Chapter Thirteen
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Tessa
The common room hums with a tension that has nothing to do with the coffee.
Voices overlap, low and rough, the scrape of chairs and clink of mugs filling the space. On the surface, it’s business as usual, brothers in cuts, boots on scarred floorboards, weapons within reach, laughter cutting through the air in sharp bursts.
Underneath, everything feels... off.
Wrong around the edges.
Conversations drop when I walk past. Eyes slide over me and then away too quickly, or linger a fraction too long. Fury’s gaze burns with suspicion. Ranger’s wolf eyes track every move, calculating. Even Hollywood, usually all charm and smirks, watches me with a wariness he doesn’t bother to hide.
I wrap my hands around the hot mug Hannah pressed into them, letting the heat bite my skin.
“Ignore them,” she murmurs, hip brushing mine as she leans on the counter beside me. “They’re assholes before breakfast on a good day.”
“This isn’t a good day,” I whisper back.
She doesn’t argue. Her fingers graze the back of my hand, a small, grounding touch.
Across the room, Blade stands near the far wall, arms folded over his chest, a mountain in denim and leather. Prophet is beside him, dark hair falling around his face, eyes distant in that half-haunted way he has, as if he’s listening to something nobody else can hear.
Vex leans against the end of the bar, between me and the rest of the room, posture lazy, presence anything but. Pale throat, dark hair, eyes that seem almost normal until the light hits them wrong and something inside flashes, cold and hungry and anything but human.
He’s been doing that all morning, hovering close enough to be a shadow without touching me, without speaking more than a word at a time.
Every time my gaze slides his way, heat flickers through me, followed by guilt and something that feels a hell of a lot like fear.
“Alright.” Blade’s voice cuts through the room, low and commanding. Instantly, conversations die. “We’re callin’ church. Everyone in.”
Chairs scrape. The mood shifts, goes from simmer to boil.
Hannah nudges my arm. “You sit with me,” she says, tone brooking no argument. “You’re involved whether some of them want to admit it or not.”
We sit behind Vex at the table they use for eating as well as their meeting room.
Long table. Scarred wood. The Kings’ reaper-and-crown emblem burned into the center.
High-backed chairs on one side, simple chairs on the other.
Brothers take their places by instinct, hierarchy written in leather and patches.
Blade at the head.
Vex to his right.
Fury, Hollywood, Flint, Stash, Ranger, Scout, Prophet, Rooster, Styx, Chrome, Cyclone.
Prospects, Bodhi, Azriel, Kyler, hover near the back wall, eager and tense.
Blade knocks his knuckles against the wood once. “This is official. We’re on record. What’s said in here stays in here. Everybody clear?”
Murmurs of agreement.
His gaze sweeps the room, then lands on me. It weighs more than his entire bear form, I’m sure of it.
“We got a problem,” he says. “A big one. Our girl here’s wearin’ a mark from a creature we still don’t fully understand. Prophet?”
The fallen angel straightens, fingers curling around the edges of his chair. “The connection is active,” he says quietly. “It’s not dormant anymore. Every time Tessa’s emotions spike, the mark responds. It glows, burns, pulls. It’s not random.”
A shiver crawls up my spine. The shoulder he’s talking about feels suddenly heavy under my shirt.
“What does that mean?” Ranger asks, voice gravelly. “Plain language, preacher.”
“It means,” Prophet replies, “her fear, anger, desire, all of it, feeds the tether between her and the thing under the ice. The more she feels, the stronger its reach.”
A low rumble passes around the table.
“Should we knock her out and keep her sedated until we figure it out?” Styx asks.
“Problem solved,” mutters Rooster.
Vex’s head tilts, eyes narrowing. “Try it,” he says softly.
Styx lifts his hands. “Kidding. Mostly.”
Blade doesn’t smile. “We ain’t drugging her. We’re not animals.”
Fury leans forward, tattoos shifting over the thick cords of his forearms. “We keep dancin’ around the obvious,” he growls. “That thing wants her? Fine. We use it. Put her somewhere exposed, let it come sniffing, ambush it, and end this.”
Hannah goes rigid at my side. My heart slams into my ribs so hard it hurts.
Vex’s chair screeches as he stands.
The motion from relaxed to lethal is too fast for my human brain to track. One moment Fury is smirking, the next Vex has him by the throat, slammed back against the wall, boots skidding on the floor. Fangs punch down, eyes gone so bright and pale they almost glow.
“Say that again,” he hisses, voice stripped of humanity. “Say it. I dare you.”
Every muscle in the room explodes into tension.
