Page 22 of Tater
“Then keep it,” she said. “It’s yours now.”
He didn’t move for a moment. Then he nodded once, like something in him finally settled.
The dragon stirred again as he walked back to his bike. “You love him,”it said.
“Love’s the easy part,” she said. “Surviving him’s the trick.”
“He’d burn the world for you.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “And I’d light the match.”
The engines started one by one. The road ahead waited, black and endless.
For now, though, there was a heartbeat of peace, the kind that only happens when the worst hasn’t happened yet.
The kind that makes the next gunfire feel like truth.
CHAPTER 10
County Eighteen
The bar sat alone on the edge of County Eighteen like it’d been dropped there and forgotten. Flat-roofed, one flickering beer sign in the window, gravel lot half mud, half broken glass.
The Hades Hellhounds used it as a halfway house when they didn’t want to be seen riding into town patched. Ren knew that much from old rumors. The dragon didn’t care about their habits. It cared about the smell.
Under cheap fried food and stale beer, there was that sour tang of arrogance.
Predator stink.
They killed their engines at the mouth of the lot. Quiet spread, thick and heavy. A single pickup sat by the dumpster. No bikes. Too neat.
“Don’t like it,” Eagle muttered near the front.
“Too late,” Ren said under her breath.
Tater looked back at us over his shoulder. His visor was up; his eyes were flat gray stone.
“Remember the rules,” he said. “We walk in calm. We walk out loud if we have to. No one starts shooting unless I say so.”
“And if they start it?” Mouse called.
“Then we finish it.”
The dragon stretched under my ribs. “Let me taste them.”
“Soon,” she told it.
They dismounted in a line, spreading into a loose V without thinking about it. Years of fights had taught Their bodies the dance. Ren’s leg screamed the second her boot hit gravel, but she didn’t let it show. The hoodie hid the worst of the bandages. The cut over it told anyone looking where she belonged.
Ren caught Tater’s eye as they moved toward the door. He gave the smallest nod.
Ren could hear the bar before she saw it fully—pool balls clacking, a woman laughing too loud, a jukebox trying and failing to drown out bad country warbling from someone’s phone. Normal noise.
Too normal.
Tater pushed the door open.
The smell hit like a slap—grease, beer, old smoke, and that Hellhound stink, under everything, like mold.
