Page 5 of Claimed By Werewolf
I hated that the word lingered.
I hated even more that I wanted to hear it again.
My phone buzzed in my bag and the screen lit up with my best friend’s name.I ignored it.I couldn’t explain this to anyone, not without sounding crazy.Who in their right mind chased down the Enforcer of the Broken Sons MC with nothing but stubbornness and grief as weapons?
Maybe I wasn’t in my right mind.Maybe I hadn’t been since the night Tyler died.
I dragged myself back to my apartment a few blocks away.The city was different after midnight.Fewer people, more shadows.I used to love walking at night.Tyler and I would do it all the time when we were kids to sneak out to watch the trains roll by.He’d tease me for clutching my jacket tight and always promised he’d keep me safe.
Now every shadow looked like a threat.Every corner whispered with ghosts.
Inside my apartment, I tossed my bag onto the couch and sank into the worn cushions.The place was small—one bedroom, mismatched furniture, and a stubbornly dripping faucet in the kitchen—but it was mine.Tyler had helped me move in three years ago.He’d carried the heavy boxes, made dumb jokes about my taste in throw pillows, and promised to fix the faucet but never did.
I opened my laptop and pulled up the folder I’d built like a shrine to him: articles, police reports, screenshots of forum threads, anything with his name or the Broken Sons.The cops said Tyler was just in the wrong place at the wrong time—a mugging gone bad.Case closed.
But his phone records told a different story.
The last call he made before he died?To a number tied to someone who ran with the Sons.The cops brushed it off.Coincidence, they said.
I didn’t believe in coincidences.
I clicked through the files until my eyes burned.Tyler’s smile stared back at me from a photo on his twenty-first birthday with cake crumbs on his chin.My throat tightened.
“I’ll find out what happened to you,” I whispered to the screen.“I swear it.”
Werewolf knew something.I could see it in his eyes when I said Tyler’s name—the flicker he couldn’t hide fast enough.
He thought he could scare me off.He thought he could growl and loom and make me run.
But he didn’t know me.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter Four
Demi
The next day, I sat against the wall of the bike shop where I knew he sometimes showed up.The Sons didn’t have a flashy clubhouse in the city.They were smart to keep their business spread out through bars, garages, and God knew what else, but the shop was neutral ground.A place where patched bikers came and went, and where people dropped cash for repairs or just to look tough leaning on their shiny Harleys.
My stomach clenched as I sipped burnt gas station coffee and pretended to scroll on my phone.I wasn’t sure what I expected.Maybe for him to storm out, drag me off the curb, and tell me to stop following him.Maybe to ignore me completely.
Either way, I had to try.
Around noon, the shop’s bay door screeched open.And there he was.
Werewolf.
Leather cut stretched across broad shoulders, and a black T-shirt clinging to him like it was painted on.His hair was damp, like he’d just run a hand through it after a shower.Tattoos curled down his forearms.Black ink stark against sun-kissed skin.
Every inch of him screamed danger.
And every nerve in me screamedDon’t look away.
He spotted me instantly.His eyes narrowed, and I felt the air between us tighten, like a wire pulled too taut.
I stood, tossed the coffee cup into a trash can, and my pulse hammered.
“You again,” he said, voice flat.
