Gideon frowned at the gun he was working on. His brow furrowed as he hunched over the weapon’s bench. His mind worked over what he knew and what he didn’t know about the situation he’d put himself into. He’d gone looking for a pack with certain conditions, and ended up in a motorcycle club.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. He still wanted to be here. He didn’t understand, rescuing doctors, tailing gang members. Those didn’t fit in with what little he knew about motorcycle clubs. He continued to work while his mind chewed it over.

The thing was, he wasn’t sure if Savannah would answer his questions or not. She was his sponsor into the club and was supposed to answer his questions. Most the time though, he didn’t get enough time to spit out the questions he had around her. She didn’t seem to encourage questions. The last time he’d had questions, she’d exploded at him due to assumptions on her part. It was beside the point at the moment, Savannah was out with Violet doing whatever she and Violet did.

Hunter closed up one of the guns and looked over at Gideon. He’d been frowning and looking thoughtful for over the past hour. She figured it had something to do with Savannah.

Hunter’s opinion hadn’t been asked, but it was her opinion that Gideon should have been put with someone a little older and of his own gender. Savannah wasn’t the easiest person to get along with most days, and having a prospect hanging around would most certainly up her stress level.

Hunter set the gun aside and turned to Gideon. “Spit it out before you choke on it,” she said.

Gideon jerked his head up. If there was anyone surlier in the club, he hadn’t met them. Hunter barely interacted with him except to give him short orders and put work in front of him. She’d never started any conversation before in his experience. He looked around, figured it wasn’t a personal question, and Hunter would probably know. “Why a motorcycle club?” he asked.

Hunter blinked once. It wasn’t about Savannah. Though it was a question that Savannah probably should be answering. Of course, like most of them raised in the club, Savannah didn’t think about the why anymore. Then his wording sank in, they weren’t a motorcycle club. The Heathens were a three patch outlaw club. “Don’t you mean, why an outlaw club?” she asked.

Gideon stared at her. “There’s a difference?” He felt his heart jump and energy seemed to sizzle along his nerves. He’d thought a motorcycle club was a motorcycle club. There were different kinds of motorcycle clubs? He wasn’t sure he liked the word outlaw.

Hunter leaned back. The boy didn’t know the difference. Shit. He was green. “Where are you from?”

“New York, the Finger Lakes Region. It’s mostly farming country.” Gideon fit the gun back together. “Nothing there for me, no money to go to an institute of higher learning, I joined the military straight out of high school.” Gideon went quiet as he realized he was talking about something a little too personal.

“Clubs don’t exactly recruit off the farm,” Hunter said in a droll tone. She grabbed another gun. If she was going to talk, she might work. “Maybe family clubs do, but that’s what they are, family clubs,” she said. “You find a family club and what’s going on the outside is exactly what you’ll find going on in the inside.” She broke the gun down and looked it over.

Gideon didn’t know what that meant. He’d thought he’d been getting solid ground underneath him. The pack was a big group of families that were bound together by the laws and the Code and happened to ride motorcycles. Hadn’t Savannah said Steele formed the club because he loved motorcycles? He tried to remember what she’d said, but it hadn’t seemed important at the time. He inwardly cursed. He was going to have to pay more attention when Savannah randomly dropped information on him and get her to explain better.

Hunter picked up the gun oil and cleaned the smaller pieces of the gun. It gave Gideon time to think, but it meant she wasn’t explaining anything.

Gideon eyed her and decided to prompt her. “Family clubs?”

“Are the same on the outside as they are on the inside,” Hunter repeated.

That wasn’t helpful. “And?” Gideon asked, feeling a bit exasperated. There was a language here, a code, and he didn’t know it. He was in a bog here and sinking fast. He’d thought going to Africa on a rescue mission had been the worst of it. He still didn’t know what that had been entirely about. Then yesterday, Savannah had him help her run off a gang, according to Frankie. There were undercurrents here and he needed answers.

Hunter looked up. Her brow furrowed. “They’re pretty open about what they are.”

“Which is what?” Gideon asked.

“People who like to ride motorcycles. Some are more structured than others. They do a little charity work.” Hunter shrugged. She didn’t have much to say about family clubs, because in her mind, there wasn’t much to say about them. “Nice, safe, and legal. They’ve got associations to promote it that way.”

Gideon struggled against panic. Isn’t that what the Heathen’s were? He’d overheard charity work in the meeting. The club had their interests everywhere. He didn’t know how Brand kept track of it all. He swallowed. “And outlaw clubs,” he said, “are the opposite?” He wasn’t sure he liked where this was heading.

