Chapter 11
Sarah
The next afternoon, Knox's phone buzzes on the nightstand.
He ignores it. His arm tightens around me, his face buried in my hair, and I feel his irritation flicker through the bond—a flash of annoyance at whoever's interrupting the first quiet moment we've had all day.
It buzzes again. And again.
He reaches for it with a growl that vibrates against my back. "This better be important."
I can't hear the other end of the call, but I feel Knox's reaction through the bond before his body catches up. His arm goes rigid around me. His breathing stops.
"The emissary?" A pause. "No. The letter specified next week."
Silence. Then something cold and terrible floods the connection between us, ice spreading through every warm thing I've been feeling for the past hour.
"He's gone." Knox's voice comes out flat, stripped of everything except certainty. "He was arrested. Restraining order, assault charges, the works. His daddy's lawyers got him bail, but the Sheriff said he headed straight back to Connecticut. He shouldn't be anywhere near Oregon."
Peter.
The name hits me before Knox says it. My hand grips his arm hard enough that my nails dig into his skin, and every ounce of contentment in my body shatters like a window struck with a rock.
Knox listens. His jaw works. Through the bond I feel his fury building, cold and methodical, layering itself over the fear he's trying to hide from me.
"How many?" Another pause. "And they're welcoming him."
He ends the call without saying goodbye and lets the phone drop to the mattress.
I find his hand in the fading light, my pulse hammering against his palm. "He's back? But the restraining order—the charges—"
"Paper doesn't stop men like him." He pulls me closer, wrapping himself around me like he can shield me from the world through sheer force of will. "It doesn't matter how he got here. What matters is that he's here, he's breathing, and he's already found friends among the people who hate us most."
I press my face against his chest. Tears soak through his shirt before I can stop them. His hand finds my belly, pressing flat against the place where our child grows.
Peter Mitchell, back and hungry for revenge, with Humans First rallying to his cause. The orc clans sending an emissary. Two threats closing in on Nightfall Cove, on the club, on our family.
Knox breathes me in. His arms tighten. Through the bond I feel his certainty settle into place—not peace, but resolve. Whatever comes, we face it together.
That's what the bond means.
Knox's phone shatters the silence at 3AM, and the bond hits me a half-second later—his spike of adrenaline flooding through the connection so fast that my body jerks upright before my eyes adjust to the dark.
He's already reaching for it, one hand swiping the screen while the other finds my shoulder and presses me back against the pillows.
"Talk." His voice scrapes low and flat. His jaw clenches as he listens, the tendons in his neck pulling taut as whoever's on the other end delivers the news.
"How many trucks do you have on site?" A pause. "That's not enough. We're on our way."
He's out of bed before the call ends, pulling on jeans, reaching for his boots.
"Knox. What happened?"
"Fire at the school." He grabs his cut from the chair and shrugs into it. "Fire chief says it jumped to the roof and they can't contain it with what they've got. If it spreads to the houses on Maple, families are going to wake up to smoke in their bedrooms."
The school. My classroom. My little reading corner, the finger paintings drying on clotheslines between the windows. My stomach turns over and I press my palm flat against my belly.
Knox punches another number. "Finn—fire at the elementary school, chief needs bodies. I want every brother on the road in five minutes. Get the truck and coordinate with the fire chief on site." He turns to me while he listens. "Diesel's on night watch downstairs. I'll tell him to stay put."
"I'll be fine." I pull the sheets around myself. "Go."
He crosses to me, tilts my chin up, and presses his forehead against mine. Through the bond I feel the war inside him—the need to protect his town pulling against the need to stay with his pregnant mate. His thumb traces my jaw.
"Lock the bedroom door. Diesel's right downstairs. I'll be back as soon as the fire's handled."
He kisses me—firm and fast, his tusks grazing my chin—and then he's gone. The roar of his bike joins two others in the compound, and the sound fades into the night until the clubhouse falls quiet.
I lie back and press my hand to my belly, reaching for the bond. Knox burns at the edge of my awareness, a bright point moving away from me through the dark. The baby flutters beneath my palm—too early for real movement, but the bond tells me what my body can't yet feel.
I should try to sleep. Instead I stare at the ceiling and listen to the clubhouse settle around me.
