Page 73 of Property of Scar

Enough to see it.

Enough to know exactly what I just did.

My breath comes faster, uneven, my hand still hovering near his side like I’m not sure whether to touch him again or not.

“Shit, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” I ask even though I know I did, more quietly than anything I’ve said all night.

And the space between us feels entirely different now.

He grins mischievously. “Only in all the good ways.”

And somehow, the fucker has made me blush.

Asshole.

I smile, relaxing my tense shoulders, his thumb brushing my wrist as he stays there, close enough that I can see the detail in those red eyes, the centuries behind them, and all the things he hasn’t yet told me and probably won’t for a very long time.

“You should sleep,” I say. “Let the stitches hold.”

“Calypso.” The way he says my full name is different from how anyone else has ever said it.

I stand up, collect the wrappers, the needle, and everything that needs to go into the kit, and I don’t look at him again right away, because there are only so many things I can process in one night, and this one is already full.

But somewhere under all the walls I’ve spent years stacking around myself, under the stubborn refusal to need anybody for a damn thing, something shifts.

Just a little.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

For him.

Chapter Seventeen

SCAR

Cali watches me in a way I haven’t had directed at me in a very long time. There’s no fear in it and no awe either, which should probably feel like a relief after five centuries of people offering one or the other. Instead, it leaves me feeling strangely exposed.

She studies me the same way she studied the wound in my side while she stitched it closed, patient and focused, letting the truth come to her instead of trying to force it. And after everything she’s just told me, after the cost of those memories flickered behind her eyes while she spoke, she’s still sitting there in the dim safe house light, looking at me like I’m simply something she’s trying to understand.

The realization settles deeper than it should. Most people want something from me like leadership, protection, answers, and those expectations have a way of attaching themselves to every conversation, whether anyone means them to or not.

Cali doesn’t seem to want anything.

She’s just waiting to see what I do next.

I don’t do this.

I don’t reach back when someone extends a hand, offers history when silence will serve just as well, or lets anyone close enough to see what the years have left behind. The club knows pieces. Raze knows the outline. No one has been given the whole story.

The silence between us is thick enough to live in, and I am considering spending the rest of the night inside it when I hear myself speak, “Her name was Astrid.”

Cali goes quiet. The question hanging between us stays exactly where it is. She lets it. Her attention never leaves me, giving the silence in the room enough time to settle instead of rushing to fill it.

The silence breathes around us, and for once, it isn’t something that needs fixing. Because for the first time all night, it feels like I might actually know what to do with the words.

“We met on a battlefield in Norway, 1670.” I let my eyes drop to the floor. The wood grain is old and uneven, splintered at one edge, and I stare at it the way I haven’t allowed myself to stare at this memory in years. “She was berserker. I was a vampire. We were on opposing sides of something that has long since stopped being important.”