Savage Saints Mc : Claimed By Four Monsters

Chapter 3

Isolde

The word wanted stared up at me from that screen like a verdict. My face, my name, A number underneath it that belonged on a property deed, not attached to a person. My legs wanted to buckle. I didn't let them.

"That's not me," I said.

Kael tilted his head. "No?"

"I told you. My name is Mara."

"Mara." He said it slowly, like he was setting it down somewhere to examine later. "Then you won't mind me sending this photo to the men who posted it. Since it's not you."

My mouth went dry. He watched my face with those flat charcoal eyes and didn't move, didn't push, just waited. That was the thing about him that frightened me most. He didn't need to raise his voice. He didn't need to move at all. He just waited, and the silence did all the work for him.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"The truth would be a start."

"The truth will get me killed."

"Something already tried to get you killed," he said. "You were barefoot and bleeding in the middle of a road at midnight. Whatever you're running from already found you once tonight."

He wasn't wrong, That made it even worse. I looked at the window behind him. Narrow, hinged at the top, dark outside. Probably a drop. Probably not a fatal one.

I ran for it. I got two steps past him before his hand closed around my wrist, and then I spun, yanked hard, and he let go just enough that I stumbled forward and hit the wall beside the window instead of reaching it. I got the latch open anyway. Cold air rushed in. I got one leg over the sill.

"Riot."

The door opened. The big man filled the frame. I was halfway out the window and he crossed the room in four steps and simply lifted me back through it like I weighed nothing at all, one arm around my waist, feet off the floor, and set me down in the middle of the room with the particular gentleness of someone who knew exactly how much strength they were choosing not to use.

"Don't," he said quietly.

I reached down and pulled the knife from the sheath on his belt before he realised what I was doing. Behind me, Zephyr's voice floated in from the doorway. "Oh, I genuinely love her."

Riot looked at his own empty sheath. Then at me. His expression didn't change but something in his eyes did, something that might have been respected if it wasn't so inconvenient.

"Give that back," he said.

"When I leave," I said. "Which will be soon."

Kael stood with his arms crossed, watching the whole thing. "Soren," he said to the pale-eyed one who had appeared silently in the doorway like he had always been there. "Find out everything about Isolde Vale."

Soren was already looking at his phone. "Already started."

The name coming out of Kael's mouth felt like a hand closing around my throat. I gripped the knife tighter.

"She's connected to the Voss family," Soren said, scrolling with one thumb, voice flat and clinical. "Engaged to Marcus Voss. Dorian Voss was found dead tonight at the family estate. Early reports say murder." He looked up at me briefly, then back at his screen. "She's the primary suspect."

The room went quiet, not the comfortable kind. Zephyr had stopped smiling. Riot's arms crossed tighter. Even Kael was still in a new way, recalibrating something behind his eyes.

"Voss," Riot said, the word landing like something heavy dropped on concrete.

"How much is on her head?" Kael asked.

Soren showed him the screen. Kael looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked at me. Something moved through his expression that I couldn't read. Not greed, or at least not only greed. Something more complicated than that.

"Everyone out," he said again. "And close the door."

They left. Even Riot, though he paused long enough to give me a look that said he wanted his knife back, and soon.

Kael sat on the edge of a table and looked at me.

"The Voss family has reached," he said. "You killed their oldest son."

"He tried to assault me."

"That won't matter to them."

"I know," I said. "That's why I ran."

He nodded once, slowly. "Someone is offering more money for you than most people see in a lifetime. I want to know why you're worth a war."

"Because Dorian Voss is dead and someone needs to be punished for it," I said. "It's not about me. It was never about me. I was just convenient."

He looked at me for a long time. Then gunfire shattered the window above my head. Glass rained down over both of us and I hit the floor on instinct, hands over my head, ears ringing. Kael was already moving, already shouting, the whole clubhouse erupting from silence into chaos in the space of a single breath. Boots on concrete. Doors slamming. Engines somewhere outside.

I crawled toward the overturned table and pressed my back against it. The knife was still in my hand. For all the good it did me against whoever was outside with guns.

The door burst open. Riot dropped to a crouch beside me, weapon already drawn.

"Stay down," he said.

"I'm very down," I said. Another shot came through the wall. Not a window this time, the actual wall, and the sound of it was different, closer, and Riot grabbed my arm and pulled me behind him in one motion. A figure appeared in the broken window frame, halfway through, weapon raised.

Riot fired once. The figure dropped. The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard. I stared at the man in the window. At the stillness of him. At what Riot had just done without hesitation, without flinching, without looking away. He had done it, and then he had turned back to me to check if I was breathing.

"You're okay," he said. It wasn't a question.

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure.

The attack ended as fast as it had started. Voices outside, retreating engines, then Kael's voice cutting through everything with sharp, clean authority. By the time he came back into the room, I was still on the floor with my back against the wall and the knife in my lap and my hands shaking in a way I couldn't stop.

He looked at me. He reached down and pulled me to my feet, not roughly, and walked me down the hall and through a door at the far end. His room. Sparse and dark and smelling like leather and something colder underneath.

He released my arm.

"From tonight onward," he said, turning the lock, "you belong to me."

The bolt slid home..