Chapter 1: The Filthy Colors
The buzzing fluorescent tube directly above the witness box hummed like a trapped hornet, drilling a steady ache into the base of my skull.
I kept my palms flat against the varnished pine railing, trying to hide the fine tremor running through my fingers.
"Miss Lockwood," Magistrate Abel Atwood rasped, his voice as dry as dead cedar needles. "The court is waiting for your sworn statement regarding the fire at the eastern marina fuel dock."
Atwood peered at me over his tortoiseshell spectacles, his pale, sixty-one-year-old face blotched with impatience. He reached into his vest pocket, crinkled the plastic wrapper of a peppermint candy, and shoved it between his teeth.
Below the bench, in the front spectator pew, Shane Caldwell sat watching me.
Shane wore his clean dress leather, the snarling iron wolf of the Iron Fangs MC freshly oiled across the chest. His dark hair was slicked back from his temples, and his boots were propped on the wooden rail like he already owned the municipal courthouse.
Beside him sat Natalie Upton.
Natalie was twenty-eight years old, dressed in ivory silk tailored specifically for the opening week of the Silver Shoals Regatta. Her wide-brimmed hat cast a delicate shadow across her cheekbones, but it did nothing to hide the smirk curling her painted red lips.
Pinned to her silk lapel was a diamond-encrusted silver wolf brooch.
Shane had given it to her that morning. I recognized the jeweler's velvet box because I had found the receipt on Shane's dresser three days ago while washing his grease-stained club shirts.
You put that paper in front of your face and read it, Riley.
Shane's voice hit my mind like a lead weight, heavy and blunt, trying to drive me to my knees. The pack leash pulsed against the base of my neck, demanding obedience.
An unshifted witch does not submit to a wolf's command. My blood pushed back against the mental intrusion, sending a sharp throb behind my eyes, smelling of copper and bitter marsh mint.
Read the confession, Shane commanded silently, his grey eyes narrowing into slits. Tell Atwood you stole the industrial accelerant from the tool shed. Tell him you were careless with the kerosene.
I lowered my chin, shielding my throat. My thumb found the leather cord around my neck, sliding down to the antique brass thimble resting against my collarbone.
I tapped the brass edge against my knuckles. Once, twice, three times.
The metallic click was small, barely audible over the hum of the light fixtures, but it anchored me. My mother had worn that thimble through twenty years of patching dockworkers and cleansing poisoned wolf-bites.
For three years, I had given everything I possessed to Shane and the Iron Fangs.
I had spent my nights scrubbing chain grease from floorboards, stitching torn flesh after back-alley brawls, and balancing three separate sets of dirty financial ledgers so the county deputies would look the other way. I had worked seventy hours a week without a single cent in pay, surviving on diner scraps and cold promises that when Shane took the presidency, I would stand beside him as his queen.
Instead, the summer billionaires arrived with their yacht money, and Natalie Upton walked into the clubhouse with five hundred thousand dollars in clean real estate cash.
Within two weeks, Shane moved my cot into the tool shed behind the repair bays.
Now, he expected me to take a five-year prison sentence for his arson.
"Miss Lockwood," Atwood repeated, his gavel tapping lightly against the leather strike pad on his desk. "You were found at the scene with soot on your sleeves. The court needs your sworn testimony to close this inquiry."
Shane shifted in his seat, leaning sideways to drape a heavy, casual arm across Natalie's bare shoulders. He rubbed his thumb across the curve of her neck, openly stroking her skin where everyone in the gallery could see.
Natalie tilted her head into his touch, her blue eyes fixed on mine with venomous amusement.
She was the new lady of the eastern shore. I was just the unpaid drudge about to be thrown into a county cell to protect their municipal land deal.
"I have a statement, Magistrate," I said.
My voice came out flat and low. It did not shake.
Shane's jaw clenched. He thought he had won. He gave me a sharp nod, expecting me to pick up the typed perjury confession sitting beside the microphone.
I stepped down from the witness box.
