Chapter Six
CRAVE
The Church room reeks of tension and barely contained violence.
Every brother sits around the scarred oak table, supernatural creatures bleeding into the air in ways humans could never detect.
Scorch’s temperature runs three degrees hotter than it should, veins of molten red crawling beneath his skin when he shifts in his chair.
Dread’s presence presses against my senses like a physical weight, primal fear he isn’t even trying to suppress.
Hex’s fingers fly across his laptop, the blue glow of his technomancy reflecting in his eyes as he monitors feeds streaming across multiple screens.
And Rogue stands guard outside the reinforced basement door, refusing to join us at the table, refusing to leave her side.
The Bloodguard connection between us stretches thin and frayed, worn down to its last fibers. I feel his conflict bleeding through the weakened bond, loyalty to me warring with something new, something powerful enough to override centuries of sworn duty and blood-forged oaths.
The mate pull.
I’ve watched fated mate bonds burn kingdoms and topple empires.
I’ve never wanted one. The Heart Bind with Sloane is different, forged through blood and conscious decision—a partnership of equals.
What Rogue has with the girl in our basement is pure instinct.
Fate deciding two souls belong together, whether it destroys them both or not.
And it’s tearing my VP apart from the inside out.
“Four murders in less than twenty-four hours,” Hex announces, pulling my attention back to the crisis at hand.
His voice carries that clipped efficiency he gets when processing too much information too fast. “All within a fifteen-mile radius of the compound. All drained of blood. Police scanners are lighting up with speculation about a serial killer using some kind of medical device to drain its victims.”
“The creativity doesn’t matter,” I say, my voice cutting through the murmured responses. “The pattern does, the exposure. We just survived a war with the Coven of Crows. The last thing we need is a stray vampire drawing their attention back to our doorstep.”
“She’s not stray,” Oracle states wisely. “She’s a scion. She didn’t choose this.”
“Doesn’t change the body count,” Scorch growls, smoke literally curling from his nostrils. His dragon is close to the surface, responding to the violence saturating the room. “Four dead humans in one day. How many more before we act?”
“Act how?” Dread asks, his fear projection leaking enough to lower the temperature. “We’ve got a newborn vampire locked in our basement. Three options… train her, contain her, or end her.”
“I vote to end her.” Scorch leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “Burn the problem, solve it permanently. Can’t have more murders if the murderer is ash.”
The words land in the room without challenge. Not because the brothers agree, but because none of them are willing to be the one to say what’s making this harder than it should be.
“She didn’t choose this,” Dread repeats Rogue’s words, his divine heritage making him sensitive to injustice in ways the rest of us aren’t. “She’s a victim. Someone made her into a weapon.”
“Sloane’s Crimson Sight confirmed it,” I say, remembering my Blood Witch’s report from earlier. Her new powers are still raw, unpredictable, but the Sight doesn’t lie. “Charlotte was turned against her will. A forced transformation. Someone powerful did this to her.”
“Who?” Hex asks, his tactical mind already calculating angles. “What vampire is stupid enough to create scions in our territory without permission?”
The blood signature surfaces in my memory before I can stop it. Ancient and familiar, a pattern I haven’t sensed in over two centuries.
The answer sits in the back of my mind, unmoving, when the door opens.
I feel him before I see him.
Leather creaks as that restless, wolf-edge presence slides into the room, dragging my attention with it, whether I like it or not.
Rogue.
I turn, irritation sparking hot in my chest. “You said you weren’t leaving her.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t bristle back. “I needed to hear this.”
“Then sit down.” I hold his gaze with mine. “Because you haven’t heard the worst of it yet.”
Something crosses his face, but he doesn’t sit. However, he goes still in the way Rogue goes still when he’s bracing, weight dropped low, shoulders squared, ready to absorb the inevitable impact.
“The sire signature in Charlotte’s blood…” I let the silence build. “It belongs to Valeria.”
The shift in him hits fast. His shoulders dip, jaw tightens hard enough to flex, gold flashing savage in his eyes before he buries it again.
Not rage, something far worse. It’s the look of an old wound getting ripped back open.
“She’s dead,” he says, flat and certain.
“So, I thought.”
“You told us the Coven executed her.” Hades speaks carefully, his necromancer’s calm never wavering. “You said Khaos sent her wherever he sends beings through his Reality Bending. That no one ever comes back.”
