Claimed by the Reapers MC

The blood didn't scare me. After six years in the ER, blood was just another fluid. The thing that scared me was silence. A quiet patient was a dying patient. The parking lot was too quiet. I'd clocked out at 2:17 a.m., still wearing navy scrubs, still smelling of antiseptic and a drunk driver's vomit. My Honda Civic was alone in the far corner where the floodlights never worked. Twenty feet from my car, I heard it. A wet sound. Then a low groan no human throat should make. I should have gotten in my car. Any reasonable person would have. But my feet stopped being my own. There were five of them. They stood in a semicircle around a man on the ground, his face a dark mess. The single working floodlight caught them in slices: leather shoulders, tattooed forearms, a motorcycle chain dangling from a belt. One of them lifted his boot and brought it down on the man's ribs. The crack traveled straight up my spine. I took a step forward. My trauma instincts had hijacked my body. Head wound in a parking lot meant dead in fifteen minutes. I knew this. My body didn't care whose boot caused it. My sneakers scuffed on the asphalt. Five heads turned. Let me tell you what that feels like. Like the air gets sucked out of the world. Like every hair on your body stands up at once. Like your heart forgets how to do its job. The closest one was enormous — six-foot-five, built like two refrigerators wrapped in black leather. His chain dripped something dark. Beside him, a young one with wild brown curls and an inappropriate grin. "Well, well. The hospital's sending room service now?" "Shut up, Wolf." This from a man with gold hair in a low ponytail, green eyes catching the light. Arms covered in ink from wrist to collar. Holding a knife. Smiling in a way that made my mouth go dry. The fourth knelt by the victim — wire-rimmed glasses, calm, clinical. He looked up at me and I felt assessed. Like I was an equation he hadn't finished solving. "Her scrubs say St. Mercy ER. Badge says Sinclair." I looked down. Avery Sinclair, RN. Blood spatter included. Then the fifth man stepped forward. I knew immediately he was in charge. Every other man shifted weight when he moved, like planets adjusting around a sun. Tall, dark hair cut precise, hard jaw. Eyes the color of a winter sky before snow. Silver. Absolutely terrifying. He stopped three feet from me. Close enough to smell leather and gasoline. Close enough I had to tilt my head back. I didn't. I looked at the man on the ground. "He's bleeding from the temporal artery. Ten minutes to hypovolemic shock. Whatever he did to you — he'll be dead before you finish punishing him." Silence. Wolf whistled low. The golden-haired one's smile widened. The one with glasses tilted his head like I'd said something interesting. The silver-eyed man looked at me the way you look at a stray dog — assessing whether it would bite, run, or roll over. "What's your name?" Quiet. Not soft. Quiet. "Avery." He already had my last name. "Avery." He tasted it. "You walked toward five armed men in a dark parking lot at two a.m. Why?" "Because you were killing him." "That's why you should have walked away." "I'm a nurse." It sounded stupid before it left my mouth. "I —" "You what? Thought you'd ask us politely?" He stepped closer. I could see the fine lines around his eyes now. "You don't know who we are. You don't know what he did. You don't know if we'd kill you for seeing us." "The groan was a seven on the pain scale. He's scared. He's not a fighter. He's just a man dying alone." My voice cracked. "I couldn't walk away." Silver Eyes stared at me. Then: "Ghost." The man with glasses stood. "Yeah, Prez." "Is he going to die?" "Five more minutes. She's right about the artery." Another pause. "Can you save him?" "Yes." "Then save him." I dropped to my knees. The man was forty-something, thinning hair, a polo shirt now more red than blue. Thready pulse. Temporal artery pumping but not spurting — partial tear. I could work with that. "My car. Blue Honda. Back seat. Trauma kit." No one moved. I looked up at Silver Eyes. "If you want him alive, I need my kit." He nodded at the giant. The giant walked toward my car, footsteps heavy enough I felt them through the asphalt. I pulled off my scrub top — tank underneath — and folded it into a pressure pad. The patient moaned. Good. Responsive to pain. "Who is he?" "Our former treasurer." The golden-haired one's voice was silk and razors. "Embezzled sixty grand. Thought he could skip town." "Sixty thousand. You're killing a man over sixty —" "Sixty thousand," Silver Eyes cut in, "and information he sold that got one of our brothers killed." I shut up. The giant returned with my kit, set it beside me like it was a bomb. Ghost knelt across from me. "Combat medic," he said. "Tell me what you need." "Hold the light." He aimed it perfectly. His hands were steady. Surgeon's hands. Or a sniper's. Six stitches. Clean, tight, even spacing. The golden-haired man hummed appreciation. "Nice hands, little nurse." "Her name," Silver Eyes said quietly, "is Avery." Something in his tone made the golden-haired man go very still. I finished, wrapped the