Chapter 5
Oisín
The room erupts into more chaos, noise blooming from every side at once, voices rising over scraped chairs and shifting bodies until the meeting stops feeling like a negotiation and starts feeling like the second before somebody reaches for a gun.
I’m still standing behind Varina with the folder still clutched to my chest, fingers pressed so hard into the cardboard spine that the edge is bending beneath my grip.
For a moment, I can’t make my body move.
I can’t even seem to make my thoughts move in a straight line.
Saint’s words keep replaying inside my head with awful clarity, each one colder and heavier than the last.
I’ll sign for him.
Like I’m a substitution. Like I’m an amendment. Like whatever happened six nights ago in a dark room with music shaking the walls has somehow reached forward, grabbed me by the throat, and dragged me into the center of both clubs.
Canon is shouting. Varina is shouting back. Rook has one hand on the table and the other hovering too close to his cut, while Bricks, the massive Obsidian man with the gold tooth and mean amusement in his eyes, looks like he’s been waiting all day for a reason to hurt somebody.
Moth keeps trying to cut through the noise with the contract open beneath his palm, explaining clause language and bloodline requirements like paperwork can hold back pride once it starts spilling.
Sol Masters is at the head of the Obsidian side, just watching the room with a stillness that somehow makes every raised voice seem childish.
And then there’s Saint.
He’s on the other side of the table with his hands planted against the wood, massive shoulders loose under his cut, mouth curved in a slow smile that feels less like amusement than possession learning its own shape.
His eyes stay on me through the chaos, as if the room has become an inconvenient background to whatever decision he made the second he recognized me.
I hate that my body remembers him before my mind can decide what to do.
It remembers the weight of his attention.
It remembers the low certainty of his voice.
It remembers the impossible, humiliating relief of being looked at by someone who didn’t want me harder or louder or crueler before he wanted me at all.
Now that same attention is on me in a room full of men who would turn that truth into a weapon if they understood it, and instead of feeling only fear, only rage, only the reasonable panic of a man whose life is being rewritten without consent, some hidden part of me warms beneath it.
That’s the sickest part.
That beneath the shame and terror, Saint’s presence makes me feel seen and that sick, awful part of me craves more of it. I must be broken.
“Oisín.”
Canon’s voice cuts through the mess cleanly enough that my whole body responds. I look at him, and the room tilts back into place around my father’s face.
He’s standing near the corner of the table now, one hand braced against the chair he shoved aside.
The fury in him hasn’t burned out. It’s been compacted into something harder, more useful.
That’s what Canon does with every emotion eventually.
Rage becomes command. Grief became silence. Disappointment became my childhood.
“Come here,” he says.
Varina turns toward him. “Don’t.”
Canon doesn’t even glance at her. “I wasn’t speaking to you.”
Varina’s mouth tightens, and for one second I see the girl she used to be under all that sharpness, the one who once stood in doorways blocking me from rooms where Canon’s disappointment felt too loud. Then the moment disappears.
I step around her as Canon takes me by the upper arm, and draws me a few steps away from the table toward the side of the room where a framed map of Rogue territory hangs beside a locked liquor cabinet.
My father leans close enough that his voice doesn’t need to carry. “You know him.”
It isn’t a question.
My throat tightens. “Not the way you mean.”
Canon’s eyes harden, and for a ridiculous second I feel twelve years old again, standing in the hall after Mom’s funeral because I’d cried too loudly at the wake and made men uncomfortable.
He looked at me then the way he’s looking at me now, as if my softness is a private flaw that keeps becoming public at the worst possible times.
“You went out and made yourself a liability.”
“I didn’t know who he was.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
“Good. At least you’re not stupid enough to try.”
I swallow. My mouth tastes like metal, though I don’t remember biting my tongue. “I didn’t plan this.”
Canon’s gaze flicks toward Saint and back. “He did. Maybe not before today, but men like that don’t move unless they’ve already decided where they want the knife to land.”
I want to say I know that. I want to say Saint’s decision feels like a blade under my chin already, like being chosen and used and exposed all at once.
