Page 22 of Shatter

They look at the girl on the couch and at Aesir standing back, and Vail's eyes flick to his, and he gives her one short nod.

Vail kneels down on the floor beside the couch, slow, at her level.

"Hi, honey." She keeps her hands in her lap. "My name's Vail. This is Gwen. We're going to take care of you, okay? Nobody else is going to touch you."

The girl's eyes move from Vail's face to Gwen's.

Her grip on my hair loosens.

"Hakon's not going anywhere." Vail's voice stays low and steady. "He can stay right here."

I kneel down beside Vail.

The girl finds my hand with hers, her fingers cold and slippery with blood, and grips it hard enough to grind my knuckles together.

She doesn't let go while Gwen unwraps my T-shirt and whistles low at the cut.

She doesn't let go when Vail presses along her ribs and the needle goes in, either, and she sucks in a breath and squeezes so hard my fingers go numb.

Every time the needle bites, my own forearm twitches, like it's going into me.

Her eyes stay on the ceiling while tears slide out of the corners and run back into her hair, and she doesn't make a sound.

Behind me, I hear boots cross the concrete.

They stop.

Rati is standing at the end of the couch.

He's looking at her.

At my cut, the leather dark and wet with her blood, the Raiders of Valhalla MC patch on the back pressed into the couch cushions under her spine.

He's looking at it the way a man looks at a ring on a woman's finger.

"That's your cut on her." His voice is flat and gravelly, and it carries through the dead-silent room.

I look up at him.

I stare at him, blank, her blood going tacky on my palms.

Rati watches my face for a long moment, and then his mouth twists, and he shakes his head slowly.

"Gods help you." He rubs a scarred hand down over his beard. "You don't even know what you just did."

I look down at her.

At the leather swallowing her, my rockers across her back, the prospect patch, the Raiders colors.

Ulf is staring at me from across the room with his hand over his mouth.

"A man puts his cut on a woman in front of his brothers, it's a claim, boy." Rati's voice doesn't rise. "Every man in this room saw you do it."

A claim.

Heat climbs the back of my neck and burns in the tips of my ears, like I'm nine again and a teacher's caught me in a lie.

Her fingers twitch in mine.