Page 12 of The Steel Beast’s Heart

His mouth twitches. His hand covers mine, palm pressing my fingers tight against his heart, and the purr deepens. We stand like that and the silence holds everything we haven't said. Two years of it between my palm and his heartbeat.

Then he leans down and presses his lips to my forehead, making me melt on the spot.

"Behave," he says against my hair.

He's through the door before I can answer.

The door closes, and I stand in the middle of his apartment with the purr still humming in the walls and the spot on my forehead where his mouth landed still warm.

I don't move for a long time.

Dawn turns the compound lot gray. I stand at the window with my arms crossed and watch.

Nine bikes idle in formation. Knox at the front, Finn beside him. Rex at the rear. The exhaust drifts through the early fog and the engines rumble low enough to shake the gravel.

Tom's is third from the rear. His medical kit straps across the saddlebags. His helmet rests on the seat while he checks something on the right side of his bike, his hands moving the way they always move—sure, steady, everything in its place. He swings a leg over and settles his weight, and the bike drops an inch under him.

Knox raises his hand. The formation tightens. The lead bike pulls forward, and the rest follow, one by one, the sound building from a rumble to a roar that fills the lot, the trees, then drains away as they round the gate and turn south.

Tom doesn't look back.

I press my forehead against the glass. Below me, the lot empties. Tire marks in the gravel and exhaust haze and nothing else. Sarah stands at the gate with Reeve on her hip, watching the road. Jess beside her. Morgan sits on the bench by the garage door, her eyes on the southern tree line.

I go downstairs and stand with them.

Chapter 6

Steel

The formation closes behind Knox's bike, and I count my brothers the way I count anything that matters—by whether they're all still here.

Knox rides point. Finn on his right, riding close enough that their mirrors nearly touch. They've always ridden like that. Colt behind Knox's left shoulder. Bruiser beside Colt, the Harley underneath him looking undersized. Chain next, then Diesel—still adjusting to road order after earning his patch, his spacing tight on turns but steady on the straights. Hunter and I ride the middle column, and Rex runs sweep a hundred yards back, watching everything behind us.

Nine bikes. The lot held ten this morning, but Garrett stayed at the compound with Jax and the two Cascades allies.

I shift my weight on the seat and feel the saddlebags adjust. My kit straps are doubled and buckled against the vibration—gauze, suture material, hemostatic packs, a combat tourniquet, the portable splint I modified for orc bone density. Everything in its place. I checked it twice before dawn and once more in the lot while the engines warmed, and the routine settled me the way routines always do. Hands busy, mind somewhere I can control it.

The highway opens into the mountain corridor, and the column threads a pass where the road narrows to two lanes and the timber closes in overhead. The air changes. Cooler, thinner, carrying pine resin and granite dust and the absence of salt. The coast falls away behind us, and with it the fog and the low sky and the woman who stood in my apartment last night with her hand flat against my chest.

I kissed her forehead.

The thought won't leave. She put her hand on my heart and told me to come back in one piece and made a joke about Finn's species identifications, and I leaned down and pressed my mouth to her forehead before I could decide not to. Two seconds of contact. The warmth of her skin, the smell of her shampoo, the soft give of her temple under my lips. I can still feel it.

The road climbs. We ride for two hours without stopping, through switchbacks that tilt the sky sideways and straightaways that open into valleys so deep the river at the bottom looks like a thread. My thighs ache from the angle of the climbs. My hands cramp on the grips, and I flex them one at a time, left then right, working blood back into the joints.

Hunter pulls alongside me on a flat stretch where the road widens. He rides with his pack strapped high on his shoulders, the same bag he's carried for years, the one that held everything he owned when he first rolled into Nightfall Cove. The straps sit cinched tight against fabric that hangs loose, the canvas no longer bulging at the seams.

He holds beside me for a mile before he speaks.

"You good?"

I don't answer. The engine noise fills the space.

"That's a no, then." Hunter adjusts his grip. The wind pulls at his collar. "For what it's worth, waiting doesn't make it easier. It just makes the time you wasted hurt more."

I look at him.

He shrugs. "I'm an expert on wasted time."