Chapter Seven #2
And with one gentle press of her lips, she reminds us why.
Once she finishes looking between us—measuring, weighing, testing us the way only Berk can—she nods to herself.
It’s a tiny movement, barely a shift of her chin, but it feels like a battle flag being raised.
Approval. Readiness. Resolve. For a moment, the room pauses around her, like even the walls know she’s the one who decides when the hunt begins.
Then her mouth tilts, wicked and bright, a spark catching dry tinder. “Let’s get this party started, yeah?”
She says it lightly, but there’s nothing light about her anymore. She isn’t the girl we knew growing up—and we’re not the boys we used to be. We’re older, harder, cut open by grief and honed by violence. Whatever we are now, whatever we’re becoming, we’re becoming it together.
We lock the house down tight, triple-checking windows and alarms, then load into the van. It groans under us like a dying animal. Rusted. Rattling. Smelling faintly of oil and burned rubber. I buckle in beside Berk, and the damn seatbelt sticks halfway. I have to punch the latch to make it click.
The ridiculousness of it all hits me, and I laugh under my breath. A laugh that’s created from exhaustion and adrenaline twisting together.
It grabs their attention instantly—three heads snapping toward me like wolves catching a scent.
I shake my head. “Relax. No danger. Just…” I gesture around us. “Berk. Where the hell do you find these shitty ass vans? And why are they always vans?”
The twin’s snort. Ronan mutters something crude about tetanus. Rowan shoots me a long-suffering glare in the rearview, but even he can’t hide the faint smirk tugging his mouth.
Berk sits beside me as if she’s perched on a throne instead of a decaying scrap heap.
She crosses one leg over the other, her boots squeaking against the torn vinyl.
“I’ll have you know,” she says, prim as a duchess, “these beauties are prized finds from the best junkyards around. Salvaged. Untraceable. Ugly as hell, but perfect.”
Her pride over these disasters warms my blackened heart.
I squeeze her knee, thumb brushing her thigh holster. “Fair. But seriously, when are you going to introduce us to these secret contacts of yours? Because whoever’s handing you keys to this apocalypse fleet deserves a medal.”
Her eyes flare, sharp and serious in a heartbeat. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
The twins laugh—loud and barking—but I feel the truth beneath the joke. Berk protects her people the way we protect her. Fiercely. Ruthlessly. Without apology.
She softens enough to add, “You’ll meet them one day. But not before Bryce and Dean are dead. I won’t risk anyone being connected to us while those two are still out there hunting.”
I lift both hands. “Got it. No pressure. You keep your secrets, baby.” But an idea has been rooting in my mind for days and now feels like as good a time as any to say it out loud.
“Just thinking… when this is over, and we take a breather, maybe we start something official. A security firm. Investigations. Protection. Whatever the hell we want to call it.” I gesture around the van.
“We already have the network. The contacts. The skill sets. Your tech brain. Ronan’s hacker shit.
Rowan’s recon and tactics. My business background. And all of us have the muscle.”
The air shifts.
Rowan’s knuckles tighten on the wheel, jaw ticking as he imagines the possibilities. Ronan leans back, grinning like I just handed him a new toy he can break people with. Berk’s eyes flash bright—a spark of interest, calculating and hungry and curious.
The idea roots itself in all of us at once. I can feel it.
A future.
A real one.
Not the kind dictated by blood or legacy. Not the path carved by the beasts who raised us, but one we build ourselves. For us. Sharp. Powerful. Ours. And maybe—if we survive what’s coming—we walk out of the fire with a life worth claiming.
Berk squeezes my hand, as if she’s imprinting into my skin. “Em,” she says, her voice low and warm, “you’re so damn smart. I think you’re onto something.” The wink she gives me is quick, but it sparks with a promise that tethers me to her—even now, with everything burning down around us.
Normally, we’d spend weeks combing through every inch of a target’s world before going in.
We’d learn their patterns: what time they left for work, how they held their keys, which foot they stepped with first when they got out of their car.
We’d know the names of their neighbors’ dogs, the cars they drove, the daily rhythms that made them predictable.
Predictable means controllable.
Tonight is neither.
Tonight is a brutal gamble—tight with urgency and stitched through with fear.
We have hours. That’s it. Hours and scraps of intel Ronan barely dragged together by ripping into half the neighborhood’s Ring cameras. It’s impressive—but it’s messy, fractured footage stitched into a picture that’s only just holding together. My jaw tightens.
