Chapter 8
Knox
The wrench slips in my grip and I catch it before it hits the engine block.
My mind isn't on the rebuild in front of me—it's across town at the diner, where Sarah works the lunch shift.
Her scent still clings to my skin from this morning, when I woke her with my mouth between her thighs and made her come twice before letting her get dressed.
My phone buzzes. Diesel's name flashes on the screen.
"Talk."
"Knox." His voice comes out wrong, too tight, all the usual bounce stripped clean. "Gas station on the edge of town. White BMW. Connecticut plates."
The wrench clatters to the workbench. I'm moving before Diesel finishes his next sentence.
"It's Peter Mitchell. He's asking about a woman matching Sarah's description."
Cold fury floods my veins. The beast in my chest snaps its chains and surges free.
"Don't engage. Keep eyes on him."
I end the call and hit Finn's number. My VP answers on the second ring.
"Get Sarah from the diner. Bring her to the clubhouse. Now." The words scrape out more growl than speech. "Her ex is in Nightfall Cove."
Finn doesn't ask questions. "On it."
The ride from the garage to the clubhouse takes three minutes. I make it in two, pushing the bike hard enough that my tires scream on the turns. I pace the main room, waiting, while Rex tracks Peter's movements on his laptop.
But I don't see Sarah.
My hands curl into fists. Then Finn's bike rumbles into the lot and I hear her voice—asking what's happening, concern threading through the words—and my lungs unlock so fast the relief nearly drops me to my knees.
She walks through the door with Finn a step behind her, confusion written across her face until she sees me. Her eyes widen. She reads what's happening in my expression, in the way I hold myself like a man balanced on the edge of violence, she crosses the room to meet me halfway.
"Knox?"
I pull her against my chest before I can stop myself. I breathe her in and catch the salt of fear underneath the warmth. Not fear of me. Never of me. Fear of the past that followed her three thousand miles and found her anyway.
"He's here." I press my mouth to her hair and breathe her in. "Your ex. He's in Nightfall Cove."
She goes rigid in my arms.
"How—"
"Diesel spotted him at the gas station. Asking about you." I pull back enough to look at her face, to make sure she sees the promise in my eyes. "He won't touch you. Do you understand? He won't get within a hundred feet of you."
Her hand finds my chest, pressing flat over my heart like she needs to feel it beating. "Knox. What are you going to do?"
Before I can answer, Diesel's voice crackles through Rex's radio.
"Knox. He's at the gate. Demanding entry."
The compound's main gate stands twelve feet high, reinforced steel that could stop a truck. Peter Mitchell stands on the other side of it like he has every right to be there, like his money and his name carry weight in a place where neither holds any power.
Diesel keeps position by the gatehouse with one hand resting on the baseball bat propped against the wall. Two prospects flank him—young orcs with more muscle than sense who look ready to tear this human apart the moment I give the word.
I walk through the clubhouse door and down the gravel drive, taking my time. Let him wait. Let him see what's coming for him.
Peter Mitchell turns out to be smaller than I expected.
Average height, soft around the middle despite the expensive tailoring of his jacket.
Dark hair, a face that probably charmed boardrooms and country clubs for years.
His hands are manicured. He looks exactly like a man who hurts women because he can, because money and connections have shielded him from every consequence he ever earned.
He sees me and the color drains from his face.
"What the—" He stumbles back a step, hitting the gate behind him. "She's with... she's with a monster?"
I stop three feet away. Close enough that he has to crane his neck to meet my eyes.
"You must be Peter." My voice scrapes low enough to vibrate in his chest. "I've heard a lot about you."
His face twists—fear warring with the arrogance of a man who's never faced consequences in his life. The arrogance wins. Men like him always think they're untouchable.
"I'm her husband." He juts his chin up, trying to look defiant despite the tremor in his hands. "I have every right—"
"Ex-husband."
The correction lands like a slap. His mouth opens and closes without sound.
"Sarah Mitchell is under the protection of the Feral Sons MC." I let each word settle between us like a stone dropping into still water. "She is under MY protection. And you are trespassing on private property."
"Protection?" He laughs—the sound high and sharp, panic bleeding through the bravado. "She's my wife. She belongs to me. I'm taking her home."
