Page 48 of The Bastard's Lily
A single pop that echoes like a whip. One of our tail riders swerves hard; a round smacks the trunk of a birch with a wet thud. Headlights flare, brakes squeal, and the night explodes. Figures pour from the tree line—dark hoods, camo, rifles flashing in the high beams. Not the militia we were meeting.
“Ambush!” Grimm roars.
I drop the bike, draw, and the woods ignite with muzzle flashes. Sparks spit off wet bark. The air tastes like copper and gunpowder. Another shot—someone goes down with a grunt. I don’t look to see who.
I push forward, boots sliding in mud and pine needles. A man lunges from the brush; I catch his rifle barrel, drive my blade up under his vest. Hot blood slicks my knuckles before he even hits the ground.
The night turns into a strobe of violence—gunfire, shouted orders, the sickening crunch of metal against bone. Smoke and cordite choke the air. A crate of rifles tips from the chase truck and bursts open, steel clattering across the dirt like thrown bones.
“Fall back to the ridge!” Grimm yells.
I grab Wren by the kutte and drag him toward the bikes, bullets tearing bark overhead. Engines scream back to life, tires chewing mud as we rip out of the kill zone, the forest behind us still spitting fire. When we finally break onto open road, hearts still hammering, I glance back.
Through the trees, a fence line glows faint and hellish—a massive scorpion, charred black and still smoking. The Bloody Scorpions’ calling card. Berlin just got a war.
The clubhouse smells like oil and wood smoke when we roll in, engines still ticking hot. Every brother’s accounted for—cuts, bruises, a few torn vests, nothing we can’t patch ourselves. But the adrenaline’s still riding high, sharp as broken glass.
Ash stands at the head of the table the second we file into church. “Bloody Scorpions,” he says, voice low and lethal. “They torched our fence and ambushed a Berlin run. That’s a declaration.”
Chairs scrape. Grimm mutters a curse. Wren flexes his split knuckles and grins like it’s personal. From the shadowed corner, Yeti clears his throat. The old man’s hunched in his worn kutte, beard gone silver, eyes still wolf-bright. Retired or not, when he speaks, the room leans in.
“Bulldog warned us,” he rasps, voice rough as the trail dust. “Back when he gave me the blessing to plant this chapter here, he said the Scorpions don’t die easy. Told me Berlin wasa good hideout—the snowmobile trails run clean into Canada if you know the cuts—but he made it clear: Sooner or later, somebody’d try to take it back.”
Ash nods once, the weight of his father’s words settling over the table. “Well, looks like ‘sooner’ just showed up.”
A low growl of agreement circles the room. The smell of blood and gasoline thickens.
Yeti tips his coffee like its whiskey, gaze fixed on the map tacked to the wall. “Bulldog built a nation that doesn’t scare easy. Remember that. We hold the line.”
Ash plants his palms on the table, eyes raking across every brother. “We lock it down. We send word to National when the time’s right. For now—we watch, we tighten routes, and when the Scorpions come sniffing again, we remind them whose colors own this mountain.”
The room answers in a rumble of leather and steel. Berlin is ours. And tonight, every man here is ready to bleed to keep it.
Church breaks with a low rumble of engines and tired curses. Ash’s orders still echo in my head—lock it down, keep eyes open—but all I can think about is getting home.
The ride back to Calla’s is a blur of cold asphalt and darker woods. My hands are sticky on the bars, knuckles split and faintly tacky with dried blood. Minor hit from the ambush, nothing serious, but it smells like iron every time the wind shifts.
Her porch light cuts through the trees as I roll in. She’s already on the steps, sweater wrapped tight, eyes searching the dark before I even kill the engine. Beau’s beside her in dinosaur pajamas, stuffed fox clutched like a tiny sentinel. The kid’s shoulders sag with relief when he spots me.
I swing off the bike, and she’s there before I can speak, palm flat to my chest. “You’re late,” she whispers, voice thin but steady. “And you’re—Rook, you’re bleeding.”
“Not mine,” I murmur, brushing a thumb along her jaw. “Mostly.”
Her gaze darts over me, cataloging every cut, every smear of dried red. Beau edges closer, wide-eyed.
“You okay, Dad?” he asks, small but sure.
That one word digs deep, steadies everything. “I’m okay, little man,” I tell him, crouching enough to meet his eyes. “Promise.”
Calla exhales, a shaky sound that tells me she’s been holding her breath since sunset. She presses her forehead to mine, fingers threading into my jacket like she might never let go. Home. Finally.
The cabin smells like wood smoke and vanilla when we step inside. I kick off my boots at the door, the day’s weight settling somewhere deep in my shoulders. Beau yawns so wide it nearly swallows his little fox. Calla scoops him up, and I follow them down the hall. We get him into bed together—her tucking theblanket under his chin; me smoothing his wild hair. He’s asleep before the lullaby of the old floorboards even fades.
Back in the kitchen, Calla turns to me with that no-nonsense stare I can never dodge. “Clothes,” she says, palm out. “All of it. I’m not letting you drip dry in blood.”
I grunt but peel off the kutte, shirt, jeans—dropping each piece into the basket she’s already got waiting. The dried streaks across the fabric look darker under the warm light. She leads me to the bathroom without a word. Steam curls from the shower she’s already started, the room filling with the clean bite of her soap.
“Stand still,” she murmurs.
