The Storm Orc’s Captive (Feral Sons MC #2)

Chapter 1

Jessica

The sky turns the color of a bruise at quarter past two, and I lose count of the gauze rolls for the third time.

I drop the clipboard on the supply counter and press my hands into my eye sockets.

Start over. Four boxes of sterile pads, two cases of saline, one portable defibrillator that Dr. Bryce insists still functions despite the cracked housing.

Three rolls of surgical tape. Suture kits—I open the case and count each one, because if this hurricane hits the way the forecasts predict, I won't have time to dig through a disorganized tray while someone bleeds on my table.

Nightfall Medical Clinic empties around me. Folders disappearing into boxes. Nurses wrapping equipment and hauling it to Dr. Bryce's SUV. The staff abandoning ship, one sensible person at a time.

I'm not sensible. Never have been. Two tours in Afghanistan cured me of the impulse.

Through the window, the Pacific churns slate-gray and furious.

Palm trees along the boardwalk bend sideways, and the flag outside the post office snaps so hard the pole shudders.

Hurricane Maren. Category three, projected to make landfall by tonight, and every evacuation route out of Nightfall Cove clogs with bumper-to-bumper traffic heading inland.

I turn back to my inventory. Seventeen IV bags. That's not enough. If the storm surge hits—

The rumble reaches me through the walls.

Low. Deep. A vibration that travels through concrete and settles in your chest. Motorcycles. A lot of them, coming from the east, growing louder until the window panes rattle in their frames.

I don't look up. I know who it is before the engines cut.

The Feral Sons MC roll into the clinic parking lot with a flatbed truck stacked high with plywood sheets, two generators lashed to the sides, and enough bottled water to stock a bunker.

I catch all of this in my peripheral vision because I refuse—absolutely refuse—to look directly at the bikes. At one bike in particular.

Three weeks I've managed to avoid Finn Stone.

Every cookout at the clubhouse, every Sunday family dinner Sarah drags me to, every time someone drops his name into conversation like a grenade with the pin pulled—I find somewhere else to be.

A shift to cover. A phone call to take. A sudden desperate need to reorganize my sock drawer.

Three weeks since Knox and Sarah's wedding reception, and I can still taste champagne and bad decisions on the back of my tongue.

The garden behind the clubhouse. Fairy lights strung through the cedar trees, the bass from the speakers inside thumping through the floorboards, and Finn leaning against the railing with his sleeves pushed to his elbows and that crooked grin leveled at me like a weapon.

I'd had too much champagne. That's the excuse, and I'm sticking with it.

He'd said something about the stars—corny, ridiculous, a line that works on women who haven't spent years getting lied to by men with charm to spare. I'd rolled my eyes. He'd laughed. And then the space between us dissolved, and my hands fisted the leather of his cut, and I kissed him.

Not a peck. Not a friendly brush of lips I could laugh off later.

I kissed him like I'd been starving for it.

His mouth opened under mine, hot and tasting of whiskey, and his hand spanned the small of my back and pulled me flush against his body—all six-foot-six of hard muscle and warm skin and that deep rumble in his chest that vibrated against my ribs.

His broken tusk grazed my lower lip. His braid fell over his shoulder and brushed my arm.

I grabbed it and pulled, and the sound he made—guttural, hungry—melted the bones in my legs.

He kissed me back like he'd been thinking about it for months.

And then an hour later I walked back inside to find him at the bar with a blonde perched on the stool beside him, leaning close, laughing, all that warmth pointed at someone else like the kiss in the garden had already evaporated. Like it meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.

I left without saying goodbye.

Stupid. I flatten the clipboard against the counter hard enough to crack the plastic casing.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I know what Finn Stone is.

Every woman in Nightfall Cove knows what Finn Stone is.

He flirts the way other people breathe—constant, involuntary, aimed at anything with a pulse.

The VP of the Feral Sons MC, Knox's younger brother, all swagger and dimples, the man mothers warn their daughters about and daughters ignore the warning.

I am not a woman who ignores warnings. I spent six years in combat zones reading threat assessments. I recognize danger when it winks at me across a parking lot.

Which is why I don't look up when the clinic door bangs open.

"Morning, Princess."

His voice hits me between the shoulder blades. Warm and threaded with amusement—like he knows I've been avoiding him and finds it entertaining.

I keep my eyes on the suture kit. "Don't call me that."

Boots cross the linoleum. Something heavy lands on the floor with a metallic thunk that shakes the supply shelf beside me.

I glance sideways. He's set a generator down—carried it on one shoulder like it weighs nothing, which tracks, because the thing has to be two hundred pounds and Finn Stone treats gravity as a suggestion.

He straightens. His mouth hooks higher. "Why not? You order everyone around like royalty. It's a compliment."

My stomach flips. I hate that it flips. I hate more that I don't hate the name, that some treasonous part of me wants to hear him say it again.

"Where do you want this?" Knox steps through the doorway behind him, Garrett ducking sideways to clear the frame with his horns, two brothers at his back carrying cases of water and medical supplies. His gaze cuts across the clinic and lands on me.

