Page 10 of Property of Mako
Staring at my reflection, I had a sense of foreboding. I’d never seen her before, yet I craved her, and that was definitely not good. My eyes were still too silver. Skin too marked by the past. My teeth still too sharp. They actually ached.
What I saw in that glass was a monster, dressed in leather and rage. I should’ve terrified her. The fact that she’d defiantly confronted me was almost a… turn-on. Those weren’t feelings I’d had in a long while. Ignoring them, I took a seat as Killswitch quickly set up.
By the time he started the needle, I was more than ready. He was starting a new piece across my ribs. Pain helped me focus—helped me stay grounded in the present instead of the past.
That woman.
She’d really thrown a wrench into my night and maybe the last hundred or so years of solitude I’d built like a fortress around myself. What was it about her that I couldn’t stop thinking about her?
Tomorrow, I would have my work cut out for me. I would need to start the process of hunting her down. Humans were supposed to break. That’s what made them easy to forget. But this one? She’d survived three enforcers, a blood-drenched slaughter, and… me.
That made her dangerous.
I closed my eyes and lost myself in the buzz of the tattoo gun and the stinging in my side before it went numb.
Little did I know, I wouldn’t have to go looking for little Miss Hazel Eyes.
Chapter 4
Oil, Ash, and Ghosts
Lyra
The garage reeked of smoke, steel, and secrets.
I found it two days later. A nondescript brick building tucked behind an old rail yard, with a blacked-out sign that simply read:
“KOA—Authorized Access Only.”
I’d followed the bike when I recognized the leather vest he was wearing. He’d passed me as I sat at a red light on the outskirts of New Orleans. My jaw had literally dropped because I couldn’t believe my luck.
Maybe I hadn’t seen his face clearly that night—not with terror in my eyes and panic in my lungs—but I remembered the ink. I remembered the silver glow in his stare and the way his voice had scraped against something feral inside me.
And I remembered the patch on his back: a skull with a lopsided crown, a bandana obscuring the lower part, and the circled A etched on its forehead.
After a quick search, I’d found the emblem online. There wasn’t much there. Just that it was a motorcycle club and all the things they supposedly did for the community—yeah, right.
Yet the darker side of the internet revealed rumors and speculations—buried deep on message boards that whispered about the Kings of Anarchy. A biker club, sure. But more than that. They had several businesses and a clubhouse, but it was believed to be more than that.
A sanctuary. A fortress. A war camp for the unnatural.
Vampires. Werewolves. Demons.
And apparently, one with a taste for heroics when the moon was right.
Funny enough, when I tried to dig deeper, the info literally disappeared from my screen. It was as if a ghost was over my shoulder, erasing it before my very eyes. Further searches came up blank. No matter what I searched or how deep into the dark web I delved.
He pulled into a gate on the side that slowly rolled shut after he entered.
“Shit,” I muttered. Then I went around the block and stopped across the street. Fingers strumming on the steering wheel, I debated my next move.
The windows were dirty, and paper was taped up over the glass on the inside. “Screw it,” I whispered as I shut off the truck and got out, hitting the button on the door to lock it.
A car passed by, and I waited for it before I jogged across the pavement. The door had cracked and peeling vinyl letters that read something about repairs and customs. It was hard to tell because there were so many letters missing.
Nervously, I glanced around and reached for the metal handle. Imagine my surprise when it easily opened.
The entry had paint cans and supplies stacked up on one side. The old linoleum tiles were in the process of being scraped up, and a pile of broken pieces was in the middle of the room. The long-handled scraper leaned against an old wooden counter.
