Page 30 of Brotan

Yet I haven't stepped into a ring since that night in New York when her hands stitched me together while everyone else wanted me to bleed out on their doorstep. The longest I've gone without fighting since the camps, where I learned to. The realization burrows under my skin like shrapnel I can't dig out.

My phone vibrates. Unknown number. I check it reflexively, then feel ice crystallize in my veins.

Quinn misses his champion. Time to settle debts.

Ryker. Quinn's enforcer. The message slices through me—a reminder of every reason I pushed Maya away, why distance is the only gift I can give her.

I delete the text without responding, though my fingers itch to engage. To end this circling threat once and for all.

Instead of seeking relief in bloodshed, I've been working my body to collapse with Shadow Ridge's rebuilding projects. Breaking things to build them better, a pathetic metaphor for a redemption I don't deserve.

The hammer cracks another board as I drive a nail with enough force to split hardwood—the third one today. Diesel just silently passes replacements, giving me space to work out whatever's eating me alive from the inside out.

The roar of Silas's pickup cuts through construction noise before it skids to a halt at the edge of our site. The old man practically falls from the driver's seat, moving faster than anyone with a Vietnam-wrecked knee should manage.

"Crow!" he barks, bypassing Diesel and two laborers. Something in his expression makes my hackles rise.

I drop everything, already moving toward him. "What happened?"

"It's the doc." Silas's face is ashen with worry. "Victor Hargrove's assistant called her out to the estate. The old snake's got the fever that's going around."

"What?" The word emerges like gravel through a wood chipper. Diesel's head snaps up at my tone.

"Maya went out there," Silas continues. "Alone. Twenty minutes ago."

"The fuck you mean she's atVictor's?" My vision narrows, blood roaring in my ears. "And nobody stopped her?"

Silas’s jaw tightens, mirroring my worry. "Nobody knew until she'd already gone. Helen found a note on the clinic door."

My hands curl into fists tight enough to make my bones creak. That stubborn, fearless woman. After everything she's heard about Victor's threats, the fires, the danger that shadows every corner of this town for outsiders who don't know the players. Yet she walks straight into the viper's nest without backup, without telling anyone.

Without me.

"What was she thinking?" The question rasps out, more desperate plea than anger.

"She's a doctor," Silas answers, as if that explains everything.

And maybe it does. That same stubborn commitment to healing that had her standing between me and an ER full of humans who wanted me dead. The determination that drives her to check on Gus daily despite his best efforts to chase her away.

The same quality I admire about her is going to get her killed.

"I'll drive," Silas says, jerking his thumb toward his truck. "You look like you might tear the steering wheel clean off."

"Not happening." I'm already striding toward my bike. "I handle this my way."

"Crow—" Silas starts, but I cut him off.

"If she'd had a way to reach me," I say, the words burning in my throat, low and bitter, "she wouldn't have gone alone."

Nearly a week of punishing myself for wanting her meant making damn sure our paths never crossed. Days of avoiding the clinic, the diner, anyplace she might be. Days when she learned I couldn't be counted on.

If anything happens to her at Victor's estate...

"Where's Ash?" I call over my shoulder, already kick-starting the bike.

"Council meeting in Marshall County," Diesel shouts. "Won't be back till tonight."

I tear out of the site, gravel spraying like shrapnel. The motorcycle's engine screams as I push it beyond what's safe, devouring blacktop between the town's edge and Hargrove's estate.

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