Chapter 3

What followed was a whirlwind.

Tess took over my hair, curling my usually straight brown strands into long, soft waves that felt strange and unfamiliar on my shoulders. Maeve followed with her makeup kit, dusting color over my lids and smudging kohl around my eyes until my reflection looked mysterious even to me.

By the time they were done, the room smelled faintly of hairspray, perfume, and the vodka we'd been chugging in turns.

My pulse thrummed in my ears as I stepped toward the full-length mirror.

The girl staring back was both me and a stranger, but in a way that made my pulse quicken. The crimson top was like a second skin, hugging the curve of my breasts while the black skirt sat scandalously high on my thighs.

I wasn’t used to seeing myself like this

Tess appeared behind my reflection, grinning like a proud pirate. "Look at that. Starling blood, through and through. Leo’s not going to know what hit him."

I took a deep, shaky breath. The image of Leo’s careless, beautiful smile flashed in my mind, but this time, it was followed by a new, intoxicating thought; that smile faltering. His confidence splintering as he truly saw me for the first time.

A spark of something reckless ignited in my chest. "Let’s go."

Stepping into the courtyard was like being swallowed by a living, breathing beast. The air vibrated with the thump of music and the roar of idle engines. Bonfires crackled in steel drums, casting wild, dancing shadows over a sea of leather cuts and flushed faces.

My eyes, against all my better judgment, began to scan the crowd.

They found Leo immediately.

He was leaning against a gleaming motorcycle, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers. He wore a dark Henley that stretched tight across his chest, the sleeves pushed up to reveal the dark ink tracing his forearms. And tucked against his side, was the blonde from the picture. She was laughing at something he’d said, her head thrown back.

My heart did a familiar, painful squeeze. Abort. Turn around. This was a monumentally stupid idea.

But Tess’s hand was firm on the small of my back. "I'm not letting you leave, Kasey. Not tonight."

She dragged me through the crush of bodies, the crowd parting instinctively for the so-called Serpents’ Princesses; our unofficial, and wildly exaggerated, title. We stopped at a makeshift bar fashioned from an old barrel and plywood. Tess pressed a red cup into my hand. "Liquid courage, sweetheart. Drink up."

I drank it down, the cheap vodka doing little to calm the frantic rhythm in my chest. But it burned a path through the anxiety, leaving a low, humming buzz in its wake.

I could still feel his presence like a shift in the atmosphere. I forced myself to stare into the bonfire, watching embers spiral into the dark sky because if I didn't, I'd go crazy just seeing them together.

A rich, deep sound cut through the noise and went straight to my core. It was Leo's laugh. My head turned before I could stop myself.

And he was looking right at me.

His gaze wasn’t casual. It was a direct, assessing hit. It locked onto my eyes for a heartbeat, then traveled down, a slow, deliberate journey over the crimson fabric stretched across my chest, down the length of my bare legs. The smirk he’d given the blonde faded, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated curiosity.

The blonde, sensing the shift in his attention, followed his stare. Her painted smile tightened into a brittle line.

Leo pushed himself off the motorcycle, disentangling himself from her with a murmured word. He took one step. Then another. The crowd seemed to part for him.

He stopped just a foot away, close enough for me to catch his scent—leather, smoke, and something dangerously sweet. His eyes, a blue color I’d spent a decade dreaming about, held mine completely captive.

"Kasey." My name was a low rumble in his throat, a sound I felt in the pit of my stomach.

For a breathtaking second, the roaring party fell silent. There was only the heat of the fire and the intensity of his gaze.

"I’m so glad you could make it," he said, and the slow, appreciative smirk that followed dragged heat across every inch of my skin.

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. My heart had taken up all the space where words should’ve been.

Then the crowd shifted. The chaos of the party dissolved the moment the engines cut through the night. The crowd hushed, and the air itself seemed to thicken with sudden dread and respect.

The Iron Serpents leaders were here.

Every head turned as the sound split through the night, deep, growling Harley engines rolling through the courtyard. The crowd instinctively parted, the way people do when power walks into the room.

At the front, walking with an authority that made even the cockiest guys lower their gazes, was Vince McIver, the President — Leo’s father.

But my eyes immediately went to the man walking beside him, his heir, Landon "Reaper" McIver, Leo's older brother.

Landon had a different kind of presence than Leo. Where Leo was a hotheaded, reckless and unpredictable, Landon was quiet and controlled. He was taller than Leo, broader too, his muscles filling out the leather vest effortlessly. His hands were shoved into his jeans pockets, giving him a false air of casualness like he hadn’t just spent the day breaking bones for the club.

He caught my gaze across the crowd, and for the briefest moment, his mouth curved; that quiet, knowing smile that had always undone me.

A different kind of heat, deeper and more unsettling, bloomed low in my stomach.

I swallowed hard and looked away, the crimson on my cheeks suddenly having nothing to do with Leo and everything to do with the man standing next to the President.

"Alright, prospects!" Vince’s voice boomed over the music. "You know what night it is!"

A cheer erupted from the crowd.

The Blood Oath ceremony.

I’d seen it a hundred times growing up, but it still made my skin prickle. This was how the club welcomed their new blood; with a ritual that blurred the line between tradition and brutality.

The prospects were lined up near the bonfire, young men with cuts that still had Prospect stitched across their backs instead of Brotherhood.

Vince motioned to the flames. "You earn your place here. Not with words. Not with promises. But with loyalty written in blood."

The crowd roared.

Beside me, Tess raised her cup in salute and Maeve whistled.

Leo’s gaze flickered from his father to me, settling for a fraction of a second longer than necessary before darting back to his father. I couldn’t tell what he saw. The same girl who used to chase him across the fields behind the clubhouse, or the one standing here now, pretending not to care that he’d once again chosen someone else.

Vince’s speech carried on about tradition, loyalty, family, all the things drilled into us since birth. But I wasn’t listening anymore. I was too aware of the weight of Leo’s stare, the way it lingered on me when he thought I wasn’t looking and the blush that was creeping on my cheeks.

I pretended to look away, searching for Landon in the sea of heads. I finally saw him leaning against a wall at the far end of the courtyard, deep in conversation with one of the Serpents. As if he could feel me watching, his head lifted and his eyes cut through the chaos until they found mine.

And then he winked.

It was so quick, so subtle, I might have imagined it. But the resulting flood of warmth through my veins was entirely real. I found myself smiling back, a reflex born from a lifetime of shared history.

It had always been that way with Landon. He was my brother’s best friend, but somehow, he’d always been mine too. He was there when I fell off my first bike and swore I’d never ride again. He was there when I locked myself in my room and cried over Leo’s first girlfriend, sitting outside the door until I stopped. He was there when the Club's kids made fun of me for getting stung by bees so bad I could barely open my eyes for a week.

And somehow, years later he was still...there.

The ceremony ended in a blur of shouting and applause. The prospects bled into the fire pit, their palms cut open and their blood sizzling against the flames, sealing their oath.

Vince raised his hand. "Welcome to the Brotherhood!"

The crowd erupted, cups lifted, engines revving.

The new brothers were swallowed by backslaps and cheers. The serious business was over; the chaos could now resume.

"Didn’t think I’d see you here, Trouble."

Trouble.

Only one person called me that.

I spun around and found Landon who was leaning against a black steel railing that separated the central courtyard from the parking lot, his own beer bottle held loosely. His eyes did a slow journey from my newly curled hair, over the crimson top, down to the hem of my short skirt.

A faint, almost imperceptible dimple appeared in his cheek. It was the barest hint of a smile, a ghost of approval on a face that was usually carved from stone. It shouldn’t have affected me.

But it did anyway.