Gorgon
Manitoba winters didn’t care who you were.
It didn’t care if you were born on this land, if your bloodline ran through it like a river, or if you were just passing through with a gas tank half-full and nowhere safe to sleep.
The cold came anyway—quiet and ruthless.
It slipped into your lungs, freezing your breath into crystals and turning the highway into a long, black ribbon of consequences.
The yard was lit by a handful of floodlights and the low glow of lights spilling from the shop.
Bikes sat in a row like beasts at rest, their chrome dull under ice dust. Somewhere inside the clubhouse, laughter rolled—deep and rough, from the sound of men and women who’d learned how to find warmth in each other when the world offered none.
“You feel it too?” Buck asked.
A headlight glowed through the trees. He saw them—first one and then the second.
It was a car, not a truck, because the lights were too low.
The car looked too clean for the back dirt road it had found itself on.
It slowed when it reached the club’s turnoff, tires crunching over ice-packed gravel, and for one moment, the driver hesitated like they could still choose to keep going.
But they didn’t, turning into the parking lot anyway.
Buck straightened. “You expecting company?” he asked. The last thing Gorgon wanted or even expected was company, but it looked like they were going to have some anyway. Gorgon’s hand lifted slightly, a signal for Buck to be quiet, and he immediately obeyed.
Two shadows moved in the yard near the shop.
They were club members who’d been talking, suddenly no longer casually shooting the breeze.
They seemed to know that their visitor wasn’t a welcome one, and started for the car.
They didn’t rush or show any signs of panic, even if Gorgon felt them from the clubhouse porch.
The car rolled up to the front of the clubhouse and stopped, but the driver left the engine running.
He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign, but he was sure that they were about to find out.
He knew one thing for certain, though—whoever was inside the car wasn’t here to visit.
They were here to survive long enough to leave.
Or they were here because they had no choice.
If he were a betting man, he’d go with the second one because no one just showed up to the Kings of Anarchy’s clubhouse willingly.
The driver’s side door opened first, and a woman stepped out.
She seemed to shiver as though the cold hit her like a slap, but she didn’t retreat.
She pulled her jacket tighter around her slight frame.
Her coat was too thin for this weather, but that didn’t seem to deter her.
She shut the door behind her and started for the porch.
Her head turned slowly as she took in the yard, the bikes, and the men and women watching her from the light and the shadow. Her posture said she knew where she was, but her eyes said she hoped she wasn’t.
Gorgon didn’t move. He didn’t need to because the world usually came to him. The woman started walking slowly, her deliberate steps crunching over the icy gravel. She kept her hands visible, which was smart. People lived longer around there when they were smart.
She stopped at the base of the porch steps and looked up.
Her gaze met his, and everything inside Gorgon went still—not with surprise, but with recognition.
It wasn’t the kind of recognition that came from knowing a face, but the kind that came from seeing a truth in someone else’s eyes.
Hers were dark, wide, and far too steady for someone who’d just driven into Kings of Anarchy territory alone.
There was a hardness there that hadn’t come from comfort.
He also saw a softness, too, tucked behind them.
It reminded him of something that she was trying to protect.
protected. Like something that she wanted to keep buried—like a secret.
Gorgon’s stare didn’t waver because he didn’t make mistakes, and letting her think that it was okay to walk into Kings of Anarchy territory would be a mistake.
He also didn’t make exceptions—ever, but something about her didn’t fit, and that made her dangerous, because people who didn’t fit were the ones who brought trouble along with them.
Buck murmured, barely moving his mouth. “She’s not one of ours.”
“No,” Gorgon said softly.
The woman cleared her throat and lifted her chin at him. “I’m not here to cause problems.” Gorgan might have been able to accept that, but nobody ever came around his clubhouse for peace.
Gorgon stepped forward, the boards under him creaking once in warning. He stopped at the top of the steps and let the height difference help him keep control. He wasn’t towering over her, using intimidation tactics that didn’t seem to be working.
