Page 94

The morning just… continues, generous and golden and entirely undeserved, and I clutch my greasy bags of food and let it be.

The garage sits at the foot of the lane, the main one in a town this size, and I hear it before I see it—the throaty, sudden roar of an engine catching, ragged and then smoothing into a low contented growl.

The scent of the place reaches me next, and it’s a whole symphony: motor oil and hot metal and old rubber, grease and gasoline and sun-warmed steel, an industrial perfume that has no business smelling as good as it does until I realize why.

It’s the closest thing in this gentle valley to him. To woodsmoke and warm iron. The garage smells like Riot turned inside out, and my body responds to it before my mind catches up, something low and warm uncurling at the recognition.

And there he is.

Crouched over a motorcycle that, judging by the awe of the older man hovering nearby, was a corpse an hour ago and is now very much alive, purring under Riot’s scarred hand like it’s grateful to him.

He listens to it the way Silas listens to a body, the way Doc listens to a problem—with total, absorbed attention—and then he nods once, satisfied, to no one but the machine.

“I’ll take it.”

The older gentleman, all grease-stained coveralls and a face like a walnut, whistles low and long.

“Son, the fact that you brought that fossil back to life in under an hour is flat-out unheard of. I had her written off for scrap.” He jabs a thumb at the rows of half-restored vehicles crowding the bays behind him. “You ought to come work alongside me. Help me bring the rest of these old beauties back. I’ve got vintage specs in here that haven’t turned over since before you were born.”

Riot smirks, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Tempting. I could. But then I’d have no time left for my Omega.” He says it easily, casually, like it’s the most settled fact in the universe. “And that wouldn’t do at all.”

Then he notices us, and his whole face changes.

It changes in a way I haven’t seen before—a real, unguarded smile breaking across that hard scarred mouth, crinkling thecorners of his pale eyes until they actually twinkle, and the sight of it does something embarrassing to my chest.

Because this isn’t the feral grin he bares at threats or the smug satisfaction he wears after sex. This is joy. Pure, boyish, uncomplicated joy, the kind that makes a grown man look eight years old for half a second, and I understand with sudden clarity that I’ve found one of his soft spots.

Engines. Machines.

The honest mechanical puzzle of bringing a dead thing back to running, no body count required. It’s the look of a kid who got to be a kid, briefly, in a life that didn’t allow much of it.

He crosses to us, leaning in to press a quick kiss to my hairline before he speaks.

“Sorry. Got distracted.” He glances back at the bike with something almost wistful. “That one’s a vintage antique. Same model my older brother used to ride—he loved that machine more than people, half the time. I saw it sitting in the corner like roadkill and I just… wanted to see if it could be saved. Turns out it could. Few fixes and she runs perfect.” He shrugs, but the wistfulness doesn’t quite leave his eyes. “I’ll have to test-drive her before I commit. But she’s a keeper.”

An older brother.

A new thread in the ruined tapestry of him, and I tuck it away gently, because the way he said it—the loved it more than people, half the time—carries a past-tense weight I recognize, the particular grammar of grief worn smooth.

I don’t prod it.

We all keep our dead in our own drawers, and I of all people know better than to pull one open uninvited.

But I look at him differently for a moment, this man the world built into a weapon.

I’ve catalogued his violence, his devotion, the trauma stacked behind those pale eyes like cordwood. I hadn’t catalogued this—the boy who must have watched an older brother ride off down some long road and wanted, more than anything, to be trusted with the machine.

The gentleness of the want unsettles me more than any of his savagery ever has. It’s easy to love a monster for his teeth. It’s the soft parts that are dangerous, the parts that make you forget to keep one eye on the door.

Here I am, in a garage that smells like him, forgetting to watch the door, charmed half to ruin by the sight of a killer made briefly, brilliantly young by a dead man’s motorcycle.

The mastermind in me logs a quiet warning.

The rest of me ignores it entirely.

“This is the owner,” Riot says, nodding at the walnut-faced man. “Runs the place.”