This wasn’t just about Clove anymore.
It was about all of us.
Kingston came up beside me.“You alright?”
“No,” I said honestly.
He nodded like he’d expected that answer.“You wanna ride again?”
“Yes.”
We didn’t say where.
We just moved.
Rode wherever the road took us.We were going to find Clove.
And whoever had Clove?
They were about to find out exactly who the Fallen Lords were.
Chapter Three
Clove
I woke up the way you wake up from a bad dream.Confused, filled with dread, and already exhausted.
For a second, my brain tried to convince me I was safe.That I’d fallen asleep on the couch after girls’ night and my head only hurt because I’d had too much to drink and laughed too hard, and the world was punishing me for it.
Then I shifted.
Rope scraped against my wrists.
Reality snapped into place so fast it stole my breath.
My eyes flew open, and the ceiling of the pop-up camper swam above me, low and sagging and stained in places like it had absorbed every mistake anyone had ever made inside it.My head pounded in a steady, merciless rhythm—throb, throb, throb—like a drumline right behind my eyes.
I swallowed, and nausea rolled up my throat.
My body wanted nothing more than to curl back into the fog and disappear.
My eyes stung as I blinked at the dim light.It looked like morning outside.Thin, pale sunlight leaked in through the edges of boarded windows.The air in the camper was colder than it had been when I’d first come to, and the smell was worse.
I lay still and listened.
Silence.
Birds chirped in the distance.It was tranquil.
Which was a cruel, insane contrast considering I was tied up on the floor of a trashed camper with a skull full of pain.
I held my breath and listened harder.
No footsteps.No voices.No engines.
Just birds and wind and a faint rustle of something—leaves, maybe—moving outside.
Maybe they’d gone to get more supplies.Maybe they’d gone to take a piss.Maybe they’d gone to eat their own breakfast like this was a normal day for them.