Page 1 of Property of Scar

Chapter One

SCAR

The crowd crushes against the chain-link hard enough to make the cage shudder, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder while the fence rattles nonstop under the weight of them. The whole pit feels alive tonight. Mean and hungry, like it is one bad hit away from tearing itself apart.

The crowd doesn’t just want to watch what happens in here.

They want to be part of it, to feel it under their skin, to taste it when it spills.

Vampires swarm the cage close enough that their claws scrape grooves into the steel, fangs flashing every time their mouths curl open. Hunger hangs off them thick and ugly, sharp enough to feel across the room. Demons loom behind them like walking nightmares, eyes catching the overhead lights at strange angles, as though something beneath their skin keeps trying to claw its way free.

Farther back, the fae watch with those too-perfect faces and expensive smiles, all polished edges and fake charm, but the longer you look, the easier it is to spot the predator underneath. Their laughter cuts through the noise bright and razor-thin while cash trades hands and the wagers keep climbing with every hit thrown inside the cage.

The air beneath the club is thick enough to choke on, heavy with blood, sweat, and that electric charge that settles into a space when something is about to die, and every creature crammed into this underground pit feels it building, stretching tighter and tighter until it’s almost unbearable.

The shifter across from me feels it too.

He carries it everywhere, in the restless shift of his weight, the constant roll of his shoulders, as if something under his skin keeps pushing out. He’s easily twice my size, thick muscle piled onto an already brutal frame, his body looking less like a man these days and more like something forced into human shape against its will. There’s an old scar carved across his jaw, pale and jagged, the kind that only comes from a fight that should have ended differently. His eyes burn amber-yellow, pupils blown wide as the shift rides him hard, barely leashed.

He studies me while he circles, searching for the smallest fracture in control, the faintest hesitation he can exploit.

There isn’t one to find.

Five centuries of war have a way of stripping hesitation, until there’s nothing left but precision, until instinct sharpens into something colder and quieter. The body moves before the thought ever forms, because the outcome has already been decided somewhere deeper than conscious choice.

He moves first, and this time, there is thought behind it. The maneuver is subtle, just enough of a shift in his shoulders to pull my weight a fraction to the left before he commits, swinging hard from the opposite side with a punch that carries the full force of his size. I see it a split second too late to avoid it cleanly, and his fist connects with my jaw in a brutal, bone-deep impact that snaps my head to the side.

The sound of it is sharp.

So is the taste.

Blood fills my mouth fast, hot and metallic, spilling over my tongue while a spray of it splatters across the concrete and the bottom of the cage. The crowd reacts like it’s been handed exactly what it came for, a roar ripping through the pit as bodies slam harder against the chain-link, the promise of vulnerability lighting something feral in their eyes.

The shifter steps back, chest heaving, already lifting his arms in premature victory, feeding off the reaction, off the noise, off the illusion that he’s landed something that matters.

For a heartbeat, I let him have it.

I straighten slowly, rolling my jaw back into place with a quiet shift of bone, tasting my own blood as it settles thick at the back of my throat. The scent of it sharpens everything, drags something darker up from beneath the surface, something old and hungry that doesn’t care about rules, control, or the difference between a fight and a feeding.

The smell hits again when the shifter exhales, thick and metallic, and I realize it isn’t just mine.

His lip has split on impact.

Blood threads down his chin in a thin, bright line.

Hunger surges so hard my vision tightens.

For a fraction of a second, the fight threatens to blur into something else entirely.

I clamp down on it.

Hard.

This isn’t a feed.

This is control.

This is the line.