His voice came out low and calm. “Name,” he barked.
Her throat worked again. “Kimi.” The way she said it was careful, like she’d weighed the sound of it before letting it go into the air. It was almost as though she didn’t want to give her name away for free.
Kimi meant secret in Cree. He had learned the Cree language from his grandmother while growing up.
She was from the Cree nation—something that he was proud of, even if he had no right to be.
Her name touched something old in his chest. Something his grandmother had once told him in a kitchen warm with Bannock and cedar tea.
Some names are shields. Some are warnings.
He wondered which was the case for the woman standing in front of him.
Gorgon kept his face unreadable. “Where you coming from, Kimi?”
Her eyes shifted toward the road. Like something might appear there if she looked away too long. “South,” she said.
That meant nothing and everything all at once. He watched her breathing. Slow and controlled. Like she’d practiced it. Like panic was a luxury she didn’t allow herself.
“You lost?” he asked.
Her mouth tightened as if she didn’t want to give him anything.
“No.” He waited because he knew that she was lying.
Anyone out in this part of the country was either lost or trying to be.
Silence was a tool. People filled it when they couldn’t stand the quiet any longer.
But Kimi didn’t seem to feel the need to fill the silence, and that impressed him more than he would ever admit.
“Then why are you here?” Buck asked, his voice hard.
Kimi’s gaze flicked to Buck—measured, assessing—and then back to Gorgon. She seemed to understand something instinctive. The one who spoke the least was the one who made the decisions.
“I needed to get off the highway,” she said finally. “I—I saw the turn and took it.”
Gorgon’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You saw the turn.”
“Yes, the exit from the highway. It was the first one that I had seen in miles, so I took it.” If she was lying, Gorgon couldn’t tell. But there was something that she wasn’t saying that hid the truth.
Gorgon let his gaze travel over her body—jacket, jeans, and boots that weren’t meant for snow.
She wore no jewelry and carried no purse.
But she had a cellphone in her hand like it was her lifeline.
She had no visible bruises, and he saw no blood.
But fear wasn’t always visible. Sometimes it lived behind the eyes.
“You alone?” he asked.
Kimi hesitated just a heartbeat and then nodded.
“Yes,” she breathed. That was a lie—he was sure of it.
Her voice was smaller and more desperate than before.
Gorgon took another step forward until he was at the edge of the porch, looking down at her with the kind of stillness that usually made men confess all of their sins to him.
“Kimi,” he said, and her name sounded different in his mouth this time. It wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t cruel either. “Do you know what happens to people who don’t belong here?”
Her shoulders tightened, but she didn’t step back.
“I’ve heard rumors,” she admitted. He could see it in her eyes now.
Either she had done her homework, or she had been warned.
Either way, she came anyway. Which meant whatever was behind her felt worse than what stood in front of her.
That kind of fear made people make stupid choices—or smart ones.
He watched her closely. “Then why come here?” he asked.
Kimi’s mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes flashed with something like frustration—at herself, not him. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said quietly. Finally, the truth. It slipped out of her like it cost her something, though.
Gorgon’s jaw tightened. He didn’t like the desperation he heard in her voice. When people sounded like Kimi, they usually brought chaos along with them. The last thing his club needed right now was more chaos, but he liked the kind of courage that walked into danger even after knowing about it.
A sound carried from the road, like tires squealing on gravel.
Another vehicle was approaching. Kimi’s breath hitched.
There it was—the thing she’d been holding back.
Gorgon didn’t look away from her to see what was coming their way.
He didn’t need to. The way her body reacted told him enough. Someone had followed her.
Buck shifted beside him, his hand going toward the gun at his hip.
In the yard, engines turned over as a couple of bikes roared to life, rumbling low like warning growls.
Club members moved into positions without being told.
They lined the south side of the property, near the shop, closest to the fence line.
They were a family built on instinct and loyalty, and Gorgon had been their president long enough that they read him the way the land read the weather.
Gorgon kept his voice even. “Who’s coming, Kimi?”