Page 55 of Nomad: Violent Devotion

“South clear!”

I don’t move. My hands stay on Crimson’s shoulder, pressing, holding, willing him to stay alive. His breathing is shallow, rattling, and his eyes keep drifting shut.

“Stay with me,” Harlow snaps. She’s pulling an IV line from her bag, hands steady as stone. “Crimson. Look at me. Stay. With. Me.”

He opens his eyes. Finds me. His mouth moves, and I lean closer to hear him. “The knife,” he rasps. “Good girl.”

That’s it. That’s all he says before his eyes roll back and his body goes slack.

“Passed out,” Harlow clips when she sees the panic on my face.

She works faster. I hear her voice, clipped and clinical, calling out drugs and dosages to a terrified prospect who’s holding her bag. The IV goes in. Fluid drips. And Crimson, this massive, terrifying man who stepped between me and death without a second’s hesitation, lies on the floor of a destroyed clubhouse, his life held together by gauze and a medic who refuses to let him die.

I stand. My hands are red to the wrist. Walker’s shirt is ruined, soaked through with blood that isn’t mine. I look down at myself, and the sight of it makes something inside me shift. A tectonic plate sliding beneath the surface, rearranging the landscape of who I am.

The clubhouse is unrecognizable.

Bullet holes mar every wall. Glass covers every surface. The bar is splintered, bottles shattered, liquor pooling on the floor in amber streams that mix with blood. The jukebox is dead, shot through the casing, its last song silenced forever. Couches are overturned, riddled with holes, stuffing spilling like entrails. A brother I don’t know lies near the pool table, a prospect pressing a shirt against his leg while he curses through clenched teeth. Two more are being helped to their feet, one holding his arm at a wrong angle, the other bleeding from a graze across his temple.

Saint stands at the shattered window, shotgun resting on his shoulder, surveying the carnage outside. His jaw is carved from granite, and the gash above his eye drips blood down his cheek like a red tear. Savage is beside him, silent. His knuckles are white around his rifle, and the look on his face could strip paint from steel.

Walker finds me. He crosses the room in three strides and pulls me against his chest, his hands finding my face, my shoulders, my arms, checking, searching for wounds.

“I’m okay,” I say.

“You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s Crimson’s.”

Something shifts in his eyes. He looks past me to where Harlow is still working, her face tight with concentration, and then back to me. His thumb traces my cheek, leaving a clean streak through the grime.

“He saved my life,” I whisper, still disbelieving.

“I know.” Walker’s voice is rough. Broken at the edges. “I saw.”

“He stepped in front of me. He didn’t even hesitate.”

“That’s Crimson.” Saint’s voice carries from the window. He hasn’t turned around. “He may talk a lot of shit, but his actions always prove the kind of man he really is.”

The silence that follows is heavy, loaded with everything none of us can say. Then Savage turns from the window, and his expression is the kind of cold that burns. “Twelve dead outside,” he says. “Rest are in the wind.” He pauses. “Except one.”

My stomach drops. “Samuel,” I say. Not a question.

Savage nods once. “He’s alone. Standing in the road like he’s waiting for a fucking Uber or something.”

Every muscle in my body locks. Walker’s hand tightens on my arm. “Poppy...”

I pull away. Gently, but firmly. His fingers slide from my skin, and the loss of his touch feels like stepping out of a warm room into a blizzard.

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t ask me to stay inside.”

“I’m not asking you to stay inside. I’m asking you not to die.”

I turn and look at him. Really look. His grey-blue eyes are wild, desperate, the Nomad stripped away, and just Walker left beneath, raw and frightened and beautiful.

“I have to end this,” I say. “If I don’t, he’ll never stop. You know that.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”