Hunter figured Gideon was getting the idea. She scrubbed a spot on one of the gun pieces a little too hard than what was needed. She kept her eyes on him, not sure on how he was going to take the truth. “Outlaw clubs have their public image and their private image.” She paused. “And they don’t like their private image getting around.”

In Gideon’s experience, secrets in publically formed organizations meant trouble of one sort or the other. He fingered a piece of the gun he was supposed to be cleaning. Secrets were dangerous things and often weren’t on the sunny side of legality.

Hunter set the gun down and picked up the empty magazine. “Publicly, they are a group of men who love motorcycles, the freedom of the open road, and want a sense of brotherhood.” She kept her eyes on Gideon. “They say that your brother might be wrong, but he is still your brother.”

She picked up a bullet. “Privately, they are about four things, drugs,” she loaded one shell into the gun, “prostitution, money and turf,” she said each word punctuated by the click of the shell entering the magazine. “Turf and money equal power. They hold onto this power by violence. They deal drugs. Meth is popular. They use their women as prostitutes, and ‘take care of business’ by intimidation, fighting, and senseless killing. In outlaw clubs, you live, sleep and eat the Club, Prospect.” She finished loading the magazine. “My throat’s dry,” she said. “Why don’t you go get me a drink?

Gideon knew an order when he heard one. He set what he was working on down and stood up. He walked over to the door and stopped. “And we’re an outlaw club,” he said.

Hunter smiled at him. “We’re an outlaw club.” She confirmed. “Genuine one percenters.”

Gideon maintained his composure until he got outside the building. Then he gave into panic. A gang, the Heathens were a gang. Oh, one could dress it up in words like ‘outlaw’ and ‘club’ but the groups that he knew about who cared about turf and power the way Hunter had described it were gangs and mafias, which were gangs by another name.

He’d known to a small degree that motorcycle clubs had a reputation for violence. He hadn’t known why. His heart pounded. He’d joined a gang? He’d never had a traffic ticket. His breath came in little short bursts and he felt lightheaded. He raked his hand through his hair and then held the top of his head. “What in hell have I gotten into?” he breathed.

Hunter needed a drink. Gideon focused on that. Hell, he needed a drink. Maybe, maybe it wasn’t as bad as he feared.

But they’d chased off a gang yesterday. Frankie had said something about not needing that type of stuff in Jasper. Or did the Heathens want that whole drug market for themselves. Yet, if they did the drug market, wouldn’t they have talked about that in the meeting? They’d talked about everything else. Or were they keeping it quiet until he was too deep to back out? He pulled his hand out of his hair and shoved both hands deep into his pockets.

He walked rapidly over to the clubhouse’s side door and went inside. He had to find this out. He knew he hadn’t asked enough questions when he’d been flat on his back staring into the African sun with bullets whizzing like sideways rain over him. Now, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever known the right questions to ask.

He leaned against the bar and forced a smile for the prospect on duty. “Hunter’s throat is dry.” And he needed a drink. He didn’t know what Hunter liked to drink. This was a way of finding this out. The prospect reached under the bar and slid two bottles over to him, one was alcoholic, and the other wasn’t. Gideon wasn’t about to argue.

“Seems a bit odd for Hunter,” Brand said from down the bar.

Gideon decided to try for casual. He wasn’t sure if he was going to pull it off, his heart was beating too fast and his adrenaline shot up. He leaned against the bar and faced Brand. “She was telling me about how the Heathens are an outlaw club.”

Brand’s eyebrow rose. The puppy had gotten Hunter to talk, that took effort. Brand cracked a grin. That was actually a pretty funny story. “Back when my da was in charge of the club, after Colorado came in and claimed the areas around Jasper, Jasper was having a bit of trouble with a gang coming in and trying to do the usual, extortion, drug dealing, and so on.

“The chief of police couldn’t do a damn thing about it. The gang was too entrenched in the town where they were based for that chief to get them out. The chiefs talked to each other and called up my da and asked him to take care of the problem.” Brand stopped to take a swallow of his coffee. “Mutual enemies and all, a benevolent conspiracy for the greater good. To be fair, Da was getting pissed and about to do something anyways. He didn’t know what.”

Gideon bit his lip.

“Da rounded up his boys, went to the other town, and beat the living shit out of any gang member they found.”

Gideon winced. That sounded like assault to him.

“Da and the boys come back to Jasper and somehow the feds find out about it. They come sniffing about and the chief of the other town goes, ‘The alleged suspects aren’t in my jurisdiction. I can’t do shit.’ They come to Jasper and our chief goes, ‘That town ain’t in my jurisdiction. I won’t do shit.’” Brand paused to laugh. “Those two had gotten what they wanted. The few witnesses weren’t about to deal with the feds. The gang members weren’t talking, most of them couldn’t. The gang members were more worried about healing up and getting away from here before Da dragged them out to the badlands and left them there like he’d threatened to do.”

