Chapter 3
Ava
The minotaur from the street found me yesterday afternoon.
Same one who watched me outside Betty's Diner without blinking, without moving, without returning my wave.
He crossed Main Street and introduced himself—Bruiser, Feral Sons MC, community outreach—and walked me down the waterfront while he made his pitch.
Full access to the compound. Guest room.
Interviews with the brothers. The real story, he said, lives up there.
I pushed back. I had a room at the B&B and a routine that didn't involve sleeping in a motorcycle club.
He gave me two reasons. I respected the honesty more than the pitch.
And the access he described would give me a story worth ten times what I'd scrape together from the sidewalk.
So I let him drive me to the B&B to grab my bags, followed him back to the compound in my rental, and told myself I'd made a smart professional decision.
I still think that. Standing at the guest room window the next morning, watching the sun catch the old shipyard buildings and turn the timber walls gold, I think: this is exactly where a journalist should be.
My car sits in the lot between two motorcycles.
Knox gave me the gate code last night. I can leave whenever I want.
The hallway outside my room smells like motor oil and pine cleaner and something else underneath both. Warm, sharp, heavier than musk. It sits in the walls. It thickens near the stairwell at the end of the hall.
I shower, dress, and go find Knox.
He's in the common room with coffee and a laptop, his wife Sarah beside him with a binder. Reeve plays on a blanket near her feet, smacking a wooden block against the floor with a dedication I respect.
"I need ground rules," I say from the hall.
Knox looks up. Sarah's pen stops.
"If I'm here for a story, I need to actually write one. That means real access. Not a guest room and a guided tour—I need to talk to your people without someone standing behind me deciding what I get to hear."
Knox looks at me for a long time. Sarah glances at him, and whatever passes between them takes less than a second.
"Bruiser stays close," he says. "Humans First has been tagging the town and harassing people, you're writing a piece that puts a target on you. But your interviews are your own. Anyone willing to talk is fair game."
"And the ones who aren't willing?"
His mouth twitches. "Then they aren't willing. That's not censorship, Ms. White. We're not going to make anyone sit down with you. Wouldn't do you much good if we did. But you won't be short on volunteers."
Knox turns back to his laptop. Sarah picks up her pen.
I pull a chair to the long table, open my notebook to a fresh page, and set the recorder beside it.
The common room connects to the kitchen, the kitchen connects to the hallway, and the hallway feeds every corner of this place.
Everyone who lives here passes through this room at some point. I set up and wait.
By the third morning, I have a rhythm. Set up in the common room, recorder ready, notebook open. The brothers come to me.
"Finn Stone. VP. What do you want to know?"
He talks for twenty minutes about the Emergence, the early years, the garage, his wife at the clinic, what some of the brothers do. He covers more ground than anyone I've interviewed in months and never once says anything I haven't already read in the town council archives.
I write: Finn Stone—VP. Gives you everything you need and nothing you want. Born spokesman. Protects the story as well as Knox does.
The next afternoon, a second orc leans against the kitchen doorframe with his arms crossed. I direct my opening question at him before he can leave.
"How did you end up with the Feral Sons?"
He stares at me. The stare sits flat and hard and doesn't blink.
"Knox found me. Gave me a cut. I stayed."
"That's three sentences. I didn't get your name."
"Rex." He pushes off the wall. "And the fourth sentence is: I don't do interviews."
He walks out. I write: Rex—road captain (per Finn). Doesn't waste words. Came from somewhere that taught him not to.
Every interview, Bruiser stands ten feet behind me.
Every time a conversation drifts toward compound operations, he redirects.
A brother starts describing the radio setup and Bruiser clears his throat and the brother switches topics mid-sentence.
I ask about the club's relationship with local law enforcement and the prospect who started to answer catches Bruiser's eye and discovers he has somewhere else to be.
Knox gave me unfiltered access but Bruiser is the filter.
By Thursday I've had enough.
After a morning interview that Bruiser shut down with a look when the brother mentioned the compound's security cameras, I turn around in the hallway.
"You're editing my interviews."
He stops walking. "I'm keeping you safe."
"You cleared your throat four times this morning. That's not protection. That's a signal."
He looks at me. Brown eyes, flat and dark. "Some questions put people in positions they shouldn't be in."
"That's not your call."
"Knox asked me to keep you safe. Part of that is keeping the brothers safe too. You don't need to know about our operations or security here. You could print something that puts my brothers or this club in danger."
I hold the recorder up between us. The red light pulses.
"How about you, then? On the record. You can control exactly what gets said."
"No."
I hold the recorder there. The quiet stretches between us and I let it sit because I'm good at quiet.
He turns and walks down the corridor.
I write: Bruiser—minotaur, tail gunner. Said no to an on-the-record without blinking. Didn't explain. Didn't apologize. Just no.
The same afternoon, a minotaur fills the doorway of the common room. Not Bruiser. Taller, wider, with a stillness that makes the air around him feel heavier. Seven feet. Hands folded in front of him, his body blocking the light from the hallway behind him.
