Chapter 7
seven
. . .
Arrow
The clubhouse feels different. Has for days.
Brothers who used to nod when I walked past now exchange glances.
Conversations die when I enter a room. Reaper—my sergeant-at-arms, my right hand for ten years—watches me with an expression I can’t read, and that’s worse than outright challenge. Reaper has never been hard to read.
It comes to a head at church. Thursday night. Table full. Gavel in my hand. And Tank—loyal, steady Tank—clears his throat and says what everyone’s been thinking.
“Pres. The girl. She’s civilian. She’s…soft.” He chooses the word carefully, like he’s handling something fragile. “Brothers are talking. Saying you’ve gone—” he stops, rephrases, “—saying priorities have shifted.”
The room goes quiet. Twenty hardened men holding their breath, waiting to see if their president is still the ice-cold bastard who built this club from blood and leather, or if he’s something else now. Something softer. Something weak.
I set the gavel down. Slow. Deliberate. My knuckles are still split from handling the Riverton crew, scabbed over and angry, and I let everyone see them as I lean forward, elbows on the table, and look Tank dead in the eye.
“Anyone who has a problem with how I run my club,” I say, voice flat, deadly, “can say it to my face. Right now. Or they can walk the fuck out that door and not come back.”
Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Tank holds my gaze for three long seconds, then nods once—respect, not submission—and sits back in his chair.
“The girl stays,” I continue. My voice doesn’t change. Doesn’t need to. “She’s under club protection. Anyone looks at her wrong, touches her, breathes near her—they answer to me. Personally. Any questions?”
Silence. Then Reaper, from the far end of the table: “She wearing your patch yet?”
The question lands like a grenade. A woman wearing a man’s patch means property. Means claimed. Means she’s as much a part of the club as the brothers themselves, bound by the same codes, protected by the same violence.
“Not yet,” I say. The words feel like gravel in my throat. “Her choice. Not mine.”
Something shifts in the room—surprise, maybe. Respect. The idea that their president, the man who takes what he wants without asking, is waiting on permission from a civilian barista half his size. It should make me look weak. Somehow, in the faces around the table, it doesn’t.
Church ends. Brothers file out. Reaper catches my arm on his way past, his voice low. “She’s good for you, Pres. Doesn’t mean it’s not complicated.”
I know it’s complicated. Christ, I know.
The internal conflict has been eating me alive for days—the fear of losing her warring with the fear of keeping her, of watching that sweetness get ground to dust under the weight of my world.
She deserves better than a man whose hands are never clean.
She deserves sunlight and safety and a life that doesn’t involve blood on the porch and guns under the bed.
But I’m selfish. I’ve always been selfish. And the thought of letting her go makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with the knife scar over my heart.
That night, I sit her down on the edge of the bed. Her hair is damp from the shower, curled at the ends, and she’s wearing one of my t-shirts that hangs to mid-thigh. She looks small. Vulnerable. Beautiful in a way that makes my throat tight.
“We need to talk,” I say. My voice is rough. She knows what that means by now—rough means I’m holding something back, something that hurts.
She sits cross-legged, hands in her lap, and waits. Those big eyes on mine, steady, trusting in a way I haven’t earned.
“I’m giving you a choice.” The words come out harder than I mean them to. “A real one. Not the kind where I tell you what’s best and you agree because you’re scared of me. A real fucking choice, Kiera.”
She goes still. Her fingers twist in the hem of the t-shirt. “What kind of choice?”
I reach into the pocket of my cut and pull out an envelope. Thick. Cash. Enough to start over anywhere. I set it on the bed between us, and the sight of it—that envelope, that distance—makes my stomach turn.
“Option one.” My voice is flat. Controlled.
Like I’m discussing club business and not the possibility of the only good thing in my life walking out the door.
“Bus ticket. Cash. Enough to get you set up somewhere new. Somewhere clean. Somewhere nobody knows your name or mine. You walk out that door and I don’t follow. You’re free. Completely free.”
Her breath catches. I can see it in the rise of her chest, the way her lips part. She looks at the envelope like it’s something dangerous, then back at me.
“Option two.” This part is harder. My throat works.
I have to force the words out. “You stay. You wear my patch on your back. You take my name if you want it. You let me claim you—completely, publicly, in front of God and every brother in this club—as mine. You let me breed you. Let me put a baby in that sweet belly and keep you round and full and riding at my back for the rest of your fucking life.” I pause.
Swallow. “You become old lady. You become part of this world. My world. The dirt and the blood and the violence. You live it. Every day.”
The silence that follows is the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Heavy. Thick. Full of the weight of what I’m asking—what I’m offering—and the terror of what her answer might be.
I don’t chain her. Don’t grab her. Don’t do any of the things the monster in me wants to do, which is pin her to this bed and fuck her until she agrees and never let her leave this room again.
I sit on the edge of the bed, hands on my knees, and I wait.
My heart is in my throat. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe.
The dirtiest biker in three states. The man who’s broken bones without blinking, who’s put men in the ground and slept just fine afterward. And here I am, terrified of a five-foot-nothing barista with trembling lips and eyes that see straight through every defense I’ve ever built.
She reaches for the envelope. Picks it up.
Holds it in both hands, weighing it, and something in my chest cracks open—raw, bleeding, desperate—and I have to look away because if I watch her choose the bus, if I watch her walk out that door, I will not survive it.
I will not be the man who lets her go with grace.
I will be the monster who follows, who tracks her down, who takes what he wants because he has never learned how to want something without possessing it completely.
The envelope drops. Back to the bed. Her hand finds mine—small, soft, warm—and her fingers curl around my rough, scarred knuckles with a gentleness that wrecks me.
“I don’t want the bus,” she whispers.
The relief is so violent it’s almost pain. My hand turns, gripping hers, holding on like she’s the only solid thing in a world that’s suddenly spinning too fast.
“Are you sure?” My voice is wrecked. Rough. Barely recognizable. “Once you’re in, Kiera, you’re in. There’s no halfway with this club. No dipping your toes. You’re either mine completely or you walk away clean. No in-between.”
She looks at me. Really looks at me—the patches, the scars, the blood that never quite washes off—and there’s no fear in her eyes. There’s something warmer. Something that looks dangerously like love.
“I’m sure,” she says. Simple. Steady. “I want your patch. I want your name. I want your baby in my belly and your bike at my back and every dirty, violent, beautiful piece of you that you’re willing to give me.”
Something breaks. In my chest, in my throat, in every wall I’ve built over twenty years of being hard.
I pull her into my lap, her small body folding against mine, and I hold her—tight, desperate, like she might vanish if I loosen my grip—and my face presses into her hair and I breathe her in and I don’t let go.
“You’re mine,” I whisper against her scalp. My voice is rough with something I’m not ready to name. “Completely mine. And I am so fucking yours it terrifies me.”
She believes me. And for the first time since I dragged her onto my bike in that alley, the obsession doesn’t feel like just possession. It feels like forever.