The bailiff reached for his holster, but Atwood held up a frail hand, watching me with narrow, calculating eyes.
I walked past the court reporter's desk directly toward the defense table. Resting on the polished oak was my old riding cut: black cowhide, heavily scuffed at the elbows, with the Iron Fangs property patch stitched across the lower back. Shane had made me wear it for three years to mark me as his territory.
I picked up the heavy leather.
The cut smelled of Shane's stale clove cigarettes, wet dog, and the chemical stench of the turpentine he had used to burn the eastern marina fuel dock.
Shane leaned forward, his smug smile widening. "Good girl, Riley. Put your colors back on and tell the judge what you did."
"I kept your books for three years, Shane," I said, pitching my voice so that every clerk, spectator, and reporter in the chamber could hear. "I know exactly how much you paid for the fuel, and I know which slipway you poured it on."
The room went dead silent.
Natalie's smile vanished. Her fingers tightened around her small leather clutch.
Shane's eyes flashed amber, the predator rising instantly to the surface of his human face. "Shut your mouth, Riley. Sit down and read the paper."
Obey me, his alpha voice roared through the psychic link, slamming into my temples with brutal force.
Pain spiked through my skull, but my mother's blood held firm. I did not blink. I did not bend.
I raised the heavy leather cut with both hands. With two sharp, deliberate motions, I ripped the collar open until the top seam tore with a dry, violent c***k.
Then I swung my arms down and dropped the entire cut into the dented brass spittoon beside the railing.
The leather hit the stagnant dregs of tobacco juice with a wet, heavy splash. Brown liquid slopped over the rim, spattering the polished toes of Shane's custom boots.
"Your cut is filthy, Shane," I said, stepping back with my chin raised. "Wear it yourself."
A collective gasp ripped through the gallery.
Shane lunged to his feet so fast his chair screeched across the floorboards and slammed into the bench behind him. His upper lip pulled back over lengthening canine fangs, a low, guttural snarl rattling in his chest.
"You miserable b***h," Shane snarled, his fingers curling into claws as he reached for the swinging wooden gate. "I will break your neck before you leave this room."
"Order!" Atwood screamed, slamming his wooden gavel down with enough force to c***k the sound block. "Bailiffs, restrain that man! Order in this chamber!"
Two county deputies moved forward, their hands resting on their sidearms, but neither of them dared step directly into the reach of an enraged alpha wolf.
Shane shoved the mahogany gate open, his eyes fixed entirely on my throat.
Before his boot could touch the aisle, the double oak doors at the back of the courtroom blasted open with the force of an artillery shell.
The heavy wood crashed back against the limestone wall, vibrating through the floorboards beneath my feet.
The entire chamber froze.
A man stood framed in the threshold, broad shoulders blocking out the morning sunlight from the civic square.
Bastien Laurent.
He was thirty years old, built like an iron piling, and wore the heavy black cut of the Phantom Riders MC. The silver-studded collar points of his leather vest caught the harsh fluorescent glare, and his dark eyes swept across the room with lethal, unhurried precision.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the air turned electric.
A high-pitched static hissed through my inner ear, the violent telepathic friction of two rival alphas occupying the same room. Shane stumbled back half a step, grimacing as the sheer weight of Bastien's presence collided with his own territorial boundary.
Bastien did not draw a weapon. He did not shout.
His heavy engineer boots struck the center aisle with a steady, heavy cadence that silenced the room completely. Every step groaned against the floorboards.
He walked past the frozen spectators, past the terrified bailiffs, his gaze locked straight onto me. There was no pity in his face. There was only raw, absolute focus, dark and burning like an unquenched coal.
Shane caught his balance, snarling across the railing. "This is town territory, Laurent. The Phantom Riders have no business in a municipal hearing."
Bastien ignored him completely. He stopped at the mahogany gate, planting two scarred knuckles against the polished wood, just inches from where Shane stood with bared fangs.
Then Bastien looked at me, his gravelly voice cutting through the ringing silence of the room.
"Court is adjourned, Shane. Miss Lockwood rides west."
