Chapter 12
Rex
Church runs long. Knox called it after I got to the compound—the double threat, Bloodstone scouts and Rickman's crew moving at the same time—and the brothers spend two hours going back and forth on patrol routes and surveillance schedules until Knox closes the table and the room empties.
Finn heads for the door. I catch his arm.
"Hang back a minute."
Knox doesn't move from his chair, which means he already knows what's coming. The three of us sit in the quiet with the last of the sunset throwing long shadows across the floor.
"I want to claim Holly." The words come out rougher than I planned. "The bite. The bond. All of it."
Knox nods once. Finn leans back and crosses his arms with a grin building on his face that I want to punch off him.
"But I don't know how." I stare at the table because looking at either of them right now would kill me. "I didn't grow up in this. Nobody taught me the tradition. My gut says bite her, but I don't wanna fuck it up."
The silence stretches long enough that I force myself to look up. Knox's expression holds no judgment. The grin drops off Finn's face.
"It's not complicated," Knox says. "The bite goes here." He touches the junction of his own neck and shoulder. "You ask permission first. Always. The bond does the rest."
"What does she need to know beforehand?"
"Everything." Knox's voice carries the weight of a man who's done this.
"That it's permanent, there is no taking it back, ever.
That she'll carry your heartbeat under hers.
That she'll feel what you feel and you'll feel what she feels—there's no hiding.
That her lifespan will increase. You don't leave anything out, and you don't bite her until she says yes with all of that on the table. "
Finn leans forward. "When I claimed Jess, the bond hit us both at the same time. Everything I'd been holding back flooded through at once. It's not gentle, Rex. It'll take you to the floor if you're not ready."
"I'm ready."
"I know you are." Finn grips my shoulder.
Knox stands. "Go get your girl, brother."
Five years ago, standing in this same room, Knox put my cut across this table and said Welcome home, brother.
I didn't cry but I came close. Went to the bathroom after and pressed my forehead against the tile and breathed through my teeth until my eyes stopped burning.
I need to remember what that felt like. A man choosing me. A family that didn't send me back.
Now I'm about to choose someone for the first time in my life and mean it.
Colt catches me in the hallway. He adjusts his reading glasses and rubs the back of his neck. "Hey Reckless, does Holly teach photography?"
"She's done some workshops. Why?"
"Ellie Frost, the librarian, organized a photography workshop for kids at the library. She wants to know if Holly would co-teach." He clears his throat. "Lily won't stop talking about it. Brought home six books on darkroom techniques. The kid's ten. I had to Google what a darkroom was."
I catch the way Colt says Ellie. Like he's been saying it to himself a lot and hasn't noticed yet.
"I'll ask Holly."
Colt nods and turns for the door. He pauses with one hand on the frame.
"She's a good one, Rex."
I carry Holly's cut folded over my arm when I walk into the Anchor at sunset.
I had it made months ago, back when I couldn't even look at her without my pulse doing something stupid.
I shoved it in the bottom of my closet at the compound because wanting it felt like admitting something I wasn't ready for.
Holly stands behind the bar drying pint glasses and stacking them on the shelf.
Her hair is pulled back with a clip and the violet streak falls loose against her jaw.
She hums while she works. Sal leans against the far end polishing bottles.
A few of the brothers sit scattered at tables: Jax nursing a beer by the window, Garrett at the end of the bar with Nina.
A normal night at the Anchor, except for what I'm carrying.
Holly spots me and her grip slows on the glass. Her gaze drops to the leather, then comes back to my face.
I walk to the bar. Set the cut on the wood between us—fresh leather, sized for her, the Feral Sons patch across the back and Property of Rex stitched below it.
"I don't have a ring." My throat tightens but I push through it. "I've got a Road Captain patch, a Harley with sixty thousand miles on it, and a long history of being the biggest idiot in this club. But I'm done running. You're my family. Will you wear this? Will you be my old lady?"
Holly looks at the cut. She traces the stitching around the patch, runs her thumb across her name on the inside collar where I had it stamped. When she looks at me I recognize the expression. It's the one she gets right before she clicks the shutter.
