Page 118 of Property of Scar

This is something else entirely.

Something made.

Something designed to do exactly this.

“Come on, asshole! Wake up!” I lean in closer, one hand braced against his chest, the other still locked on his jaw, forcing his face toward me like I can make him see me, like I can force him to come back just by being here. “Scar, stay with me.”

Nothing.

Not even the smallest flicker.

And that’s when it lands, cutting straight through the panic and leaving something colder behind it… I don’t know how to fix this.

Glancing up, I see the berserker strapped to the table in the center of the room is enormous, six-foot-six at least, broad as a doorframe, and completely unconscious, leather restraints biting deep into his wrists and ankles. His chest still rises and falls, shallow but steady.

Alive.

For now.

Mordain stands over him with a syringe the size of my forearm, and the liquid inside it is too dark, too thick to be anything natural—moving like it’s thinking.

He doesn’t look at me as I kneel at Scar’s side beside him on the ground.

He doesn’t need to.

“The hunter,” he drones, his voice holding a calm, settled satisfaction, like this was always the plan. “I wondered if you’d make it this far.”

“Put it down.” I stand, slowly turning toward him. My voice stays level even as every nerve ending in my body is screaming. The compound shakes somewhere above us, distant concussions that dislodge dust from the ceiling in fine gray curtains. The Kings are still fighting. Scar is somewhere behind me, and the thought of him alone with that toxin pulling him into a deathly slumber is a cold hand around my throat that I absolutely cannot afford right now.

Mordain turns, and the full force of him hits me like a wall. He’s ancient in a way that Scar isn’t, where Scar’s age has refined him, sharpened him into something precise and dangerous, Mordain’s centuries have curdled into something else entirely. Beautiful and rotten at the same time, like a cathedral left to decay, all the grandeur still there underneath the rot.

He smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes by about three hundred years. “You are half of something extraordinary,” he says, tilting his head with genuine scientific curiosity that is somehow more terrifying than rage. “And yet… here you are, playing at being fully mortal.”

He moves before I can fully pull air into my lungs.

I step in, and he’s gone.

No shift I can track, no blur to follow. The space in front of me empties, like he was never standing there at all, and the first warning I get is the impact from behind. It slams into my ribs hard enough to knock the air out of me, my body lifting off the ground before I can even turn into it. For a fraction of a second, there is nothing under my feet, no balance, no control, just force driving straight through me.

Steel gives under the impact with a sharp, tearing groan as my front crashes into the shelving unit along the far wall, the entire structure buckling and collapsing around me. Glass vials explode on contact, shattering in a cascade that rains down in every direction, liquid spraying across the concrete that hiss and spit where they land.

Something burns where it touches my skin.

The sound of glass breaking, metal twisting, and chemical reactions snapping alive fills the space for a split second before gravity finishes the job, and everything comes down with me in a violent crash that sends debris skidding across the floor.

But I don’t stay down.

I hit the ground and roll through it, already moving, already forcing my body back into motion before the pain can settle, because staying still isn’t an option—it’s a decision, and it’s the wrong one.

By the time I get my feet under me again, Mordain is still exactly where I left him.

Watching.

The hit rattled my skull. The look unsettles me more. He isn’t closing the distance or taking advantage of the opening he created. Mordain stands there with the same unnerving calm he’s carried since this started, as though the outcome isn’t something he needs to worry about.

Whether I beat him, surprise him, or end up flat on my ass again is secondary to whatever calculation is running behind those cruel, uneasy eyes.

The realization settles heavily in my chest.