The guest room door opens down the hall. Bare feet on hardwood. A soft knock.
"Sarah? I heard bikes. What's going on?"
Jessica. She arrived this afternoon with a duffel bag over one shoulder and a six-pack of IPA I can't drink anymore, standing in the clubhouse doorway with her blonde pixie cut grown out just enough to prove she hasn't had time for a haircut in weeks.
My best friend. The woman who followed me to Nightfall Cove.
Jess is five-four, all lean muscle from years of military fitness she never dropped after her discharge.
Tattoos sleeve both forearms, intricate black-and-gray work that covers the scars she doesn't talk about.
She spent four years as a combat medic in places she won't name, came home with a nursing degree and a flinch response she manages through sheer will.
I open the bedroom door and she leans against the frame, arms crossed.
"Fire at the school," I tell her. "Knox and the brothers went to help the fire crew."
"And he left us here with the golden retriever downstairs." She glances toward the hall. "Solid plan."
"Diesel's on watch."
"I said what I said." But she grins, and the tension in my shoulders loosens. Jess has that effect on me. She's had it since freshman orientation, when she dropped into the seat beside me and said, You look like you need a friend who won't take your bullshit. I'm Jessica.
"Come on," she says. "I'm not sleeping through this. Let's go make Diesel some coffee."
We find Diesel in the great room, pacing a circuit between the front windows and the bar. His baseball bat rests against the wall within arm's reach, and he straightens when he sees us, trying to look like he has everything under control.
"Ladies. Knox asked me to hold the fort. Everything's secure."
"At ease, soldier." Jess heads for the kitchen, laughing. "I'm making coffee. Anyone want?"
The three of us settle into the quiet routine of waiting.
Jess takes the couch with her phone, scrolling through something, her version of light reading.
Diesel resumes his circuit of the windows.
I curl into Knox's armchair with a blanket around my shoulders, reaching for the bond every few minutes to track Knox's location.
He's across town now, his focus sharp and outward, the low hum of exertion telling me he's working hard.
Suddenly the power dies.
Every light in the clubhouse cuts at once, plunging us into darkness. The coffee maker gurgles to a stop and goes silent. Then the emergency lights kick on—dim red strips along the baseboards, turning the great room crimson.
Diesel stops pacing. "That's not the storm grid. The generator's out back—someone cut the line."
The words land in my stomach like ice water. The fire. The brothers gone. The clubhouse nearly empty.
It's not a coincidence. It's a trap.
"Someone's out there." Diesel presses himself against the wall beside the front window, peering through the edge of the glass. "Movement by the tree line."
Through the bond I feel Knox register my spike of fear. His focus fractures—shifts from the fire to me. I feel the exact moment he understands, because his fury detonates so hot the connection between us vibrates with it. He's already coming.
But he's across town. Ten minutes at least.
Glass explodes somewhere down the hall. Diesel grabs his bat and moves toward the sound.
He makes it a few steps before something strikes him from the broken window frame.
His body seizes, every muscle locking rigid.
He drops, the bat clattering across the floor, thin wires trailing from his chest to something outside.
Taser. He hits the ground hard.
Jess grabs my arm, pulling me toward the hallway. "Now, Sarah. Move."
But I see Diesel crumpled on the floor, his breathing shallow and uneven, a cut on his forehead where he struck the edge of a table. Twenty-five years old. A kid who makes waffles from Betty's recipe and calls me ma'am when he forgets himself.
I plant my feet.
"Sarah." Jess's grip tightens on my arm. "We need to go."
"No, we can't leave him." The word comes from somewhere deep, somewhere Peter spent our entire marriage trying to kill. "I'm done hiding while other people bleed for me."
Jess stares at me. Whatever she sees makes her release my arm and step back.
"Then at least let me cover Diesel." She drags him behind the bar, out of the line of fire, presses two fingers to his neck. "Pulse is strong. He'll come around." She looks up at me. "Go. I'm right behind you."
The front door shudders. Once. Twice. A shoulder slamming against reinforced wood. Then a voice from outside.
"Open up, monster-lovers. We know you're in there."
Humans First.
The front door shudders again, the frame cracking, and I pick up Diesel's baseball bat.