Claimed by the Reapers MC

6.After Church

I sat on the worn leather couch and listened to the muffled thunder through the chapel door.

Church. Kael's voice came through in low, measured waves. Then Tank — a single word, heavy as a gavel. Ghost's calm murmur. Jax's sharp retort that cut through the wall like a blade. Wolf said nothing I could hear, but I imagined him pacing, unable to sit still.

Twenty minutes. Thirty. The shouting stopped. Silence was worse.

When the door finally opened, the men filed out in a line that looked choreographed. Wolf first, his grin absent for the first time since I'd met him. He walked straight to the kitchen and poured whiskey into a coffee mug. Ghost followed, glasses pushed up, mouth a flat line. Jax came last, and for once he didn't look at me at all. He went out the back door and the screen door didn't bang — he caught it, let it close soft.

Tank stayed in the chapel doorway. His arms were crossed over his chest. He looked at me for three seconds, then shifted his gaze to the front door. Guarding. Always guarding.

Kael's voice reached me from inside the chapel. "Avery."

I stood. My legs worked. That felt like an accomplishment.

The chapel was a narrow room with a long oak table, eight chairs, and a single bulb overhead. Maps on the walls. A cork board with photographs I didn't look at. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and testosterone.

Kael sat at the head of the table. His cut was draped over the back of his chair. In just his black t-shirt he looked younger and more dangerous — the muscle in his forearms, the fresh scratch on his jaw, the exhaustion he was too proud to show.

"Close the door."

I did. The latch clicked. We were alone.

"Sit."

I sat in the chair to his right. Jax's chair, I realized — there was a carving knife on the table in front of it, the tip embedded half an inch in the wood.

Kael didn't speak for a long moment. He studied me the way he'd studied me the first night — like I was a problem he was still deciding how to solve.

"The Serpents hit our eastern supply run this morning," he said. "Killed a prospect. Nineteen years old. His name was Danny."

I absorbed it. Nineteen. A kid. "I'm sorry."

"He was wearing our patch for three weeks." Kael's voice didn't waver. "He knew what he signed up for."

"That doesn't make him less dead."

Something flickered in his silver eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition. "No. It doesn't."

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. The single bulb threw shadows across his face. "This isn't going to stop. What happened today — that was a message. They're testing us. They'll hit again. Harder. Closer."

"And you're telling me this because?"

"Because I need to know if you're staying."

The question landed like a stone in still water. I felt the ripples spread through my chest.

"You said I didn't have a choice," I said. "Three rules. I stay. I obey. No one touches me without permission."

"That was before."

"Before what?"

"Before I touched you." He said it without shame. Without apology. "Before you stopped flinching every time someone walked into a room. Before you ate Wolf's pancakes like you belonged at that counter."

I didn't have an answer for that.

"The rules still stand," Kael said. "But I'm giving you something I don't give anyone. A real choice. There's a bus station in Ashford. Tank will drive you there tonight. No one will follow. No one will come looking. You go back to St. Catherine's, back to your twelve-hour shifts, back to your life before the parking lot."

"And if I stay?"

"Then you're in it. All of it. The blood and the business and the bodies. The Serpents won't care that you're a nurse. They'll see Reapers property and they'll treat you accordingly." He paused. "I'll protect you. But I can't promise protection is enough."

The room was very quiet. I could hear Wolf's whiskey glass clink against the counter in the kitchen. Tank's heavy breath by the door.

"Why?" I asked. "Why give me the choice now?"

Kael stood. Walked to the cork board and stared at a photograph I couldn't see. His back was a wall of tension.

"Because I've buried three brothers this year," he said. "Because the last woman who sat in that chair tried to burn this club to the ground. Because you deserve to know what you're walking into before you walk into it."

I thought about St. Catherine's. The fluorescent lights. The endless stream of gunshot wounds and overdoses and drunk drivers. Going home to an empty apartment. Calling Lily once a week and lying about how I was doing.

Then I thought about this morning. Bacon grease popping. Wolf's grin. Tank's silent presence. Ghost's steady hands. Jax's dangerous eyes. Kael's thumb on my pulse.

"I'm staying."

Kael turned. His face was unreadable. "You understand what that means."