Brand stopped to take another swig of coffee. “Unable to find out anything or arrest anyone, the feds left with their tails between their legs and a report on how one alleged gang attacked another alleged gang.” He shrugged and then grinned. “Da and his buddies got off with their noses clean.” And that was how the Heathens had been labelled a gang by the country of Colorado.

Gideon wasn’t sure he appreciated the humor to the story. It was pretty clear to him that Brand found the whole situation funny.

Brand eyed him. “I guess you might have had to have been there,” he muttered. “Of course, since they’ve never been able to wiggle an undercover agent into our ranks.” He shrugged. “They’ve never changed their impression of alleged gang if they don’t know what the hell we do behind closed doors.”

Gideon picked up the bottles. “As you say, sir,” he said. That hadn’t helped him in the least bit.

Brand raised an eyebrow. That sounded like military double speak for ‘blow it out your ass.’ “You’re free to form your own opinion.”

Gideon blinked in surprise. Usually he got told that was the way it was and that he wasn’t to say otherwise with a few barked soldier, shut up and soldier in there. No one had ever appreciated him questioning the status quo. This was new ground for him. “I will, sir,” he said and nodded at Brand. He headed towards the door.

Brand turned to the prospect. “It is a funny story though.”

The prospect grinned. “It is.”

Gideon rolled his eyes and jerked chin upwards. Maybe to Brand it was a funny story and he was quite sure that the prospect on duty had been born to the Club. Gideon didn’t know how he felt tweaking the tails of the feds. Hell, a few months ago, he would have been considered one of them.

He returned to Hunter and let himself into the gun locker. He cracked both bottles open and set them on the table in front of her. He sat back down and picked up where he’d left off on the gun. He let Hunter take a swig or two before he spoke up.

“Jasper is a pretty quiet town for drug dealing, prostitution, and drive by shootings,” he said. Especially since when he’d gone looking, he hadn’t been able to find any such thing. It was one of the reasons he was still here. He’d had enough of that with his excursions into the City and Boston Megalopolis. He supposed Flossie could be dealing drugs out the back door of Gold Rush Cupcakes, but why would she?

Hunter huffed and repressed a laugh. What was going through Gideon’s mind? Okay, she’d been a bit cruel to the puppy, taking advantage of his ignorance. “The Heathens aren’t like that.” Hunter narrowed her eyes. He should know that from simple observation. They weren’t expressly hiding anything from him. “You ever try meth?”

Gideon shook his head. “No.”

Hunter snorted. “Because you’re a good boy.”

Gideon flushed. He shrugged a shoulder at her, conceding the point.

“Your mama raised you right, Gideon. No shame in it.” Hunter looked down the gun. “You had an appointment with Hope. I’m sure she gave you the spiel. It’s one of her favorites. Meth’s an upper. One dose of meth could kill you where you stand.” She paused. “You were a pack a day smoker before you quit,” she observed.

“Half-pack,” Gideon muttered.

Hunter raised an eyebrow. “With the way you fuss with those suckers?”

“Half-pack,” he insisted. He’d spent half the time with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He’d been more addicted to the feel of the cigarette than the nicotine.

Hunter snorted. She took a swig of the beer. She looked at him and picked up the soda bottle and passed it to him. Gideon took it from her with a nod. She tilted her head and said, “You saw that it didn’t do much for you. Alcohol probably barely makes a dent. And if I’m going to have mushrooms, they’re going to be in a big pile over my steak.”

Gideon grinned. He couldn’t disagree.

“We don’t exactly have a use for drugs,” Hunter said. “Which leaves prostitution. And that’s against both the bylaws and the Code. Money, which isn’t that hard to come by if you know where to look, and turf.” She looked over at him.

“Territory,” Gideon muttered. It was beginning to make sense.

Hunter sighed. “This pack has always had motorcycles attached to it, since before Steele’s time. Steele used to say it went all the way to an idiot ancestor of his rode one way back in World War One and discovered how thrilling it was. The Cascading War changed a lot and the status of the pack, since Steele was enthralled with the things, had to change with it. The one thing an outlaw club and a pack needs is territory, and in Steele’s opinion, this was the most open and most assured way to establish it. Form a club. Let the violent reputation of the outlaw clubs do the rest, back it up when needed. The town was grateful enough.”

