Claimed by the Reapers MC

5.The Morning After

I woke to an empty bed and the smell of bacon.

Sunlight cut through the thin curtains. For a long moment I just lay there, letting my body remember where it was. The compound. Kael's territory. The couch downstairs where I'd fallen apart in his hands six hours ago.

My face heated. I pressed my palms to my cheeks and tried to convince myself it hadn't happened.

It had happened.

I could still feel the ghost of his mouth on my throat. The rough drag of his calloused fingers. The way he'd said my name like it was something he owned.

Kael was gone on business. The compound felt different without him — looser, louder. Wolf was already in the kitchen when I came down. He was shirtless, spatula in hand, bacon grease popping on the cast-iron skillet. He grinned when he saw me.

"Well, well. She lives."

"It's nine a.m., Wolf."

"Ten-thirty, actually. You sleep like the dead." He flipped a pancake with unnecessary flourish. "Tank already ate. Ghost is in medical doing — I don't know, Ghost things. Jax is somewhere being creepy. And you, princess, get the last of the bacon."

He slid a plate across the counter. Three strips of bacon, two pancakes, a fried egg. I stared at it.

"You cook."

"Road Captain means I ride point on runs. Doesn't mean I can't make breakfast." He leaned on the counter, green-brown eyes warm. "Eat. You're too skinny."

I ate. Wolf watched with undisguised satisfaction, like feeding me was a personal victory. He was the easiest of the five to be around — no threat, no weight, just a twenty-five-year-old man-child who happened to run guns for a living.

"Kael said to keep an eye on you," he said, cracking another egg. "Said not to let you out of sight."

"And you listened?"

"Always." The word was light, but something flickered behind it. Loyalty. Absolute, bone-deep loyalty to his president. "Besides, you're more interesting than whatever Ghost is dissecting in there."

I pushed bacon around my plate. "What kind of business is Kael doing?"

Wolf's grin didn't waver, but his eyes flattened. "Club business."

"Which means don't ask."

"Which means don't ask."

I let it go. Picked up my coffee instead. It was good coffee — dark roast, no sugar, exactly the way I drank it at the hospital. Someone had noticed.

The kitchen door swung open and Ghost walked in, wiping his hands on a surgical towel. Wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Blood under his fingernails.

"Morning, Avery."

The blood didn't seem to bother him. Nothing seemed to bother Ghost. He poured himself coffee with the same calm precision he probably used to stitch wounds or open them.

"Marcus is stable," he said, answering a question I hadn't asked. "Lung's healing. Another week and I can move him."

"Move him where?"

Ghost looked at me over his glasses. His eyes were pale blue, almost colorless. "Somewhere he can't do any more damage."

I didn't ask follow-up questions. Some doors you don't open twice.

"You're adapting well," Ghost said. "Better than most. Better than Roxy did, and she was born into this life."

"Roxy." I set down my fork. "What's her deal?"

Wolf snorted. Ghost didn't. He took a sip of coffee, considered his words.

"Roxy was Kael's old lady. Before." He said it like that explained everything.

"Before what?"

"Before she slept with a Serpent to get back at him for something he didn't do." Ghost's tone was clinical, dispassionate. "Kael didn't kill her. He didn't mark her. He just stopped looking at her. For a woman like Roxy, that was worse."

I absorbed this. It explained the hostility. It also explained the hunger in her eyes every time Kael entered a room.

"Does she still —"

"Yes." Ghost cut me off gently. "Which is why you should stay away from her."

The kitchen fell quiet. Wolf flipped a pancake too hard and it hit the ceiling. It stuck there for three seconds before peeling off and landing on the floor.

"Five-second rule," he said, and ate it anyway.

The back door banged open. Every muscle in my body tensed.

Jax.

He filled the doorway like a storm cloud — golden hair pulled back, green eyes sharp, leather cut dark with road dust. He'd been somewhere. Riding. Fighting. The knuckles on his right hand were split and bloody.

