Chapter 8
The compound gate swung open like the mouth of something hungry.
Marley drove through with her windows down and her heart in her throat, the truck's cab still smelling like bar rags and fryer grease no matter how many miles she put behind her. The Anchor's smell. The only smell she'd known for three years.
Now it was just a reminder of everything she'd left behind.
Wake pulled his bike alongside her window as she parked in the gravel lot. "Stay in the truck until I check in."
"I'm not a package you can leave on a porch."
Something flickered in his eyes—amusement, maybe, or that possessive heat she was starting to recognize. "Five minutes. Then I'll come get you."
He was gone before she could argue, disappearing into a large building that looked like it had started life as a fishing lodge and gotten meaner over the years. Marley killed the engine and sat in the sudden silence, taking stock.
The compound was... not what she'd expected.
She'd pictured something rougher. Dirtier.
The kind of place where men drank until they passed out and women learned to be invisible.
Instead, she saw converted cabins with flower boxes on the windowsills.
A workshop with organized tools visible through the open door.
A covered pavilion where someone had strung Christmas lights that probably stayed up year-round.
It was quieter than anywhere she'd ever worked. No jukebox, no clinking glasses, no steady hum of conversation that told you the night was going well. Just birdsong and the distant lap of water and the occasional rumble of a bike engine somewhere deeper in the property.
The quiet made her restless.
Marley checked her phone. Six missed calls from the Anchor's landline—probably her weekend bartender wondering why the hell the bar wasn't open. Three texts from the hospital about Hank's discharge paperwork. One voicemail from a number she didn't recognize.
She deleted the voicemail without listening. Nothing good came from unknown numbers at six in the morning.
Wake appeared at her window, and she jumped hard enough to bang her elbow on the door.
"Didn't mean to scare you."
"You didn't scare me. You startled me. There's a difference."
That almost-smile again. "Still says you're welcome here as long as necessary. I'll show you to a cabin."
She grabbed her bag and her lockbox and followed him across the compound.
Brothers nodded as they passed—some in cuts, some in plain clothes, all of them watching her with the careful assessment of men who didn't trust easily.
She kept her chin up and her shoulders back, the same way she did when a new crowd walked into the Anchor.
Read the room. Figure out who matters. Don't show fear.
The cabin Wake led her to was small but clean. One room with a bed, a bathroom through a door on the left, a window that looked out over the water. It smelled like pine and motor oil, and Marley realized with a start that it smelled like Wake.
"This is yours," she said. "Your cabin."
"You need somewhere safe."
"And you—what? Sleep on the floor?"
"I'll figure it out." He set her bag on the bed like the conversation was over. "Someone will bring food later. Try to rest."
"Wake."
He stopped at the door, his back to her. The prospect patch stared at her from between his shoulder blades, that promise of something permanent waiting to be earned.
"Thank you," she said. "For all of it. The cabin, the rescue, the—" She gestured vaguely at the compound outside the window. "Whatever this is."
He turned. Looked at her with those lake-water eyes that saw too much.
"This is your life now," he said. "Until Maddox is handled. Get used to it."
Then he was gone.
Marley sat on the edge of the bed—his bed—and tried to process everything that had happened in the last twelve hours. A gunfight. Seven dead men. A midnight drive through back roads with headlights in her rearview mirror.
And Wake. Always Wake. Positioning himself between her and danger like it was the most natural thing in the world.
This is your life now.
The words should have terrified her. Instead, they settled into her chest with something that felt almost like relief.
A knock at the door made her tense up all over again.
"It's not locked," she called, then immediately regretted it. Stupid. She didn't know these people. Didn't know who was friendly and who wasn't, who could be trusted and who was just waiting for her guard to drop.
But the women who walked in didn't look like threats.
There were three of them. The first was tall and blonde, with the kind of easy confidence that came from knowing exactly where she belonged.
The second was shorter, dark-haired, with sharp eyes that reminded Marley of a hawk.
The third was somewhere in between—average height, brown hair, a smile that looked practiced but not unkind.
"So you're the bartender," the blonde said. Not a question.
Marley stood up, falling back on instincts honed by a decade behind the bar. "And you're the welcoming committee?"
The dark-haired one laughed. "Told you she had a mouth on her."
"Limestone mentioned." The blonde stepped further into the cabin, looking around with the air of a woman taking inventory. "I'm Maggie. Still's old lady. This is Jolene—she's with Limestone—and Darcy, who belongs to Current."