“Savannah said they were rough and wild times,” Gideon said. And Brand had told him about a time when his da had ‘backed it up,’ Gideon guessed.

“She told you about Steele.” Hunter raised her eyebrow and lowered her jaw as much as she could without opening her lips. She nodded. Savannah hadn’t been keeping Gideon completely ignorant. Of course, Savannah was proud to be descended from Steele. She’d talk about him if Gideon gave her a ghost of an opportunity.

“A little bit,” Gideon said.

“He and Randy came up with the Bylaws and the Code. The Code makes us different than other Clubs, makes us better. If you ever decide to talk to Brand or Savannah about the other clubs, you’ll find they don’t have a high opinion of them,” Hunter said and left unsaid that the other clubs, though they didn’t know the difference between them and the Heathens, didn’t have a high opinion of the Heathens either.

“We aren’t really an outlaw club by definition,” Gideon said, his chest relaxing a little bit.

“No.” Hunter paused. “Not that it makes much difference to other clubs and gangs because they don’t know that.” Or the government outside of Jasper, but Gideon looked like he was about to have a heart attack already. She decided he didn’t need to know that yet. She’d let someone else higher in the chain of command explain that wrinkle to him.

Gideon felt his chest tighten again. That wasn’t helping! He swallowed. “Why not?” He fiddled with the gun and realized he was done with it. He fitted it back together keeping his eyes on the parts. He didn’t want to meet Hunter’s eyes. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.

Hunter watched him carefully. “It’s necessary. We don’t want their kind getting a toehold around our families and mucking up our towns and our wilderness. And the towns, if they are smart, are grateful, because we protect them as much as we protect ourselves.”

Gideon remembered that Frankie and Savannah had said the same thing. If more than one person said it, did it make it true? Or were they all delusional? Or packing the same story of lies?

“It’s more than other outlaw clubs that we have to worry about. We do use violence to keep other clubs from coming into our territory en masse. We need that reputation. It keeps the others out. We’re big enough now we can enforce our territory, our rules. We’ve got six formal charters in Colorado, five towns and the nomad charter.”

“Like gangs,” Gideon said. Frankie had called the people he and Savannah had tailed a gang.

“And the Native American mafia.”

Gideon’s jaw dropped open. “What?” This was the first he’d heard about this!

Hunter nodded. “Native American mafia. The chief of it resides in Deadwood.” There were other mafias and crime families that the other charters had to deal with, but in Jasper it was the Native American mafia trying to bang down the doors.

“That’s crazy,” he sputtered.

Hunter sounded calm. She shrugged. “Gambling, weapons running, drugs, though not as much as the Rabble.”

“I thought they were the Rebels,” Gideon said, his voice faint.

Hunter smirked. “We like to call them the Rabble.”

Things were beginning to come together in Gideon’s head. “It’s like a war.” He felt faint. It was one thing to be in a war when he was in the military. Those wars had rules and there were laws to protect him because he was doing his job. He didn’t know anything about this war. Gang wars ended up with people dead or in jail. He didn’t like either of those two outcomes.

“Not a hot one. We try to keep it quiet and out of Jasper,” she said. Her throat was getting sore. She reached for the beer and took another swig. She normally didn’t talk this much.

That wasn’t as reassuring as Hunter probably hoped it was. The bylaws, the Code, both said he couldn’t talk about Club business. And part of Club business was ‘taking care of business.’ This whole war against gangs.

But the bylaws didn’t allow murders into the club and murder was against the Code. How did this all fit in with this gang war? And last week, in Africa, they’d shot a lot of people and caused a lot of damage on that rescue mission. How did that work?

Gideon leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “The rules in the Code, they’re a little like chivalry out of those ancient books about knighthood.”

Hunter snorted. “Steele liked to say he was descended from Marrok.”

“Marrok?” Gideon asked. He’d never heard of Marrok.

“Marrok, he was a Knight of the Round Table, he merited one line in one of those old stories. His wife had cursed him to be a werewolf.” Hunter rolled her eyes. “Totally improvable of course, but Steele was enamored with it. There are stories about werewolves helping knight errants or being knight errants themselves. Steele told it to Randy and Randy latched onto it as a way to help us survive.”

“Survive?”

“The Club protects us. The Code helps us survive,” Hunter said it like it was a mantra.

Gideon looked completely confused.

“You’re supposed to be memorizing the Code,” Hunter reminded him. “Those rules, mostly the rules of Challenge keep the senseless fighting between family members and different families down and alive longer. The longer we live, the more children we can have, and the more the children can learn from the older generation,” she said. She didn’t know that Brand had already told him something similar.

