Chapter Six
Ronan
“Now… let’s start with a present.”
The words leave my mouth with that feral edge I can’t quite hide, but none of them know the storm already brewing in me before I walked into this room.
Because just moments ago, I was stretched out on Emerson’s table, his hands steady as he threaded me back together.
The sting of the needle tugging my skin closed was nothing compared to the tearing inside my chest. He didn’t speak much—Em never does when the weight’s too heavy—but his jaw was locked, eyes narrowed like if he let a single word slip, all of it would come crashing down on us.
When he was done, he didn’t bother with questions.
Just pushed a syringe into me, something strong enough to blunt the edges, and tossed a small pile of pills into my hand like it was routine.
I downed them all without hesitation. Pain doesn’t matter. Not when Berk is still out there.
The chemicals dulled my body, left me floating—but my head stayed razor-sharp. And every clear thought had one name carved into it. Berk.
For thirty minutes, I sat there and let my mind do what it does best—calculate, predict, track.
I sorted through every move, every thread of her rage I could tug at until I found the pattern.
She wouldn’t hide. She wouldn’t take the time to heal.
She’d hunt. She’d go for blood and carve her pain into the flesh of the people who deserved it.
A message that would scream louder than words ever could.
And if I’m right—and I know I am—she doesn’t see how perfectly her choices are lining up.
Like fate’s been setting the board for her, and she’s about to sweep the pieces clean.
She’s got a head start, sure, but I’ll cut straight to her ending.
Because I know her. I know the way her body will tremble once the adrenaline spikes and then burns out.
It’s the only thing that quiets the roar inside.
But I can’t slip free of my brothers yet.
They’re watching me, waiting for me to bolt, and I can’t afford the distraction.
So, before I go after her, before I chase down the trail I can sense, we’ll start here.
With our own strike. Our own message. Something brutal enough to echo back to the bastards who built this empire, a promise they can’t ignore.
Their reign is ending. And it’s ending at our hands.
Rowan narrows his eyes at me, suspicion tightening his features. “What the hell are you smiling all crazy about? What present?” His voice has an edge to it, the one that always comes out when he knows I’m ten steps ahead and he’s scrambling to catch up.
Emerson doesn’t speak, doesn’t blink, just studies me like he’s dissecting every twitch of my face, trying to pull the truth out without me saying a word. But this isn’t something he can puzzle together with his logic or calm. This isn’t on their radar yet.
So, I give it to them straight. My grin widens, sharp enough to cut, and I say, “Grab all your worldly possessions, boys. We’re burning this motherfucker down.
” The words hang in the air like gasoline fumes, and I can practically hear the spark catching.
Their heads snap toward me in unison; twin looks of shock and hunger mingling in their eyes.
For a heartbeat, I almost laugh—almost—because I know what they’re about to ask before the words leave their mouths.
I cut them off, voice low, steady, full of the conviction that’s been grinding through me since the second I opened my eyes in that bed. “And then I’m going to find my pixie.”
The silence after that statement is deafening.
Rowan’s lips part, Emerson’s eyes narrow, and I can feel their questions ready to spill—Can we come?
Will she forgive us? Will she even let us try?
But I don’t give them the chance. I lean forward, pinning them both with my stare until they’re forced to see I mean every damn word.
“She’s not going to want to see either of you.
Not yet. But me?” My hand tightens into a fist against my thigh, and the heat in my chest surges like wildfire.
“I’ll help put her back together. And when she sees this place burn, when she sees our grand gesture, she’ll know.
” I pause, letting the promise cut through the room, the fire already burning in my veins.
“She’ll know we’re behind her, every step of the way—and that we’re coming for them. Every last one of them.”
I may be the instinctive problem solver, the one who sees patterns where others see chaos, but my brothers aren’t fools.
They’re just as sharp, and even if I don’t spell it out, they’re putting the pieces together.
They know what I’m really saying. If we burn this house—our home, our prison—we send a message no one can ignore.
It’ll be a line carved into the earth, separating us from the rot of our fathers, severing us from the empire that’s stained everything it touched.
It tells the world, and more importantly Berk, that we’re done playing their game.
It’s for her. Reign. Berk’s father. For us, together as a team.
And maybe—just maybe—it’s the only way to show her that no matter what’s happened between us, no matter the blood and betrayal in the basement, we’re not our fathers.
That we never will be. Deep down, I think she knows it.
She wouldn’t have let Rowan cross that line if she didn’t.
Berk has always been deliberate, calculating even in her silence.
She allowed it to happen—not to shield herself from pain, but to shield him. To shield us.
That kind of loyalty is a debt we’ll never repay. But we can burn the world trying.
We split off without another word, each of us peeling away toward our own rooms like shades drifting through a mausoleum.
The house feels heavier than it ever has, each creak in the floorboards groaning like the building itself knows its end is near.
The plan was simple: grab what matters, salvage the things worth keeping, mementos too important to leave behind.
But when I step into my room and flick on the light, the truth hits me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken.
There’s nothing here for me. Not a damn thing.
The walls, the furniture, the clothes—they’re meaningless.
This isn’t a room. It’s a stage set. An empty space dressed up to look like a life that never really existed.
I stand in the doorway longer than I mean to, staring at the bed I hardly ever slept in, the desk stacked with papers that mean nothing, the shelves lined with trinkets and trophies that once fooled me into thinking they mattered.
They don’t. None of them do. The weight in my chest confirms what I’ve always known but never wanted to admit: anything that ever had value is already gone.
Reign’s smile. Berk’s laughter. The fleeting moments that felt like light in a house made of shadows.
Those are the only things worth keeping, and they’re already with me, tucked away on my phone in stolen photos, carved into my memory where even fire can’t reach.
Everything else? It’s rot. Decay disguised as comfort.
The longer I look, the more I see it—that this room is soaked through with poison.
Every corner, every shadow, feels tainted by the truth we uncovered.
The walls reek with the echoes of lies, with the blood I never noticed, with the weight of horrors our fathers let happen under this roof while we walked blind.
My stomach turns. My hands clench. I don’t want any of it.
Not the bed, not the desk, not even the memories tied to this place.
Especially not those. They’ve curdled into something rancid, and I’ll be damned if I carry a single shred of it with me.
Fifteen minutes later, I find myself back in the living room, the silence of the house pressing down on me like a shroud.
Rowan’s already there, his hands empty, his face carved into something tight and grim.
There’s no hesitation in his stance, no flicker of doubt—just a hard, cold acceptance.
His eyes meet mine for a moment, and in that look, I see the same truth I’ve just walked through in my room.
He left it all behind too. Nothing in this house deserves to survive.
Emerson drags in a few beats later, slower than us, his shoulders heavy as though the walls themselves tried to keep him from leaving.
His face is pale, drained of color, his eyes shadowed like he’s aged years in the span of minutes.
When he finally speaks, it’s barely more than a whisper, the words raw, splintered, like they’ve been dragged across broken glass. “There’s nothing here for us.”
The sound of it twists something inside me. Emerson has always been the steady one, the voice that stabilizes storms before they tear through us, but right now he looks gutted, wrecked in a way that no amount of steel can mask.
Rowan and I both shake our heads, the motion slow and heavy.
He’s right. This place isn’t ours anymore.
Maybe it never was. Whatever fragments of ourselves once lingered here—laughing in the halls, sneaking out the windows, planning lives bigger than these walls—they’re long gone.
Ash waiting to happen. What remains is nothing but ghosts and ruin, and it’s time we stop pretending otherwise.