wound, checked pupils — equal, reactive. "He needs a CT. Subdural hematoma risk. Could be dead in six hours." "He'll live long enough to answer questions," Ghost said. "If you get him to a hospital in two hours. Otherwise I just made his corpse neater." Ghost looked at Silver Eyes. Silver Eyes looked at me. My hands were bloody to the wrists. I hadn't called the police. I'd just... saved a man who, by all accounts, deserved what he got. What did that say about me? "Stand up." I stood. He took my right hand — the bloodier one — and turned it palm up. Calloused fingers. Warm. Light grip that I knew could become a vise. "You're very good. Ghost couldn't have closed that faster." "I've had practice." "Mm." His thumb rested on my racing pulse. He could feel it. "Here's the problem, Avery. You've seen our faces. You know we nearly killed a man. If we let you walk out, you're a liability." His thumb traced a line across my wrist. "I have to decide what to do with you." My mouth was dry. My brain screamed to be afraid, but some deeply stupid part of me was focused entirely on the heat of his hand. "Kael." The giant spoke. His voice vibrated in my chest. "She saved Marcus." "She did." Kael hadn't let go. "That complicates things." "Take her to the clubhouse," Jax said. "Keep her until we decide." "She's not a hostage." Ghost cleaned his glasses. "She's a witness who rendered medical aid. There's a difference." "She's a witness. That's the important part." "Enough." Kael's voice landed like a door slamming. Jax's jaw tightened but he said nothing. Kael turned back to me, still holding my hand. I hadn't pulled away. "Avery. Choice one: you go to the police. We'll be gone. But you'll spend your life looking over your shoulder — the Reapers don't forget." He let that sink in. "Choice two." His grip tightened slightly. "You come with us. Stay at the clubhouse a few days. Keep your mouth shut. In exchange — Marcus gets care, your sister Lily stays safe, and you walk out with my personal guarantee no one touches you." My blood went cold. "How do you know my sister's name?" "Your phone." Ghost held it up. "Lock screen is you and a teenage girl. Text from 'Lily: Pick me up at 4 from Sarah's? Mom forgot again.'" They had my phone. My keys. My sister's name. Probably my address. But I wasn't crying. I wasn't begging. Because choice two meant staying close. Close enough to learn things. Close enough to find a way out. Close enough to survive. And somewhere I'd never admit — close enough to the man with silver eyes still holding my hand. "Choice two." Kael's thumb pressed down on my pulse — once, deliberate — before releasing me. "Smart girl." He turned. "Wolf. Get her car three blocks away — make it look like she walked. Ghost, get Marcus to the basement. Tank — you're on her. She doesn't leave your sight." Tank nodded, eyes moving over me. Cataloguing. Measuring. "And me?" Jax spun his knife. "Nothing involving her. Understand?" Something hot flickered in Jax's green eyes — less warning than promise. Then he smiled and tucked the knife away. "Understood." Kael brushed a strand of hair off my forehead, almost tender. "Welcome to the Reapers, little nurse. Try not to make me regret keeping you alive." Wolf grinned. "She's already more interesting than half the guys we've patched in." "I said enough." The grin vanished. Tank moved beside me — a wall of leather and muscle. I followed him. As I passed Ghost, he smiled. "Your sutures are excellent. French knots?" I stared. "I'm a surgeon by training. It's rare to see someone keep even stitch count under pressure. You'd make a good field medic." "I'll put that on my résumé. Right under 'kidnapped by a motorcycle gang.'" "We prefer 'motorcycle club.'" At the lot's edge: five bikes. No car. No van. Nothing with doors that locked from inside. "Where's the — you don't have a car?" Tank almost smiled. He held out a helmet. Black. Matte. Tinted visor. I took it. Our fingers brushed — his rough, mine sticky with blood — and his entire body went rigid. Not hostile. Just... struck still. I pulled the helmet on. The world went dark and narrow. "Hold on." His third word of the night. I climbed on, wrapped my arms around his waist, and stopped breathing. Solid. Not gym-solid — built-solid. Years of absorbing impacts and giving them back twice as hard. My hands didn't meet around him. He revved the engine. The vibration traveled through my thighs, my spine, my skull. Around us, four other bikes roared to life. Kael pulled alongside, silver eyes finding me through the visor. His mouth curved — the expression of a man who'd just acquired something valuable. Then he nodded, and five bikes tore into the night. The last thing I saw was Jax blowing me a kiss, golden hair streaming like a banner. I was surrounded by criminals. I'd stitched up a man who'd gotten someone killed. I was being taken to a motorcycle club's headquarters. And a golden-haired psychopath with a knife collection had just blown me a kiss like we were on a date. My life was officially unrecognizable. I held tighter to Tank's waist and closed my eyes. The highway stretched ahead, black and endless. And I had no idea where it led.