“No one does.” The energy beneath my skin crackles, so I stand, needing to move. “And yet here she fucking is, in our territory, creating scions deliberately.”
“She’ll build an army,” Hex predicts. “She’ll force the Coven’s hand.”
“And when the Coven investigates…” Hades begins.
“They’ll find us at the center,” I end the sentence for him.
The trap closes around the table in silence, but Oracle’s voice cuts through it. “Then why this girl? What’s special about Charlotte that an exiled vampire risks everything to turn her?”
The answer moves across Rogue’s face before I speak it, and I see the second it hits him. The weight of it. The ugly truth of it. His expression hardens like he’s already put the pieces together before the words even left his mouth.
Our eyes lock across the room. “She’s my mate,” Rogue says quietly.
Nobody speaks.
Scorch pulls the cigarette from his mouth and crushes it out halfway through. That’s enough to put a crack through the room all on its own because Scorch treats cigarettes like extra organs.
Dread reins his fear back immediately, the pressure peeling off the room enough to breathe again, and Hex’s hands freeze over the keyboard.
Oracle shuts his eyes for a second. The silence that follows hits hard.
A room full of monsters going dead quiet for one of their own.
“Valeria didn’t just find my fated mate,” Rogue continues, his voice steady even as the tension coils through his shoulders. “She turned her into the one thing guaranteed to destroy me.”
Lycans and vampires are natural enemies. The Bloodguard are the exception, wolves who forge bonds that let both natures coexist.
But a Lycan’s mate turning vampire? That’s cruel in a way only fate can be.
Because vampires don’t carry life, they don’t build families, or get futures like that. Everything stops with us. Blood in, blood out. End of the line.
I watch the truth hit Rogue.
His whole body locks up for half a second like something reached into his chest and snapped bone from the inside. The kind of pain a man can’t fight because there’s nothing to punch, nothing to kill, nothing to bleed for to make it better.
No kids in his future with Charlotte.
No little pieces of him running through the clubhouse someday. No family that looks like them.
Just… nothing.
No tiny heartbeat curled against his chest. No pup with his dark eyes and Charlie’s stubborn mouth. No future where he teaches a son to shift or watches a daughter take her first unsteady steps across wooden floors.
Valeria didn’t just take his mate.
She severed his wolf bloodline.
Rogue’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t break. That’s not who he is. Still, I feel it, the grief sliding under his ribs like a blade. He would have been a good father. The kind who stands behind a pup without crowding them, who lets them fall but never lets them stay down.
And now?
Now that future is gone.
But he is my Bloodguard.
I think of the centuries stretching ahead of us, of dens filled with noise, chaos, and the next generation tumbling over one another in the snow.
One of his brothers will have kids, perhaps even one of the brothers in the MC.
And when that time comes, Rogue will be there, teaching them to hunt, to fight, to control the wolf inside them.
An uncle by blood and in name only.
But something far more in practice.
It won’t replace what was stolen.
Nothing will.
But when the centuries finally weigh heavy and the time comes for leadership to pass, one of those pups, someone strong, raised in our code, could take his place. Although Rogue can never be replaced.
Rogue won’t father a bloodline, but he will shape one.
And that matters.
Still… as I watch him stand there, shoulders squared, staring down a future rewritten without his consent, I know this much…
Valeria didn’t just declare war.
She made it goddamn personal.
“She’s sending a message through you,” I say. “Revenge.”
“For what?” Scorch demands.
“I condemned her. My testimony sealed her fate. She swore revenge, promised she’d make me lose everything.”
“She’ll create more,” Hex predicts. “Build an army. Force the Coven’s hand.”
Valeria wants to destroy everything I’ve built, the club, the family, the life I chose.
Burn it all and make me watch.
Starting with Rogue.
I move toward my vice president, who holds himself together through pure stubbornness. The Bloodguard connection flickers between us.
“You’re my Bloodguard,” I say evenly. “Your oath is to me. Your protection, your loyalty, your life if necessary.”
“I know.” His jaw clenches. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“But the connection is weakening.” Not an accusation, merely an observation. “I can feel it fraying.”
His eyes meet mine, gold flaring bright.
“That girl downstairs. Charlotte…” I pause. “She’s your fated mate.” It’s not a question, because we both already know it to be true.
“Yes. She’s mine.”