Blind spots get people killed.
Blind spots got Kimber taken.
I can feel the tension humming through each of us like static.
It coils in the cramped van as we coast into position, waiting, watching the residential street drown in the sickly orange wash of aging streetlights.
Curtains glow softly in quiet houses. A dog barks somewhere down the block.
A car rolls through, slow and oblivious.
Jory’s house sits dull and unremarkable, the way hiding places often do.
“Fifteen minutes ago,” Ronan mutters from the front seat without looking back. “That’s when he got home. We watch him for an hour, see how he settles in. Anything jumps; we adjust.” His voice is steady, but I can hear the razor edge underneath. He wants this done. We all do.
The hour drags, each minute pulled thin.
Ronan stares at the camera feeds and phone pings like he can force movement through sheer will.
Rowan keeps watch on the house, posture locked in stone.
Beside me, Berk can’t sit still—knees bouncing, fingers tapping—her energy a wildfire beating against its cage. My nerves hum like a live wire.
But nothing happens.
No visitors.
No cars pulling up.
No movement worth naming.
His phone pings twice—harmless nonsense. A friend asking a stupid question. Someone sending a meme. The normalcy of it turns my stomach. Normal is a lie people hide behind.
The quiet is worse than noise; it invites the mind to invent danger.
Rowan breaks first. He leans forward and draws his gun, thumb sliding along the metal before he checks the magazine. The click is soft but decisive—a ritual that marks the moment before the storm.
We follow. My gun settles heavy in my hand, like it knows what we’re about to do, as if understanding what’s on the line.
Rowan glances over his shoulder at us, eyes sharp and gleaming in the dim light. A muscle ticks in his jaw. He’s collected, but his tension mirrors my own, thrumming beneath the surface.
“Ready?” he asks.
He doesn’t mean it casually. He means ready to cross a line we can’t step back from. Ready to tear truth out of someone who may not survive the telling. Ready to face the nightmare Jory is tangled in—and whether it leads us to Kimber.
I nod once. Slow. Steady.
Berk reaches forward and rests her palm between Rowan’s shoulder blades, steadying him, steadying all of us. She whispers, “Let’s go get him,” and her voice slides through me like lightning.
Because ready or not, we are going in.
We split into pairs, slipping through the yard like wolves on a blood trail.
A porch light humming and flickering, nervous as the house itself.
Rowan and I cover the front door, guns low, ready.
Around back, Berk and Ronan move in sync, shadows cutting across the yard, their silhouettes circling like predators closing in on a doomed thing.
My pulse stays steady. My palms dry. This is what we do. This is where we breathe best.
Rowan meets my eye and touches the comm. One tap. Then—
“Now.”
We breach.
The front door cracks open like a rib cage splitting. We barrel inside and stop dead.
The universe must hate us.
Jory sits in the middle of his living room like he’s posing for the world’s worst crime-scene photo.
Recliner tilted back. Lotion bottle in one hand.
Dick in the other. Some low-budget porn blaring from his TV, colors flashing across his pale, sweaty face, catching the exact moment shock hits him—mouth open, eyes wide, frozen mid-stroke.
Honestly, I wish we had come in guns blazing just so I wouldn’t have to see this.
“Hands up,” I shout, deadpan. “Not the one holding your dick.”
He obeys instantly, jerking both hands up like he’s trying to touch the ceiling, his pathetic half-mast slaps and then plasters awkwardly to his thigh. His gut sticks out under a stained shirt. His breath wheezes like a cheap accordion.
Perfect. Our target is a horny couch gremlin.
Berk and Ronan enter from the back hallway. Ronan snorts hard enough to choke. Berk’s face does this adorable twitch—equal parts horror and amusement—before she smiles with a sweetness that does not match the situation at all.
“Aww… how sad,” she coos.
And the bastard’s dick twitches again like it’s trying to reanimate.
That’s when Rowan moves.
He crosses the room in two steps and cracks the butt of his gun across Jory’s skull so fast the porn actress on the TV moans at the same time the man screams. Blood freckles his cheek, eyes watering.
“Don’t look at my girl like that,” Rowan growls. “Try it again and I’ll scoop those eyes out with your own spoon.”
Jory instantly stares at the floor like it suddenly became holy.
“Who the hell are you people?” he shouts—way too bold for a man whose pants are still around his ankles. “What do you want? Why are you—”
Another pistol-whip shuts him up mid-sentence.
“We ask,” Rowan says calmly. “You answer.”