The sun broke over the jagged peaks surrounding Willow Creek, spilling cool, golden light through the dense stands of pine that guarded the town like ancient sentinels. It was the kind of sharp, early autumn morning that made you feel alive, the air so crisp it felt like a fresh start. For fourteen-year-old Ava Harland, it was just that—another one.
Her worn leather boots crunched on the cracked and heaving sidewalk that led toward Willow Creek High, each step a quiet, reluctant beat in a rhythm she knew all too well.
Her braid, thick and dark, swung against the back of a patched denim vest that was two sizes too big, a hand-me-down from a club brother that fluttered around her slight frame like a flag of a country no one else recognized. Over her heart, a tiny, intricately embroidered patch read: Property of Thunderhawks MC.
To most kids, it was just a cool, vintage-looking piece of flair, something you’d treasure from a thrift store bin. They didn’t know it was real.
They didn’t know it was a shield, a legacy, and sometimes, a target.
As she passed the town’s only gas station, the usual morning gathering of old-timers, perched on overturned milk crates and nursing their coffees, gave her their customary nods. She returned the gesture, a quick, polite dip of her chin, but her pace never faltered. Her dad, Knox Harland, had drilled the rules of the road into her since she was old enough to ride on the back of his Harley.
Eyes up, shoulders loose, never look lost.
You carry our name, kid. Walk like it.
The moment she pushed through the heavy double doors of the high school, the clean mountain air was swallowed by a wall of sound and scent—the clang of metal lockers slamming shut, the high-pitched chatter of a hundred conversations, the stale aroma of floor wax and adolescent anxiety. Ava kept her head low, her arms wrapped tight around a worn sketchbook, its cover soft with use.
This was her third school in two years.
Her mom was a ghost, a faded photograph on her dad’s nightstand. The club, her sprawling, noisy, protective family, had moved for “fresh air.” Ava knew the translation: trouble had finally caught up to them in the last town, and they’d needed a new ridge to call home. She found her assigned locker, 247, its drab green paint chipped and scarred with the history of students past.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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