Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 32319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
The gun points at the ground now. Not holstered. Not surrendered. Just... paused.
Destiny cradles the baby against her chest. Her eyes are different now—softer around the edges but harder at the center. Motherhood didn't make her gentle. Just gave her something worth fighting for.
"I hope..." she says, voice catching a little. "I hope one day, you slay that demon, Legion. I really do."
The words hit hard. A stab in the back. A shiv in the ribs. Not because she said them, but because she means them. Like I'm the one possessed. Like I'm the one who needs saving here.
My name is Legion, for we are many. The verse I've carried since birth, tattooed across my soul before it ever touched my skin.
Destiny shifts the baby in her arms, takes a step toward me. "You want to hold her? Just once before—"
"No." The word comes out rough, unfinished.
"She's blood, Legion. Your blood."
I shake my head, backing away like she's fire.
This baby is doomed. Adding my filth to her burden will only make it happen faster.
And then, in this moment of damnation that feels like it was handcrafted just for me, Colt opens the Range Rover door. Destiny hesitates, looking back at me one last time before climbing in. Colt gets in too. The engine purrs to life—wealth sounds different, even in machinery.
They back up, do a three-point turn, and then pull away slowly. Tires crunching gravel, kicking up dust that hangs in the air like unspoken apologies.
I watch until they disappear around the bend.
Failure settles in my gut like concrete.
I never protected her.
And now I never will.
I slide the gun down into the small of my back as I walk across the compound. Every boot step feels like regret. Forty-seven pairs of eyes watch me from everywhere imaginable. Windows. Doorways. Shadows. Some with respect, some with judgment, all measuring what just happened against what they would've done.
Brick stands by the door, face giving nothing away except the slight nod—acknowledgment, not approval. Diesel's jaw works like he's chewing on words he won't spit out. Roach just stares, calculating odds I don't want to know.
The clubhouse looks different now. Smaller. The air thicker with something unspoken. The same walls and floors, but the brotherhood has shifted. The vote bought Savannah protection, but what just happened put cracks in foundations I can't see.
Savannah’s eyes find mine—questions I don't have answers for written across her face. She's on the porch, standing behind Mama Jo and the others like she's been hiding.
I walk past her without slowing. The gun at the small of my back feels heavier than it should.
The threshold looms ahead—just a doorway, just worn wood and metal hinges. But crossing it feels like choosing sides.
In or out.
Brother or blood.
Club or family.
I step through, feeling something tear inside me as I do.
Something that won't heal clean and I'll never get back.
CHAPTER 2
The blood beneath my tattoo bandage pulses with each heartbeat. Fresh ink, fresh claim—the words "PROPERTY OF DEMON" still pressing into the clear wrap.
The Range Rover disappears, leaving a cloud of dust behind as Colt drives away with my niece. Legion's niece.
Our niece.
I'm not sure that makes sense yet.
I'm not sure anything makes sense these days.
Watching Legion point a gun at my youngest brother didn't evoke the kind of reaction it should've.
He was calm. His hand did not shake, not one bit. There was no wild, jittery aim of someone who might miss, but the practiced calm of someone who never does. The way men who understand consequences handle death when the possibility of it rises up in front of them.
I should've felt fear for Colt. I should've felt sympathy for Destiny.
But God help me, watching Legion handle that gun made something low in my belly tighten.
Not because I wanted Colt dead—though part of me might after what I just learned—but because Legion in control is violence made beautiful.
In another timeline, I would have been Destiny's sister-in-law.
In that timeline, I would marry Legion instead of running away to college in order to put off the reality of Ashby expectations.
But I don't live in that timeline, I live in this one. The one where I came back to mama and the ranch, and the camera.
The one where Legion went to prison for something he didn't do.
The one where my thirty-one-year-old brother got his seventeen-year-old sister knocked up.
Now we're strangers connected by a child who shouldn't exist.
I'm ashamed for Colt, though Colt didn't look the least bit ashamed of himself. Standing there in his designer clothes next to Destiny in her sundress, like they're playing house instead of running from the wreckage they've created.
Legion turns from the empty road, dust settling around his boots as he walks back toward the clubhouse. Toward me. His eyes find mine for just a heartbeat. No words, just a look that says everything and nothing at all.