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CHAPTER ONE

PROLOGUE

KAIN BLACKWOOD – Age 23

Helmand Province, Afghanistan – November 19, 2013

Two hours until sunrise.

The weight of my gear pressed down on me, sweat sliding down my back beneath layers of Kevlar. My rifle felt heavier than usual, but adrenaline kept my grip steady. The air was thick with dust and tension, every breath tasting like grit and gunpowder. My unit moved in formation through the narrow alleyways of the village, boots crunching over debris. The night vision goggles painted the world in eerie shades of green, shadows flickering with every cautious step.

“Blackwood,” Jensen’s voice crackled through my comm, “we’re five hundred meters out. Stay sharp. Intel says it’s too quiet.”

Too quiet. That was never a good sign. I swept my gaze across rooftops and doorways, my gut twisting with that familiar sense of wrong. I’d learned to trust that feeling out here, it had saved my ass more times than I could count.

We rounded a corner. And that’s when it happened.

An earsplitting blast ripped through the night. My world flipped, heat, fire, debris hurling me through the air. My body slammed into the ground, pain detonating across every nerve. Ears ringing. Vision blurring. The taste of blood filled my mouth. Panic clawed at my chest, but muscle memory kicked in. Roll. Move. Survive.

“Blackwood! Blackwood, respond!” Jensen’s voice cut through the static in my earpiece, panicked and distant.

“I—” The word barely left my lips when I saw it: flames engulfing the building beside me, the twisted wreckage of what had been a safe route. Pain spiked down my left arm—burning, searing. I reached up, fingers brushing against my face.

Skin peeled beneath my touch. Fire. Blood. Flesh.

My stomach churned.

Jesus…

My vision swam as the heat scorched deeper.

“Get down! Incoming!” someone shouted.

Another explosion tore through the street. Shrapnel sliced through the air like hornets. I barely reacted in time, curling in on myself. The impact punched into me—like a sledgehammer to the side of my head—and then there was nothing but fire and noise. Screams echoed, some distant, some mine.

The world folded in on itself.

Darkness.

I woke to the relentless thump of helicopter rotors overhead, voices shouting over the chaos. My vision was a haze of flashing lights—red, white, swirling together like a bad dream. Hands pressed down on my wounds. Someone was yelling, “Stay with me, Marine!” but it was hard to focus. Everything spun.

Then a glint caught my eye, the reflection off a medic’s visor. And I saw it.

Me.

Or what was left.

Half my face was shredded, blood and charred skin melding together in a grotesque mess. My stomach flipped. What the hell happened to me? A sharp, searing pain exploded behind my eyes. One eye—my right—swirled with an unnatural shade, darker than it should have been. Panic clawed at me, but darkness dragged me under again.

When I came to, the world was white. Sterile. Too clean. I blinked against the harsh lights overhead, my body heavy with painkillers. Bandages covered most of me, tight, suffocating. Words filtered through the fog. Burns. Shrapnel. Permanent scars. I heard them, but they felt distant… like they were talking about someone else.

A small mirror rested on the tray beside me. It sat there like a challenge. My heart pounded.

Do it. Just look.

With trembling fingers, I reached for it. The glass felt cold against my palm. I lifted it— slowly —until my face came into view.

Blue and gold eyes stared back at me. Only… they hadn’t been like that before. The right one, darker now, rimmed with crimson, didn’t look like mine. Half my face was unrecognizable: scarred, twisted skin pulling across my cheek and jaw.

My throat tightened. Rage simmered under my skin.

What the fuck did they leave me with?

A soft voice broke the silence.

“Kain…” A nurse stood at the doorway, her eyes gentle, careful. “You survived. That’s what matters.”

Did it? The thought flickered, bitter and sharp.

I set the mirror down, gaze fixed on the ceiling tiles. Each breath felt heavier than the last. The man I had been… he didn’t make it out of that alley.

And what was left?

Hell if I knew.

A sliver of light crept across the floor, thin, golden, uninvited.

Dawn.

The world got its sunrise.

All I got was the wreckage.

***

ONE YEAR LATER

I used to think war would be the thing that broke me.

Turns out, it was peace.

Been out almost a year now. That’s what the VA calls it— out. Like I walked away clean.

But the truth is, part of me never made it back.

The quiet’s the worst part. You’d think I’d be grateful for it after everything. But silence has teeth. It chews on your memories, gnaws on your regrets. Leaves nothing but bones.

I don’t leave the house much. Not because I’m scared. Because I’m tired.

Tired of the stares.

The pity.

The whispered comments when people think I can’t hear them. I don’t need the world to remind me I’m not the same.

I already know.

I don’t look in mirrors anymore. The air’s gone heavy. These walls feel like they’re closing in, inch by inch. I sleep in my boots, tense at every slam like war just walked in through the back door. I keep hoping time’s got a cure—but I think it’s outta medicine.

That’s when the knock came.

Heavy. Certain. Not the kind of sound you ignore.

I opened the door and found two ghosts from a different life—Adly and Calder. Or as they’re known now—Devil and Chain.

Same cocky grins. Same steel in their eyes. They looked like life hadn’t laid a hand on them. Not really.

Adly’s leather cut caught the sunlight, the patch over his chest unmistakable. Calder just leaned against the porch rail, arms crossed, like we were seventeen again and he was waiting for me to sneak out through my bedroom window.

Adly raised a brow. “You done hiding yet?”

I didn’t answer. Just stepped back and let them in.

Inside, the silence stretched like it owned the place. Adly paced a little, taking in the dark room like it offended him. Calder dropped onto the edge of the couch and looked at me like he could see every crack, every fracture I thought I’d buried.

“We came to give you a kick in the ass,” Calder said. “You look like hell, brother.”

Adly nodded. “You need something to belong to again. Something that matters.”

“Brotherhood,” Calder added. “One that doesn’t care about scars.”

I stayed quiet, throat tight—because part of me wanted to scream that nothing mattered anymore.

That the damage ran too deep, too damn far.

But a smaller part—buried under the wreckage and ruin—wanted to believe they were right. Wanted to believe I wasn’t just wasting oxygen.

Adly clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You got a choice, Kain. You can keep dying slow in this tomb… or you can ride with us. Find something real again.”

I looked past them, toward the door. The sun was spilling across the pavement like it hadn’t forgotten me. Maybe it was time I stopped forgetting myself.

What the fuck did I have to lose?

I was already dead.

Or at least felt like it.

So I grabbed my jacket. Followed them outside. Pulled the cover off my motorcycle and straddled it for the first time in years.

The leather creaked beneath me. The engine coughed, then roared like it remembered me. Like it had been waiting.

The road to the clubhouse wasn’t new to me. I used to crash with Chain after my parents died. His old man was a club member. Back then, the place felt loud. Dangerous. Untouchable.

Now it looked like the only thing still breathing while the rest of the world slept.

I hesitated on the porch.

Chain glanced back. “Still thinkin’ you don’t belong?”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

Devil stepped closer. “You got two eyes that don’t match, and a face and body that tell a story no one wants to hear. You belong with us more than you ever did out there.”

Chain smirked. “We used to call you Mystic behind your back. Thought you could see shit the rest of us couldn’t. Now it fits damn perfect with those eyes.”

I didn’t smile, but something in my chest shifted. A breath I didn’t know I’d been holding finally let go.

Maybe it wasn’t about being normal.

Maybe it was about finding the place where being broken didn’t mean being alone.

I pushed the door open.

And I walked in—not whole, not healed, but willing.