Page 120 of Priest

Heads turn. The room scans itself.

She isn’t there.

Ghost’s gaze meets mine across the space, and he doesn’t need to say it out loud. She knew. Or she was told. Either way, the empty space where she should be feels like an answer.

Across the room, Lena stands near one of the tables, her hand gripping the back of a chair as if she needs something solid to keep herself upright. The color has drained from her face, and for a second, she looks carved out of panic. Cage hurries to her side, wrapping an arm around her waist without hesitation.

“Mom?”

She shakes her head slowly, eyes unfocused, lips barely moving.

“This is a mistake,” she murmurs. “This can’t be happening.”

Something about the way she says it pulls at my gut, but the room is already moving too fast for me to name it.

Somewhere beyond the reach of our walls, Blue is out there, caught in a game that just turned into a war.

39

Lena

The room felt unsteady beneath her feet, though nothing around her had moved.

Voices overlapped. Boots struck hardwood. Someone barked an order near the bar, but the sound reached her strangely, dulled at the edges as if she were standing underwater. Lena kept one hand wrapped around the back of the chair because it was solid and familiar, and if she let go, she wasn’t sure her knees would remember their purpose.

This is a mistake.

This can’t be happening.

The words repeated inside her head, thin and useless against what she had just heard. Joker’s voice still seemed to vibrate in the air, that low, controlled menace filling the clubhouse long after the phone had gone dark. Blue was gone, and he had spoken about her like she was already property.

Cage pressed himself against her side, his arm wrapping around her waist with instinctive protectiveness that made her throat tighten. He still reached for her when the world tilted, trusting her to steady it, and that made the damage she’d done feel even uglier.

She smoothed a hand over his hair automatically, forcing her breathing to slow so he wouldn’t feel how hard her heart was pounding.

“I’m okay,” she managed, though her voice sounded borrowed.

Across the room, the men were already moving. The prospect from Dead Man’s Hand had been taken downstairs. Switch and Patch disappeared with him, and the clubhouse shifted into a kind of disciplined chaos Lena had grown used to over the years. Orders were given without shouting. Gates locked. Calls made. Old Ladies and kids were gathered inward, pulled closer to the center of the compound as if proximity alone could create safety.

She used to tell herself this was what she hated about club life. Everything could change in an instant. Violence was always close enough to breathe on the back of her neck. Men in cuts could turn from laughing over beer to planning bloodshed before a song finished playing.

Watching it now, she saw the other part too. Beneath the threat, beneath the violence she’d always resented, there was a structure built to respond when danger came through the door.

And she had tried to crack that structure apart one small piece at a time.

The alert from the gate cut through the room before she could follow that thought any deeper. A prospect hurried in from outside, speaking directly to Priest.

“Fallen Angels rollin’ up to the gate.”

The shift was immediate. Priest ordered that only the president be allowed through. The rest would wait outside the gates.

Lena’s fingers tightened around the chair as Archangel entered the clubhouse. She had only ever seen him from a distance, another president on another stretch of asphalt, all leather and silence. Up close, he didn’t look shaken by what he was about to say.

He looked prepared.

He wasted no time. “We’ve been watching Dead Man’s Hand for a while,” he said, addressing Priest but loud enough for the officers to hear. “They’ve got activity at an old factory on Echo Road. It’s wrong for that place. Traffic’s inconsistent. Guards rotating. We’re ninety percent sure your Old Lady is there.”

Echo Road.