Ranger is up, chair tipping, wolf snarling under his skin.
Hollywood’s glamour flickers, a faint heat-haze over his features.
Flint’s pupils narrow to slits, inner dragon straining.
Power prickles across my skin, each supernatural energy a different flavor of danger.
The mark on my shoulder detonates.
Cold fire streaks down my arm, through my chest, wraps around my ribs. Breath rips out of me. The room tilts for a heartbeat, edges warping.
Somewhere far away, under miles of ice and earth, something stirs.
Hears.
Answers.
“Tessa?” Hannah’s voice, distant and distorted, cuts through the roar in my ears. Her hand clamps around my wrist. “Breathe.”
Vex’s grip tightens on Fury, knuckles white. Fury’s hands claw at his wrist, red eyes burning, the threat of fire smoldering in his veins.
“Enough,” Blade snaps.
The single word shakes the walls.
He doesn’t move his feet, but the air shifts around him, weight of a predator who dropped its disguise. The temperature dips, the boards under our boots protest.
Vex doesn’t let go.
“Vex.” Prophet says his name with quiet steel. “You’re making it worse. Look at her.”
His head jerks toward me.
For a second, I see both of us from outside, me, clutching Hannah’s hand, mark blazing under my shirt, vision blurred with tears, him, all fangs and rage, holding a brother off the ground.
Something in his expression cracks.
Fury crashes back into his chair when Vex releases him. He coughs, rubbing his throat. “Fuck,” he rasps. “You’re welcome for the suggestion.”
Hollywood snorts. “Maybe next time you aim your big ideas at the enemy.”
Vex doesn’t sit. He plants his hands on the table instead, close enough that I feel the cold curling off his skin. His eyes are still pale, voice frayed around the edges.
“We are not using her as bait without her consent,” he snarls. “She is not a bargaining chip. She is not disposable.”
“The club isn’t disposable either,” Fury fires back. “We all bleed for this place. Her mark puts every single one of us on the line. We’re supposed to sit around and hope feelings fix it?”
“Make a move on her dog and I will put you down,” states Vex.
“I’ve gone easy on you Vampire but don’t think for one minute, you could bring me down. You think you’re evil. I am evil and the devil calls me friend.”
Enough.
The word screams through my head before I realize I’ve moved.
My chair scrapes across the floor as I stand. The sound snaps every gaze toward me. My knees wobble, but my voice doesn’t when I speak.
“If anyone uses me as bait,” I say, “it’ll be because I agreed to it. Not because someone decided I’m expendable.”
The silence that follows feels endless.
Blade’s massive frame turns toward me fully, eyes dark and assessing.
“Tessa,” he begins, tone measured. “You’re—”
“I’m the one with the mark,” I cut in. “The one this thing keeps reaching for, the one who keeps waking up with frost in her veins. You want to act like I’m not already in this? Too late. I’m in it up to my neck. But you don’t get to make decisions about my body, my life, without me.”
My heartbeat thunders, every nerve on fire. The mark is still burning, but the pull shifts, focuses, no longer wild. It coils inward, feeding off the surge of something sharp and stubborn inside me.
I step away from my chair, into the open space between Blade and the rest of the table. If they want a focal point, they can have it.
“You say nobody fucks with the Kings,” I continue.
“Fine. Then maybe you should remember you brought me in under that crown. You claimed me. You put me in your house, under your protection. So, either I’m part of this family and my voice matters, or I’m a resource and we stop pretending this is about loyalty. ”
Rooster whistles under his breath. Styx mutters something that sounds suspiciously impressed. Chrome’s lynx gaze brightens with interest.
Vex is still watching me, frozen in place, a storm in vampire skin.
Prophet’s mouth curves in a faint, almost sad smile.
Blade’s jaw flexes. The scrape of bone is nearly audible. “You finished?” he asks.
“Not even close,” I answer. “But it’s your turn.”
He studies me for a long moment. Then his hand rises and he rubs the bridge of his nose as though fighting a headache.
“Fury’s not wrong about one thing,” Blade says slowly.
“You are a risk. The mark ties you to something that could level this land and take half the state with it. But he’s wrong about another thing.
” He shifts his gaze across the table, pinning each brother in turn before returning to me.
“We don’t throw our people to the wolves.
We don’t hand them over, and we sure as hell don’t use them without their say-so. ”
He hooks a finger under the chain around his neck, where his President patch hangs in miniature metal form. “Nobody fucks with the Kings,” he says quietly. “That includes the Kings fuckin’ with their own.”
A few brothers nod. Others look away, grumbling.