BIKER QUEEN AND HER HELLBOUND KING

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Grace

"Is he dead?" Jinx whispered, his voice shaky.

"No," Kent said. He stepped back, his chest rising and falling slowly. His knuckles were split, and blood was dripping from the shallow gashes on his arms, but he looked like he was barely winded.

The room was silent except for the sound of the Riders breathing hard and someone pushing debris off the ruined table.

"Someone get Mara," Kent commanded, his eyes not leaving Bane’s unconscious form. "Now."

Jinx scrambled toward the door, nearly tripping over a broken chair. Rook was already on his feet, helping Silas up from the floor. The rest of the Riders were standing in a wide circle, looking at Bane with a mixture of shock and pure, unadulterated fear.

I remained on the floor, clutching my stomach and waiting for the nausea to pass.

"How did he get through?" Silas rasped, clutching his side.

"The Collector sent one of our own back as a vessel," another Rider whispered, his face pale. "How did he get past the ward with that mark on him?"

Bane had been outside the ward? That meant the Riders could come and go as they pleased?

"He didn't get past it," Kent said, turning towards the door. "He was let in. The ward recognizes Velmore's blood. The Collector used Bane's own signature to bypass the security."

The room went deathly silent. Every Rider was staring at the body of their friend, the reality of the threat finally sinking in. The Collector hadn't just tested the ward; he had breached a soul.

I stayed against the wall and tried to remember how to stand up straight. My legs felt like jelly underneath me. I had seen Kent be arrogant. I had seen him be controlling and dark. But I had never seen him fight. The way he had handled Bane made something in me quiver.

Mara arrived in under ten minutes. She took one look at Bane on the floor, at the mark on his neck and set her bag down without a word. She checked his pulse, his eyes, she looked at the snapped bones and then at Kent, but she didn't scold him.

“I'll need to take him back to the clinic. He needs to be sedated.” she said.

“How long will he be out for?” Kent asked.

"Three days at minimum," she said. "Maybe four. The Collector's mark doesn't release cleanly, he'll need to be contained until we know how much of him is still in there."

"Do it," Kent said. "And Rook, double the guards at the clinic. Nobody gets in but Mara and Jinx."

"I'm on it," Rook replied. He gave me a look as he passed— not a threat this time, but something seemed to say ‘you did this’.

I looked away, refusing to acknowledge it.

"Will he come back?" Jinx asked from the doorway.

Mara looked at Bane's face for a long moment before she answered. "Most of him, probably. Whether all of him does depends on how long the mark had been active before you found him."

Nobody said anything after that. The Riders started moving, clearing the room, righting what could be righted and leaving what couldn't. Silas and another Rider I didn't know lifted Bane carefully and carried him out. Kent walked with Mara outside the room, probably to talk about the situation out of earshot.

I had finally managed to get myself off the floor and onto a chair that had survived the chaos, and I was looking at my own hands because I needed something to focus on while I got my heart under control.

I heard boots on the concrete and looked up.

"You okay, Grace? You look like you're about to faint." Jinx asked, looking down at me.

"I'm fine," I lied, though my knees still felt like they were made of water. "I just wasn't expecting a wrestling match in the middle of a meeting."

"Glad to know you're still so witty," Jinx chuckled quietly and I returned a faint smile.

Kent returned to the room and gave the Riders orders. Everyone slowly cleared out of the room until it was just the both of us left.

He slowly walked towards me and stopped a few feet away, close enough that I could see the blood drying in the creases of his knuckles. He was looking at my face with an odd expression.

"The mark was dormant. It was triggered by the proximity to your powers. The Collector isn't just marking people anymore. He’s planting seeds.” Kent said quietly, he looked nothing like the man who had sat in my room last night.

“I'm putting everyone in danger, aren't I?” I could barely hear myself.

“No, the collector is putting Marked beings in danger. He won't stop even when he has you.” Kent said and bent into a squat, until he was eye level with me.

"You're shaking,"

"I think I'm allowed to be shaking," I replied, my voice a little higher than I wanted it to be.

"Something just tried to eat my face while talking in a voice that sounded like a blender full of wasps."

"He wouldn't have reached you," Kent said. He looked tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from a lack of sleep, but the kind that comes from maintaining a sanctuary for two hundred years.

“Bane was one of the scouts sent outside the ward to gather information. He wasn't supposed to return for another week.” He explained. That made a lot of sense as to why he was outside.

“Nothing can cross the ward unless I allow it, not even the collector.” He reached for my hand and I pulled away, looking everywhere but him.

He looked down at his hands and asked, "Are you afraid of me?"

The question caught me off guard. I looked at the blood on his hands, then at the broken table where he had snapped a man's bones without a second thought. My heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs just thinking about the sound of Bane's bone snapping.

"No," I said. It was only half a lie. I wasn't afraid of him hurting me, but I was terrified of the world he lived in. A world where this kind of violence was the only language that worked.

"Should I be?" I asked, finally focusing on his eyes. When his eyes weren't glowing, they were a light shade of brown, the kind that caught sunlight and sparkled. I wondered how they looked in the sunlight.

He looked at me for a long time. Long enough that everything around us faded into something distant and the only thing in the room was his eyes on my face and the question hanging in the air between us.

"Probably," he said. He turned away, reaching for the jacket someone had left on the back of a chair. "Most people with any sense are.”

"I've never been accused of having a lot of sense," I muttered.

He let out a short, dry sound that might have been a laugh. "I noticed.”

I watched him wipe his hands with the jacket and said nothing.

"You're not going to be afraid of me," he said. It wasn't a question or a guess. It was a statement of fact, the same way he talked about the ward or the Collector. "Not because you're brave, Grace. But because you're starting to realize that I'm the only thing between you and the thing that made Bane look like that."

"That's a hell of a choice," I said. "A warden or a monster."

"In this world, they're often the same thing," he replied. "You should go upstairs."

"I have questions, Kent. A lot of them,”

"Not tonight," he said. He finally got up, stretching as he tossed the jacket aside.

"Why did he go for me?" I asked anyway, "He was in the room with all of you. He could have attacked anyone. Why me?"

I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it.

"Because you're the only thing in this room the Collector actually values," Kent said, leaning toward me. He didn't use compulsion, but I felt my body go still. "To him, everyone else in Velmore is just an obstacle. You’re the prize."

I looked at his hands. The blood was mostly gone now, he would need to put a bandaid on the cuts. "What you did to him. You didn't even hesitate."

"Hesitation is how people die, Grace. In this world, you either end the threat or you become the victim. I don't have the luxury of being gentle.”