BIKER QUEEN AND HER HELLBOUND KING

CHAPTER TWO

Kent's POV

I felt it before the door opened.

That was the thing about the ward. After a century of maintaining it, of feeding it and reinforcing it and trusting it because I built it with my own hands, I knew every variation of what it felt like when something pressed against the boundary. The scouts that tested it. The lost humans who wandered close and were directed back to the road without realising it. The occasional Marked being who tried to push through and found something pushing back. I knew it all.

This was none of those things.

At 3 AM on a Tuesday, the ward didn't resist. It parted. Like it recognised whatever was coming and simply stepped aside and welcomed it, and that recognition moved through me like a current, because the ward was mine and what it felt, I felt, and what I felt was something I had no language for. Something old that had no place in this world.

Rook felt it too. I saw it in the way he went still at the end of the bar, the slight shift in his posture that meant he was reading the room, the exits, the threat level. He looked at me. I had nothing to tell him because I didn't understand it either, then the door opened and she was there.

Bleeding. Wild-eyed. A rag wrapped around one arm that had long since soaked through and was dripping, her jacket pulled tight over something tucked in her waistband, and the particular look on her face of someone who was running from something. She stood in the doorway and looked at every single one of us and did not flinch.

The music had stopped. I hadn't told anyone to stop it, it just stopped.

She looked at me last. And the thing I had spent decades keeping buried, the second nature that I managed through discipline and distance and sheer bloody-minded will, lurched forward in my chest like a dog hitting the end of a chain. It was not subtle. It was not something I could rationalise or file away or deal with later. It was immediate and absolute and completely without my permission.

I think she felt it too because she stepped back, like she was about to bold when suddenly her eyes went unfocused and she went down.

I was around the bar before she hit the floor.

I carried her upstairs to the back room and sent everyone else away and cleaned and dressed the wound on her arm, which was deeper than I thought, any deeper and her arm would have been severed. I worked in silence, making sure I cleaned her up properly but didn't intrude on her privacy.

She woke around thirty minutes later. I was sitting in the chair across from the bed when she opened her eyes with a jolt. She tried to get up and let out a pained sound that did something to my chest. She lay back down and slowly scanned the room instead. The moment she clocked me sitting there, she went very still.

"Your arm needed stitches," I said. "I did what I could."

She sat up slowly, looked down at the bandaging, at her body and then looked back at me.

“I didn't do anything else, don't worry,” I reassured.

"Thank you," she croaked, like she was minutes away from losing her voice. "I appreciate it. I'll get out of your way."

"You're not going anywhere."

She stopped. Something moved across her face. "Excuse me?"

"I said you're not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not until I know how you got through my ward."

She stared at me. "I don't know what that means."

"Right." I replied, not believing her for a second. "You're saying you somehow found your way to my town, without any Marked leading you?" I paused. She looked genuinely confused at my words, but I didn't trust her.

“I don't know what you're saying honestly, my car died and I walked until I found your bar. I appreciate your kindness, but you're being really rude right now.” She slowly got down from the bed, looking around for her things.

“I told you, you can't leave without my permission, so you better start talking.”

She ignored me, picking up her jacket.

"I'll ask you again. How did you get into my town?"

"I followed a light," she exhaled slowly, like she was explaining something to someone who might be unstable. "My car broke down. I walked. That's all that happened."

"That's not all that happened."

"Look, I don't know who you think I am, but I mean no harm to you and your town. I can't even do anything if I wanted to," she raised the bandaged arm to make a point.

"I have had a genuinely catastrophic night. I am hungry and tired and really need to get some sleep, so I am grateful for the bandage and I am leaving."

She moved towards the door and I didn't stop her with my hands. I stopped her with my voice.

"Sit down."

She sat down like her body was out of her control. She looked furious about it. Good. Fury meant she was present, thinking, alive and clear-headed, which meant she could answer my questions.

“What did you do to me?” She looked at me wide-eyed as she tried to move and her body resisted. “Did you drug me?”

I almost laughed at those words of her, compulsion was light work for a Marked being of the blood-wielder class, much less me, an ancient hellbound.

"What's your name?" I asked, ignoring her questions.

"Sarah," she said with great difficulty, trying to fight my power. "What's yours?"

"Kent."

She nodded, eyes fixed on the exit. Then she did something I have only witnessed once in my existence. She broke the compulsion and bolted for the door.

Her eyes found me as she tried to open the door and all her movements stopped.

I watched it happen, the shock paralyzing her instantly. Her lips parted slightly, and no words came out, but she didn't look away.

"Your eyes," she said with a shaky voice. "They were dark earlier."

I said nothing.

"They're not dark now." She was shaking now, "They're amber." She swallowed once, and I saw the goosebumps move up her body with each tremor.

"Why are your eyes glowing?"