Chapter Thirteen #2
“So we plan,” Blade continues. “We figure out how to fight this thing, how to cut that tether without killing her. Prophet, you dig deeper into your fallen-angel knowledge. Flint, see what your dragon hoard of bullshit says. Bodhi, you’re our tree whisperer, find out what the land knows about what’s under it. ”
Bodhi straightens, face flushing. “Yes, Prez.”
“As for using Tessa as bait...” Blade’s gaze swings to me again. “If we ever go that route, it will be because she agreed to it. Not before. Club vote. Full say. Understood?”
A low chorus of acknowledgments rises around the room.
Fury huffs, but doesn’t argue further. Ranger leans back, studying me with new calculation. Hollywood tips an invisible hat, mouth curling at the corner.
Vex finally sits, but the tension in him doesn’t ease. Not even a fraction.
Blade knocks his knuckles on the table once more. “Meeting adjourned. For now. Don’t do anything stupid without talkin’ to me first.”
Chairs scrape, conversations restart, the hum of noise slowly rising. Hannah touches my arm.
“Come on,” she says softly. “You need air.”
We step out into the cold air. The door closes behind us, muffling the noise. For a second, we stand in the frosty Alaskan air, both breathing hard.
“Are they always that intense?” I ask.
Her mouth twists into a wry smile. “You should see them on poker night.”
Despite everything, a laugh escapes me. It feels fragile, but real.
Hannah threads her arm through mine, tugging me away from the meeting room. “Walk with me,” she says. “Before Vex finds a corner to brood in and you feel obligated to fill it.”
We weave through the compound, past the main building, to a fire pit.
The air bites in that dry, clean way only Alaska seems to manage.
Snow crunches under our boots. The compound sprawls around us, the garage, cabins, training yard, the hut they first kept me in when I first learned they were monsters. .
Hannah keeps our pace slow. “You were badass in there,” she says. “Half those guys respect nothing but spine and blood. You gave them both.”
“I nearly threw up on the table.”
“Spine and blood,” she repeats, bumping my shoulder. “Never said anything about stomach.”
We stop near a line of pine trees, dark spears against the pale sky. My shoulder throbs where the mark sits, a dull echo now rather than a scream.
“When Blade carried you out of my room the other night...” I begin, then trail off, unsure how much of that is mine to ask about.
Her expression softens instantly. “Yeah?”
“You called him your mate.”
Color rises in her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. “I did.”
“What does that... mean? For you? For him?”
She blows out a breath, watching it fog the air. “It means he’s mine and I’m his. On a level that makes marriage look like a polite handshake. It’s instinct, bond, choice, all tangled together. It means the idea of losing him feels worse than dying, and he’d probably say the same. It’s... intense.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I ask.
She laughs quietly. “I didn’t say I wasn’t terrified. But I am okay with it. Because for the first time in my life, I’m not alone. I have him. I have this place. I have you.”
The last few words land heavy in my chest.
“You barely know me,” I say.
Her gaze sharpens. “I know enough. I know you stayed when you could’ve run. I know you turned into a human lightning rod during that meeting instead of letting them talk around you. And you keep looking at Vex like he’s going to hurt you and save you in the same breath.”
Heat crawls up my throat. “That obvious?”
“To anyone with eyes, yeah.”
I exhale slowly, the weight of my past pressing against the inside of my ribs. Maybe it’s the cold, or the endless stretch of sky, or the way Hannah’s looking at me, open, patient, without judgment. Either way, the words begin to rise.
“My family wasn’t good,” I say. “Not good people. My father... he did things. To people. To us.”
Hannah’s fingers brush my arm, silently urging me on.
“He used to say the world owed him. My mother believed him. They were both mean in different ways. She was cold. He was fire.” The word sits bitter on my tongue.
“When I was eight, they had one of their fights. Screaming, smashing things. I hid in the closet with a blanket and a flashlight and a book I’d already read four times. ”
My chest tightens, but the images come anyway.
Smoke.
Heat.
Sirens in the distance.
“I smelled the smoke first,” I whisper. “Thought they’d burnt dinner again. Then it got thicker. The door handle turned hot. Someone was pounding on our front door, shouting. I stayed where I was because hiding always worked before.”
My eyes blur. The snow in front of my boots goes double.
“The fire started in the kitchen,” I say. “Spread so fast. By the time I opened the closet door, the hallway was full of smoke. I couldn’t breathe. I crawled. Flames were already on the ceiling. He... he locked the front door before he set it. Trapped her inside. Trapped both of us.”
