1. Ivy
The smell of the clubhouse is a permanent resident in my lungs. It’s a cocktail of stale beer, expensive leather, motor oil, and the underlying metallic tang of gun solvent. To my sister Rae, it’s the scent of freedom. To me, it’s the scent of a room I’m trying to find the exit for.
I sit at the heavy oak table in the “Big Kids” makeshift-classroom, the late morning sun slicing through the high windows.
“And… sent,” Caroline says, her voice bright with a triumph I don’t quite feel yet. She clicks the mouse with a flourish. “The University of Seaview Finance Department won’t know what hit them, Ivy.”
Caroline, Riot’s Old Lady, has been our teacher in this windowless world of chrome and testosterone. She’s homeschooled almost every club brat for over a decade. She’s the one who looked at my spreadsheets and my obsession with market trends and guided me towards a degree in finance.
“Thank you, Caroline. Really,” I say, leaning back in the mismatched plastic chair.
“You’re going to be the only person in this zip code who understands a diversified portfolio, honey,” she teases, patting my hand before gathering her lesson plans. “Your dad is going to be so proud. Even if he doesn’t understand half the words you’ll be using.”
I offer a tight smile. My dad, Stone, is the best man I know. He’s the President of the Broken Halos MC, a man who commands silence just by breathing, but who used to tuck me in with Romanian lullabies he learned just to please my mother, Alexandra. My parents are the gold standard—a rare, shimmering example of MC royalty done right.
But I don’t want the crown. I don’t even want the throne room.
I look around the playroom. It’s littered with remnants of a life I’m outgrowing. A stray math textbook, a discarded leather vest in a toddler size, and the faint sound of “Old MacDonald” drifting from the hallway.
I love my family. I love the salt-sprayed air of Seaview and the way the fog rolls over the redwoods like a heavy blanket. But I want a life that doesn’t require a property cut. I want a glass-walled office and a quiet apartment where the doorbell doesn’t mean a federal agent is serving a warrant.
I think of the summers I spent in Romania with my mother’s family. The Carpathian Mountains, the ancient stone streets of Timișoara, the sense of history that had nothing to do with patches and rivalries. Sometimes, I wish we’d stayed there. In Romania, I was just Ivy. Here, I’m the President’s daughter. A prize to be guarded or a target to be hit.
The door creaks open, and the human equivalent of a biological miracle waddles in.
“Hey, Ives,” Angel calls out, her voice bubbly despite the fact that she’s carrying what looks like a small planet under her shirt.
Angel is radiant. Truly. She’s been basically pregnant since the moment she became Ghost’s Old Lady. This is number six. Six. The daycare, which had gone dormant once Cyber’s kids, Ariana and Nicolas, moved up to the homeschool room, is now fully repopulated solely by the Ghost and Angel production line.
“Hey, Angel,” I say, watching her rub her bump with a look of pure, unadulterated bliss. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a literal house,” she laughs, leaning against the doorframe. “But he’s kicking. I think he’s going to be a kicker like his daddy.”
“Wonderful,” I say, trying to keep the “gross” out of my voice.
I like Angel. I really do. She’s kind and fierce and loyal. But her life is my literal nightmare. To be a vessel for the club, to spend decades in a cycle of morning sickness and clubhouse dinners? To each their own, but I’d rather calculate compound interest for the rest of eternity. She thrives here. She loves the chaos. Me? I’m counting the days until I can walk through the front gates and not feel the heavy weight of the “Halos” legacy on my shoulders.
“Ghost is looking for you, by the way,” Angel adds. “He’s in the garage with Bear. Something about your car’s alternator?”
My heart does a weird, traitorous little skip at the mention of the second name.
“Thanks. I’ll head down.”
I pack my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. I pass the common room, where my sister Ava is sitting on the lap of her husband, Blade. They look like a poster for the life—young, tatted, and completely entwined. Ava is twenty and already settled. Rae, at seventeen, is probably in the gym right now trying to out-lift a prospect to prove she deserves a patch.
I’m the glitch in the DNA.
I head down to the garage, the air turning colder and heavier with the scent of grease. The garage is the heart of the clubhouse—a cathedral of iron and rubber.
I see Ghost first. He’s leaned over a bike, his lean frame tensed as he wrenches something into place. And then, I see him.
Bear.
He’s standing by the tool bench, wiping his hands on a dark rag. The name is apt. He’s massive—at least 6′7″—with shoulders that seem to take up two zip codes. He’s bulky in the way a mountain is bulky, all solid, terrifying power. His hair is dark, his beard neatly groomed into a sharp line that emphasizes a jawline that could cut glass.
He’s thirty-eight. I’m nineteen. He’s a man who lives, breathes, and would likely die for the Broken Halos. He is everything I am trying to run away from.
He’s also, quite unfortunately, the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.
He looks up as I approach, those hazel eyes—the color of moss and autumn—settling on me. He doesn’t smile. Bear doesn’t really do smiles for anyone who isn’t wearing a patch.
“Ivy,” he grunts. His voice is a low rumble, a frequency I feel in the floorboards under my boots.
“Bear. Ghost,” I nod to them both.
“Alternator’s fine,” Ghost says, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Just a loose belt. Bear tightened it up for you.”
“Thanks, Bear,” I say, stepping closer.
The height difference is comical. At five-foot-nothing, I have to tilt my head back just to meet his gaze. Up close, he smells like sandalwood and expensive tobacco—not the cheap stuff the prospects smoke. He looks like a model who walked off a runway and decided to join a biker gang.
He looks down at me, his expression unreadable. To him, I’m probably still the little girl who used to color with crayons in the corner of the bar. I’m the President’s middle daughter. I’m off-limits by every law of the club and every law of common sense.
“Don’t take the curves on the coast road so hard,” Bear says, his voice like gravel. “Belts don’t like the heat you’re putting on ’em.”
“I like to go fast,” I counter, my voice steadier than I feel.
One corner of his mouth twitches—not a smile, but a ghost of one. “I know you do. Just make sure you can stop when you need to.”
He turns back to the workbench, his massive back a wall of denim and muscle. The muscles in his forearms flex as he moves a heavy wrench, the ink on his skin dancing with the movement.
I should walk away. I should go home, finish my finance prep, and dream about spreadsheets and city lights. I should find a nice, safe guy at college who doesn’t know what a hang-around is.
But as I watch him, a hot, sharp spark of defiance flares up in my gut. I’ve spent my whole life being the good daughter, the one who doesn’t cause trouble because she’s too busy planning her escape. I’m leaving this life.
But before I go? Before I turn into a suit-and-tie professional in a high-rise?
I want that. I want the mountain.
I know the rules. I know my father would probably skin him alive, and he’d likely lose his patch before he even touched me. He’s nineteen years older. He’s a zealot for the life I hate. We’d be a disaster waiting to happen.
I adjust my bag strap, staring at the broad expanse of his shoulders.
Fuck it. I’m leaving this world behind, but I’m not leaving without a souvenir. I don’t want a relationship. I don’t want a happy ever after in the clubhouse. But I want to know what it feels like to be crushed by all that power. Just once.
I’m getting under him. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but I’m going to make the big bear growl.
