The scent of Coldwater had changed. It no longer smelled like the heavy, stagnant tension of a city under Silas Thorne’s thumb; it smelled like ozone, wet pavement, and the sharp, metallic tang of an impending storm. As the pack crossed the city limits, the familiar red-brick landscape of the industrial district looked different in the gray morning light. The power vacuum left by Thorne’s death and Marcus’s arrest had turned the streets into a chessboard where the remaining minor gangs were already scrambling for the pieces.
Dax rode at the front of the formation, his left arm strapped tightly to his chest in a temporary sling. Even injured, he sat on his bike with the rigid authority of a man who had claimed his throne in blood. I rode close on his right flank, my Norton humming a low, s
