Claimed by the Reapers MC

12.Snake

Dawn Church lasted forty minutes.

I sat in the common room with Wolf, neither of us speaking. He shuffled a deck of cards without looking at them, the rhythm automatic — shff, shff, tap. Ghost was in the medical room checking on Cole. Tank stood by the front door, arms crossed, watching the tree line.

When the chapel door opened, Kael came out first. His face gave nothing away. Jax followed, and unlike Kael, his face gave everything — sharp satisfaction, the kind a man wore when he'd been told he could hurt someone and wasn't being asked to wait.

"We hit them tonight," Kael said. "Jax has point. Tank, Ghost — you're with him. Wolf, you're on the gate. No one gets in." His silver eyes found me. "You're in the medical room. If anyone comes back bleeding, you keep them alive."

"Understood."

Jax stretched, slow and feline, the motion pulling his t-shirt tight across his chest. The ink on his arms shifted with the movement — snakes, skulls, roses with thorns that looked sharp enough to draw blood. "Don't look so worried, little nurse. I've been doing this since before you learned to start an IV."

"I'm not worried."

"No?" He tilted his head. "Then why are your hands shaking?"

I looked down. My hands were steady.

Jax's grin widened. "Made you look."

Wolf snorted. Ghost shook his head. Tank didn't react at all, which was Tank's version of telling Jax to shut up. Kael was already walking toward the garage, pulling on his gloves.

Jax lingered.

The others filtered out — Ghost to inventory supplies, Tank to the bikes, Wolf to the gate with a rifle and a thermos of coffee. I went to the kitchen.

I was pouring a cup of coffee when I felt him behind me. Not heard — Jax didn't make noise unless he wanted to. Felt. A shift in the air pressure. The prickle on the back of my neck that said predator.

"You're in my spot," he said.

I didn't turn around. "Didn't know the kitchen had assigned seating."

"It doesn't. But you're still in my spot."

I took my coffee and moved two steps to the left. When I turned, Jax was leaning against the counter exactly where I'd been standing, arms crossed, green eyes tracking me with the lazy intensity of a cat watching a bird it hadn't decided to kill yet.

"Better?" I asked.

"Much."

He didn't move. Didn't reach for coffee. Didn't do anything except exist in my space with the kind of deliberate proximity that was either a threat or an invitation, and with Jax Ryder, the line between the two had been drawn in invisible ink.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm appreciating. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"Staring is what Tank does. Silent. Respectful. Might as well be looking at a painting." He uncrossed his arms and took a step closer. "Appreciating is what I do. Loud. Close. Uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable for who?"

His grin flickered — not the sharp one he wore before a fight, but something smaller, more genuine. Surprise.

"You really don't flinch, do you."

"You're the second person to say that to me this week."

"Tank." It wasn't a question. "Heard you were in the shop with him last night. Three in the morning. Very cozy." Jax's voice dropped to something silkier, more dangerous. "First Kael's room. Then Tank's shop. You're collecting us like trading cards."

"Maybe I just like the company."

"Which company?" He was closer now — close enough that I could smell him. Leather and whiskey and something sharper underneath, like ozone before a storm. "Kael's the President. Tank's the muscle. Ghost is the brains. Wolf's the heart." He paused. "What am I?"

"The knife."

The word landed. Jax went very still.

"That what Kael calls me?"

"No. That's what I call you." I took a sip of coffee, forcing my hand to stay steady. "You're the one he sends when words don't work. The one who enjoys it. The one the other four need but don't want to admit they need."

Something moved behind his eyes — not anger, not offense. Recognition. Like I'd said something he'd known about himself for years and never heard anyone else say out loud.

"You know what my first job was?" He pulled a knife from his belt — not the bone-handled kind, this one was black, tactical, all business. He spun it once, twice, a blur of steel between his fingers. "Three months after I patched in. Some drug dealer from Portland was moving product on our territory. Kael told me to deliver a message."

"What kind of message?"

"The permanent kind." He stopped spinning the knife. The blade caught the kitchen light. "I was nineteen. Never killed anyone before. Thought I'd feel something. Guilt. Horror. Maybe throw up after." He looked at the knife, not at me. "Didn't feel any of that. Felt calm. Felt clean. Felt like I'd finally found the thing I was supposed to be doing." His eyes lifted. "That's when I knew I was broken. And that's when Kael knew I was useful."

"You're not broken."

"How do you know?"

"Broken people don't ask if they're broken."

Jax stared at me for a long moment. Then he laughed — not the sharp bark he used around the men, but something lower, darker, more real.

"Tank said that to you last night."

"He did."

"And you're using it on me."

"Is it working?"

He sheathed the knife. Took one more step closer. Now there was maybe six inches between us, and the kitchen felt very small.

