Chapter Twenty-Six
ROGUE
The Next Night
Every brother is already seated by the time Crave calls Church, their chairs pulled into a rough circle around the battered table, the air between them heavy and charged, as it gets before a storm breaks.
No one’s joking.
No one’s leaning back with a beer in hand the way they might on an ordinary night. The patches on their cuts catch the overhead light, Eternal Sins MC stitched in faded thread above ink, scars, and centuries of survival.
I take my seat to Crave’s left. Sloane stands near the wall behind him, her arms loose at her sides, that quiet strength she carries now sitting differently on her than it used to, like she’s grown into the power rather than wrestling it.
Beside me, Scorch drops into his chair, cigarette already burning between his fingers, the ember a small, furious orange point in the dim room.
Oracle slides in next to Scorch almost unnoticed.
Dread folds into his seat next to him, his presence the kind of still that isn’t peaceful.
On the other side of the table, Hades takes the seat next to Hex, unhurried, the faint smell of old earth and cold stone following him the way it always does.
And Grizz takes the far end, having to sit at the end of the table due to his sheer size.
The three club girls, Eden, Reyna, and Seraphine, are even standing at the back wall for this Church. It seems everyone is in on this briefing.
And then there’s Charlie.
She lingers in the doorway for a second before stepping inside, dragging a breath through her nose first. She’s checking the room while feeling out the heartbeats around her and how hard they hit before she lets herself all the way in. It’s not a weakness. It’s discipline.
Weeks ago, she didn’t have any.
Now she uses it like armor.
She sits beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushes mine, and something in my chest settles the way it does whenever she’s in reach. I don’t reach for her. Not here. But my wolf tracks her anyway, the way it always does.
Crave lets the quiet hold for exactly three seconds before he speaks, “Sloane found Valeria’s location through the blood trace.
” He doesn’t ease into it. His voice carries the weight of centuries of command, flat, certain, and leaving no room for debate.
“She is currently at an abandoned church on the northern outskirts. She’s been using it as a base of operations.
Our intel puts at least twenty newborn scions inside, possibly more.
” His gaze moves around the table, landing on each of us in turn. “We end this tonight.”
“Hex and Grizz hold the compound, protect the perimeter, ensure no secondary force moves on our people while we’re gone.” He pauses. “No heroics from either of you. You hold this ground.”
Grizz nods once from the back of the room, steady as bedrock, his Stonehide almost visible in the set of his jaw.
Hex doesn’t look thrilled. I see the argument building behind his eyes, but he swallows it.
Then Crave’s gaze shifts to the far side of the table, where Ronan sits with his boot propped against the chair leg, one of his lucky coins turning over and over between his knuckles in that restless fae habit of his.
Beside him, Jet is completely still by contrast, the smoky black of his soul tether coiled at his forearm, his pale eyes giving nothing away.
The two of them together look exactly like what Crave once called them, miracles and monsters, side by side.
“Ronan…” Crave’s voice carries the note it gets when he’s about to hand someone a responsibility they need to understand fully before they accept it.
“You’re on the strike team. Valeria’s church will have wards, traps, contingencies.
She’s had months to build her stronghold, and she is meticulous.
I need your Luck Bending inside that building before the first engagement, bending the odds in our favor before she can tip them against us.
” He pauses just long enough to let the weight of it land.
“Do not burn through your tally carelessly. I need the probability shifts where they count most, not scattered.”
Ronan stops the coin mid-roll. His molten gold eyes flick to Crave, and the grin that crosses his face isn’t the easy cocky one he wears when he’s deflecting.
It’s sharper than that, genuine, lit from the inside by the kind of excitement a leprechaun can’t entirely suppress when fate is about to be bent.
He taps the tally marks on his forearm once.
“She wants to play the odds against us. She’s picked the worst possible night for it. ” He pockets the coin. “I’m in.”
“Jet…” The name falls quiet, and his pale eyes sharpen without his expression changing at all.
“You’re compound defense. I need your Phasemind and your Soul Resonance inside these walls tonight, not a mile away.
” There’s no softening in Crave’s tone, no apology, and Jet wouldn’t respect one if there were.
“If Valeria sends a secondary force while our backs are turned, you are the thing that moves through walls and hears them before they arrive. You work with Hex and Grizz. The compound does not fall.”
He responds with silence, not disagreement.
Jet holds Crave’s gaze for a long moment with those eyes that always look like they’re reading something the rest of us can’t see.
Whatever he hears, it satisfies something.
He exhales a slow breath through his nose, smoke drifting from the cigarette burning low between two fingers.
“Compound stays standing,” he says, and his voice is the flat, sardonic kind that other people might mistake for indifference. Everyone in this room knows better.
From beside him, Ronan leans back with exaggerated ease and nudges Jet’s shoulder with his. “Look at us, mate, one holds the fort, one tilts the universe. The twins of bad timing, finally given their moment.”
“Stop talking,” Jet says, without heat.
Ronan grins anyway, pocketing his coin. The tally marks on his forearm catch the light as his hand moves, borrowed luck, already counting down.
“Reyna…” Crave’s voice doesn’t shift in register, but the weight of it does, the way it always does when he’s addressing someone he’s counting on rather than issuing a courtesy. “You’re on the strike team.”
Reyna doesn’t react the way some people do when they’re called into a fight, no sharpening of posture, no flash of heat.
She’s already leaning forward with her forearms on the table, dog tags catching the overhead light as they swing forward, and the faint glow along her lightning-vein scars pulses once, reading the room, reading the combat potential in each of us the way only her All-Mother’s Sight can.
She simply nods, and the movement carries the weight of a thousand battlefields behind it.
“Seraphine…” The name falls from Crave’s mouth with deliberate care.
“I want you on the strike team. Valeria’s scions are newborns…
they’re running on instinct and hunger, and instinct responds to Resonance.
If we need to slow them without destroying them, your voice will do what none of us can.
” Something moves across Seraphine’s face, not surprise, but recognition, the look of someone who has spent years being desired for the wrong reasons, finally being valued for the right one.
Her eyes, always a fraction too bright to look at directly, settle on Crave with quiet acknowledgment.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.
“Eden…” The final name, and the air in the room goes still in the way it always does when Crave says it, because even the most ancient thing in the room has learned to pay attention when the banshee is addressed.
Eden stands near the far end of the table, her Irish-dark hair falling forward as she tilts her head, the lights above her flickering once in that unconscious way they always do in her vicinity.
“You stay with Hex and Grizz. If we take casualties, if anyone’s dying, and I need to know about it before it happens, I need your Deathsense inside this compound, not a mile away in a derelict church.
” He says it without apology, without softening it into something she hasn’t already accepted.
“You are this compound’s warning. There is no one else I trust with that. ”
Eden’s gaze holds his for a long moment—the lights above her steady.
“I’ll hear them coming,” she says, and her voice, even at conversational volume, carries that quality, not musical, but resonant, like the space around it has been touched.
“Any soul moves toward this compound with intent to harm, I’ll know before they hit the gates. ”
“Good.” Crave stands. “Then we know exactly what we are walking into and exactly who is holding the line behind us.” His gaze sweeps the full table—brothers, Old Ladies, club girls, prospects reduced to their posts. “All right, I think we’re set.”
“There’s one more thing…” Sloane’s voice is quiet, but it carries the way hers always does now.
She steps away from the wall, and the firelight catches the faint crimson shimmer at her fingertips, Bloodfire sitting just beneath the surface of her skin, restless and patient all at once. “I’m coming.”
Crave doesn’t flinch, but I see the barely perceptible shift in his posture, not resistance, more like he was waiting for it. “I know,” he says.