Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
We step outside into the night air that smells like coming rain. His motorcycle sits under the porch light, waiting like a black matte beast. Legion hands me his helmet—he's only got one—and I take it and put it on as he swings his leg over and kicks the bike to life.
The engine growls, hungry.
Legion nods to me. I climb behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. The bike roars beneath us, vibration climbing up through my bones as we pull away from the trailer, away from what just happened in the cabin, away from the person I was three days ago.
The highway unfolds like black ribbon, just moonlight to guide us. Wind cuts across my neck where the hoodie doesn't cover. I press myself against Legion's back, arms tight around him. His hand finds mine, squeezes once, then returns to the handlebar.
The drugs still fog the edges of my mind, but the night air and the rumble between my thighs burns some of it away.
I hold tighter to Legion's jacket, feeling the patches under my fingers.
Wondering what I'm riding toward.
Wondering what I've left behind as Legion takes me away from the only life I’ve ever known. Barefoot on the back of a Harley doing seventy on a Montana back road. The pegs are cold against my soles, and every bump jars my bruises like fruit in a basket.
I left whatever was left of Savannah Ashby, ranch princess, back in that cabin.
What I am now is a girl in borrowed clothes with asphalt grit between her toes.
After what seems like a long time of nothing but wind, we turn off the highway onto a dirt road. The bike kicks up dust that fills my mouth and coats my skin.
We slow as a chain-link fence appears, topped with barbed wire that catches the moonlight like fish hooks. Floodlights cut through the darkness, illuminating spray-painted words across a metal gate: NO MERCY, NO MASTERS.
A figure emerges from shadows—lanky, nervous hands. He slides the gate open without a word, and Legion nods as we pass through. The young man's eyes catch on me, widen, then drop away quick.
The clubhouse sprawls before us at the end of a dust-packed main street, a two-story structure built from weathered timber and corrugated steel. The front porch stretches the length of the building, its boards sun-bleached and warped. Heavy wooden doors the color of brown rust host the club emblem—a skull wrapped in barbed wire.
Rows of motorcycles gleam in formation, chrome and black, lined up like soldiers. The building hulks against the night sky, more bunker than home.
But this is home to Legion. I can feel it in how his shoulders relax, how his breathing changes.
Legion cuts the engine, kicks the stand, and silence rushes in. He swings his leg over, then helps me off. My legs wobble, still weak from whatever they pumped into me. His hands take off my helmet, then steady my waist.
For a moment it's just us, breathing together in the dark.
Then they appear.
Men materialize from doorways, from shadows, from around corners. Big men with hard eyes and leather cuts like Legion's. A few women hover at the edges, but an older lady with silver hair down to her waist waves them back inside. Her eyes catch mine, measuring, judging.
"Legion!" A small voice cuts through the tension. Mercy barrels across the lot, all knobby knees and flying hair. "You left me! You said you wouldn't leave me again!"
Legion catches her, lifts her up against his chest. "I know, Merce. I'm sorry."
"You promised," she says, pounding tiny fists against his shoulders. "You promised!"
Then Mercy sees me. Her fists stop mid-air. "Savannah?"
The silence shifts. Every pair of eyes turns to me—really looks at me. At my dead eyes. At Legion's clothes hanging off my frame. At my bare feet on the cracked blacktop.
Little stones dig into my soles. The collective gaze of a biker gang weighs on my skin, heavier than any camera my mother ever pointed at me.
"I've got no shoes," I say, because it's all I can think to say.
Something in the air changes. The edges of everything go soft. The silver-haired woman's face shifts from suspicion to something else.
"Mercy, go on up to bed," she says, her voice surprisingly gentle.
"But—"
"Now, honey. Go on."
She does. She leaves. But something else remains.
I can't really put my finger on it, it's more of… an aesthetic. Something gloomy and gray. Something… woeful remains behind.
I've complicated things.
I've ruined Legion's homecoming.
Now they all just look sad, these dangerous men with their tattooed knuckles and knife scars.
Legion bends suddenly, scoops me into his arms like I weigh nothing. My head rests against his chest, right over the infected brand that marks him as theirs.
He kisses my cheek, smiles at me with a gentleness that doesn't reach his eyes. "You're OK," he tells me, though we both know that's a lie. "I've got you now."