Belongs to. The phrasing should have rankled. Instead, Marley heard the pride underneath it. These weren't women who'd been claimed against their will. These were women who'd chosen their men and wore that choice like armor.
"Marley Boone," she said. "I run the Rusty Anchor. Or I did, until the Razorbacks decided they wanted it more than I did."
"We heard." Jolene—the sharp-eyed one—settled into the room's only chair like she owned it. "Heard you stood in the doorway with a bottle and a gun while the boys handled business, too."
"Cottonmouth talks too much."
"Cottonmouth doesn't talk at all." Darcy smiled. "His old lady Tessa does, though. Word travels fast around here."
Marley filed that away. In a bar, information was currency. It seemed compounds worked the same way.
"So this is—what?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "The inspection? Making sure I'm good enough for your little club?"
Maggie's expression didn't change, but something sharpened in her gaze. "We protect what's ours around here. That includes the men. They're out there right now, planning how to deal with sixteen nomads who want to hurt you. Seems fair we get to meet the woman they're risking their lives for."
Risking their lives. The words hit harder than Marley expected.
"I didn't ask them to," she said quietly. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"None of us did." Jolene's voice softened slightly. "That's not how it works. You don't ask these men for help. They just... decide you're theirs to protect. And then nothing in the world can stop them."
Theirs. The word echoed in Marley's chest, tangling with the memory of Wake saying she's with me like it was the simplest truth in the world.
"Look." Darcy stepped forward, her smile warmer now. "We're not here to judge you or test you or whatever you're thinking. We're here because you're about to spend a lot of time in this compound, and it helps to know people."
"What Darcy's trying to say," Maggie cut in, "is that we've all been where you are. New to this world. Scared, even if we wouldn't admit it. Not sure who to trust or what the rules are." She paused. "It gets easier."
"Does it?"
"No." Jolene laughed again, but there was something real underneath it.
"It gets different. You learn the rules.
You figure out who's worth trusting. You find your place.
" Her eyes met Marley's. "These men—they're rough, and they're violent, and they do things that would make a civilian run screaming.
But for the women they claim? They'd burn down the world. "
The certainty in her voice made Marley's throat tight.
"I'm not—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Wake hasn't claimed me. I'm just... under protection."
The three women exchanged looks that Marley couldn't quite read. Something knowing. Something almost amused.
"Sure, honey," Maggie said. "Under protection. That's why he gave you his cabin and he's sleeping in the bunkhouse with the prospects who haven't earned a room yet."
"That's why he killed a man in front of you and then asked if you were okay," Jolene added.
"That's why every brother in this compound already knows your name, your face, and the fact that Wake will put anyone who looks at you wrong into the ground." Darcy's smile turned sharp. "Under protection. Right."
Marley didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know what to do with the fierce, terrifying hope that was building in her chest.
"The Anchor," she said instead, retreating to safer ground. "I need to call my weekend bartender. Tell him to stay closed."
"There's a phone in the main lodge," Maggie said, accepting the subject change gracefully. "Come by whenever you're ready. We'll introduce you around, show you where things are."
"And if you want to work while you're here," Darcy added, "the compound bar could use someone who knows what they're doing. Brothers have been pouring their own drinks for years, and let me tell you—it shows."
Despite everything, Marley felt herself smile. "You let them pour their own drinks? That's just bad management."
"Tell them that." Jolene stood up, stretching. "Might be nice to have someone around who can put them in their place."
The women left as easily as they'd arrived, leaving Marley alone in Wake's cabin with too many thoughts and not enough space to hold them.
She sat back down on the bed and pulled out her phone.
The weekend bartender answered on the third ring. "Marley? Where the hell are you? I've been trying—"
"Dave, listen." She kept her voice calm, professional, the voice she used when cutting someone off. "The Anchor's closed until further notice. Don't go near the place, don't answer if anyone calls, and if you see bikes in the lot that aren't mine—run."
Silence on the other end. Then: "Marley, what's going on?"
"Nothing I can't handle. Just... stay away. I'll call when it's safe."
She hung up before he could ask more questions.
The Anchor was closed. Her bouncer was in the hospital. And she was sitting in a biker's cabin at a compound full of strangers, trusting men she barely knew to save her life.
Under protection.
She thought about the way Wake had looked at her last night, blood on his knuckles and death in his wake. The way he'd said I'm not leaving you alone in anything.
Maybe protection wasn't the only thing he was offering.