I nod, even though that truth feels heavy. “Then we have a problem. We just survived a war with the Coven. They’re watching, waiting for any excuse. And we have a vampire in our basement who’s killed four humans and can’t control herself.”
“I can teach her,” Rogue says desperately. “Give me time—”
“If she can’t stop killing, she’ll draw the Coven back.” I let that settle for a moment before continuing, “I won’t risk everything we’ve built for one vampire who can’t master her nature.”
“She’s my mate. You have Sloane. You know what—”
“I do. Which is why I’m giving you a choice.” His body goes still before I continue, “One week. Seven days to get her under control. Teach her to feed without killing. Master her bloodlust. Make her safe.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then… I will end her myself.” I let the Original power bleed into my voice. “Because I’m not losing my VP over a vampire who can’t control her bloodlust. And I’m not letting Valeria destroy this club through you.”
I watch my brother process the ultimatum. See his world fracture. Loyalty, duty, love crashing together.
“I can do it.” His voice emerges steady despite the chaos.
“Give me one week. I’ll make her safe, I swear it.
But not here.” Rogue’s voice is low, but it cuts.
“She can’t do this here. Not with a building full of heartbeats behind every wall.
She needs to be away from the clubhouse.
Somewhere, she can’t hurt anyone…” He pauses, choosing the words carefully. “Somewhere quiet.”
Scorch’s chair creaks as he leans forward, smoke curling from between his teeth. “You’re not seriously suggesting—”
“A cabin.” Rogue’s voice closes over the interruption without raising. “North of the ridge. Pack territory. She’ll be contained, the brothers here will be safe, and she’ll have room to… breathe.”
Silence falls across the table, and nobody moves.
I let it stretch.
Let him feel the weight of what he’s asking.
“You don’t want the club to help?” I keep my voice quiet, but the weight lands anyway. “The moment she crossed into this compound, she became club business.”
“And the club’s VP is handling it.” He doesn’t look away. “Give me one week at the cabin. If I can’t manage her through the worst of it, you’ll have my full report and my full cooperation in whatever comes next.”
Scorch’s temperature spikes, I feel it from across the table. “This isn’t a honeymoon, brother. It’s quarantine. You take her up there alone, and she gets loose in open country, we’re hunting her through the woods while the Coven watches.”
“She won’t get loose.” Rogue’s jaw is iron.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can!” The certainty in his voice is absolute. I haven’t heard him sound like that since the battle. Maybe not even then.
Rogue is already past the point of accepting any other answer. And killing him to enforce it would end us both.
“If she feeds on anything human—”
“She won’t.”
I study him. My Bloodguard, my brother, the wolf who hung in Thanatos’ magic while Viktor put three blades through my chest and still dragged himself upright to finish the fight.
He has never once lied to me.
“Conditions,” I say.
“Name them.”
“Hex drives the perimeter every forty-eight hours. You check in daily, voice, not text. If she puts teeth in one human, I will come myself. And I will not come alone.”
The last line lands where it’s meant to. I watch him absorb it. The brothers at this table will be the ones I’ll bring.
His own pack.
His own family.
Executioners for his mate.
He nods once. “Understood.”
“You better.” I grip his shoulder. “Because I’m not losing you, brother. Not to Valeria’s revenge. You’re my VP, and I’ll be damned if I let her destroy what we’ve built.”
Determination shifts across his face. “Seven days,” he confirms.
“Seven days.” I release him, and he turns to go.
“Rogue.”
He stops.
I don’t have words for what I actually want to say. I hope I’m wrong. I’d rather lose the argument than keep the promise. Two hundred years of watching him bleed for me has turned this into the hardest sentence I’ve spoken in decades.
None of it comes out, so instead I simply say, “Bring her back.”
Both of you. That’s what I mean. Charlotte, yes, but also the brother who’s stood at my right hand for two centuries. Whatever this week costs him, I need him walking out the other side of it still intact.
He knows.
“Yeah,” he says. “I will.”
Then, he’s gone.
The meeting breaks up, and the brothers disperse. I stand alone in Church with the scarred oak table still warm where my brothers sat.
A millennia I’ve survived by making hard decisions, choosing survival over sentiment.
This one might finally break something centuries couldn’t touch.
I head toward Sloane. Toward the Heart Bind burning bright and certain in my chest, the anchor that reminds me what all of this is for.
Seven days.
Either Charlotte learns control.
Or nothing between Rogue and me will ever be the same.