Everything in me goes still. The way it goes still before I do the things that keep my people safe. My vision sharpens. The world narrows to this one pathetic creature and the hundred different ways I could break him without breaking a sweat.
"She belongs to herself." I step closer and he presses himself flat against the gate, eyes wide and white-rimmed. "And she chose to be mine."
Movement in my peripheral vision. Sarah, walking through the front door with Finn a step behind her.
I should tell her to get back inside, to let me handle this, but the look on her face stops the words in my throat.
She isn't hiding. She walks toward us with her shoulders back and her chin lifted.
Pride surges through me hot enough to burn.
My mate doesn't cower. My mate doesn't run. My mate faces her monster head-on.
"Go home, Peter." Her voice holds steady.
"Sarah." His tone shifts—softer now, wounded, the voice of a man who's practiced this performance a thousand times. "Baby, come on. You know I didn't mean—"
"I'm not going anywhere with you." She stops at my side, close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm. "I'm staying here."
His mask cracks. The charming facade falls away and I see what lives underneath—petulant rage, the fury of a spoiled child denied his favorite toy.
"With THAT?" He jabs a finger at me, his face contorting. "You'd rather fuck an animal than come home to your husband? What, does he have some kind of monster cock you can't live without? Is that what this is?"
The growl tears from my throat before I can stop it—primal, a sound that makes prey animals freeze where they stand. My brothers shift behind me. Waiting. Ready.
Peter's eyes dart between us, and I watch him calculate his odds and decide he doesn't like them. His hand drops to his waistband.
The gun comes up fast, pointing at my chest.
Time stretches like taffy.
Sarah screams my name—I think—but the sound warps and slows. All I see is the barrel. All I feel is the heat flooding my muscles, my vision sharpening until I can count his heartbeats from ten feet away.
I move.
My hand closes around his wrist before his finger finds the trigger. I twist—not hard enough to break—and the gun clatters across the pavement. My other hand catches his throat. Not squeezing. His pulse hammers against my palm like a trapped bird trying to beat its way free.
"You came to my territory." The words scrape out of me, barely human. "Threatened my woman. Pulled a weapon out."
Behind me, my brothers form a half-circle. Finn's hand rests on the knife at his belt. The prospects crack their knuckles.
"Give me one reason not to end you right here."
Peter's face goes purple, his hands scrabbling uselessly at my grip.
Tears leak from the corners of his eyes.
He makes sounds—blubbering, maybe begging—but I can't hear them over the roar in my skull.
All I can see is Sarah flinching from a raised hand.
Sarah documenting bruises with shaking fingers.
Sarah driving three thousand miles to escape a man who treated her like property.
"Knox."
Her voice cuts through everything.
She doesn't say anything else. Just my name. But her hand touches my arm—small, warm and steady—and her scent floods my senses. The smell of home. The beast stops and listens.
Her fingers slide up to my shoulder. She steps closer, pressing herself against my side, and the contact grounds me in a way words never could.
I look down at Peter—this pathetic creature, this man who beat his wife and bought his way out of consequences for years—and I see exactly what he is.
Small. Weak. A man who can only feel powerful when he's hurting someone weaker than himself.
A man who mistakes cruelty for strength and control for love.
I am nothing like him.
I release his throat and he crumples to the ground, gasping and coughing. Snot runs down his face. He's sobbing now—ugly, wet sounds that make my lip curl.
Sheriff Gardner's cruiser pulls up the drive, lights flashing. Finn made the call. The sheriff climbs out with two deputies flanking him, and I watch Peter's face cycle through relief, then confusion, then fear again when he realizes the cops aren't here to save him.
"Normally," I say, loud enough for Peter to hear, "we'd handle this ourselves. More hands-on." I crack my knuckles. "But for Sarah's sake, we'll let the law deal with you."
I crouch down until I'm eye level with the sobbing mess on the ground.
"But hear me, Peter. If you ever show your face in Nightfall Cove again—if you come anywhere near her—the cops won't find you.
We'll drop you in the monster lands and let you fend for yourself.
" I bare my tusks. "You wouldn't last a day. "
Gardner looks down at Peter with undisguised contempt. "Peter Mitchell. Assault. Brandishing a weapon. Trespassing on private property. Violation of a restraining order." He nods to his deputies. "Cuff him."
Peter screams as they haul him to his feet. Threats and promises, money and lawyers, the same words that have always protected him.