Page 32 of Property of Scar

“She crashed through the skylight at the bar.” Rhett’s voice floats in from somewhere to my left. “I like her already, VP.”

I find him sprawled on the old sofa near the wall, boots up, arms crossed, the hellhound darkness that clings to him curling lazily at the edges like smoke that hasn’t decided where to go. His eyes are lit with that brightness he gets when something genuinely interests him, which is, as a rule, everything that inconveniences other people.

“You would.” Bennett doesn’t look up from the tattoo chair. His jaw is still locked, though I suspect that’s more about dignity than the needle. “Your kind appreciates excessive property damage.”

“Better than sitting around looking pretty and judging people.”

“I don’t just look pretty…” Bennett pauses for dramatic effect. “I bring divine justice.”

“You bring divine judgment,” Rhett says. “There’s a difference.”

“One more word…” I say, without looking at either of them, “… and I’m assigning you both to Wreck for a week.”

In the corner, Wreck shifts his weight in the chair, and the entire feel of the room changes with him. He doesn’t rise or step forward. He simply exists harder for a second, and that’s somehow worse.

The wendigo hunger rolls off him, spreading slowly and heavily through the clubhouse, thick enough to feel beneath the skin. It crawls through the air like a coming storm, dragging every instinct in the room to attention. The lights flicker, the music stops, and everyone reacts visibly as the atmosphere tightens around him like a storm cloud. Like the room itself knows a predator is sitting in the corner capable of eating every living thing inside it if he ever loses control.

Both prospects go quiet instantly. The kind of quiet that comes when your survival instincts finally outvote your mouth, and I can’t help the smirk that pulls at my lips.

I hear them coming before they hit the bottom of the stairs. Raze’s boots land heavy and steady against the upper level while softer footsteps move beside him close enough to blur together.

He comes down side by side with Roxy tucked under his arm as though that spot was made for her. His hand rests low against her waist, casual and possessive all at once, the kind of touch that stopped being deliberate a long damn time ago and just became part of him.

Then Raze looks up and sees Cali.

The warmth that lives in him now, the warmth Roxy drew out of him, doesn’t disappear. It retreats behind something much older, much cooler, the part of Raze that runs a criminal empire and has never once flinched at what that requires. Ice shards spiderweb up his arms as his gaze moves to me, his brows furrowed in a stare that tells me he is unimpressed.

“Scar.” Just my name, one syllable, but carrying the full weight of ‘Explain this, now, or I will remove the problem myself.’

I hold his gaze. “We have a problem.”

“Define we.” His eyes cut back to Cali, a blade disguised as a glance.

“The Crimson Circle. They’re active again.” I watch something move behind his expression, and I keep going before he can interrupt. “The rogues hitting our territory… they’re not feral. They’re coordinated. Faster than they should be, smarter than they should be, taking orders from something that knows what it’s doing. Someone’s been experimenting… mixing vampire blood with berserker blood.”

The muscle in Raze’s jaw tightens. “That’s not possible.”

“It wasn’t. Three hundred years ago, we made sure of it.” I pause, just long enough for the weight of what comes next to settle.

The clubhouse moves around us, despite our arrival. Music is back on through the speakers. Coil keeps talking low into his phone somewhere near the window. Wreck’s tattoo gun buzzes steadily in the corner while cash keeps changing hands around the tables.

Every brother close enough to catch the conversation feels it happen at the exact same time. You don’t survive in this club without learning how to recognize the moment shit gets serious.

Raze holds my gaze for a long second, and I let him think it through without interrupting.

I know exactly what’s happening behind those eyes—threats, territory, fallout—all the worst-case scenarios. He’s weighing how bad this would be if we believe her, against how much worse it would be if we don’t. And after five centuries beside the bastard, I know better than to rush him while he’s putting the pieces together.

“And her?” His chin lifts toward Cali. “Where does a hunter fit into all this?”

“She’s the one who found the pattern. Tracked three separate incidents back to the same source before our people even knew to look.” I keep my voice even. “She came to me. We want the same outcome.”

“Hunters don’t want outcomes that keep us breathing.”

“This one needs us to.”

Raze lets the silence stretch while his eyes settle back on Cali, with the kind of attention that makes most people start second-guessing themselves. Somebody who didn’t know him might mistake it for patience.

It’s not.