BIKER QUEEN AND HER HELLBOUND KING

CHAPTER EIGHT

Grace

The morning air in Velmore felt different than the night before. It was crisp and carried the scent of pine and damp earth, but the weight of Kent’s words still pressed against my chest. I couldn't just sit in my assigned room anymore. I needed to move, even if I was just walking in circles within the invisible cage Kent had built around me.

Jinx found me on the front steps of Venom after breakfast, which I suspected was not an accident.

“I'm coming with you” I said, not even giving him a chance to oppose. There was a slight look of amusement in his eyes as I walked with him to a small workroom not too far from the bar. It looked like a garage, but not quite.

"You look like you didn't sleep a wink," Jinx said, and started taking a bike apart.

"It’s hard to sleep when someone tells you that your blood is a supernatural battery and that you’re essentially a prisoner," I replied and leaned against the wooden door, watching him.

“Ah… so he's told you what you are then” Jinx hummed, not stopping his work.

"You have questions," he said with the easy confidence of someone who had decided we were friends and that was exactly the reason I followed him, he was the only person in this place I was comfortable with enough to pry who might give me answers.

"I have about four hundred questions," I said.

"Good. I have answers for at least six of them." He stretched his legs out before he focused on the bike again. "Ask.”

"He mentioned some kind of boundary. A century-old ward or something, how does any of that actually work?"

Jinx stopped working to clean off oil from his fingers and looked at the horizon. "It works because Kent made it work. He’s been maintaining the perimeter of Velmore longer than most cities in this country have had paved roads."

I frowned, trying to do the math. "He looks like he’s in his thirties, Jinx. Maybe forty if he’s had a rough life. How can he maintain something for a century?"

Jinx laughed under his breath, his movements steady. "He's thirty-two, but also much older. Kent is the oldest living Rider we have. He’s two hundred and forty-three years old, Grace."

“So you're saying he's both thirty-two and two hundred?” I couldn't keep the shock off my face.

"Our kind doesn't age after a certain point, we can choose to stop it at any point after adulthood or let nature work its magic. He's been thirty two since before your country even existed.”

I let out a short, dry laugh. "Right. And I’m the biblical Methuselah. Is that part of the 'Marked' starter pack? Living forever?"

"Not forever," Jinx said, his voice dropping an octave. "But long enough to see empires rise and fall. He built this place as a sanctuary, it started after a war that your history books don't even have a name for. He wanted a place where the lines didn't matter so much." I didn't want to believe it, but honestly this is the tamest of all the information I've been hit with since I entered this town so I choose to change the topic.

"He told me about the rooms," I said, thinking back to last night. "The Marked and the Unmarked."

"Velmore is where the doors stay open," he explained. "We have humans here who chose to stay, some fell in love with a Marked being and couldn't imagine leaving. Others just wanted to live somewhere where the monsters outside couldn't get to them. Then we have people whose blood has diluted over hundreds of years. They aren't quite human, but they aren't fully Marked either and finally Marked beings of many kinds. Kent keeps the peace for all of them."

"He seems like a very solitary peacekeeper," I remarked. "Does he ever let anyone in? Does he have a family? A partner?"

The rhythm of his work stopped completely. Jinx didn't look at me this time. The silence stretched out, becoming uncomfortable and heavy.

"Kent doesn't do 'close'," Jinx said finally. His voice was different now, guarded.

"He carries the weight of every soul in this town. That doesn't leave much room for anything else."

"Has he ever been with anyone?" I pushed, curious despite myself. "In two hundred years, surely there was someone."

Jinx turned his back to me and started putting the bike back together. "That's a question you should probably never ask him, Grace. Some ghosts are better left in the dark."

I watched him work for a while longer, his sudden change in mood making my skin crawl, then I left the workroom and wandered back towards the center of town.

*

*

Venom, the bar that served as the heart of Velmore, looked both small and imposing at the same time. I pushed the doors open and walked into the main room. It was empty, but I could hear a low, buzzing sound coming from Kent's office. I walked toward the noise, my boots silent on the rugs and opened the door slowly.

Kent was sitting at his desk completely shirtless. He was holding a small, silver tattooing needle in his right hand, working on his own left forearm. The buzzing was coming from the machine. He was focused, his brow slightly furrowed, as he moved the needle with agonizing care.

I stayed in the doorway, my eyes traveling over his body. I had noticed the tattoos before, but I had never looked at them closely, I didn't have the chance to when everything has basically been speedrun since I got here.

His tattoos weren't just designs, they were rows of tiny, text and numbers in different colours of ink and fonts.

I moved closer, drawn in by the sheer detail of it, I leaned over his shoulder to see what he was currently working and and Kent went rigid. Every muscle in his body seemed to lock into place but his movements didn't stall. He didn't look up at me, but the air in the small office suddenly felt like it was vibrating.

"What are you doing?" I asked, curiosity lacing my voice.

He finished the final stroke and set the needle down. He didn't cover the mark. He just sat there, staring at the fresh, red-rimmed ink on his skin. I leaned down further, my hair brushing against his shoulder as I tried to make out the design for this one. The ink was dark and it was a date. Today’s date.

"What does that mean?" I asked, pointing to the numbers. "Is that a birthday? An anniversary?"

Kent slowly turned his head to look at me. His face was so close now that I could feel his steady breath, I moved before I could stop myself, straightening my spine to escape the proximity.

“It's nothing you should concern yourself about,” he said. His voice was low and rough.

“Everything in this town is my business if I’m not allowed to leave it,” I couldn't just sit around, doing nothing and wait to die.

"It’s a marker," he sighed, pulling on his shirt.

"A marker for what? You have hundreds of them. Are these all the people you've lost?" I made a wild guess, Kent didn't seem like the kind of man with such sentimentality, but then again, I didn't know what kind of man he was.

"Some," he said, surprising me with his response. He stood up, and I had to step back to avoid being bumped by his chest. He was so much taller than me, and in the cramped office, he seemed to take up all the available oxygen. "Some are beginnings, some are endings, this one is a warning."

"A warning for who?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs. "For me?"

"For everyone," Kent replied.

He walked past me, his arm brushing mine. Where our skin met, a spark of heat shot through me, making my breath hitch.