Page 15 of Savage Loyalty

I swung my leg over my bike, the movement smooth and practiced, but there was nothing casual about the storm brewing inside me. My hands tightened on the handlebars, the leather of my gloves creaking under the pressure. For a moment, I just sat there, staring out at the darkened road ahead, the cold night air slicing against my face. As I fired up the engine, the roar of it cutting through the night, I made a silent promise: Ghost’s death wouldn’t be in vain. The Vipers had made their move, and now it was our turn.

This was war.

The faint glow of the depot’s embers lit the scene behind me, flickering in the corner of my vision like ghosts refusing to let go. The air still reeked of burnt rubber, gasoline, and blood—a cocktail of violence that clung to my skin and filled my lungs with every breath. I stopped at the edge of the wreckage, my fingers brushing against the worn leather of my cut, the weight of it a reminder of everything this club stood for.

They thought they’d sent a message. Axel Cruz and his pack of rabid dogs thought they’d made their point. They thought they’d put us on our heels, shake us, and show us the cracks in our foundation.

They were wrong.

They’d made one mistake.

They didn’t finish the job.

The world felt different now, sharper somehow. Wyatt—or Slade, as we called him—was gone. A kid who’d barely had a chance to prove himself, cut down like he was nothing. The weight of his loss pressed against my chest, heavy and suffocating. I hadn’t even known him that well—Slade was fresh, new blood—but he was one of us. And no one touched the Reapers without consequences.

I revved the engine, the familiar roar cut through the night. It was a sound that usually grounded me, but tonight it felt like a war cry echoing into the emptiness. The vibration rumbled through me, setting my teeth on edge, the mechanical hum almost too loud in the quiet aftermath of the attack.

This wasn’t just about the depot. It wasn’t just about Ghost. This was about control—about the Vipers trying to take what was ours, trying to show us that we weren’t untouchable.

My lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

They thought they’d rattled us, that we’d retreat, regroup, and lick our wounds while they claimed more of our territory. They thought they could play this game on their terms.

They didn’t know who they were dealing with.

As I pulled out onto the road, the wind slicing past my face, my thoughts turned to the bigger picture. The rhythmic thrum of the engine beneath me was steady, dependable, unlike the chaos swirling in my mind. Axel Cruz wasn’t just reckless; he was arrogant. He thought his crew could match us blow for blow, that the Vipers could rise to our level.

And maybe, for a moment tonight, he’d convinced himself they had.

But I knew better.

The Crimson Reapers weren’t perfect—hell, we were far from it. The cracks in our foundation were real, and I felt them every damn day. They weren’t new, either; they’d been there for a while, growing beneath the surface like fractures in ice, waiting for the right pressure to splinter everything apart.

Gage didn’t have a need to control everything. But make no mistake as President, his authority was absolute, and most of the club respected that. But sometimes, his grip was too tight, his refusal to delegate leaving us scrambling when shit hit the fan. Then there was the restlessness among the ranks, the way some of the guys had started questioning decisions behind closed doors, their loyalty not fractured but… strained.

And I wasn’t blind to the whispers. The murmurs of whether our leadership—my leadership—was strong enough to carry us through this war.

I clenched my jaw, the wind whipping against my face doing little to cool the heat rising in my chest. They didn’t say it to my face—none of them dared—but I felt it in the way some of them hesitated when I gave an order, the fleeting looks they exchanged when things didn’t go as planned.

The truth was, we weren’t invincible.

But we didn’t need to be.

Because what Axel didn’t understand—what no one outside this club seemed to understand—was that the Reapers thrived in chaos. We didn’t break under pressure. We sharpened. The tension, the doubt, the fractures—they didn’t weaken us. They made us dangerous.

It was in the chaos that we found our edge, where we proved that no matter how much blood was spilled, we would always rise. Stronger. Meaner. Hungrier.

Axel Cruz thought he could exploit our cracks and that he could break us by landing the first blow. But he didn’t realize he’d just given us a reason to come together. He’d given me a reason to remind the Reapers who the fuck we are.

I wasn’t naive enough to think this was the end of it. The Vipers had struck first, but this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Axel Cruz might think he’d won a round, but he’d just opened a door he wouldn’t be able to close.

And I’d make sure he regretted it.

The road stretched ahead of me, dark and slick from the earlier rain. The faint reflection of streetlights glinted on the asphalt like shards of broken glass. The hum of the engine beneath me was steady, a low, constant growl that matched the tension simmering in my chest.

This wasn’t going to be a quick skirmish. It wasn’t going to end with a single retaliation, a few bodies, and a handshake at the end. That wasn’t how this worked. Axel Cruz hadn’t just fired a warning shot; he’d declared war.

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