POV: Silas

SCREEEECH—

CRASH!

The barefoot child in Silas Blackwood's headlights was wearing the blood of the mate he had never met.

He wrenched five hundred pounds of Harley onto its side.

Metal screamed across asphalt. Sparks exploded through the rain. Behind him, twenty motorcycles swerved and shrieked to a stop as their president and his bike spun past the little girl by less than a foot.

Silas was back on his feet before the Harley stopped moving.

A little girl stood in the middle of the mountain road.

One bare foot. One red shoe. A torn yellow dress soaked in blood that was not hers.

She did not cry when twenty leather-clad men surrounded her.

She did not even seem to see them.

Her lips moved around the same two broken words.

"Mommy bleeding."

Silas's wolf slammed against his bones.

The blood on the child belonged to the mate he had waited thirty-five years to find.

And somewhere below the road, a gunshot split the night.

Every Reaper turned toward the guardrail.

The child did not.

That frightened Silas more than the shot.

She remained beneath the white blaze of twenty headlamps, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, rainwater and blood running from her fingertips. A fresh scrape crossed one cheek. Mud reached her knees. Her small chest moved too quickly, but the rest of her seemed frozen somewhere far from the road.

Ronan came up beside him, already reaching beneath his cut. "That was close."

"No guns." Silas kept his voice low.

"Someone down there has one."

"And she has seen enough of them."

Ronan's hand dropped.

Silas forced his wolf back another inch. It fought him with a violence he had not felt since he was sixteen and newly shifted, all teeth and hunger and no room inside his own skin.

Mate.

The word was not a thought. It was a command hammered through his blood.

Find her.

Claim her.

Kill whatever made her bleed.

Silas locked his knees and did none of those things.

The little girl swayed.

He took one step, then stopped when her bare foot dragged backward across the asphalt.

"Easy," he said. "I'm not coming closer."

Her eyes passed over his face without settling.

"Mommy bleeding."

"I hear you."

He slowly lowered himself to one knee. The fall had torn the leather from his right palm and opened the denim over his hip, but the pain barely registered beneath the scent pouring from her dress.

Rain. Fear. Human blood.

And beneath all of it, something warm and impossible that his wolf knew better than his mind.

Her mother.

His mate.

"Where is Mommy?"

The child stared at him.

Silas pointed toward the guardrail. "Down there?"

Her chin moved once.

"Car," she whispered.

Ronan was already signaling the others. Five men killed their engines. The sudden quiet exposed the sounds below the road: rushing water, a car horn trapped in one continuous note, and the faint electronic pulse of emergency lights.

Not an ambulance.

A police unit.

Silas smelled gasoline.

"Maeve," he called.

His sister pushed through the line of bikers with her medical bag in one hand. She stopped several feet from the child, read the scene, and crouched without needing instruction.

"Hi, sweetheart. I'm Maeve. Can I look at your foot?"

No response.

"Mommy bleeding."

"I know." Maeve unzipped her bag. "My brother is going to help her."

The girl finally looked at Silas.

The trust in that terrified, empty stare landed heavier than the Harley had.

Another sound rose from below.

A man's shout.

"Sophie!"

The child came apart.

She stumbled toward Silas so quickly that he barely had time to open his arms. Her small body struck his chest. Fingers knotted in the front of his leather cut.

"No Daddy. No Daddy. No Daddy."

Silas lifted his gaze to Ronan.

His vice president's expression had gone flat and lethal.

"Now we know who fired," Ronan said.

Silas removed his cut without dislodging the child's hands. He wrapped the leather around her shoulders, covering the blood, then slid one arm beneath her knees.

"May I pick you up?"

She was already clinging to him, but he waited.

After a moment, her head moved against his chest.

Permission.

He lifted her.

She weighed almost nothing.

"Maeve, take her to the van. Keep the doors open. Don't let anyone in uniform near her."

"Silas—"

"I am bringing her mother back."

The child made a thin sound when Maeve reached for her.

Silas looked down. "She stays where you can see her."

"Mommy."

"I'm going to find her."

Her fingers tightened.

Promises were easy to make to frightened children. Silas had heard men make hundreds of them, usually just before they broke every one.

So he gave her something else.

"You can keep my cut until I return. No one in this club will leave while you're wearing it."

Her gaze dropped to the black leather around her shoulders. The silver Reaper stitched across the back meant nothing to her.

It meant everything to the men watching.