Claimed By The Inferno Riders

Chapter Eleven

The ten yards across the clearing felt longer than the blind curve on the ridge.

Nadia’s boots crunched heavy against the bed of dead pine needles and dry dirt. The adrenaline that had kept her spine rigid and her vision hyper-focused for the last hour was rapidly burning out, leaving behind a toxic, vibrating exhaustion. Her knees felt like water.

She stopped in front of Slate.

He didn't speak. He held the dented aluminum canteen suspended between them.

Nadia took it. She was careful, deliberately calculating the geometry of her grip so her fingers wouldn't brush his gloves. She unscrewed the cap and drank. She meant to take a controlled sip, but her body bypassed her brain. She swallowed too fast, the tepid, metallic water hitting the back of her throat in a rush. She choked, coughing violently, bending forward as water spilled down her chin and splashed onto the dusty toes of her boots.

It wasn't a stoic, cinematic moment. It was an ugly, desperate biological failure.

Slate didn't step forward to steady her. He stayed exactly where he was.

"Don't drown yourself," he said quietly. "Your stomach's empty. It'll come right back up."

Nadia squeezed her eyes shut, dragging oxygen through her teeth until the coughing fit subsided. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. In doing so, she dragged the dried blood from her torn ring finger across her jawline, leaving a faint, rust-colored smear on her pale skin.

Slate tracked the movement. His eyes locked on the laceration at her knuckle.

He reached into the back pocket of his heavy canvas work pants and pulled out a clean, folded red shop rag. He didn't offer it to her hand. He set it down on the black leather seat of his Road King, leaving it in neutral territory.

"Wrap it," he said. "Pine sap and dirt will infect it before we hit the state line."

Nadia stared at the rag. The practical, mechanical normalcy of the object felt jarring against the reality that they were currently hiding from a Russian hit squad in a forested ravine. She picked it up and wrapped it tightly around her finger, tucking the end under itself to secure it.

"I didn't know about the Bratva," Slate said.

The words were spoken into the space between them, lacking any defensive edge. It was just a heavy, flat admission.

Nadia didn't look up from her makeshift bandage. "What did you know?"

"That he was drowning," Slate answered, his voice dropping to a register meant only for her. "He came to the compound eighteen months ago. Looked like he hadn't slept in a month. He said he owed money to people who didn't take cash for late fees. He said he needed a vault they couldn't crack."

"And you let him use the club."

"I offered it," Slate corrected.

Nadia’s hands stopped moving. She looked up.

Slate held her gaze, the shadow of the forest canopy carving sharp angles across his face. He wasn't the quiet boy in her kitchen anymore, but the ghost of him was still there, buried under layers of scar tissue and club loyalty.

"River didn't want the heat," Slate continued. "He told Marcus no. I was the one who pushed it. I told River that if we didn't draft the paper, Marcus was going to end up in a ditch, and you were going to end up in a shipping container."

The air in the clearing felt suddenly thinner.

Before Nadia could process the weight of that confession, the crunch of heavy boots broke the isolation.

Priest walked over, his broad face lined with a fatigue that hadn't been there at the bar last night. He pulled two crushed, foil-wrapped protein bars from his leather cut. He tossed one. It hit Slate square in the chest, and Slate caught it on reflex. Priest handed the second one directly to Nadia.

"Eat," Priest ordered, his tone stripped of its usual warmth. "The adrenaline crash is going to hit you in about ten minutes. Your brain's going to tell you to lie down and close your eyes. We can't afford to have you pass out on the highway."

Nadia looked down at the crushed bar in her hand. "I'm not hungry."

"It's not a meal, it's fuel. Force it down," Priest said. He leaned his heavy frame against the side of Slate's bike, looking out across the clearing. Up on the rock face, Ghost was completely motionless, a silhouette blending into the granite, the barrel of his rifle pointed toward the access road.

Nadia looked at Priest, studying the open, exhausted lines of his face.

"Why are you here?" she asked, the exhaustion stripping away her filter. "With them. You don't fit."

Priest ripped the foil off his own bar with his teeth. He chewed, swallowed, and looked back at her. His smile was brief and entirely devoid of humor.

"We all fit, Nadia," Priest said softly. "That's the tragedy of it."

He pushed off the bike and walked away, heading toward Kayne, who was meticulously checking the air pressure on his front tire with a gauge.

Nadia stood in the dust. The deep woods were completely silent, oblivious to the violence idling in their center. She looked over at River. He had an old paper map spread across the wide gas tank of his bike, his finger tracing a faint blue line through the topography, searching for the ghost roads that wouldn't have cameras.

He was plotting the survival of his club, and she was the dead weight dragging them into the fire.

She unwrapped the protein bar, broke off a dry piece, and forced herself to swallow it. The six months were never about paying off a debt. They were about surviving long enough to outlive it.