Page 31 of Property of Scar

Whatever this turns into, however far it reaches, I’ll track it, break it down, and deal with it the same way I deal with everything else.

The only difference is this time… I won’t be doing it alone.

Chapter Nine

SCAR

The Next Evening

I pull into the lot and kill the engine.

There’s no way in hell we handle this one alone. Raze needs to hear everything, and the club needs eyes on Cali until we figure out exactly where all this shit is heading.

That’s why I brought her here.

The clubhouse is already loud enough to spill out across the parking lot, music thumping through the walls while brothers laugh, argue, and carry on like the world isn’t getting ready to crack open underneath us.

Gravel crunches under my boots as I head for the clubhouse. The second I shove the door open, noise hits me full force.

“Stay close,” I announce as I step inside.

She pauses just behind me, not long, just enough. I make a point of tracking everything in the first two seconds, the way a vampire with an eternity of violence behind him always does when he brings something new into his territory.

She doesn’t falter.

That surprises me more than it should.

The main room is already in full swing when we walk in, loud and restless in that familiar way the clubhouse gets before the real work of the night starts. Brothers spread across sofas and tables. Music rolling through the walls. Money moving hand to hand while deals, threats, and bullshit blend into a single language.

Ruckus has stacks of cash spread across the far table, banded bills piled high while gold flashes from the rings covering his fingers every time he counts. Luck hangs around him like a living thing. You can almost feel reality bending sideways to keep favoring the smug little bastard. He’s halfway through muttering numbers under his breath when he glances up, already grinning before he even figures out why.

Near the window, Coil stands with a phone pressed to his ear like always, eyes bleeding gold as the serpent underneath pushes too close to the surface. Guess he’s done pretending to look human tonight. “Triple the rate, and I’ll throw in the warding stones,” he says smoothly into the phone. “Non-negotiable.” Then his attention slides to Cali and stays there. The kind of stare that belongs to predators deciding whether something is a threat or entertainment.

Across the room, Wreck hunches over prospect Bennett with a tattoo gun buzzing in his massive hand. The wendigo looks like death squeezed into biker leathers, all sharp bones and stretched skin with shadows clinging to him thicker than they should. Like somebody built him out of nightmares and bad ideas.

Bennett sits stiff in the chair, trying real hard not to move while Wreck works.

Smart choice, honestly.

The entire room notices Cali in under three seconds.

I watch it happen. The phone call goes silent mid-sentence. The tattoo machine keeps buzzing, but Wreck’s eyes lift. When a wendigo looks at you like that, radiating a hunger that has nothing to do with food and everything to do with the animal reading you as prey, you feel it in your spine before your brain catches up.

The brothers converge without coordinating it, the way predators do. A slow gravitational shift that ends with them between Cali and the exits, hands sliding toward weapons with practiced ease.

Cali stands in the middle of the clubhouse like the chaos doesn’t touch her. Her chin comes up a fraction while her gaze moves across the room, slow and controlled, clocking exits, weapons, threats. Her instinct and training, years of surviving by knowing exactly how fast a room can turn deadly.

And in here? Every brother she looks at is the kind of creature she was probably raised to put down.

That realization settles heavy in my chest, sharp enough to feel like steel pressed flat against my ribs.

Then Wreck speaks, “That’s a fucking hunter.” His voice is flat and certain, like he’s stating a fact rather than offering an opinion, and it lands in the room with the same weight.

Cali doesn’t even blink. “And you’re fucking criminals.” Her tone is perfectly even, almost conversational, like she’s acknowledging something mildly interesting rather than standing in a room full of supernatural beings whose collective body count would make governments nervous. “We all have our hobbies.”

The silence that follows stretches just long enough to be dangerous.

Then Ruckus lets out a short burst of laughter, the kind that comes out against a person’s better judgment. “She’s got balls,” he says with that crooked grin of his, all easy charm and trouble, the kind that somehow keeps people from punching him even when he deserves it. Gold coins clink softly as he moves, the sound following him around like luck itself keeps riding shotgun for the bastard.