"You know what I thought," he said quietly, "when I walked into that hallway last night and heard what was happening behind Kael's door?"

"Tell me."

"I thought: good for him. Then I thought: that should be me." His hand came up, not quite touching my face — his fingers hovered an inch from my jaw, close enough that I could feel the heat. "Then I thought: I'm going to make sure it is."

"That sounds like a threat."

"That sounds like a promise." He dropped his hand. Stepped back. The tension broke, but not completely — it just stretched, thinned, became something that would snap back the moment someone let go. "You've got four other men in this club, little nurse. I don't mind sharing. But I don't like being last in line."

He walked out of the kitchen before I could answer.

I stood there for a full minute, coffee going cold in my hands, trying to figure out what had just happened. Jax Ryder had cornered me, tested me, threatened me — and somewhere in the middle of it, he'd told me the most honest thing anyone in this club had ever said about himself.

"I knew I was broken. And that's when Kael knew I was useful."

The man wasn't a knife. He was a blade that had been forged too hot and quenched too fast, and now he'd hardened into something that cut everything it touched — including himself.

---

The rest of the day was preparation.

Ghost inventoried the medical supplies and gave me a crash course in the kind of trauma care that nursing school didn't teach: how to pack a gunshot wound with hemostatic gauze, how to decompress a tension pneumothorax with a fourteen-gauge needle, how to keep someone alive when the nearest hospital was twenty miles away and currently on fire.

"If it comes to the needle," he said, voice calm as always, "you'll know. The trachea deviates. The neck veins distend. The patient stops breathing for reasons you can't fix with a tube." He handed me a sealed kit. "Second intercostal space, midclavicular line. You'll hear the air escape. Don't hesitate."

"I won't."

"I know." He pushed his glasses up. "That's why Kael put you in the medical room instead of locking you in his."

Wolf spent the afternoon on the gate, a rifle across his knees and a pair of binoculars around his neck. I brought him a sandwich around two.

"Any movement?"

"Couple deer. One squirrel. Very suspicious squirrel." He took the sandwich. "You're a saint, princess."

"I'm a nurse. Feeding people is half the job."

"The other half?"

"Cleaning up after they bleed on my floors."

He laughed, mouth full. "Fair."

Tank was in the garage, checking every bike — oil, tires, cables, brakes. He didn't look up when I walked through, but his hand moved to a second mug of coffee sitting on the workbench and pushed it toward me. Still warm. He'd poured it ten minutes ago, knowing I'd come by.

I took it. "Thanks."

A grunt.

Jax was in the chapel, alone. I saw him through the half-open door — sitting in Kael's chair at the head of the table, boots on the wood, knife in his hand. He wasn't spinning it this time. Just holding it. Looking at the blade like it was a mirror.

He saw me watching.

Didn't speak. Didn't grin. Just met my eyes and held them for three long seconds. Then he went back to looking at his knife.

I walked away.

Kael found me at dusk.

I was in the medical room, laying out supplies on a steel tray — gauze, antiseptic, sutures, the chest decompression kit Ghost had given me. My hands moved through the motions automatically. I'd done this a thousand times. Just never for people I cared about.

"Ghost says you're ready."

"Ghost is optimistic."

"So am I." Kael stepped into the room. He'd changed into black — no cut, just a dark shirt and dark jeans and boots that had seen worse nights than this one. "Jax talked to you."

"Jax does a lot of things. Talking isn't usually one of them."

"What did he say?"

I looked up from the tray. "You want me to repeat a private conversation?"

"No." He paused. "I want to know if he crossed a line."

"He didn't." I set down the suture kit. "He told me why he's the way he is. First kill. Nineteen. Drug dealer. Said it felt clean."

Kael was quiet for a moment. "That was a test."

"I know."

"Not for you." His eyes held mine. "For me. He wanted to see if I'd react. If I'd get territorial. If I'd treat you like property instead of a person." The corner of his mouth tightened. "I didn't."

"Was that the right answer?"

"It was the only answer that wouldn't have started a war in my own club." He reached out and touched my face — the same gesture, the same thumb on the jawline, but gentler now. Softer. Like he was learning. "He's dangerous, Avery. Not because he's cruel. Because he's honest about his cruelty. Most men lie to themselves about what they are. Jax doesn't."

"Neither do you."

"I'm learning." He dropped his hand. "I'll be back before sunrise. If I'm not—"

"You will be."

The words came out harder than I meant them. Kael looked at me like I'd just done something unexpected.

"Alright," he said. "I will be."

Then he walked out, and the bikes started up, and five men rode into the dark.

I stood in the medical room with my steel tray and my sutures and Ghost's chest decompression kit, and I waited for them to come back bleeding.

(End of Chapter 12)