The MC President's Forsaken Wife (Zara and Knox) novel Chapter 461

Chapter 226-2

+25 Points

The beauty of thermite is that it destroys everything it touches, but doesn’t release a chemical

cloud. It just eats itself, burns itself out.

“Yes! Direct hit!” Spoon cheers, turning back toward the ridge with a triumphant grin plastered

across his young face. “f**k you and your f*****g drugs!”

“Spoon! Get down!” I roar, throwing myself forward over the mud lip. “Down!”

From underneath the smoking frame of the lead outrider, a wounded MC member drags himself through the gravel, raising a heavy sidearm with both hands and tracking the silhouette of the young prospect standing open on the exposed ledge.

Two sharp sounds split the freezing air:

C***k. c***k.

Spoon’s body jerks violently. The grin instantly vanishes from his face, replaced by a look of sheer,

confused shock.

He staggers, his knees buckling beneath him, and falls backward off the ledge, sliding down the dirt embankment into the mud at the base of the rock wall.

“No!” Diesel screams, dropping his rifle and plunging down the steep slope, completely heedless of the incoming fire. “Spoon!”

I slide down the wet dirt right behind him, my boots digging into the mud, racking my rifle and putting three rounds straight through the wounded shooter’s helmet before he can adjust his aim.

“Diesel, get up to the western tree line!” I bellow. “They’ve got three shooters trying to flank Hammer’s blind side! Cobra, Mayhem, Rook, move up and support the high ground! I’ve got

Spoon!”

“Locke, I can help,” Diesel says, his hands already shaking violently as he reaches for his medical

kit. “I can -”

“There’s no time! They’re pushing the flank! Go!”

I shove Diesel hard back toward the dirt slope. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, his eyes wild with terror, before scrambling back up the embankment to join Cobra and Mayhem in the dark

tree line above.

The tactical chatter in my earpiece fades into a distant, buzzing hum. The firefight continues to rage up on the ridges, but down in the pit, the world shrinks down to the narrow strip of muddy

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Chapter 226-2

road between the rock wall and the burning transport.

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drop to my knees in the freezing mud beside Spoon, pulling his head and shoulders up onto my lap

His face is ghostly pale, his eyes wide and glossy, reflecting the towering orange flames leaping from the middle truck thirty feet away. Blood bubbles over his lips, spilling down his chin onto the

front of my jacket, dark and thick in the flickering light.

“Hold still, kid,” I say, my fingers tearing frantically at his tactical vest, trying to find where the rounds hit. The heavy fabric is soaked through with hot, slick red. “Hold still, I’m right here.”

“Locke…” Spoon gasps, his hand reaching out blindly, his fingers curling weakly into the collar of my heavy cut. His grip is fluttering, losing strength by the second. “Locke… did… did I get the truck?”

A brutal, crushing weight slams down on my chest. I stare down at this boy, this kid who sat in the clubhouse two nights ago, laughing with Bishop, drinking a beer, dreaming about the day he’d earn his full patch and buy his first custom chopper.

“You got it, Spoon,” I choke out, my voice rough and thick, holding his head tightly against my chest, feeling his hot blood soaking straight through my jeans. “You took the whole f*****g lab out, kid. You did it. You were incredible.”

A faint, fleeting smile touches the corner of his bloody lips. “Tell… tell the boys… I held the line…”

“You held the line,” I whisper, pressing my forehead against his wet hairline, my eyes burning with bitter, hot tears that mix with the soot and gunpowder on my skin. “You held the line, just like a

man. We’ve got you now.”

Spoon takes one long, shuddering breath. His chest rises, falls… and then goes completely still.

His hand slips from my collar, dropping limply into the dark mud beside him. His wide, dark eyes stare up into the night sky, empty and fixed, reflecting the distant, cold stars and the flickering

white heat of the thermite.

“Spoon,” I murmur softly. “Hey… Spoon…”

Nothing.

The silence hits me like a physical blow. The tactical training, the breacher discipline, the situational awareness that has kept me alive through years of combat… it all evaporates in an

instant:

I don’t reset my perimeter. I don’t check my six. I don’t look back up at the ridge to see if the flanking team cleared the threat.

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I just sit there in the mud, frozen in complete, paralyzing shock, holding the lifeless weight of a

nineteen-year-old boy in my arms.

Above us, Brick’s body rests silently on the crushed hood of the middle truck, his blood dripping down onto the cracked windshield. Down here, Spoon’s blood is cooling against my chest and

thighs.

Two of my men. Two of my family.

My mind goes entirely blank. The crackle of the burning rubber, the sharp popping of hydraulic lines, the distant shouts of my crew up on the heights: it all turns into white noise, pushed far beyond the edges of my consciousness.

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