"They've been watching."
The silence holds.
I sit down.
My knees want to shake and I don't let them. I put both hands flat on the wood.
Knox lets the silence run ten seconds. He has always understood what a silence is for.
Then he lifts his head.
"They came for one of ours," he says. "They threatened another."
He looks around. Every face turns toward him.
"We end this."
Nods come back from every chair. Rex. Finn. Dawson. Colt. A circuit closing.
Knox pulls a folded photograph from his cut and slides it across. The grainy tree-line shot Dawson took two weeks ago. Two cloaked figures, heavy orc builds, watching the town.
"And while we're opening the books," he says, "the women need to know about the other thing. The Bloodstone clan's been scouting the tree line east of town. Garrett's been on me to tell them since I showed him the photograph. I said no. I was wrong. We're telling them tonight."
Every head in the room lifts. Finn's jaw tightens.
"We need patrols at the cabin," Knox says. "At the clinic and the school. Sarah gets a brother with her when she's in town. Jess doesn't go anywhere alone either. And Nina is under the same protocol as the old ladies starting now. We can argue about the politics of that with her afterward." He looks at me. "She's a part of the club now. She's club because you say so and because I say so, and nobody at this table is going to tell Garrett Maddox his woman isn't ours to protect."
I close my eyes for a second.
Finn says, "Fucking amen."
Rex lifts two fingers off the wood. A silent amen of his own.
"Dawson runs the patrol schedule," Knox says. "Rex on the clinic on nights. Dawson, cabin on days. Colt, records and plates—anything we can trace through a keyboard. We double up for the next two weeks. Finn runs point on intel. Assume they're local, assume they're watching, assume they'll move before New Year's. Questions."
Nobody has any.
"Then we're done."
Chairs push back. Rex stops behind my chair and sets his palm on the back of my neck, holds it a beat, then he walks out. Finn squeezes my shoulder. Dawson nods. Colt won't meet my eyes, and I've known Colt long enough to recognise it. It's the face he makes when he doesn't want anyone to see him feeling something.
Knox is the last one out.
He stops at the end of the table and looks at me.
"You did good," he says. "I know what that cost you."
I can't answer him.
He walks out and shuts the door behind him.
I sit with the silence for a minute, maybe two. Then I push up from the chair.
I find the clubhouse bathroom. Lock the door. Grip the sink with both hands. The porcelain creaks and I ease off it before I crack the fixture.
My ribs heave. My head hangs between my shoulders and I watch a drop of sweat fall off my nose into the drain.
The words tore a wound open on the way out.
