His Unwanted Peace Offering: Claiming Eleanor

Eleanor POV:

The wind tore at my jacket like a pack of wolves, and the convoy sharply banked into the switchbacks of Dead Man's Ridge. Below us, the sheer drop plunged into the pine-choked canyon, yawning open like a grave.

My arms ached from bracing against the machine's violent vibrations. My companion ahead of me, Diesel, was also a member of the Iron Bastards escort, constantly braking and accelerating; I thought he didn't know how to ride at all. If I had a gun right now, I would definitely shoot out his rear tire just to make him suffer.

Worse, I even wanted to take off my helmet and scream into the wind just to vent my anger. Damaris called this behavior "road rage." She said I rode like I was possessed, as if I had to get myself killed. Maybe.

My thoughts retreated into the romantic legend that every girl in our compound grew up hearing.

Jax and Clara had also gone over a cliff, just like us now.

Twenty years ago, when the cartel's truck hit Jax's rear bumper, his battered pickup smashed straight through the rusted guardrail. I could imagine that terrifying fall—as the cab crumpled, Jax kicked the door open, his Glock barking into the blinding headlights until the world spun sideways.

The truck exploded into a fireball twenty yards away, scorching the hemlocks. Jax dragged Clara from the burning wreckage, his left leg shredded, the femoral artery barely missed, bone splintering through denim. He didn't stop to set the bone. He tore his flannel shirt into strips, bound the bleeding wound, and hoisted Clara into his arms, limping into the pitch-black woods while the cartel's searchlights combed the ridge.

Three miles deep, they found a deserted logger's cabin. By midnight, the mountain air had plummeted below freezing. Clara was soaked, cyanotic, her lips turning the color of bruised plums as hypothermia seized her chest.

Jax's lighter sparked twice and died in the damp. He didn't waste breath cursing. He stripped off his soaked, blood-caked leather cut, discarded the remnants of his ruined shirt, and dragged Clara's cold, stiff body onto the moldy wooden cot.

He pinned her beneath him, using his bare skin, his feverish blood, to force life back into her failing pulse. His rough stubble scraped her temple as he growled into her hair: "Stay awake, Clara. You don't get to die on me."

He held her through the long, agonizing dark while the torn nerves in his shattered leg screamed in agony, his sweat dripping onto her cold cheeks. When dawn finally broke through the rotting timber, Clara's breathing was steady. Jax was gray as ash, half-dead from shock and blood loss, but his arms never loosened.

What a grand drama of redemption and faith. If it were me, I'd just put a bullet through Jax's head, because I have road rage.

The Harley lurched violently, throwing me forward, my helmet cracking against Diesel's back armor with a sharp sound, snapping me back to the brutal present.

We had cleared the ridge. Ahead, planted firmly on the gravel shoulder of the highway, stood the Iron Bastards MC boundary marker.

It was a terrifying totem—a massive iron skull welded from twisted exhaust pipes and rusted chains, its hollow eye sockets staring down the asphalt.

"End of the line, Queenie," Diesel shouted over his shoulder, his boots skidding across the gravel as he killed the engine.

Three heavy cruisers sat idling under the skull's shadow, their riders slouched over ape-hanger handlebars. The man in front wore a sleeveless denim vest with no top rocker—a Prospect, his face scarred with acne and arrogance.

He revved his throttle twice, an obnoxious, deafening crackle that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Look what the postman brought," the Prospect sneered, spitting a stream of brown tobacco juice onto the tire of Diesel's bike. "The Kidd family's prize heifer, delivered right on schedule."

Diesel's hand snapped to the Ka-Bar knife strapped to his thigh, his frame tensing like a coiled spring.

I slapped my palm hard against Diesel's shoulder armor, leaning forward. "Stand down, Diesel. We don't draw steel on their threshold."

I stepped off the rear pegs, my combat boots hitting the dirt with a solid thud. I stared straight at the Prospect through my tinted visor, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing my eyes.

"Tell Fulton I'm here," I said, my voice cutting through the idling engines like a blade. "And tell him to teach his dogs how to heel."