"Yes, Rex." She pulls the cut on over her shoulders. Settles it. Tugs the lapels straight. On her terms, like everything she's ever done.
Garrett lifts his glass an inch, and from Nina comes a sound that might be a squeal or even a war cry.
Dawson wolf-whistles from the pool table.
Sal smiles behind the bar, and I'm not sure I've ever seen that before.
Holly grins at me in my colors, and my ribs crack open in a way that has nothing to do with the desperate need to bond and everything to do with the woman wearing my cut like she's owned it her whole life.
Holly locks the Anchor up herself and we climb the stairs to her apartment with the February cold pressing against the windows and the street gone quiet below us.
She stands in the kitchen in my cut over a tank top, pouring bourbon into two glasses. The sight of her in my colors hits me low in the gut. The feral thing in my blood rolls over and purrs.
She passes me a glass. Takes a sip of her own. Sets it on the counter.
"There's one more thing."
My heart kicks.
"Knox claimed Sarah." Her voice drops, direct. "Finn claimed Jess. I know how orcs bond, Rex. I know what the bite means. And you already called me your mate—you don't get to take that back." She steps closer. "I want forever. Give it to me."
I set my glass down because my grip won't hold it.
"It's forever, Holly. It changes you, physically. My heartbeat layered under yours. My emotions in your body. You'll feel everything I feel and I'll feel everything you feel. You'll live longer." I swallow. "There's no taking it back."
She crosses the kitchen and cups my face in both palms. Her thumbs trace the edges of my tusks, the same gesture that cracked the word mate through my skull six months ago.
"I've spent years proving I don't need permanent." Her eyes hold mine. "But I want it. With you. Don't hold back the one thing that means forever."
I pull her against me. My mouth finds the curve of her neck, the hollow where her throat meets her collarbone. The claiming place. I press my lips there and feel her pulse jump against my mouth.
"Tell me yes." The words come out wrecked. "I need to hear you say it."
"Yes, Rex. Do it."
The bite. My teeth pierce her skin and she gasps—a sharp bright intake that tightens her grip in my hair. The bond snaps into place. Everything I've suppressed since October tears through both of us at once, and my knees buckle against hers.
Her heartbeat layers beneath mine. Not a sound but a presence. A second pulse running alongside my own like it belongs there.
Holly grabs my shoulders. "I can feel—Rex, I can feel your heartbeat."
My lips press against the mark, tasting copper and salt and her, and the claiming scar settles into her skin. "That's me. You'll feel it for the rest of your life."
The bond hits me like Finn warned it would.
Everything she's hidden floods through at once.
The fierce independence she wears like armor.
The vulnerability she buries under sarcasm and sharp edges and the camera she puts between herself and the world.
And beneath all of it, stillness. Deep and quiet and unshakable.
Holly doesn't move. She's the steadiest person I've ever known, and I've spent every mile since that first night running from the one person who could make me stop.
Her emotions crash into me. Love and terror and relief, the same tangled mess I've carried for months, mirrored back, and the doubled weight of it cracks a place behind my ribs I thought would never break.
I kiss her. The bond amplifies everything—her lips against mine, the heat of her body through the tank top and my cut, the taste of bourbon on her tongue. I slide the cut off her and pull the tank top over her head because I need skin so bad my whole body shakes.
Before I touch her breasts I feel them. Her sensation floods me, the cold air tightening her nipples, the ache of wanting my mouth there, my hands follow the signal like they're being guided.
I cup her in my palms, thumbs dragging across the peaks, and the sound she makes hits me twice: once through my ears, once through my ribs, a spike of pleasure that drops straight through my gut.
"Fuck," she breathes. She yanks my belt loose and shoves my jeans down my hips.
I lift her onto the counter and her legs wrap around my waist, her thighs trembling.
I grind my cock against the seam of her shorts and she rocks into me, through the bond I feel what she feels.
The pressure of me against her clit, the friction of the denim, the wet heat building between her legs. My cock throbs so hard my vision blurs.