"Storage room." I point without looking at Finn. "End of the hall. Supplies go on the metal shelves, water on the floor."

Knox nods. The brothers move.

But Finn doesn't move.

He leans against the counter three feet from me, and I can feel his gaze on the side of my face. Not the flirty once-over he aims at other women, that lazy sweep from ankles to eyes designed to make my heart rate spike. This look carries an edge. More focused.

Then one of the brothers calls his name from the hallway and he turns, cracking a joke about plywood and poor life choices, and the intensity vanishes. His familiar smirk back in place.

I exhale through my teeth and finish counting suture kits.

Dr. Bryce emerges from her office with a box of files tucked under one arm and her coat already on. Mid-fifties, silver bob, moves like a woman who's never panicked a day in her life and isn't starting now.

"You sure you want to stay?" She pauses beside me, car keys in hand.

"Someone has to."

"Jessica." She lowers her voice. "This storm is projected to drop eighteen inches of rain in twelve hours. Storm surge could flood the lower streets. The National Guard is setting up inland—"

"And if someone breaks a leg or goes into labor or takes a piece of debris to the skull, they need a clinic. Not a thirty-mile drive through floodwater." I hold her stare. "I've ridden out worse."

She studies me for a beat, then nods. Squeezes my shoulder. "The satellite phone is in my office. Battery backup's charged. You need anything—"

"I know, I know."

Dr. Bryce leaves. One by one, the last of the staff filter out—the receptionist with her cat carrier, the lab tech with his laptop bag, the janitor who shakes my hand and says God bless like he's not sure he'll see me again.

The first patients trickle in before the last car pulls out of the lot.

A man with a gash across his forearm from a shutter that ripped free in a gust—six stitches, clean edges, minimal bleeding.

I irrigate the wound, suture it closed, and send him out with gauze and instructions he probably won't follow.

Then a kid with a sprained wrist from helping his dad board windows, crying more from fear than pain.

I wrap it, give him a lollipop from the doctor's stash, and tell him he's tougher than the hurricane.

His mom mouths thank you over his head. I nod and wash my hands and try not to think about the barometric pressure dropping like a stone.

"Knox wants me here through the storm." Finn's voice from the hallway.

My head snaps toward him—he's crowding the doorframe, arms braced on either side—a position that stretches his shirt across his chest and makes the Feral Sons patch on his vest pull taut.

His dark braid hangs over one shoulder, the jagged edge of his snapped tusk pale against his green skin.

"The clinic needs securing," he continues. "Windows, doors, generator hookup. Knox's orders."

"I don't need a babysitter."

His jaw tightens. Hurt flashes behind his eyes—there and gone. But his voice stays level, stays light. "Good thing I'm here for the building, not you."

Knox passes behind him carrying the last case of water. He catches my eye, and a weight moves between the brothers. A silent conversation in a language I don't speak. Knox's hand lands on Finn's shoulder, grips once, and then he's gone.

The other brothers file out. Engines roar to life in the parking lot. The rumble fades down the coast road until only one bike remains.

Finn turns back to me. "Last convoy leaves in forty minutes. Heads inland to the evacuation center in Deermont." He pauses. The mask slips. "You should be on it."

"No."

"This is stupid, Jess. You're going to get yourself killed playing hero."

"I'm not playing anything." I slam the supply case shut. "This is my job. Maybe you don't understand that."

"I understand you've got a death wish—"

"Don't you dare—"

We're in each other's faces before I register moving.

The size difference hits me—I have to crane my neck to meet his eyes, and he has to drop his chin to hold mine.

We're both furious, both breathing hard.

His scent rolls over me—iron and sweat and underneath that, a heat like sun-baked leather my body recognizes even when my brain screams at it to stop.

"If you two are done flirting, I need to finish evacuating."

Dr. Bryce stands in the side entrance with a forgotten box of files, one eyebrow raised above her glasses.

"We're not—!" The words come out in unison. Identical pitch. Identical indignation.

Dr. Bryce leaves with a smile that makes me want to throw a suture kit at the wall.

Finn steps back. Runs a hand over his braid. The anger bleeds out of his posture, replaced by exhaustion. He moves to the window and stares at the sky, and for a second—just a second—I see the man underneath the act. Tired. Tense. Jaw locked against whatever he's not saying.

The lights flicker.

We both glance at the ceiling. The fluorescents buzz, dim, surge back. Outside, the wind screams louder and the first real rain hits the windows sideways, streaking the glass in sheets so thick I can barely make out Finn's bike alone in the lot below. Everyone else is gone.

He turns from the window. One corner of his mouth lifts, but the humor doesn't reach his eyes.

"Like it or not, Cooper, you're stuck with me."

I fold my arms across my chest and lock eyes with him. The lights flicker again, and in the half-second of darkness his eyes catch a feral amber glow—orc night vision kicking in—before the fluorescents stutter back.

I arch an eyebrow. 'Try not to be more trouble than the hurricane.'