My arms stopped feeling like arms miles ago. Now they were dead weight—burning, shaking, barely attached to my body. Every step felt like my shoulders were tearing apart.
“Just a little farther,” I rasped. “Don’t give up on me.”
The girl didn’t answer.
She hadn’t made a sound since I pulled her from the ditch off Route 9. She was small—seven, maybe eight—with tangled blonde hair that smelled like rain and asphalt. Her body sagged against my chest, breathing shallow and uneven.
I glanced down at my shoes. Or what was left of them. The sole of my left sneaker flapped loose, slapping the pavement with every step.
Slap. Drag. Slap. Drag.
I’m seventeen, but that night I felt ancient.
Homelessness wears you down fast. Carrying another human when you haven’t eaten in two days? That destroys you.
A semi blasted past, the wind nearly knocking us over. I stumbled, skinning my knee on gravel, but I tightened my grip.
“Hey!” I screamed after the taillights. “Please—stop!”
Nothing.
Nobody stops for a kid in a filthy hoodie at eleven at night. To them, I was invisible. Trash on the roadside. They didn’t see the girl. They didn’t see the blood drying in her hair.
Hunger twisted my stomach so hard I had to lean against a guardrail, gasping. The cold burned my lungs.
Put her down, a voice whispered. You can’t save her.
I looked at her face as headlights washed over us. She looked peaceful—like she was asleep in her own bed, not bleeding in a stranger’s arms.
“No,” I whispered. “Not tonight.”
I lifted her again. My arms screamed. My spine felt like it might snap. But I walked.
I counted steps. One hundred. Two hundred.
I needed lights. People.
Then I saw it.
A warm orange glow.
Not headlights—neon.
I stumbled around the bend and froze.
Motorcycles filled the gravel lot like steel beasts. Music thumped through the walls of a low building. A buzzing sign flickered above the door:
THE IRON SPARK
A biker bar.
Fear locked my legs—until the girl went limp.
Her breathing hitched. Stopped. Then returned, weaker than before.
I had no choice.
I crossed the lot, kicked the door, and collapsed just as it swung open.
Light exploded. Music died. Silence crushed the room.
I looked up.
Boots. Leather. Chains.
A massive man loomed over me, beard down to his chest, eyes like ice.
“What the hell is this?” he thundered. “You bring your mess into my house, boy?”
I couldn’t speak. I just held the girl tighter.
Chapter 2: Into the Lion’s Den
The room smelled of beer, smoke, and leather. I knelt on the sticky floor, curled around the girl like a shield.
“She’s hurt,” I croaked. “Please. I didn’t know where else to go.”
The man—President patch stitched over his heart—knelt in front of me. He wasn’t looking at me.
He was looking at her.
When I pulled back the blanket, the light caught her bruised temple.
The man went completely still.
“Lily?”
The name broke out of him like a wound.
“This is my daughter,” he whispered.
Chaos erupted.
Lights snapped on. Someone called 911. The bikers weren’t predators anymore—they were a family in panic.
He took her from my arms with impossible gentleness, rocking her as tears soaked his beard.
“You carried her?” he asked me later, voice shaking. “Six miles?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “No one would stop.”
He stared at my ruined shoes.
“Six miles,” he repeated.
Then the world tilted—and went black.
Chapter 3: The Sanctuary That Wasn’t
I woke in a real bed. IV in my arm. Clean sheets.
The biker—Gunner—sat nearby.
“She’s going to be fine,” he said. “And you’re not going back to the street.”
I didn’t believe him. Not yet.
But he gave me a silver challenge coin.
“Protection,” he said. “Anywhere.”
The clubhouse became my shelter. The garage became my job.
Then I found the brake line on Lily’s bike.
Clean cut.
Not an accident.
The compound locked down.
That’s when Jax came to my door.
Knife in hand.
“I hate loose ends,” he said.
The door exploded inward—
And Gunner stepped from the shadows.
He had used me as bait.
Jax was arrested. Exposed. Finished.
And I was still standing.
Chapter 4: The Iron Vow
“You’re a prospect now,” Gunner said.
Six months later, I wore a mechanic’s jumpsuit with my name stitched on it.
Lily laughed beside me in the garage, her bike rebuilt, her smile bright.
I rode with them now.
Not because I was rescued.
But because I earned my place.
I touched the coin in my pocket as engines roared to life.
I wasn’t walking anymore.
I was riding.
THE END