Hannah’s hand finds mine, squeezes tight.
“I don’t remember how I got out,” I go on. “One of the firefighters said they found me near a back window, half-conscious. My mother didn’t make it. My father did. He went to prison, but that never felt like enough.”
The tears spill over. I let them. They burn hotter than the mark ever has.
“I went to live with my best friend’s family after that,” I say.
“They were kind. Normal. They gave me a room, a bed, a place at their table. They never made me feel like a burden. But no matter how safe I was, there was always this... pull. A feeling in my bones. North. Cold. Mountains. Alaska. It didn’t make sense. ”
“Until now,” Hannah murmurs.
“Until now,” I echo. “Until a giant bear-shifter President and a vampire VP walked into my shitty little life and told me the mark on my shoulder is tied to some ancient monster under the ice.”
We stand there in the cold, our breath tangling.
Hannah leans her head against my shoulder.
“You deserved better than all of that,” she says.
“Your parents, the fire, the years after. But you’re here.
You’re with us. You’ve got me, Blade, Prophet, a clubhouse full of idiots who will die for you on principle, and one vamp who already looks at you like you hung the moon and the noose around his neck. ”
A broken laugh escapes me. “That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be true.” She pulls back enough to meet my eyes. “Whatever happens with the mark, with that thing under the ice, you’re not facing it alone. Found family, remember?”
The words settle in my chest, a small, stubborn light in all the dark.
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it more than I know how to explain.
She bumps my shoulder again. “Anytime. Now, I’m gonna find Blade and nag him into eating something before he decides brooding counts as a food group. You should probably talk to Vex before he finds fifty new ways to torture himself over what happened.”
My stomach flips. “He’s fine.”
She snorts. “He’s Vex. Fine isn’t in his vocabulary.” Her grin turns wry. “Besides, the longer you avoid him, the louder his pacing gets.”
She heads toward the main building, leaving me alone with the wind, the trees, and the faint glow of the mark under my skin.
The sun is starting to sink when I work up the nerve to go back inside.
Scout is in the kitchen with glitter in his hair. Stash is carrying ledgers and growling about numbers. Prophet paces with distant eyes, lips moving in silent prayer.
I keep going until I’m outside Vex’s door. Fingers brushing the worn wood. No sound comes from inside, no pacing, no fist against the wall.
For some reason, that worries me more.
I force myself to keep moving. My hand shakes as I push the door open.
Vex is already inside.
He stands near the window, back to me, shoulders tense. The last of the daylight paints a faint line along his profile, turning his hair nearly black and his skin almost translucent.
“How do you stay so quiet?” I ask, closing the door behind me.
He doesn’t turn. “Trick of the trade.”
My pulse speeds up. The mark stirs.
“Sulking and brooding, VP?” I say. “Very presidential of you.”
“Don’t.” His voice is rough. “Don’t use jokes to dodge this. Not tonight.”
The fragile shield of sarcasm cracks. I cross my arms to keep from reaching for something, him, the wall, anything solid.
“Dodge what?” I ask.
He finally faces me.
The hunger from last night still burns in his eyes, but something else is there now too. Guilt. Fury. A desperate restraint that looks painful.
“You stood in that room,” he says, stepping closer, “surrounded by monsters who could tear you apart, and told them they don’t own you. You said you’d choose if you’re bait. You did that while your mark was flaring and that thing under the ice was listening.”
I swallow hard. “Would you rather I stayed quiet and let them decide for me?”
His jaw tightens. “I’d rather you didn’t offer yourself up as sacrifice.”
“That’s not what I did.”
“You think I didn’t feel it?” he snaps. “The pull? Every time your emotions spike, it reaches for you. For us. You think I don’t know your choices matter?”
I take a shaky breath. “Maybe my choices are the only thing I still own.”
He stops, close enough now that I can feel the cold radiating from his body. It reaches for my heat, wrapping around it without quite touching.
“What happened to you?” he asks suddenly, voice lower. “Before us. Before this place. Before the mark.”
The images rise again, smoke, flame, the sound of wood screaming as it burns.
“Nothing worth telling,” I whisper.
He doesn’t move. “Tessa.”
There’s something about the way he says my name. It slides under my skin, past all my defenses. Maybe I’m tired of carrying it alone. Maybe Hannah cracked me open earlier and I haven’t quite sealed back up.
Either way, the words come.
I tell him.