"I'd love to hear about your woodworking, if you're open to it," I try. Finn mentioned it.
He shakes his head once.
I close my notebook. "Okay, fair enough. Thank you for your time."
He inclines his head and leaves.
The touches start on day two.
Every time Bruiser walks me somewhere on the compound—and he walks me everywhere—his hand finds the small of my back or my arm as we pass through.
In the narrow hall his fingers wrap my elbow to guide me past a stack of lumber.
When I trip on the raised threshold of the garage his palm catches my arm and holds it until I'm steady.
Each touch lasts a few seconds. Except my skin holds the warmth after his hand pulls away, and the warmth doesn't fade. It soaks in and stays. By the end of the week I've stopped noticing the touches. I've started noticing their absence, almost craving them.
Friday afternoon he walks me to the other minotaur's workshop on the compound's edge. A woman sits at the counter with a baby asleep in a sling against her chest, a mug of tea between her palms. A pendant rests against her collarbone: a piece of horn on a leather cord, polished smooth.
"Tea?" the woman asks with a warm smile. Her body stays behind the counter. The minotaur shifts without looking, his bulk between her and me.
"I'd love some. Thank you."
She pours and tells me her name is Nina and her husband is Garrett. I take the mug and stay where I am. I drink the tea and ask about the workshop: how long it's been here, what he makes. Nina answers, comfortable and easy. The minotaur's hands never leave the lathe.
The pendant catches light when Nina turns to check the baby. Horn. Minotaur horn. On a leather cord around the neck of a human woman married to a minotaur. I don't know what it means but I'll find out.
On the walk back, Bruiser's hand finds my back again through the doorway. I don't move away. His palm sits warm against my spine and stays there three steps longer than the doorframe requires.
Saturday morning the compound smells like sawdust and fresh paint.
Banners go up on the fence posts. Someone strings lights across the yard between the garage and the main building.
Founder's Day is next weekend and the whole place hums with it—brothers hauling tables, Sarah organizing a volunteer list in the common room, the prospect carrying a stack of folding chairs taller than he is.
The prospect stacks the chairs against the wall, wipes his hands on his jeans, and drops into the seat across from me. He starts talking before I press record. Young, broad through the shoulders, one knee going under the table before he finishes sitting down.
"So you're the journalist, right? Bruiser said I'm not supposed to—well, he didn't say I'm not supposed to, he said I should think about it, which, I thought about it, and I think talking to you is fine because the whole point of the piece is making us look good, right?
And I look great. I'm Diesel, by the way. "
I press record.
He gives me his road to the club. His first week as a prospect.
What Knox means to him, and this part he delivers with a sincerity that makes me stop writing.
He pulls out his phone to show me photos of a custom build he helped with, and then the gallery turns into a tour: compound barbecue, his motorcycle, a sunset from the coast road, a tattoo sketch.
"Compass rose." He angles the phone. "Kim—she runs Ink and Iron downtown—she keeps telling me to sleep on it. Three months now. At this point the design's more committed to me than I am to it."
"Kim a friend?"
His ears go red. "She's—yeah. She does good work."
I write: Diesel—prospect. Heart on his sleeve, phone in my face, zero filter. Kim at Ink and Iron. Noted.
A hand closes around the back of Diesel's chair and pulls.
Bruiser. He appeared behind us without a sound, which shouldn't work for a man his size but does. He lifts the chair—Diesel still in it—six inches off the ground and sets it down three feet from the table.
"Time's up."
"I was just showing her the—"
"Phone gallery. I saw. Time's up."
Diesel shoots me an apologetic look as Bruiser steers him toward the hallway. The prospect turns back at the door. "If you need more, I've got stories about the—"
"Out," Bruiser says.
The door closes.
That evening I spread a week of notes across the kitchen table and play the recordings back. Finn's polish, Rex's three sentences, Diesel's forty-five minutes, and the long stretches of Bruiser's silence filling the gaps between everyone else.
A coffee mug appears at my elbow.
I didn't hear him come in again. I look up and he's already gone, his back disappearing into the hall.
The coffee is black. No sugar. Exactly how I've taken it at every meal this week.
He noticed how I take my coffee. Seven days of meals, and at some point between the first one and this one, he memorized it.
I lift the mug. It's strong. Bitter at the edges. I drink and write in my notebook: He watches everything. Noticed how I take my coffee and brought it without a word. Never asked. Just knew.
I carry the mug back to the guest room and sit on the bed with the window cracked. A motorcycle rumbles into the lot. Brothers talk on the porch below. Above me, through the ceiling, the low hum of electronics. Steady, constant. Whoever lives upstairs doesn't sleep early.
I work through the coffee and two more pages of notes. Brush my teeth, change into a t-shirt, and get into bed pulling the blankets up. The recorder sits on the nightstand, switched off.