Page 47 of Tater
He dragged in smoke, exhaled slowly. The rain tapped lazily against the tin roof, steady and even. The storm had finally run out of fight.
He pulled the chain from his belt loop and held it to the light. The metal gleamed dull silver, nicked, and scarred in all the ways life marked a person. He thought about how it had come back to him—blood, rain, fire. Everything that mattered in their world always came through fire.
He set it down again, beside his knife, and rubbed a hand over his face. His body was bone-tired, but his mind wouldn’t stop moving.
Shadow was gone, but that didn’t mean peace. There were always others—the next threat, the next rival, the next storm. That was the life. But what happened tonight wasn’t just club business. It was her.
He’d seen Ren fight before. Hell, he’d seen her burn. But the way she’d stood on that ridge—steady, glowing, unbreakable—something in him had shifted. It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t fear. It was awe.
She’d gone through hell and didn’t just crawl back out, she brought part of it with her and learned to make it listen.
He smiled faintly, shaking his head. “My old lady,” he muttered, almost laughing. “You’re somethin’ else.”
The clock on the wall ticked past two. He stubbed out the cigarette, grabbed his cut from the chair, and slung it over his shoulder. For a minute, he just stood there, staring at the doorway that led to the hall.
Part of him wanted to check on her again, just to be sure. The other part knew better. Ren didn’t need guarding. Not anymore.
Still, when he walked back through the quiet clubhouse and paused at the bedroom door, he couldn’t help himself.
She was turned toward the window, moonlight washing over her face, the faintest shimmer under her skin. Her breathing was steady, peaceful.
Tater leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“You did it, baby girl,” he said softly. “You burned the devil.”
He waited for another beat, watching her chest rise and fall. Then he turned off the light and left the door cracked—just enough to see the faint gold glow that pulsed with her heartbeat.
Outside, the night smelled of rain and ash and something clean. The kind of scent that said maybe, just maybe, the fire hadn’t destroyed everything—just burned away what wasn’t meant to stay.
Tater walked back toward the shop, boots scraping on the concrete, the dragon’s hum still faint in the air behind him.
And for the first time, he wasn’t thinking about revenge, or the next fight, or the next loss.
He was thinking about tomorrow.
CHAPTER 26
The Warning
The morning came too bright, too quiet.
Sunlight cut through the mist, catching the puddles across the compound and turning them into mirrors. The storm had left the world clean, like it was pretending nothing happened.
Tater was on the porch, mug in one hand, phone in the other. Eagle was pacing near the gate, muttering to Brick about tire tracks that didn’t match any of their bikes.
Then a hangaround—Scotty, kid barely twenty—rolled in slow on a dirt-covered pickup. He looked pale, spooked.
Tater stepped off the porch. “What’d you find?”
Scotty swallowed hard and held out a small black box wrapped in duct tape. “It was sitting on the gravel outside the fence. No note. Just this.”
Eagle took it, turned it over once. “You check for wires?”
“Already did.”
Tater tore the tape off and flipped it open.
Inside sat a single Hades Hellhounds patch, burned at the edges. The leather still smelled like smoke. Beside it, a single round—.45 caliber, polished clean.
