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We both jerk upright, still tangled together.

“Carnage.” Sentinel’s voice comes through, clipped and urgent in a way that has nothing to do with early-morning teasing. “Need you both out here. Now.”

Carnage is already moving, dragging a shirt over his head while his eyes stay locked on mine, silently asking a question I don’t have an answer for. I pull on the first clothes within reach, my hands fumbling buttons I’d normally manage without thinking, my entire body running that old, familiar calculation.

We hit the hallway together, and within three steps I know something is off. The clubhouse has gone too-fucking-quiet, with every voice from the main room cut off along with the usual laughter and brothers giving each other shit.

Sentinel is waiting at the end of the corridor, his wings pulled tight against his back, his shoulders rigid beneath his cut. His eyes find Carnage first, then me, and he pushes away from the wall.

No grin. No smart-ass comment about us coming out of Carnage’s room together. Not even a raised eyebrow. Considering what he interrupted between us in the garage, that alone is enough to put me on edge.

“We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?” I ask, though some part of me already knows, already feels the answer crawling up my spine before he says a word.

“There’s someone at the gate.” Sentinel’s eyes cut to me, careful in a way that makes my stomach drop straight through the floor. “Says she’s Conclave. Says she’s here for you.”

The words hit like cold water, and every hard-won inch of ground I found in the last twelve hours cracks straight down the middle.

Oh hell. They have found me.

Carnage’s hand closes around mine, that same steady quiet from this morning settling over his face now instead of softness. His jaw sets, his grip tightens, and even without a single sound leaving his throat, the message comes through louder than any roar he’s lost.

Not without a goddamn fight.

I should feel afraid. Twelve years of running should have every nerve screaming at me to find the nearest exit and get the fuck into those mountains before anyone realizes I’m gone.

Instead, I feel Carnage’s hand around mine, Sentinel’s wings flaring wider at my back, and the weight of an entire clubhouse rising to stand between me and a woman who thinks she’s here to collect what belongs to the Conclave.

For the first time in twelve years, running isn’t the first thing my body reaches for.

Staying is.

And that terrifies me more than anything waiting at that gate.

Chapter Fifteen

CARNAGE

Echo’s hand stays wrapped around mine as we head down the corridor, her grip getting tighter with every step. There’s a tremor in her fingers she can’t quite stop, but the rest of her is locked down tight, shoulders back, chin up, keeping pace beside me like she can fucking outstare the fear if she tries hard enough. I squeeze her hand, and when those pale green eyes flick up to mine, I reach for that thing between us and push everything I can’t say into it.

I’ve got you.

Her breath slips out, her grip loosening just enough to tell me she felt it before her fingers tighten around mine again.

Sentinel takes point, his wings pulled tight against his back, cutting through the clubhouse ahead of us while brothers peel off tables, pool tables, and doorways to follow. Maul falls into step on Echo’s other side without a word, and by the time we hit the front doors, half the club is moving behind us in a loose, silent wall of leather, muscle, and things that used to be human before the world got its claws into them.

The morning air hits cold when we step outside, mist still clinging low to the tree line, and my hellhound rises the second I catch sight of her standing at the gate.

The woman sticks out in Kings’ territory before I even get a proper look at her. Tall, dressed in dark blue that probably cost more than half the shit in this clubhouse, she stands outside at the gate with her hands loose at her sides while a bunch of supernatural bikers watch her from every direction.

And she looks completely-fucking-comfortable.

Long gray hair falls in loose waves down her back, her face sharp without looking hard, and there’s something about her eyes that tells me she’s been around long enough to know exactly how dangerous everyone in this yard is.

She just isn’t impressed by it.

Then she speaks. “Echo.”