Elie247
- Reads 2,995
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- Parts 68
Nearly a decade has passed since she last walked through those gates. In that time, life stripped her down and rebuilt her in quieter, more dangerous ways. The sweet club princess has been replaced by something harder to define: an unstable enigma, marked by scars she doesn't explain and ghosts that refuse to loosen their grip. Her pain is written on her body, not loudly, but permanently - a history the club can see even when she says nothing.
They don't know how to look at her anymore.
They don't know what she's become.
Zara returns carrying restraint instead of softness, sharp intelligence instead of innocence, and a tenderness she guards like a wound. She is coming home to her father - and to the past she never truly escaped.
Killian has not softened in her absence.
Known to the club as Bear, he has grown cold, precise, and brutally controlled. Nearly twenty-three, he stands at the centre of the Hell's Riders with quiet dominance and a reputation earned, not questioned. Where others found comfort, distraction, or replacements, Killian found discipline. He does not touch what is not his. He does not promise what he cannot keep.
Especially not when it comes to the girl he promised forever to as a boy.
Zara's return fractures the order he built with such care.
Because the girl he once swore to protect is gone - and the woman standing in her place awakens something far more dangerous than memory. As old wounds resurface and loyalty is tested, both must confront what it means to love when innocence is lost and devotion is anything but gentle.
Some people are remembered.
Others are waited for.
"I'd have earlier fed my own dick through a meat grinder before letting another woman see what only belongs to you, Flower."
Tropes:
Morally grey Male Lead
He falls first
Childhood friends
Found family
Mafia
Biker club
Nursing back to health
Scars
Tattoos
He falls first, and harder