Page 28 of The Biker and His Bride

We shared a moment—quiet, like the world stood still. But under it all, I felt her fear. And mine. I couldn’t tell her how many times I’d seen men ride off into night battles and never come home. Couldn’t tell her how close she’d come to being a widow before she’d even said yes.

She watched me from the porch, arms wrapped around herself as I mounted up, the brothers rolling out beside me. Thunder roared as the engines fired, taillights vanishing into the dusk like falling stars.

Behind me, her silhouette stayed etched against the glow of the clubhouse, fragile and brave.

I didn’t look back again.

Tonight, we rode into hell.

And I was going to make sure the devil himself knew my name.

13

ROGUE

The night of the MC war, the air felt like iron—thick with tension, pulsing with something ancient and brutal that hummed in my veins.

Reaper’s Pride had crossed a line. Caleb might’ve pulled their strings, but they made their own damn choice when they blew up our warehouse and sent bullets screaming past my brothers’ heads. We’d warned them once. This time, we were riding out with one mission:

Crush them.

Diesel handed out extra mags, fingers steady, expression grim. Trigger said nothing as he prepped a silencer for his .45, his jaw tight. Maddox slipped brass knuckles over his fists. Pitbull checked the fuel on the molotovs twice, then grinned like the devil himself.

“We doing this or what, Prez?” Nash asked me, cocking his head toward the row of bikes lined up under moonlight.

“We’re not riding to scare,” I said. “We’re riding to end it.”

The boys nodded. That’s all we needed.

We thundered out into the North Carolina night, tires shredding gravel, engines howling across the valley like wolves.The coordinates Diesel found led us to a busted-ass quarry out near County Line Road. Reaper’s Pride had been holed up there for weeks, thinking no one’d find their little hidey-hole.

They were wrong.

We circled high ground, lights off. Heat vision spotted seven bikes, four trucks, and a hell of a lot of bad decisions. Two guards patrolled the ridge. Trigger took the left. Diesel took the right. No noise, no warning.

Crack. Thump.

Down they went.

Then it began.

Pitbull lit the first molotov and hurled it through the passenger side of their main truck. Flames exploded up, lighting the night in orange and black chaos. I dropped the clutch and shot down into the pit with Maddox at my six, both of us blasting warning shots into the air as the first screams started.

Men ran. Some grabbed weapons. Others dove for cover. But we were faster. Cleaner. Trained.

I aimed for their president, a big bastard called Ruckus. He had a shotgun half-raised when I tackled him from the side. We hit the gravel hard. I grabbed his vest and slammed him into a wheel hub twice before dragging him up, blood painting his cheek.

“You came into my house,” I growled. “Now I’m inside yours.”

He spit blood. “You’re dead, Thorne.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But you’re done.”

By the time the smoke cleared, five of them were zip-tied, three were unconscious, and two were stripped of their cuts and left barefoot by the fire. No deaths—we weren’t monsters—but they’d remember.

The final message came in the form of their clubhouse flag burning in the back of Pitbull’s truck. Pride was over.

I rolled home just before dawn.

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