CLAIMED BY THE RUTHLESS BIKER KING

Chapter 10 — The Grunt of Approval

Alaric

Cricket was running a betting pool in my own mess hall on how long it would take Wrench to smile at my newest prospect, and the fact that I found that mildly funny instead of grounds for immediate punishment told me exactly how much this one particular prospect had already rearranged something in my head.

"Odds are three weeks," Cricket said, not even bothering to lower his voice as I walked past with my coffee. "Preacher's got money on never. Bear's staying out of it on principle."

"Bear's staying out of it because Bear's smarter than both of you." I didn't stop walking.

*[Preacher's wrong,]* Rook said, unprompted, entirely too invested in club gossip for an animal that supposedly didn't care about anything but hunting and territory. *[Wrench already likes him. You can smell it on the old man from across the yard.]*

*Not interested in Wrench's opinion.*

*[Didn't say you were. Just making conversation.]*

*You don't make conversation. You growl and take things that aren't yours.*

*[I make conversation when it's about him. Learned it special.]*

I found the one person Rook apparently had learned manners for in the kitchen at an hour that shouldn't have surprised me anymore and somehow still did every single time.

Finch stood at the counter with a mug in both hands, hair still damp from a shower I knew for a fact he'd taken before five, staring at nothing in particular with the specific blankness of someone who hadn't slept properly. I knew that look. I'd been wearing a version of it myself for twelve years.

*[There he is.]* Rook, smug, entirely too pleased with himself, like he'd personally arranged the coincidence.

*Coincidence. Kitchen's on the way to my office.*

*[Sure it is.]*

"You're up early." I said it instead of anything Rook actually wanted said.

"Could say the same about you."

"I run this club. Early's mandatory." I reached for my own coffee, found the pot empty, and made the entirely reasonable, entirely unplanned decision to take his instead.

He didn't stop me. He just watched, unimpressed, as I drank half of it before I'd fully registered what I was doing.

"That's mine," he said, mild, like he was more curious than annoyed.

*[Funny word, that,]* Rook put in, insufferable. *[You used it about him yesterday too. Different context. Same word.]*

*Shut up.*

*[Just an observation.]*

"Was yours." I set the mug down between us, already regretting it and too stubborn to admit that out loud. "Ironclad Wolves. Everything's shared property."

"Funny. Nobody explained that rule to me during trials."

"I'm explaining it now."

*[You drank from his cup without thinking twice,]* Rook said, delighted with himself. *[That mean anything to you yet, or should I keep count until it does?]*

*Keep count somewhere I can't hear it.*

*[No fun in that.]*

I ignored him. It was becoming a habit.

"You want the rest?" Finch nodded at the mug, one eyebrow up, daring me to admit I'd taken it on purpose or claim it had been an accident. Either answer felt like losing.

"No." I pushed it back toward him anyway. "Make more. I've got a den full of prospects who think stealing coffee from their President is a personality trait, and I need to set an example."

"You literally just did the stealing."

"I said I need to set an example. Didn't say which one."

That got something out of him — not quite a laugh, something smaller and more surprised, like he hadn't expected to find me funny and resented the discovery a little.

*[There it is,]* Rook said, practically preening, which was a deeply undignified thing for a wolf to manage. *[That sound he just made. Do that again.]*

*It's not a trick I can repeat on command.*

*[Bet you could if you tried.]*

*Bet you could shut up for one whole minute if you tried.*

*[Wouldn't bet on that. Wouldn't win.]*

---

The thermostat war started the same morning, entirely by accident, when I turned the hallway unit down two degrees out of habit and found it turned back up an hour later without a word of explanation from anyone.

I turned it down again.

By evening it had gone up a second time, and I stood in that hallway for a full minute, coffee in hand, feeling genuinely, absurdly invested in a battle over two degrees of temperature with a prospect who'd been in this den less than a week.

*[This is what twelve years of restraint gets you,]* Rook informed me, entirely too delighted. *[A war over a thermostat.]*

*Shut up.*

*[Never going to. Not about this one.]*

I turned the dial back down, and didn't examine too closely why I was smiling doing it.

I found him in the garage that evening, elbow-deep in a carburetor, and didn't say anything about the thermostat at all. Just watched him work for longer than I meant to, the same way I had that first morning, until he glanced up and caught me at it.

"You're doing the staring thing again."

"I don't have a staring thing."

"You absolutely have a staring thing." He wiped his hands on a rag, unbothered, entirely too comfortable calling out the President of a motorcycle club for lurking in doorways. "It's very unsettling. Very intense. Very 'I might be planning your murder or I might just be constipated,' and I genuinely can't tell which."

*[Neither,]* Rook said, laughing in the low, rumbling way that meant something in my own chest laughed with him whether I wanted it to or not. *[Tell him neither.]*

"Neither," I said, and didn't mention I'd had help landing on the word.

"Sure you weren't."

"I was thinking about the thermostat."

"Sure you were."

*[He doesn't believe a word of that,]* Rook said, still laughing. *[Neither do I. Neither do you, if you're honest.]*

*I'm never honest with you before noon.*

*[It's evening.]*

*Then I'm never honest with you at all.*

"Sure," Finch said again, entirely unconvinced, entirely too pleased with himself about it, and I stood there a moment longer than I should have, watching him work, Rook quiet now, satisfied, settled — right up until the garage's outer door slammed open hard enough to rattle the tools on the wall, and Bear's voice cut through the whole building, tight with the specific urgency I'd only ever heard him use twice before in twelve years.

"King. You need to see this. Now."