Gideon’s brow furrowed again and he nodded to show he was listening. Brand had said the same.

Hunter sighed and set her gun on the table. “Look, the Code keeps us within the boundaries of supposed civilized human behavior and still lets us be werewolves. The Club is the same way. We can have our parties, have our land and our hunts and do things in the community, but if something strange happens, something that the humans can’t quite explain. They look at us, and go, ‘oh, it’s an MC thing.’”

Gideon grinned. “The Club is camouflage.”

“Right.”

Gideon rubbed his chin. “But the brotherhood thing still applies.”

Hunter narrowed her eyes at him. “You really didn’t want to leave the service.”

“No.” Gideon stared at the gun and chewed his tongue a minute. “They forced me out because of my leg.” It’s why he didn’t mind helping Hunter out. It reminded him of being back there with the smell of metal and gun oil and the familiar routine of gun dismantling, repair, and putting it all back together. It was soothing. It was something useful. He could see the result at the end of the day.

Hunter shook her head. “Seems like an awful risk to get of town, joining the military,” she said. “Most parents wouldn’t let their pups do that. Too afraid of the government finding out what we are.”

Gideon half-smiled. “I signed up with the recruiter and then told my father.” He shook his head. “He wasn’t pleased. I was eighteen and there was nothing he could do about it.” He shrugged. “Get out or kill him.”

Hunter stared at him and nodded. “Some packs are like that,” she said and picked up another gun.

“But not this one?” Gideon asked.

“Why do you think we have fourteen charters?” Hunter asked dryly. She took a swig of her beer and concentrated on the gun in front of her. She was out of words.

Gideon turned back to the gun. He reached for another one and started working on it. Now that he had answers, he wasn’t sure he liked any of them. His gut twisted. His thoughts felt greasy, something he’d always associated with panic. He didn’t think Hunter was lying to him. But the fact of the matter was she’d almost outright stated that they were a gang. He felt the urge to run.

The problem was, he didn’t have anywhere to run to.

---

Savannah and Violet walked slowly down a winding sidewalk among the trees. In between the trees and patches of flowers were granite stone, large, and small, Jasper cemetery.

It didn’t rest inside of town proper, but had a highly lucrative spot on the back of one of the hills that protected Jasper from the rest of the world. The gravestones peeking between the trees overlooked the next valley and hill filled with trees and a stream. The place had the heavy peace of the dead. There was no noise of autos, no children. Wild animals often drifted in and nibbled on the well-tended grass.

In one hand, Savannah held a bunch of flowers in white and dark wine, the colors of the club. Violet had her own bunch of flowers, poppies in all different colors. They turned several more corners before they reached the group of stones they wanted. The granite stones had been carved into shapes, a female angel holding a sword, a wolf, and three crosses.

There were names written in the stone but neither Savannah nor Violet had to read them to know who was buried there. They put their flowers in the vases attached to the bases of the stones and retreated to a small bench in the shade across the way.

Violet slouched down and put her head on Savannah’s shoulder. Savannah wrapped an arm about her and kissed the top of her head.

“You think they’d be happy?” Violet asked.

“About Corey?”

“Yeah.”

“I think so.”

“Daddy would make threats.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Violet sniffled.

Savannah felt her eyes tear up and she put her face back into Violet’s hair. “They’d be happy, baby. I know it.”

Violet nodded and cuddled closer. They stayed that way until the sun started going down.

---

The setting sun painted the lake with streaks of orange. It was past dinner time. Gideon’s stomach twisted. The thought of food made him nauseous. He stretched out using the bench where he’d written his letter and fed the duck as a type of block. The pull of the muscles felt good. He finished and stared off past the duck pond at the lake. The wind rippled the surface of the water and caressed his skin and went through his hair.

He shivered a little bit, goosebumps forming on his skin. The lake didn’t hold any peace for him today. He looked away and started running down the sidewalk. His boots thumped against the concrete and thoughts beat away at his head. Africa. Spy Missions. Gangs. Brotherhood.

He couldn’t escape his thoughts. Though he was trying. The Heathens were a gang, an outlaw club, one percenters. Ted’s off hand joking comment now made more sense though he didn’t think Ted used the term in the same way other motorcycle gangs used it. They might not deal drugs or prostitution but he might be called upon to deal violence to other people, other civilians.

He knew how to deal violence. The military had taught him well. He was used to it, hardened from it. But could he hurt or kill someone on the orders from another civilian?

Or was he being lied to, were the Heathens an actual gang and Hunter pulling a big joke at his expense? Sweat formed on his arms, dampened his shirt, and turned his hair wet. The sun went down behind the hills.

Gideon kept running.