He Caged Me for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The New Mark

The clubhouse lot smelled the way it had on my eighteenth birthday, hot chrome and cut grass.

I rode in on my own bike with Roxie behind me and Niall following on his.

Every Wolf in Ashgrove stood in the lot to watch me park.

The road captain walked out to meet me.

He took off his cap, and the rest of them did the same.

"Maeve Callister," he said. "We voted last night. Every hand."

"Roxie told me."

"The seat is yours."

"I heard."

"Your father's chair, and the name. The club is yours, if you'll have it."

A murmur ran through the lot.

I looked at the clubhouse.

The big oak stood out back where Cian had kissed me.

"No," I said.

The road captain's mustache twitched.

"Girl."

"No. Thank you."

"It's yours by right."

"It's mine by a vote of men who stood in a road and watched me for three weeks, and went home."

He took that.

He did not look away.

"We were told to," he said.

"By the man in the chair you want me to sit in."

"Yes."

"That's why I'm not sitting in it."

He nodded slowly.

"The club needs a name," he said.

"Then pick one. Pick it by the same hands that took the old one." I looked around the whole lot. "But it won't be mine, and it won't be a Callister's. A name isn't a thing you get handed because your father had one."

Nobody spoke.

Then the sergeant-at-arms grunted, and a few of the men began to laugh, low and awkward and relieved.

"She's Wolf's girl," someone said, softly.

"Not anymore," I said. "I'm my own."

I turned my bike around.

The tattoo shop was on Main Street, between a laundromat and a vape store.

Roxie's cousin ran it.

I lay face down on the table with my shirt off, and Niall sat on a stool by my head.

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