little tick at the end in her written notes. That’s how she talked too. To me, anyway. Because that’s how I talked to her.

Then she said— You're not the only one with a surprise up your sleeve. I got one for YOU. And maybe YOU will feel good against MY back. This summer's gonna be the best… be there tomorrow for sure.

She always signed her notes: S.

Not Savannah.

Just S.

My past unfolds around me, my memory made real as the sound of hooves hits. Me at fifteen steps outside the silo, watching as Savannah Ashby, age thirteen, comes in at a hard gallop, then pulls up dramatically making the dust fly.

She always did love an entrance.

Savannah slides off her horse as it’s still hoppin’, lands light on her feet.

Her boots hit the dirt with practiced grace.

She's wearin' dark jeans that have never seen the inside of a thrift store and her hair is pulled back in one long, thick braid that falls down her back, comin' loose from the wind of her own creation.