Page 24 of Tater
Ren felt all the Bastards shift beside her at once—small movements, fists clenching, weight shifting forward. Tater stilled instead. Stillness, with him, meant something was breaking.
“How you know she was alone?” he asked, voice quiet.
Beard shrugged. “We watch. We listen.” His eyes flicked past us, toward the back hallway for a fraction of a second. “Friends in low places.”
There. A clue. Quick as a flash, gone.
Ren followed that glance. The guy near the back hallway tensed, then relaxed when he saw her looking. He had his hands in his pockets. No patch. No ink. But something about the way he stood—the straight spine, the way he kept one shoulder slightly turned toward the door like he was used to watching exits—it tugged at me.
He smelled familiar.
Not Hellhound.
Leather and cheap cologne and the faint metallic tang of someone who spent too much time near their toolshed.
Ren’s stomach dropped.
“One of yours,”the dragon hissed.
She didn’t know who yet, not by name. Not by patch. But that scent was from their side of the line.
“Enough talking,” Eagle said, voice sharper than the air. “You got something that belongs to us, or are we just here to listen to you flap your gums?”
Beard shook his head. “You Bastards. Always in a hurry.” He straightened, hand brushing the bar top. “Man can’t even have a drink in peace anymore.”
He grabbed a bottle by the neck and swung.
Eagle was already moving. The bottle shattered on the table where his head had been. Brick lunged; Mouse ducked. The room erupted.
The first punch rocked through her bruised ribs so hard she saw white, even though it wasn’t aimed at her. The dragon recoiled, then expanded, pushing heat into every nerve, burning the edges of the pain away.
“Now,”it said.
I let it.
Fire slid under Ren’s skin like molten metal. It didn’t explode outward, not yet. It hugged her muscles, laced her bones. Her fingers crackled with barely contained heat.
The guy closest to her swung wide. Ren sidestepped, caught his wrist, twisted, felt the joint strain and pop. He screamed, tried to bring his other fist around. Ren slammed her forehead into his nose. Bone crunched. Blood sprayed.
The room was a blur of Bastards and Hades Hellhounds and panicked civilians scrambling for the back door. Tater had Beard by the collar, slamming him into the bar hard enough to rattle every glass still standing. Eagle had another guy pinned, his forearm digging into his throat.
Through it all, she kept flicking my eyes toward the back hallway.
That man still stood there.
Watching.
Not moving to help his supposed brothers. Not moving to run. Just… watching.
And in his stance, in the angle of his head, she recognized something so small it hurt?—
the way a Bastard prospects himself up, trying to look older.
The way one of the younger patches always stood when Tater was talking, like he wanted to be ready if his President called his name.
Ren didn’t say it out loud. Not yet. Her throat closed around it.
He saw her staring and looked away.
