I look back at Mark. The conversation we were having doesn’t matter anymore. Not in the same way. He notices the change. Everyone does, even if they don’t understand it.
Dinner continues.
Her mom tries to smooth it over.
Olivia answers questions.
Mark watches me.
I stay. I eat. I exist in this space the way she needs me to. But I’m not here anymore. Not really.I’m already moving pieces in my head. Tracking. Planning. Eliminating. They want her. They’re still coming.
Good. Let them.
I look at Olivia next to me. She’s laughing at something her mom said, her shoulders relaxed, her expression open in a way she never is at the clubhouse.
This is her world.
This. Right here.
Normal. Warm. Unprotected. Mine to guard now.
They don’t take this from her.
Not while I’m breathing.
Not while I’m standing.
Not while there’s anything left in me to use against them.
They want a fight.
They’ll get one.
And I won’t stop until there’s nothing left of them to come back for her again.
By the time we get back to the clubhouse, the night has shifted into something quieter. Not calm.
I don’t think this place is ever truly calm.
But the sharp edges from dinner have dulled enough that I can breathe around them. The message Cobra got still sits between us, even though he hasn’t said a word about it. I felt the change in him at my mother’s table. One second he was learning how to exist in my family’s warm, too normal dining room, and the next, something inside him went still in a way that made the whole house feel too fragile around him.
I didn’t ask. Not there. Not in front of my mom. Not in front of my brother, who was already watching Cobra like he wanted to hate him but couldn’t quite get there because Cobra never gave him anything careless to use. I waited.
I’m still waiting.
The main room is softer when we walk in. The kids are finally in bed, which apparently means the adults get to breathe for the first time all day. The lights are lower, the TV is on without anyone really watching it, and the room looks nothing like the dangerous place I thought I’d been brought into the first night.
Mac is curled into Logan’s side on one couch, his hand resting over her thigh like it belongs there. Kya is tucked against Dom, her legs folded under her, while Dom scrolls through something on his phone with one hand and keeps his other arm around her like he forgot how not to touch her. Brooke sits close to Carter, their shoulders pressed together, his thumb moving slowly over the back of her hand. Emma is half asleep against Cain, looking so safe there that something in my chest aches. Shadow has Shaina pulled into him like the room could vanish and he’d still be exactly where he needed to be. Joker has Raven tucked under his arm, his face unreadable except for theway his hand keeps brushing over her hair. Blaze and Bella are bickering quietly about something I can’t hear, but she’s sitting in his lap while she does it, so it can’t be that serious.
It’s intimate. Not sexual. Not performative. Just… claimed.
Chosen.
Everyone here is wrapped around someone else in one way or another. Then there’s Hammer, standing near the bar with a beer in his hand, looking around at everyone with a disgusted expression that I don’t believe for a second. “This is fucking depressing,” he mutters.
Blaze looks up immediately. “Your face? Yeah, we’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
Hammer ignores him. “Every damn one of you has gone soft.”