"Prez back yet?"

"Nope," Wolf said around a mouthful of floor pancake.

Jax's gaze swept the room and landed on me. Held. His mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"Little nurse. You look different this morning."

I kept my face neutral. "I slept well."

"Did you." He crossed to the sink, ran his bleeding knuckles under cold water. The muscles in his back shifted under his t-shirt. "Funny. Kael didn't sleep at all. I saw his light on at four."

My stomach tightened. Jax wasn't looking at me, but he didn't need to. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"What happened to your hands?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Disagreement." He shook the water off and turned. "Some guy in town thought the Reapers were a myth. He's reconsidering."

"And the other guy?"

Jax's smile widened. It didn't reach his eyes. "He's not reconsidering anything. He's unconscious."

Wolf whooped. Ghost sighed and grabbed his medical kit.

"Jax. Let me look at that."

"I'm fine."

"You have someone else's blood in open wounds on your knuckles. You're not fine." Ghost's voice never rose, but the steel in it was unmistakable. Jax submitted, sitting on a stool while Ghost cleaned and bandaged his hands. The enforcer didn't wince. Didn't even blink.

I watched the dynamic and understood something: Ghost was the only one Jax would let touch him.

"You missed breakfast," Wolf said. "Avery got your bacon."

"I'm not hungry." Jax's eyes found me again. "For food."

The temperature in the room dropped. Wolf stopped chewing. Even Ghost's hands paused for half a beat.

"Jax," Ghost said quietly. A warning.

"What?" Jax spread his bandaged hands. "I'm just saying the girl's got an appetite. Good for her. Prez likes a woman who knows what she wants."

He knew. Somehow, impossibly, he knew what had happened last night. Maybe he'd been awake at four a.m. too. Maybe he'd heard something through the thin walls. Maybe he could just smell it on me — the way predators smell fear, or blood, or s*x.

I stood up. "I'm going for a walk."

"No." Three voices in unison. Wolf, Ghost, and Jax. For the first time since I'd arrived, they were perfectly aligned.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Frustration leaked into my voice. "Sit here and wait for Kael like some kind of —"

"Old lady?" Jax supplied.

"I was going to say prisoner."

"Same thing." He stood, Ghost's bandages white against his tanned skin. "Until Kael says otherwise."

He walked out. The screen door banged shut behind him. Wolf let out a long breath.

"Well. That was awkward."

I spent the afternoon in the common room, pretending to read a motorcycle magazine from 2018. Tank appeared at some point, took up position in an armchair by the door, and said exactly nothing for four hours. His presence was a wall — solid, immovable, reassuring in a way I didn't want to examine.

At five o'clock, I heard the rumble.

A single motorcycle. Deep-throated, familiar. My heart rate doubled before my brain caught up.

Kael.

He came through the front door like he'd never left. Dust on his boots. A fresh scratch on his jaw. His silver eyes swept the room — Wolf in the kitchen, Tank by the door, Ghost emerging from medical — and landed on me.

Something in his face shifted. Not a smile. Something hungrier.

"You're still here."

"Where else would I be?"

He crossed the room in four strides. His hand closed around the back of my neck — the same gesture from last night — and he pulled me close. Not a kiss. A check-in. His thumb found my pulse, felt it racing, and his eyes darkened with satisfaction.

"Good girl."

He released me and turned to the room. "Church. Now. All of you."

The men moved without question. Wolf killed the stove. Tank unfolded from his chair. Ghost hung his apron. Jax materialized from somewhere — he always seemed to appear when Kael called.

Kael looked at me one last time before the chapel door closed.

"Stay close. We'll talk after."

The door shut. The lock clicked. I stood alone in the common room, my pulse still hammering where his thumb had been.

"He does that."

I spun. Roxy. Standing in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, red hair catching the last light through the window. I hadn't heard her come in.

"Makes you feel like you're the only woman in the world." Her smile was a blade with no handle. "Until you're not."