Page 29 of Property of Scar

But there’s something else mixed into it now too.

Something sharper.

Not trust.

We are nowhere near that shit.

But maybe the beginning of respect. The kind earned between predators who have realized the other one is dangerous enough to matter.

“We’re after the same thing,” I say. “We can kill each other later.”

His mouth doesn’t move, but his eyes do, just barely. “You’re asking for an alliance?”

“I’m stating a fact. What you do with it is up to you.”

His attention drops back to the photographs spread across the table, and I watch him work through whatever is turning over in that ancient head of his.

Most people eventually leak their thoughts with a twitch, a shift in posture, or something in their face that gives the game away.

Scar doesn’t.

If anything, he becomes stiller. The only movement comes from his eyes tracking slowly across the evidence, taking in every detail with a cold focus that he understands more than he’s saying.

It doesn’t feel like he’s studying the photographs.

It feels like he’s remembering them.

Then he looks up. “Temporary truce,” he says. “But you follow my rules in my territory.”

The second he says rules, my whole body tightens on instinct before I can stop it. Old training snaps awake hard and fast, drilled too deep to ignore, no matter how many years have passed.

My shoulders lock. Weight shifts slightly onto the balls of my feet, holding myself steady in that dangerous kind of inactivity that looks calm right up until the moment violence starts.

“I don’t follow anyone’s rules.”

He moves. Not fast, not the way he did in the bar three nights ago when speed was the point, but slower, more deliberate, like he’s giving me time to register it, to choose how I’m going to respond to the fact that he’s closing the distance. He circles the edge of the table in three unhurried steps, each one measured and controlled, each one bringing him closer in a way that doesn’t rush the moment but tightens it, until the space between us is no longer neutral.

Close enough that the decision becomes immediate.

Hold or give.

I wait for the other part of it.

The allure.

The thing vampires use when they don’t feel like asking, that subtle pressure that slides in under your guard and makes resistance feel unnecessary, like stepping back was your idea all along. It’s the kind of influence I’ve been trained to recognize before it takes hold, to fight before it can settle in…

But it never comes.

There’s no shift in the air, no pressure at the edges of my thoughts, nothing trying to redirect me, soften me, or move me without contact. He’s close enough to use it, strong enough that it would land if he did.

He just… doesn’t.

Which means this, whatever this is, isn’t about forcing the outcome.

The leather of his cut carries the faint trace of motor oil and something darker underneath. Something that doesn’t belong to anything but him, and the warmth coming off him doesn’t make sense, not with what he is, not with what I know he should be. Still, it’s there anyway, close enough now that I can feel it if I let myself focus on it.

I don’t step back.