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Somewhere past the second doorway, I hear him. Not words, more like sounds, barely recognizable as a voice at all.

But I’d know it anywhere. I’ve known that voice since we were kids running wild through my father’s garage. Since long before he was my brother-in-law. Since he was just Wolf, the reckless idiot who talked me into every stupid decision I made before twenty and saved my life more times than I can count after that.

Something in my chest cracks wide open knowing that he’s alive. We’re not too late. Not yet.

Cullen’s already turning when I round the corner, gun coming up fast. He knew I was coming and wasn’t planning on losing this quietly.

“Knox.” He says my name like we’re old friends catching up. Like my brother isn’t bound and bleeding on the floor between us. Like the last two months of my life haven’t been a slow-motion unraveling I don’t know how to stop.

“You found us faster than I planned for.”

“You should’ve planned better.”

“My mistake.” He almost smiles, and something in me that’s spent two months being patient, being calm, being the man everyone else needs him to be, finally runs out of road.

I don’t answer him with words. I close the distance before he can finish bringing the gun level. Whatever training kept me steady through every hard year of running this club since my father stepped back collapses into something violent.

My dead sister’s husband and my best friend is bleeding out on a warehouse floor because this fucker decided he was worth more to him broken than whole. This is Rae’s face flashing behind my eyes every time I’ve had to explain to someone my VP’s gone dark for weeks. This is every night I’ve lain awake wondering if I’m about to lose the only piece of her I have left that still calls me brother.

It’s over fast. Faster than it probably should be, given what Cullen tried to take from us.

I don’t feel anything close to guilt. I don’t think I will later, either.

Gunshots ring out in the background as Diesel and Bishop begin to clear out the resistance. Outside, the sound of engines grows closer—brothers who came as backup.

Sam’s barely conscious when I reach him, wrists raw where the rope’s been cutting in, his face swollen in ways that make my stomach turn just looking at it. For one terrible second I feel that same feeling of watching someone I love disappear in front of me while I stand there useless.

I am not doing this twice.

“Wolf.” My voice cracks around his name, nothing steady left in it. “Jesus, Wolf, wake up and talk to me.”

He doesn’t, not really. His eyes open, but he’s somewhere else entirely. I cut the rope myself and drag his limp body from the floor. He weighs nothing, like there’s less of him left than there should be. Like grief already carved half of him away before Cullen ever got the chance.

“I got him,” I call out, already making my way toward the door. Sam’s dead weight braced against me, his breath coming shallow and wrong against my shoulder. “You will not fucking die on me, Wolf. Do you hear me?”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t so much as flinch at the sound of my voice.

Outside, the gunfire’s quieting, Diesel and Bishop holding their ground against what’s left of Cullen’s men. The rest of the brothers who arrived are closing in from the perimeter now that there’s nothing left to hold the light against. Most of Cullen’s guys are already scattering. There’s no president left to give them a reason to keep fighting for this place.

“Fall back,” I shout. “Fall back now.”

Mouse catches up and helps me get Wolf into the truck, wrapping him in a couple of emergency blankets I keep stashed under the back seat. His breathing’s shallow but steady.

“You’re an idiot,” I tell him, even though I don’t know if he can hear me. “You know that? A goddamn idiot. You don’t get to do this to me. Not you too.”

I think about my sister the whole drive back to the clubhouse. About the promise I made her. I think about how close I came tonight to breaking that promise anyway. How I’d have had to be the one to tell my father, who’s already buried a wife and a daughter, that he’d lost another piece of our family.

Cullen’s dead. Ridgeback’s finished, at least here.

But I don’t feel like celebrating. I feel wrung out, hollowed clean by two months of grief with nowhere to put it, and one night of terror I’m not sure I’ve fully come down from yet. I hold the wheel steady while the man my sister loved breathes unsteady in the back, alive, for now, because we got there in time.

Just barely.

But in time.

“He’s gonna make it,” Mouse says, not quite a question, like he needs someone else to confirm it before he lets himself believe it.

“He’s gonna make it,” I say it like a fact instead of hope. Because right now, that’s the only way I can make myself believe it too.