Chapter 1
The bass hit long before I ever stepped inside.
Even from the sidewalk, Havoc London thrummed like a living thing, the lights pulsing against the brick, laughter spilling out in waves, the queue stretching around the building with girls shivering in tiny dresses and guys pretending to be cooler than they were.
I shouldn’t even have been here. I didn’t do clubs.
Not really. I liked teasing men too much to ever actually invest in them, and my friends liked to pretend I was a man-eater because I kissed half of London’s nightlife into next week.
But the truth? I’d only ever slept with two men and both disappointingly forgettable, and everything after that had been a stage performance.
A little dancing, a little flirting, a little control. After all control was my safe place.
“Bryn, stop looking like you’re analysing a murder scene,” Steph whined, bumping her hip into mine as we inched forward. “Try acting excited for once. The Dragic brothers are here. Two of them.”
I blinked at her. “Why does that matter?”
Steph and Jade both groaned like I’d confessed to not knowing what oxygen was.
“You seriously haven’t been paying attention?” Jade asked, eyes wide. “The Dragic brothers. As in the Dragic brothers.”
I frowned. “Until last week, I didn’t even know the name. One minute you’re complaining about the lack of hot men in London, and the next you’re both losing your minds over some family of models-slash-criminals-slash-whatever.”
Steph clutched her chest dramatically. “Blasphemy. Pure blasphemy.”
Jade leaned closer. “Okay, listen. We saw them here last Friday. The two of them. And I swear to God, Bryn, they didn’t look real.
It was like someone ordered two different flavours of Greek statues and accidentally brought them to life.
Then I looked up the other three brothers and they are all drop dead gorgeous. ”
I snorted. “You need therapy.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but you need to see them. The oldest one? Married now. Totally taken. People say his wife is the only person on earth he actually smiles for.”
Steph chimed in. “And the second one? Engaged. Like, shockingly whipped. He carries her bags. Opens her car door. Literally turned down a girl who looked like a lingerie ad.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s your benchmark for devotion? Rejecting someone in underwear?”
Steph waved me off. “Let me finish. The third brother? Rumoured to be living with his girlfriend. They’re inseparable. He apparently threatened a guy at a petrol station for looking at her too long.”
Jade wiggled her fingers like she was recounting a ghost story. “They’re all like that. Possessive, protective and so damn intense. The kind of men who look at you like you’re either the answer to everything or the start of a war.”
I tried not to laugh. “So, the other two are… what? Untouched? Unclaimed? Still on the market for your delusional fantasies?”
Steph pointed at me like I’d finally caught up. “Yes. Exactly. Two left. Viking and Draugr. The single ones. The dangerous ones.”
“Dangerous,” I repeated flatly. “Because you saw tattoos and decided they kill people for fun?”
Jade shrugged. “Maybe not for fun. But people say the Dragic brothers don’t mess around. They keep to themselves. They don’t date, they don’t flirt. They don’t even dance. They just… exist. All huge and hot and intimidating.”
Steph sighed wistfully. “It’s like the city collectively agreed they’re off-limits. Untouchable. Except every girl still tries.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re both ridiculous.
” But the truth was simple. I hadn’t heard a single whisper about these men until my friends spotted them last week and exploded into a frenzy of theories, rumours, and fantasies.
Suddenly the Dragic brothers were everywhere.
Every conversation. Every group chat. Every half-drunken rant about destiny and fate and catching the eye of a man built like a medieval warlord.
I’d ignored all of it, right up until now.
Jade chimed in with a breathy sigh. “The tall one with the tattoos. God, I would climb that man.”
I rolled my eyes. “You say that about literally every man with biceps.”
“No,” she said, jabbing her finger at me. “This one is different. The one they call Viking? I swear…just looking at him is an emotional experience.”
I snorted. “You’re all ridiculous.”
And yet, when the black Dodge Charger pulled up beside the line, something in my chest…shifted. The crowd parted like the ocean. People moved without being asked, instinctively, like something dangerous had come to shore.
The passenger door opened first, and Draugr stepped out.
At least, I was guessing it was him from the way my friends had described the brothers in their breathless, borderline feral group chats all week.
He was the one whose name people only whispered because he never actually spoke to anyone. The quiet one. The shadow.
