Alpha Bikers

RILEY*FIVE YEARS LATER* I stared at the new masterpiece I had just finished working on, unable to take my eyes off it and continued grinning from ear to ear. It had taken me just an hour to lain the wolf claw marks onto the Harley engine, but each minute was worth it.Then a familiar memory hits me. This looked like the wolf claw marks that Knox had drawn on my Harley back in high-school when we had newly begun dating.Deja vu.I wavered off the thoughts, reminding myself that there was no need to think about it. It's been five years and I've started a new life. After that day, I ran away to start a new life in Seattle and when it seemed like everything came crashing down, I found out I was pregnant.I wanted nothing more but to be with knox at that moment, but the rejection still stung. He was hard to forget anyways—the mark hunted me day and night. But, it was because of my children I was able to pull through. They were the only ones that made life worth living after Knox betrayed

KNOXI was still standing there like a complete moron, dripping water all over Riley’s hallway floor, heart banging so loud I swear the neighbors could hear it, when the bedroom door at the end of the hall flew open like someone kicked it. Two tiny kids came running out full speed, socks sliding on the wood, almost face-planting but catching themselves at the last second.“Mommy there’s a huge man!” the boy—Hunter—yelled, eyes huge.The girl—Harley— got to me first, slamming straight into my legs and hugging my knee like it was a tree. “You smell like motorcycles and cookies and rain!” she said all in one breath, face squished against my wet jeans.Hunter skidded up right after and wrapped his arms around my other leg, sniffing super loud. “He smells like the big wolf from my dreams Mommy! Like a really really big wolf!”I swear my brain just stopped. Like someone hit pause. All I could do was look down at these two little humans who had my black hair and Riley’s freckles and my exact

KNOXThe penthouse smelled like fresh paint and nobody.I'd bought the building at two in the morning through Grayson's cousin's real estate contact, paid forty percent over asking price in cash, and moved exactly nothing into the top floor except a burner phone charger and myself. No furniture. No sheets. I sat on the bare floor with my back against the wall and stared at the ceiling and listened.Below me, they were already awake.I could hear feet — small, fast, two sets — hitting the wood like they were racing somewhere important. Hunter's voice first, all high and urgent: "The T-rex can't eat the stegosaurus because they didn't even live at the same time, Luna, that's not how dinosaurs work—" And then Luna, completely unbothered, narrating something over him in that calm, authoritative little voice she had. Something about the cereal. Something about how the red ones tasted different from the orange ones even though they were the same flavor and someone needed to investigate that

KNOXI'd had the helmets made three days in advance.Getting the lettering right was the hard part. Riley's style is specific — she learned calligraphy somewhere along the line, uses it for the custom job plaques in the shop, has a way of writing people's names like each letter belongs to them specifically. I had Grayson photograph six examples off the plaques and sent them to the guy in Portland who does custom paintwork for the pack's bikes. He sent me back three samples before I approved one. Worth it.Hunter stared at his helmet for exactly ten seconds when I handed it to him. Just stood there in the parking lot holding it with both hands, looking at his name on the side in that dark silver lettering, and then made a sound that I can only describe as the thing that happens to your ribcage when something hits it from the inside.I told Grayson about it later. He said, "That's the sound, man. That's the whole thing." He wasn't wrong.Luna put hers on immediately, backwards, then cor

KNOXGrayson called me from the arrivals hall to tell me he'd identified the twins from thirty feet away without having met them."The boy's got your forehead," he said. "And the girl did this thing with her chin when she saw me carrying the wolves. That's your chin, Knox. You make that face when someone brings you a problem you already solved."He was right on both counts.By the time I got down to Riley's apartment Grayson had been installed on the living room floor for approximately seven minutes and the twins had accepted him as a permanent fixture of their lives. Hunter was explaining the structural limitations of a block tower with the focused intensity of a small engineer, and Grayson — who had spent the last four years handling pack security negotiations and was not known for patience — was listening with what appeared to be genuine investment. Luna had positioned the two stuffed wolves Grayson brought in a formation she considered strategically sound and was now directing a c