CLAIMED BY THE RUTHLESS BIKER KING

Chapter 21 — Favoritism

Marlowe

There was an official betting pool now, apparently, about exactly how soft their President had gone for the new blood, and Cricket had the audacity to show me the chalkboard tally like I might want to place a wager on my own life.

"Odds are shifting daily." He tapped the board with real enthusiasm. "Started at even money on 'nothing, you're all imagining things.' We're down to three-to-one on 'something's definitely happening' as of this morning. Preacher's holding out for 'King's just weird about prospects who remind him of Silas,' but nobody's really buying that anymore."

"You people have too much free time."

"We have exactly enough free time." He grinned, entirely unrepentant. "You want in on the pool? I'll give you decent odds, given you're technically the most informed party."

"I'm not betting on my own life, Cricket."

"Suit yourself." He wandered off to harass someone else with his chalkboard, and I stood there a moment longer, feeling the particular exhausting weight of being the most-discussed mystery in a den full of people with entirely too much curiosity and not nearly enough real danger to occupy it otherwise.

---

Nova found me packing gear for the evening supply run, and the question she asked came so gently, so carefully, that I almost didn't register it as dangerous until it had already landed.

"Can I ask you something? You don't have to answer."

"Depends what it is."

"Why do you flinch?" She kept her eyes on her own bag, giving me the small mercy of not watching my face while she said it. "Not always. But sometimes. Somebody moves too fast near you, or reaches for something on your shoulder, and you go still for half a second before you catch yourself. I've noticed it a few times now. Figured maybe you'd tell me eventually. Figured maybe eventually's now, if you want it to be."

My whole chest went tight. I kept my hands moving, methodical, folding a jacket that didn't need folding, buying myself a few extra seconds before I had to actually answer.

"Rough family," I said finally, which was true, carefully incomplete, the kind of true that didn't require explaining the rest. "Before this. Doesn't matter anymore."

"Okay." She didn't push, exactly the way she'd promised she wouldn't, and something in her voice told me she understood there was more underneath the sentence than I'd handed over. "For what it's worth — nobody here's going to move on you like that. Not on my watch, anyway."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me. Just answer honestly next time I ask." She bumped my shoulder, gentle this time, careful in a way that told me she'd registered exactly how close to the edge that question had actually pushed me. "Come on. King wants us loaded up before the weather turns."

---

The weather turned considerably faster than anyone predicted.

We were forty minutes into the return leg of the supply run when the sky opened up in earnest, rain coming down thick and sideways, the kind of storm that made visibility on an unlit mountain road something closer to guesswork than actual sight. King's voice crackled over the radio first, terse and certain.

"Pulling off. Can't run this in zero visibility."

By the time we found shelter — an old, half-collapsed hunting cabin a mile off the main road, more roof than walls but enough of both to keep the worst of the rain out — the rest of the convoy had scattered to their own emergency stops, radio contact spotty at best through the storm, and it became clear, fast, that we weren't getting back to the den tonight.

"One tent," King said, surveying our combined gear with the flat, resigned tone of a man doing math he didn't love the answer to. "Enough dry ground under this roof for one setup. You want to argue about it, argue with the weather."

"Not arguing."

"Good." He got to work anyway, hands quick and practiced, and I helped where I could, both of us soaked through and shivering and doing an increasingly poor job of pretending this was purely a logistics problem instead of something considerably more complicated.

By the time the tent was up, the rain had settled into a steady, relentless drum against the canvas, and I understood, with a small, sinking certainty, that I had exactly one very long night ahead of me, alone in a small space with a man I had spent weeks failing spectacularly not to feel something dangerous for — and no radio contact, no backup, and no way out until morning.

---

### Alaric

I told myself the tent situation was purely practical the whole time I was setting it up, and Rook let me get away with that lie for almost four full minutes before he got bored of it.

*[One tent,]* he said, entirely too pleased with the weather's timing. *[Funny how that worked out.]*

*I don't control the weather.*

*[Didn't say you did. Just said it's funny.]*

*Go away.*

*[Not going anywhere. Small tent. Not much room to go.]*

I ignored him, mostly because there wasn't a version of engaging that didn't end with me agreeing with whatever smug point he was building toward, and finished staking the last corner down against the wind while Finch wrung water out of her jacket a few feet away, shivering, jaw set in the particular stubborn line she got whenever she refused to admit she was cold.

*[She's freezing,]* Rook pointed out, unnecessary, since I'd already noticed. *[You could fix that.]*

*How.*

*[You know how. Body heat. Basic biology. Not even asking you to do anything untoward, just suggesting you stop standing over there being useless.]*

I didn't dignify that with a response, mostly because he wasn't wrong, and spent the next several minutes getting a small fire going just inside the cabin's broken doorway instead — a compromise, of sorts, between what Rook wanted and what I was willing to admit out loud I wanted too.

*[Coward,]* Rook said, almost fond.

*Strategic.*

*[Sure. Keep telling yourself that. We'll see how strategic you're feeling around midnight, trapped in a tent with her, storm outside, nowhere else either of you can go.]*

I didn't have a good answer for that. I built the fire instead, watched the rain hammer down outside in sheets thick enough to erase the road entirely, and understood, with the same sinking certainty I imagined she was feeling on her side of the small space between us, that whatever this night turned into, neither of us was walking out of that tent quite the same as we walked in.