Claimed By The Inferno Riders

Chapter Twelve

The sharp, deliberate crease of heavy paper was the only warning.

River folded the topographical map, sliding it into the interior pocket of his leather jacket in one fluid motion. He didn't issue a command. He didn't check to see if anyone was ready. He simply swung his leg over his saddle and kicked the side stand up.

Around the clearing, the response was immediate. Ghost dropped silently from the granite ledge. Kayne holstered his tire gauge. Slate crushed the empty foil wrapper of his protein bar into his fist and shoved it into a saddlebag.

The thirty minutes were up.

Nadia shoved the last dry bite of her ration down her throat. She pulled her gloves back on, wincing as the thick leather scraped against the makeshift shop-rag bandage on her ring finger. The pain was a sharp, localized throb, but it was useful. It grounded her.

She fired her engine. The collective roar of five heavy V-twins shattered the ancient quiet of the ravine, a violent reminder of exactly what they were.

They rolled out of the dirt bowl single file. The climb out of the ridge was brutal—a steep, washed-out logging trail cut entirely from jagged shale and exposed root systems. Nadia stood on her pegs, letting her knees act as the suspension the street bike lacked, fighting the heavy machine for every inch of traction. Her thighs burned, lactic acid flooding her muscles, but she kept her eyes locked on the narrow strip of dirt between Slate’s rear tire and the sheer drop-off.

An hour later, the dense pine canopy finally broke.

The dirt transitioned jarringly into broken asphalt, then smoothed out into a narrow, two-lane county road that hadn't seen fresh paint in a decade.

River immediately pushed the speed. The formation tightened up, moving not as five separate riders, but as a single, predatory organism. The wind hit Nadia’s chest, stripping away the stifling smell of cooked pine and replacing it with the heavy, humid scent of approaching rain.

They rode hard for another sixty miles, staying off the interstates, weaving through ghost towns and hollows that time and state funding had entirely abandoned.

By late afternoon, the fuel lights on the heavy cruisers started glowing red.

River signaled, cutting across a lane of oncoming emptiness into the cracked concrete lot of a dilapidated, single-pump gas station. The structure was half-swallowed by invasive kudzu, its faded awning advertising a brand of gasoline that hadn't existed since the nineties.

They killed the engines. The silence that rushed in was different from the woods—it was accompanied by the distant, hollow hum of a transformer and the mechanical ticking of cooling exhaust pipes.

"Cash only," River ordered, already dismounting. "Helmets off. Visors up. Don't give whoever is inside a reason to remember five masked riders."

Priest nodded, pulling a thick roll of bills from his cut, and headed for the reinforced glass door of the station. Kayne didn't fuel his bike. He walked to the edge of the lot, his back to the pumps, eyes scanning the empty stretch of county road they had just come down. Ghost vanished around the side of the building to check the rear perimeter.

Nadia unclasped her helmet and pulled it off. The sudden rush of humid air against her sweat-damp hair felt jarringly real.

She walked to the rusted pump and unhooked the nozzle. Before she could swipe her thumb to reset the dial, a large, calloused hand covered hers.

River.

He didn't squeeze, but the weight of his grip stopped her entirely. He took the nozzle from her hand, slotting it into the tank of her bike, and squeezed the trigger.

"You don't pump your own gas when we're exposed," River said, his eyes scanning the tree line across the road. "Your hands need to be free. If Kayne calls a threat, you don't waste three seconds dropping a hose. You mount up and hit the ignition."

Nadia stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest. The smell of high-octane fuel filled the heavy air.

"You didn't bring me here to be a mechanic," she said, her voice dropping below the hum of the pump.

"I brought you here to keep the bikes running," River replied, his tone perfectly flat. "But if you're dead, the bikes don't matter."

"Marcus bought me a shield," she pressed, the residual anger from the weigh station flaring back up. "He didn't ask me if I wanted to be carried."

The pump clicked off. River didn't immediately pull the nozzle out. He looked at her, his dark eyes stripping away the defensive architecture she was desperately trying to build.

"He didn't ask you because he knew you'd say no," River said. "He knew you'd try to stand your ground and fight an organization that executes families for sport. Your uncle didn't doubt your courage, Nadia. He doubted your math."

He pulled the nozzle loose, a single drop of gasoline hitting the hot chrome of the exhaust pipe with an angry hiss.

"You held the slide on the ridge," River continued, his voice shifting, losing the commanding edge of a Sergeant-at-Arms and settling into something uncomfortably human. "You didn't panic. You rode the machine to the absolute edge of its capability."

He set the nozzle back into the rusted cradle.

"Marcus taught you the sequence. He taught you how the engine breathes," River said, stepping close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his leather cut. "But he didn't teach you the road. Not this road."

Nadia held her ground, refusing to step back. "Then what are you teaching me?"

"How to survive the fact that you belong to us now," River said.

He didn't wait for her to absorb it. He turned and walked toward his own machine, leaving her standing next to a full tank of gas in a town that didn't exist on any modern map.

The sky above the kudzu choked awning finally broke, the first heavy drops of summer rain hitting the hot asphalt like bullets.