Good.
Necessary.
Also, not enough.
No one argues. No one even looks like they are considering it.Of course they aren’t. This isn’t about preference, this is about territory, about what happens when someone tests the edges of something the club considers its own.
And she is…
… whether anyone says it out loud or not.
This is the part where leadership stops being a discussion and becomes direction.
Sin’s gaze moves around the table, measuring agreement without asking for it. I feel it before it reaches me, the way pressure builds before a storm breaks.
“Objections?”
None.
“Good.” He nods once. “Then we formalize it.”
Hands lift in sequence. I watch them go up like a series of small, irreversible decisions, wishing more than anything I could raise my hand. Put my vote in to protect her.
But I am a fucking prospect.
What I want doesn’t count.
But this is what protection looks like here. It is structured, controlled, and goddamn effective.
My brain keeps circling back to the moment Sin told us.
Not the specifics, but the tone. The way he shifted from listening to acting in the space of a single breath.
I didn’t hear her voice, but I heard what fear sounds like when it reaches this table.
That was enough.
The vote carries without opposition. It was never going to go any other way. I knew that before Ghost finished talking. I knew it the second Sin told us what happened.
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t on that call.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t hear her.
My body made the decision first.
Because once something threatens her, it stops being a club issue.
And it becomesmine.
Sin’s eyes land on me. That’s deliberate. Prospects don’t vote, but this isn’t about voting. This is about who’s willing to stand in front of whatever comes next.
“You in?” he asks, focused directly on me.
There isn’t a version of this where I say no, but I hesitate, purely because I amnineteendays out, and Millie has been the one distraction I’ve been actively trying to avoid in stopping me from getting my patch.
“Will?” he asks, knocking me out of my rambling thoughts.
“Yes,” I say, before he finishes the question.
