Page 125 of A Witchy Spell Ride
I did. The table still smelled like lemon oil and blood. Selene’s red heel strap was in my pocket; it dug into my thigh like a reminder. Reaper took a needle from Thorne and pricked my thumb. He did the same to his own. We put blood to leather, old as patched men and bad ideas.
“Say it,” he ordered.
“I put the club first,” I said, the words old and new at once. “I keep the code. I keep the peace by breaking what needs breaking. I keep ours safe. I don’t run.”
“You enforce,” he said.
“I enforce.”
He took a small rocker from Thorne,ENFORCERand pressed it to my palm. “Then wear it, carry it, or die before you betray it.”
“Copy,” I said, voice low, the word a soldier’s bad joke turned truth.
He pinned it under my name. The weight settled where other men keep a saint’s medal.
“Now the rest,” Reaper added, and his gaze cut to Selene.
She stepped forward without me needing to tug. She was not shy, and she was not performing. She came to the table like a woman who’d built it. Briar followed and stood a pace off, a guardrail with teeth.
“You trying to claim my sister?” Reaper asked, and there was that warning buried under humor that only family understands.
“No,” I said, and the room actually moved with surprise. I let it hang a breath and watched Selene’s mouth tilt. “I’m asking if she’ll claim me.”
Briar grinned like I’d passed an exam I hadn’t studied for.
Reaper’s head tipped. “Ask, then.”
I turned to Selene. “I’ll put a patch on your back if you want it. I’ll put my tags around your neck if you want those. I’ll wear your red thread and call it armor. But this isn’t a cage. You don’t belong to me; you belong to you. You want to put me in your pocket and call me yours? Say it. And say your terms.”
A hush fell that had nothing to do with fear. Daisy sniffled into a bat-shaped napkin. Bones looked like he’d never seen a miraclebecause he didn’t go to church. Cross’s eyes flicked to the corner lens and back like he wanted this part archived for the day some prosecutor tried to make us something we aren’t.
Selene’s hands were steady. She reached into her bra; Briar clapped because of course she did and pulled out a small square of leather. The white-stitched words were simple:PROPERTY OF GHOST.
She held it up. The room exhaled.
“I don’t wear chains,” she said, voice clean. “I wear choices.” She looked at me like she could see every scrape under the leather. “You want me as your Old Lady?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re my Old Man,” she said, and the grin on Vex’s face could’ve powered half the city. “My terms are these: you don’t keep me out of the room because you’re scared of what I’ll see. You don’t lie to me to feel noble. You don’t disappear without a call. If I say stop, you stop. If I say go, you don’t hesitate. You put me on the back of your bike and in the front of your decisions.”
I could’ve hit my knees and thanked every god I don’t believe in. “Done.”
“And when the world tries to make me soft,” she went on, eyes like flint and honey, “you remind me I’m steel.”
“That I can do,” I said, throat tight.
She slapped the patch into my palm. I took off my cut, heavy with the new rocker, and shrugged it around her shoulders justlong enough to set the leather’s weight on her bones. She closed her eyes and inhaled like it smelled like home. Then I took it back and draped my dog tags around her neck.
I haven’t taken those tags off for more than a shower since Fallujah. They clinked against her collarbone, glitter catching on the edge of one letter.GHOST, the O always looked like a scar.
She lifted the chain and kissed the steel once. “Okay,” she said. “Now kiss me in front of God and everyone so all these idiots stop squinting like they can’t see.”
I did. The club lost its collective mind. Daisy screamed. Vex howled. Bones pounded the bar with a bottle until the label shred. Reaper’s mouth turned a quarter inch and that’s how you know he was pleased enough to scare himself. Cross slid a glass of water toward Briar, and she pretended not to drink it, then drank it.
Banks stood off to the side under Rattle’s eye, pale and small, looking like a boy who’d finally realized longing isn’t a job. He didn’t speak. Smart. He’d get a second chance at breathing, not at belonging. That’s Reaper’s call. Mine too, now, whether I like having a say or not.
Briggs stared at the floor. The cuffs cut his skin. He was learning about consequences in the only language that ever stuck.