"I've stitched up men who were shot in parking lots. I've watched people die on my table. I'm not afraid of blood."

"This isn't about blood." He crossed back to me, stopped close enough that I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes. "It's about belonging. You stay, you belong to the Reapers. To me. There's no halfway. No exit clause. You're in until I say you're out."

"And if I say I'm out?"

"You don't get to." His hand came up, fingertips brushing my jaw. "That's the point, Avery. I'm offering you the door. If you don't take it, it closes. Permanently."

I should have been terrified. Instead, I felt something settle in my chest — a lock clicking into place.

"Close it."

Kael's eyes darkened. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, feather-light, agonizingly slow. "You're sure."

"I've never been more sure of anything."

He stared at me for a count of five. Then he stepped back and opened the chapel door.

"She's staying."

The words carried through the common room. Wolf let out a whoop that was half relief. Ghost nodded once, like he'd already run the numbers and reached the same conclusion. Tank didn't move, but something in his shoulders loosened.

Jax appeared in the kitchen doorway. His bandaged hands were braced on the frame. "Well. Looks like we've got ourselves a permanent nurse."

"Looks like," Kael said.

Jax's green eyes met mine, and for the first time, there was no mockery in them. Just assessment. Reassessment.

I spent the evening on the back porch. The compound sat in a clearing surrounded by pines, and when the sun went down the forest turned black and alive with sound. Crickets. Wind. The distant howl of something that wasn't a dog.

Tank came out and sat on the step below mine. He didn't speak. He just existed there, a wall of muscle between me and the dark. After twenty minutes of silence, he reached into his boot and pulled out a knife.

It was small. A folding blade with a bone handle, worn smooth by years of use.

He set it on the step between us.

"Tank —"

"For you." His voice was gravel, rarely used. "Keep it on you."

I picked up the knife. It was heavier than it looked. "Why?"

He didn't answer. He just looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes, and I understood. The knife wasn't a gift. It was a promise. The same promise Kael had made, in Tank's language instead of words.

"Thank you."

He nodded once and turned back to the dark.

Later, when the compound had quieted and the men had retreated to their corners, I walked to the kitchen for water. The hallway was dark. I almost didn't see her.

Roxy.

She was leaning against the wall outside my room. Red hair loose around her shoulders. In the dim light she looked like something out of a ghost story — all sharp angles and hungry eyes.

"He gave you the talk," she said. "The choice. The door."

I stopped. "How do you know that?"

"Because he gave it to me, too. Three years ago." She pushed off the wall. "I stayed. Just like you."

She was close now, close enough that I could smell her perfume — jasmine and something metallic underneath. Blood? No. Just memory.

"Here's the thing about that door," Roxy said. "It only closes one way. You can't open it from the inside." She smiled, and there was nothing warm in it. "Enjoy the honeymoon, little nurse. It doesn't last."

She walked away before I could respond. Her footsteps faded down the hall. The back door opened and closed — soft, careful, the way Jax had done it earlier.

I stood in the dark hallway holding Tank's knife, my heart beating too fast, my mind spinning.

My room was cold when I finally went in. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to process Roxy's words. Was she warning me? Threatening me? Both?

A knock on the door frame. Kael.

He didn't come in. He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, silver eyes catching the moonlight through the window.

"Roxy talked to you."

"How did you —"

"Because she talks to everyone. It's what she does." He pushed off the frame. "Whatever she said, it's half truth and half poison. Figure out which is which."

"Did you give her the same choice?"

Kael's jaw tightened. "Yes."

"Did she regret staying?"

He was quiet for a long moment. "I don't know. She never told me. She told a Serpent instead." He stepped into the room, just far enough to reach my face. His knuckles brushed my cheek. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be long."

He left. His footsteps went down the hall, past the chapel, to his own room at the end. The door closed.

I lay back on the bed, still dressed, Tank's knife on the nightstand. The ceiling was cracked in three places. I counted them. One. Two. Three.

Outside, a low rumble broke the quiet.

Not Kael's bike. Not any of the Reapers' engines I'd learned to recognize. Deeper. Meaner. More than one.

I sat up. My hand found the knife.

Headlights swept across the window — two sets, cutting through the pine trees, heading straight for the compound gate.

The rumble grew louder.

(End of Chapter 6)