I understand that kind of suspicion, and I can work inside it. I don’t need men like Cade to like me. I don’t need the prospects to stop glancing at my cut as if it might peel itself off my shoulders and reveal Rogue leather underneath. I only need enough space to be useful without disappearing completely.
The ring makes that harder.
It’s a thin silver band, plain enough that it shouldn't draw the eye as much as it does. But people notice it. Their gazes drop when I reach for a mug, when I slide a file across Moth’s desk, when I tuck my hair back and the light catches on my hand.
Demo stared at it for nearly ten seconds the first morning after Saint put it there, then turned bright red when I asked whether he had a question. Tally noticed me rubbing my thumb along it during breakfast and pretended not to smile. Even Bricks caught the motion once from across the room and shook his head with the faint, dry amusement of a man watching trouble grow roots.
I stare at it too and touch it more often than I mean to, usually when my mind has wandered somewhere dangerous. The edge of the silver gives my thumb something solid to follow when Sol appears at the edge of a room and says nothing. It keeps my hand occupied when Saint’s temper sharpens enough to change the air around him. It reminds me that the claim is public now. Permanent, or as permanent as anything can be inside a club where men turn promises into leverage before the ink dries.
The softness from the wedding day has mostly sunk back beneath Saint's skin. He's still Saint, more comfortable issuing orders than accepting care in any form that might make him feel seen. He still comes to bed carrying violence in his shoulders and uses my body as if it’s the one language he trusts not to lie to him. He still leaves too early some mornings, disappears into runs and meetings, and looks at the world like every person in it is a variable waiting to become a threat.
But something has shifted under that. I think I’ve stopped being a threat to what Saint has built. That doesn’t mean I’m safe, and it doesn’t mean he trusts me. It just means I’ve become part of the structure he monitors, protects, and uses. I should probably find that horrifying. Some days I do. Other days, I sit in his office with a coffee Demo brought me and a logistics board spread across the desk, and I realize the thought doesn’t scare me as much as it should.
Sol has made himself scarce since the wedding, which somehow makes him harder to ignore. His absence has weight. Sometimes he appears at the edge of the main room for five minutes, eyes moving from Saint to me and back again, then leaves without saying anything worth answering. On those nights, Saint’s temper changes.
Sometimes he drags me to his room before it has anywhere else to go. I know the clubhouse hears more than I want it to hear, because Demo can’t meet my eyes the next morning without blushing and Tally once slid coffee in front of me with a muttered, “Drink, sweetheart,” in a tone that made it clear she knew I hadn’t slept much.
At first, the idea mortified me so badly I could barely stand to sit in the main room. Now I try not to think about it, which works poorly because Saint seems to enjoy reminding the whole building exactly whose bed I’m in.
Demo has become a friend, if that’s what this can be called. He brings me coffee without ceremony, asks questions about route maps he barely understands, and once passed me a packet of painkillers after a night Saint left me walking carefully enough that even I couldn’t pretend otherwise. He didn’t joke about it, which made the gesture more difficult to accept. In return, I help him phrase messages to Moth so they sound less like a golden retriever learned to use a phone. It’s a fair exchange, or close enough that I’ve stopped correcting him when he says, “Come on, you’re sitting with me,” as if my place beside him is already decided.
Just after dinner, Saint leaves on a run.
He tells me before he goes, which is new enough that I notice. We’re in the main room, the club shifting into evening around us, when he stops behind my chair and bends close enough for his mouth to brush the edge of my ear.
“You stay here,” he says.
I glance up at him. “In the clubhouse?”
“In the clubhouse. In the private wing. In the office if Moth calls.” His fingers slide over the back of my neck, settling there long enough to make my pulse respond. “No runs. No meets. No warehouse checks. No one takes you anywhere unless it goes through me.”
A week ago, I would’ve heard only control. Tonight, I hear the rest of it because Saint has spent days making the rule painfully clear to everyone else. He told me in his room, with his hands on my face and his voice low enough to make the order feel less like ownership and more like a promise. No one gets to make you do shit unless you choose it.
“I know,” I tell him.
His gaze drops to my ring, then returns to my face. “Good.”
He leaves with Moth and most of the senior men. Demo goes too, which annoys me more than it should even though he looksso pleased to be included that I don’t have the heart to begrudge him. Tally stays, along with a handful of prospects, two garage men, and Cade.
Cade is the problem I keep hoping will solve itself.
He hasn’t done anything blatant since the first morning, and maybe that’s what makes it so irritating. He’s smart enough to keep his mouth clean when Tally is near and careful enough not to stand too close when Saint can see him. But ever since the rings appeared, something in him has turned meaner. He watches my hand whenever I touch the silver band. He smirks when someone calls me Saint’s husband. He lingers in doorways after I pass, always just far enough away that anyone watching could call it coincidence and just close enough that I know it isn’t.
A hands-off nuisance, until the one evening most of the club is off site and I decide boredom is safer than staying in Saint’s office with nothing to occupy my mind but the shape of his absence.
The garage hallway is dim when I wander into it, lined with tool cabinets, old posters, and storage doors with scuffed paint near the handles. Most of the overhead lights are off, leaving the far end washed gray from the high windows. I hear the faint clink of tools somewhere deeper in the garage, but no voices close enough to reassure me. I tell myself I’m only stretching my legs, only walking a familiar path, only proving I’m not so trained to Saint’s orders that an empty hallway feels forbidden.
I see Cade in the reflection of a glass-fronted parts cabinet before I hear him.
He steps out from a side bay behind me, broad shoulders filling too much of the corridor, arms loose at his sides, his eyes on my hand. More specifically, on the ring.
“Lost?” he asks.
I keep my voice level. “No.”
“Saint know you’re wandering?”
“Saint isn’t here.”
