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“I know the arrangement,” Dutch said. “I thought the move was temporary.”

I shook my head. “It’s not. Kettlewell’s home now. Permanent, Prez.”

Dutch sat back and looked along the empty table before he faced the camera again. “I’ve got to think about it,” he said. “And I will put it to the table.”

He was going to put my refusal before the brothers. I held his gaze. “Do it.”

“You’re not going to argue?”

“I’ve given you my answer. Put it to a vote if you need to. I’m not moving back.”

“That’s not like you.”

“No, it isn’t.” I sat back. “For years I told everyone Venom was my life. Turns out Wren and Sparrow are my life. Venom’s second. It’s a good second but it’s second, and it’s staying second. If that’s a problem for you or the brothers, tell me.”

“They should come first,” Dutch said. “You staying in Kettlewell does cause a problem, though.”

“Go on.”

“You’re a patched member of this club living permanently four hours outside our territory.” He rubbed his jaw. “That’s not a thing that exists, Glitch. That’s not me being difficult. There’s no status for it. You’re not on a run, you’re not seconded, you’re not nomad—and I’m not making you nomad, so don’t start.”

“And?”

“Every man at that table’s going to ask what you are at some point. Right now, I haven’t got an answer. You’re a Venom Rider who lives in Kettlewell Cold Bay. That’s not a category.”

He was right. I’d been so busy learning how to be Sparrow’s father that I hadn’t considered what living there meant for Venom. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing. It’s mine.” He was already working through it. “But it needs a real answer, and Glitch lives up there now isn’t going to pass for long.”

Then he ended the call.

The next day I started looking for a house.

I’d considered buying the cottage. I knew it well, and I’d already run cable through half of it. But I was sleeping in the front room. One bedroom held my monitors; the other held Wren’s boxes and would soon have Sparrow’s crib. That worked while I was renting. It wouldn’t work when Sparrow started walking. She already reached for anything I touched, and I needed a door I could shut between her and the kit.

I wanted space for her to play, for my brothers to stay when they rode up from Millfield, and for Robin and the others to visit. The cottage couldn’t give me that.

So I found another one. Fifteen minutes farther around the bay, up the hill on the east side where the fog sits lower. A single-story house with four bedrooms and a double garage built as a workshop.

The paperwork was supposed to take six weeks. I paid to expedite the inspections and make it four. The house had been empty for eighteen months. The owner lived with her sister two states over and wanted it sold. When I asked whether I could get in early to work on the garage, she said I could.

I started on the garage the same afternoon.

When I told Handful, he was incredulous. “You’re buying a house in Kettlewell?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never owned a place in your life.”

“Handful-”

“I’m just saying. In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve been happy in one room. Now you’ve got a house. Four bedrooms. A workshop. Look at you, brother. A proper grown-up.”

He was right. That was why the clubhouse room had suited me. Everything I owned that mattered had come north in week one—towers, drives, bench gear and the box of cables nobody was allowed to reorganize. I bought clothes as I needed them online.

Renting was fine while I was a man who was living between two places. I wasn’t that man anymore. My daughter lived in Kettlewell, and I intended to be there while she grew up.

Wren and I had agreed Sparrow’s first overnight would be the following Friday. I’d still be in the cottage, but I bought a real crib for the back bedroom instead of setting up a travel one. I put a changing table beside it and a chair by the window so I could give her a bottle while she watched the road.