And God, they were right about him being an imposing figure.
He unfolded from the car like something built, not born.
Long, dark hair tied low at the base of his neck, thick enough to glint under the streetlights.
A face carved from stone, all sharp lines and sharper silence.
His eyes were the worst of it, pale and piercing, the kind that didn’t need expressions or words to communicate danger.
One look made your spine understand something your brain didn’t want to process.
He didn’t even acknowledge the queue. Not a single person. His gaze swept the street, slow and methodical, as if he was weighing threats or mapping exits. A soldier’s scan, not a clubgoer’s.
And even without moving a muscle, he radiated the kind of calm that said he could kill everyone here without breaking a sweat.
My friends had said he was huge, but huge didn’t cover it.
He carried mass like a warning. Broad shoulders.
Heavy arms marked with black ink that vanished under a fitted black shirt.
Boots that looked like they were meant for dirt and blood, not a London sidewalk.
People around us quieted without realizing why. Conversations died mid-sentence. The crowd shifted, respectful and afraid in the same breath.
Draugr Dragic didn’t have to speak to command the space. He just existed, and the world adjusted.
Then the driver’s door opened. And out stepped the man my friends wouldn’t shut up about.
Viking. Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark blond hair pulled back in a low tie, a jaw cut sharp enough to break glass, tattoos licking up both arms and disappearing beneath a fitted T-shirt that seemed personally offended by the size of his chest.
But it wasn’t his body that hit me. It was his presence.
A storm wrapped in a man’s skin. I got the impression that he was hot-headed, wild-eyed, vibrating with barely contained violence, like he could go from perfectly composed to setting the world on fire if someone breathed wrong.
And for absolutely no logical reason, my heart punched itself against my ribs.
What the hell?
I didn’t get butterflies. I didn’t get flustered. Men were entertainment, not inspiration for heart palpitations. And yet…here I was. Palpitating.
“Oh my God,” Steph whispered, practically vibrating. “Do you see him? Bryn, do you see him?”
I saw him. I saw nothing but him, because Viking Dragic’s gaze swept over the line, indifferent, cold and then froze. On me. Just for one second but it was enough to turn my pulse into a drumline.
His eyes narrowed, like he’d just scented something he didn’t understand. Then Draugr said something low, Viking nodded, and the two of them strode past the bouncers and into the club without a single pause.
My friends squealed like they’d witnessed a royal coronation. I, however, suddenly needed air.
“Bryn,” Jade sang, slapping my arm. “Tell me you saw the way he looked at you.”
“He didn’t look at me,” I lied smoothly.
“He absolutely did,” Steph argued. “It was like time paused.”
My skin heated. “Shut up.”
But their grins said they’d already created entire wedding fantasies in their heads.
By the time we finally made it to the front of the line and into Havoc, the club swallowed us whole with lights, heat, sweat, the haze of perfume and dark liquor.
The DJ was already drowning the room in an electric remix that hit hard and fast.
We pushed toward the dance floor, toward the wildness that always let me forget myself for a while. But even as my friends dragged me through the crowd, my eyes were scanning…unwillingly, annoyingly for any sign of him.
Nothing.
Good. Ridiculous that I’d even looked.
We made it to the dance floor, and the moment the beat dropped, all three of my friends disappeared into the music. They were good at that, switching their brains off, slipping into the rhythm like the night existed for them alone.
I followed, slower at first. Letting my hair spill around my shoulders, letting my body sway, letting the noise and heat loosen something in my spine.
This was why I came out at all. Not for the drinks. Not for the men. Definitely not for the sweaty strangers who thought grabbing a woman’s waist was a greeting.
I came because my real life was mind-numbingly dull.
I worked in a construction company’s procurement office, which sounded more important than it was.
Mostly, it meant emailing suppliers, hunting down missing invoices, begging subcontractors to send documents on time, and trying not to fall asleep during meetings about concrete mixes.
It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t thrilling. But it kept the lights on in my tiny flat and kept food in the fridge. Stability over excitement I guess and routine over chaos.
But routine suffocated me if I let it. So every once in a while…once the spreadsheets and delivery schedules started blurring together, I let the girls drag me out. I put on a dress, painted on confidence, and let the bass rattle something loose in my chest.