But the words tangle somewhere behind my teeth because the other truth is uglier.
Some part of me still feels the ghost of peace when I look at him, and I don’t know what to do with that except hate myself for it.
Canon’s fingers tighten slightly on my arm.
“This alliance matters more than whatever shame you’re carrying.
You’ll sign the contract, you’ll go where you’re told, and you’ll keep your head down inside Obsidian.
You’re not going there as a lover or a husband or whatever bullshit title Sol’s people want to dress it up as.
You’re going there as Rogue blood securing Rogue survival. ”
I look at him then, the ache inside my chest shifting into something colder. “You were going to send Varina.”
His expression barely changes. “Varina knows duty.”
“So do I.”
“No,” Canon says, quiet and immediate. “You know how to be hurt by it.”
Behind us, Varina’s voice rises. “He gets a choice. You don’t get to stand there and pretend this is cleaner because you changed which one of us bleeds.”
Canon’s attention flicks over my shoulder. “Stay out of it.”
“He’s my brother.”
“He’s my son.”
I almost laugh but I bite the reaction back, knowing that it’ll only make my father look weak in front of two clubs.
Canon looks back at me. “At least you’ll finally be useful.”
The words are soft enough that maybe only I hear them. Maybe Saint does too. I don’t know. Nothing in the world rearranges itself around the fact that my father has just reduced my entire life to a function and called it mercy.
I pull my arm from his hand and Canon lets me go, but his eyes warn me not to mistake the release for freedom. “Sign.”
I turn back toward the table just as Sol clears his throat. The room immediately settles, a sort of appreciation for the Obsidian leader’s power making me realize my father is mostly all talk.
Sol’s voice cuts through the room. “Enough. The clause stands. The presidents agree, the Ward signs, Saint signs, and the alliance is formal. Anyone with objections can make them after the ink’s dry and the guns are put away.”
Canon turns toward him sharply. “Don’t command my table.”
Sol exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “Then stop losing control of it in my room.”
I brace myself for the worst to happen, Canon’s hands fisting at his sides. His nostrils flare in defiance as Sol just runs through where our signatures are supposed to fall. Each of us silently fall in line, my signature the second to last on the page.
Saint signs just beside me, staring at the drying ink for a moment before placing the pen back on the table.
“There,” Sol says. “Done.”
Logistics erupt through the room again, everyone talking over each other but my eyes are now on Saint, the man’s gaze firmly fixed on me. I hold my breath as he reaches over, his hand settling on the back of my neck.
I go completely still.
His palm is warm and heavy, fingers spreading beneath my curls, thumb resting just behind my ear.
It isn’t a caress. It’s too firm for that, too claiming, too public.
He doesn’t squeeze hard, but the touch turns my spine into a live wire, and the worst part is how quickly my body understands the instruction inside it.
Move.
Shame burns up my throat as Saint steers me toward the door with that hand at my nape, guiding rather than dragging, which somehow feels worse because I obey so easily.
Canon’s voice cuts through the conversation. “Where are you—”
“He’s with me now,” Saint says without turning around.
Canon’s voice lowers. “Careful, Masters.”
Saint’s hand tightens by a fraction, and I hate myself for the way my breath catches. Neither man speaks again, two clubs watching me walk out under Saint’s hand.
The hallway outside the meeting room is cooler, quieter. My heartbeat fills the space between my ears. His thumb shifts once against the sensitive place under my hairline, and I nearly trip over my own feet.
Saint catches me without looking down. “Easy.”
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound in the hallway where anyone could hear.
I don’t understand myself. I don’t understand how I can be this angry, this frightened, this humiliated, and still feel my body softening under the exact hand that just dragged me into a new kind of hell.
Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it isn’t him.
Maybe it’s just the shock of leaving the Rogues, the awful relief of being pulled away from Canon’s disappointment even if the thing doing the pulling is just another monster with better timing.
Maybe Saint feels like escape only because I haven’t had enough distance to see the shape of the cage yet.
Or maybe I’m sick for wanting his touch when I should want nothing but distance.