Page 92 of Property of Scar

“Want to make a bet on who kills more rogues?”

Bennett rolls his eyes. “That’s sacrilegious.”

“So yes?”

The corner of Bennett’s mouth shifts, just barely, but enough. “Winner doesn’t have to clean the pit for a month.”

Rhett’s grin breaks wide and crooked across his face. “Deal.”

“You’re both cleaning the pit regardless.” Scar’s voice arrives before he does, cutting through their exchange without raising itself. He passes behind them without slowing, red eyes moving across the tactical map as he goes, and neither of them actually startles, which says something about how well they know him. “Focus.”

I smirk as Rhett watches him go. “He heard the whole thing, didn’t he?”

Bennett resumes sharpening. “He always hears everything.”

“Damn vamp ears.”

Bennett shoves Rhett’s side. “Now focus.”

I turn away from them before my expression betrays me, because something has shifted behind my ribs that feels dangerously close to warmth.

Wreck pushes back from the table across the room. He rolls his shoulders, a slow, purposeful rotation, and when he raises his hands and cracks his knuckles, the sound is louder than it should be. Stone bleeds up from beneath his skin in patches, pale gray spreading across his knuckles, his forearms, the ridge of his jaw. The wendigo is surfacing. Not completely, he’s keeping it leashed, barely, but the hunger that lives in his hollow eyes sharpens into something with a specific shape, and the temperature in the six feet around him drops three degrees. He is already thinking about what comes next, and his body is already answering.

Thorn simply turns from the table and walks to the wall, where he stands with his back to the room and his hand resting flat against the timber. His fingers splay wide, and faint, thin roots push out from the gaps between the planks and curl gently around his wrist, the building acknowledging him, or him acknowledging it, the silent communion of a forest spirit checking in with whatever sacred geometry lives in old wood. Then he drops his hand, folds his arms again, and says nothing. His silence isn’t emptiness, it is the kind of quiet that sits in ancient things, of things that have been here long before any of us and expect to remain long after.

That stillness settles firmly into my chest.

I want this.

The thought arrives without warning, without the careful scaffolding I would normally build around something that inconvenient. It doesn’t come with qualifications or disclaimers. It just sits there, blunt and certain… and I let it.

Not the fighting or the danger, though both of those things live in me in ways I stopped pretending were simple a long time ago.

I want this.

The organized chaos of brothers who move around each other like they were made to occupy the same space. The way Wreck and Thorn don’t need to speak. The way Flux trusts that when he comes back through that window, there will be somewhere to land. The way Ruckus sits on the floor making luck charms for people who would probably walk through fire for him, and does it without anyone asking, because it never occurred to him not to.

Even the way Rhett and Bennett’s bickering is, underneath it, a kind of care. A reassurance they’re both still here, still themselves.

I have not had a ‘this’ in a very long time.

“Hey.” Roxy materializes at my elbow and steers me by the arm, away from the doorway and down the hall toward the kitchen, where the noise drops to something manageable. She hands me a mug and leans back against the counter, composed, like nothing in this club is new to her anymore. She doesn’t open with small talk. “How are you actually doing?”

“I’m fine—”

“Calypso.”

I exhale, looking down at the mug. “I’m terrified. And I’m trying not to be.”

“Fear is useful.” She tilts her head slightly. “You know that, it keeps you sharp.”

“There’s a difference between useful fear and the kind that makes you second-guess every exit strategy you’ve ever built yourself.”

Her expression doesn’t change, but something in her eyes does, a softening that isn’t pity, just understanding. Understanding shaped by having been in this exact place, knowing there’s no way through it but straight ahead. “You’re thinking about tomorrow.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“We are. But you’re thinking about it differently than the brothers.” She pauses, letting that sit. “You’re thinking about what you’d be leaving.”