JULIAN
The next day, the compound bleeds noise.
Not rage this time. Not panic or agony or one of Kai’s slow-acting doses slithering down the spine like confession. No. This is chaos baptized in celebration. A party carved straight from victory. The kind of revelry that smells like beer, blood, sex, and metal. Every shipping container is open. Every hallway’s flooded in noise. Music spills from the speakers above the mess hall—something with too much bass and too little shame. Someone—probably Finn—rewired the sound system to blast obscene Russian remixes with no lyrics, just snarling men yelling “fuck yeah” between bass drops. It’s awful. It’s perfect.
The win didn’t just earn us the rink. It cracked something open in all of us. Broke the tension that had been knotting up our throats since I first got dragged into the compound high and gagged and looking for somewhere to die. Now they chant my name like a fucking war hymn. “Reaver! Reaver!”—like the taste of it alone will make their beer hit harder.
I sit on the edge of the long metal table, one boot up, black tape still wrapped around both wrists like I forgot we weren’t on the ice anymore. My jersey’s gone—ripped off mid-lap by Luca after the final horn. I’m in just black jeans now, bruises on full display, a new cut over my hip from where the blade clipped me yesterday. Still not stitched. Still weeping a little. But I don’t care. I feel good. I feel fucking invincible. I feel likeif someone put a crown on my head right now, I’d wear it sideways and kiss their fucking ring with blood on my tongue.
Across from me, Finn’s got a bandage wrapped around his head like a WWII poster boy and is currently chugging from a beer boot someone stole from the Belladonna suite during the cleanup. The second he slams it down, the room erupts. Cheers, laughter, Bishop trying to pick him up and swing him in a circle, failing, and then immediately demanding a rematch while bleeding from the knuckle again.
“You sure your brain’s still in there?” Luca drawls, sprawled out in Vlad’s lap like the world is made of pillows. He’s wearing someone else’s shirt—way too big, collar hanging off one shoulder, half of a bruise visible beneath it. Vlad says nothing. Just runs a hand down Luca’s throat like he’s counting seconds until the next break in his bones.
Finn grins, eyes glazed. “Brain’s fine. Just calibrated to chaos now.”
“Always was,” Misha mutters, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Kai, who is not partaking in the festivities so much as overseeing them like an exhausted babysitter who’s two seconds from injecting himself just to tolerate our existence.
He looks at me once, then at my drink. “How many is that?” he asks.
I sip. “Enough.”
“I’ll sedate you.”
I grin. “That’s the idea, Doc.”
Kai shakes his head and turns back to whatever concoction he’s mixing for Luca, who refuses to drink anything that doesn’t sparkle or taste like rot.
Ezio’s in the far corner, alone, sitting on an overturned crate like it might elevate him again, like the world hasn’t already walked away from his bloodline. He’s nursing something expensive in a glass he clearly brought from home—too delicate, too fucking gold-rimmed for this place. Nobody’s talking to him. Nobody’s looking at him. He exists in negative space now, the kind you see only when it trips your eye. He watches us with the kind of stillness that comes from knowing the throne’s been burned and the crown welded to someone else’s ribs.
He catches me staring. I don’t look away. I lick my lips slow, deliberate, then slide my hand between my thighs where I know Rafe is watching and mouth the word “Captain” without making a sound.
Ezio looks away.
Good boy.
Someone turns the music up. Someone else climbs on the table and starts stripping for no reason except it’s what we do when our bodies feel too big and the walls too tight. Vlad tosses a knife into the air and catches it without looking. Misha starts singing something off-key. Bishop lights a sparkler in his mouth and dares Kai to stop him.
And Rafe’s standing just inside the door, black-on-black, cigarette hanging between his fingers, eyes on me like he never stopped watching. His mouth twitches when I push my beer aside and get to my feet, hips already swaying with the rhythm of the music even though no one’s dancing yet. I walk toward him like gravity doesn’t apply to me anymore. Like the compound belongs to me now.
I don’t stop until I’m toe-to-toe with him.
He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
I reach out, pluck the cigarette from between his fingers, bring it to my own mouth, drag hard, and exhale the smoke straight against his lips—slow, deliberate, letting it curl between us like a secret only we share. The room behind me is still screaming—chaos, cheers, bets being settled, voices overlapping in a roar—but here, in the narrow space we’ve carved out, it’s suddenly quiet. Just the low crackle of the cigarette, the steady thump of my pulse, and the heat rolling off his body.
He stares at me like I’m still on the ice—still bleeding, still grinning through the gore, still about to break someone’s jaw with a smile and a kiss. Like the violence hasn’t left me yet, like it’s painted on my skin and he can still taste it.
I lean in closer, breath hot against his throat, and whisper the words low enough that only he can hear them. “Do I make you proud, Daddy?”
His hand curls around my hip—hard, possessive, fingers digging in like he’s anchoring himself to the only thing that matters in this entire fucked-up night and he smiles.
The air’s so thick with smoke and sweat that breathing feels like a choice. A bad one. The kind you make just to keep laughing, just to keep dancing, just to stay standing long enough for the next shot to burn your throat and someone’s hands to find your waist again. The party stopped being a celebration and mutated somewhere around hour three—when the lights dimmed too far and the bottle count passed twenty and everyone started forgetting they were supposed to be predators. Now? It’s chaos. Raw. Unfiltered. Honest in the ugliest, filthiest, most beautiful ways.
Luca’s clinging to Kai like he thinks gravity’s out to get him personally. Legs locked around Kai’s waist, one hand fisted in the doctor’s collar, the other holding a drink like aweapon. “Daddy,” he moans, loud and proud, slurring it. “You said I could have another if I hydrated.”
“I said no such fucking thing,” Kai mutters, deadpan, one arm locked around Luca’s ass just to keep him from face-planting into the tile.
“You’re holding me,” Luca purrs, grinning, glitter in his lashes, dried blood on his throat. “You love me.”
