Page 51 of Crow’s Shadow

We walk back toward the club, his hand in mine, and I’m almost happy when I feel it.

Something is watching us. I stop.

Crow turns immediately. “What?”

I stare past the tree line. “I don’t know.”

“Renner?”

“No. He’s gone.”

Crow moves closer. “Then what?”

I reach for it and wish I hadn’t. Whatever is out there is far away. Farther than anything I’ve touched before. But it felt us on that mountain and it knows where we are.

“Shadow?”

I look at Crow. “We woke something up.”

The clubhouse doors open as Loco comes out.

Crow nods toward him. “You want to tell Loco?”

I think about it then slowly shake my head. “Maybe tomorrow.”

His eyebrows go up. “Seriously?”

“In the last week we buried a nineteen-year-old, I got patched into a motorcycle club, talked to my dead mother and now something supernatural is watching us. It’s a lot and I’m taking the fucking night off.”

Crow stares at me, then he laughs, and I pull him toward the clubhouse.

Whatever is out there can wait until tomorrow.

EPILOGUE

EMBER

THREE WEEKS LATER

Three weeks after the mountain, a coffin comes to Grimstone with my dead name on it.

I’ve spent six years in this club learning how to take up no room. There’s a skill to being unseen, and I wore mine on purpose, which is the difference between me and Shadow.

She was overlooked.

I hid.

It’s the reason I’m still breathing.

The club has been putting itself back together since the mountain. Byte’s arm is out of the sling. Wolf’s charter rode home to Idaho lighter by one man and heavier by a debt none of us talk about. The women don’t hide what we are anymore, and the men are still figuring out what the hell to do with that.

It suits me more than I thought it would.

The open doors. The loud women. No more pretending we’re less than we are.

I didn’t think I’d ever get to want that.

For six years, I’ve braided hair, poured drinks and kept my real name buried where nobody could reach it.