Chapter Nine
CRAVE
The ride to the clubhouse feels longer than it should.
Sloane sits behind me on my bike, her arms wrapped tightly around my waist, her heartbeat hammering against my back.
I smell the fear rolling off her in waves—it’s sharp, acrid, and very human.
But underneath it, there’s something else.
Something that makes my Bloodfire hum with recognition.
The scent that’s been haunting me since the moment she walked into my bar.
I pull into the compound, the engine’s growl dying as I kill the ignition. The gates close behind us with a heavy clang that sounds too much like a prison door. Around us, the clubhouse looms, a fortress built from brick, blood, and centuries of keeping secrets.
My brothers are already waiting.
They stand in formation across the main room like soldiers preparing for war.
Rogue at the front, arms crossed, gold eyes tracking our every movement.
Scorch to his right, smoke curling from his nostrils in lazy spirals.
Dread in the shadows, his presence making the air itself feel heavier.
Hex is sitting at his laptop, fingers frozen over the keys.
Hades is standing like death incarnate, his necromancer’s calm radiating from him in waves.
Grizz near the reinforced wall, his bear’s patience barely contained.
Oracle by the fireplace, flames reflecting in his eyes.
Ronan is trying to look casual and failing.
Jet half phased, his wraith form flickering.
And the women? Eden perched on the counter, her banshee senses screaming danger, every glass behind her vibrating with the force of what she’s feeling. Seraphine is silent for once, her siren’s song held in check. Reyna is leaning against the wall, storm energy crackling faintly around her fingers.
“Brothers,” I say, my voice cutting through the silence. “This is Sloane.”
“We know who she is,” Scorch mutters. “Question is, what the hell is she?”
Sloane stiffens beside me, and I feel her pulse spike through our proximity.
She’s terrified but trying not to show it.
Brave little thing.
“That’s what we’re here to figure out,” I say. Then I turn to Sloane, my expression softening just slightly. “What I’m about to show you… there’s no going back after this. You sure you want the truth?”
She meets my eyes, and I see the determination there. The need to know, even if it destroys her. “I want the truth.”
I nod slowly. “Then you’ll get it. Everyone out,” I say, my voice carrying the weight of command that comes from being president. From being what I am.
No one moves.
“Crave—” Rogue starts.
“I said out!” My voice booms, carrying the weight of darkness from being centuries old.
A hint of my inner monster shows, just a flash of fang, a flicker of the evil that lives in my veins.
“This is between me, Sloane, and whoever needs to verify what she is. Everyone else, you have ten seconds to leave this room before I make you.”
Rogue’s eyes flash gold, his lycan rising to meet my challenge. For a moment, I think he might push back, but then he looks at Sloane, and something in his expression shifts.
Recognition.
“Five minutes,” he growls. “Then I’m coming back in, Prez, ready or not.”
“Fair enough.”
The room empties slowly, reluctantly. Only Hades and Oracle remain, standing on opposite sides of the space. The necromancer and the phoenix. Death and rebirth. The perfect witnesses to what’s about to happen.
The door closes behind the others with a soft click that sounds like a death knell.
I turn to Sloane.
She’s standing in the center of the room, looking small, human, and terrifyingly fragile. Her eyes are wide, darting between me, Hades, and Oracle like she’s trying to calculate her chances of survival.
Zero, I want to tell her. If I wanted you dead, you’d already be ash.
But I don’t want her dead.
I want to understand what the hell she is.
“Sloane,” I say carefully, keeping my voice low and even. “What I’m about to show you, what you’re about to learn, changes everything. Once you see, you can’t unsee. Once you know, you can’t unknow. Do you understand?”
She lifts her chin, and despite the fear pouring off her, there’s steel underneath. “I understand. Show me.”
I know what showing a human means, what showing her means.
I built this club to stop this very thing from happening.
My vow is to stop humans from finding out about supernaturals—about breaking the Law of Silence.
And what I am about to do right here, right now, is going to do exactly that.
It will put us all in danger and break the law I have vowed to uphold.
But Sloane was attacked.
She already knows this world isn’t normal, and the Coven of Crows is already on its way.
My eyes meet hers, and I stare at her intensely, my Bloodfire coursing under my skin.
My fangs descend fully, not the half measures I’ve been using around her, but the real thing.
Three inches of ivory death designed to tear through flesh and drain life.
My eyes shift, the silver darkening to something ancient and hungry.
The shadows in the room respond, reaching for me like old friends, as lovers, as the darkness that birthed me millennia ago.
I move.
Vampire speed isn’t something humans can process. I cross the twenty feet between us in a blink, appearing behind her before her brain registers I’ve left my original position. I allow my presence to wash over her, icy and unmistakably wrong in every way that counts.
“Do you know what I am?” I whisper against her ear.
She doesn’t scream.
She doesn’t run.
She turns slowly, deliberately, until we’re face-to-face. Her eyes meet mine, and I see it, the moment she truly understands.
“Vampire,” she breathes. “You’re a vampire.”
“Not just any vampire.” I step back, giving her space. “I’m an Original. One of the first. Born from evil itself when the world was young and the night was absolute.”
Her hand reaches out, trembling, and I think she’s going to push me away. Instead, she touches my cheek. Her fingers are warm against my cold skin, and the contact sends an electric hum through both of us. I withdraw my fangs and ease my expression so I don’t appear so intimidating.
“How old?” she asks.
“A thousand years, give or take a few centuries. I stopped counting around the time Rome fell.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He wasn’t around when I was made, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
A laugh bubbles out of her, half hysterical, half genuine. “This is insane. This is actually insane. I should be running. Why the hell am I not running?”
“Because you’re not fully human,” Hades’ voice cuts through the moment like a blade. The necromancer steps forward, his eyes fixed on Sloane with an intensity that makes even my skin crawl. “I can see it on you. I can feel it.”
Sloane turns to him, and I see her trying to process his appearance. The pale skin. The hollow eyes. The way he moves, like he’s not quite anchored to the living world.
“What do you mean?” she demands.
Hades tilts his head, studying her as though she’s a corpse on his table.
“Death has touched you. Not in the way it touches everyone, the natural entropy of mortality. This is different, older, darker.” He moves closer, and I resist the urge to step between them.
“You’ve been marked by something evil. It swims through your veins, poison threaded with power. ”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“The residue,” Hades continues, circling her slowly. “It’s all over you. Every drop of blood you carry remembers something ancient. Something that should have stayed buried.” He stops in front of her, reaching out but not quite touching. “You shouldn’t exist. And yet here you are.”
“Why me?” Sloane asks the question that’s been haunting me since this started. “Why am I like this? I’m nobody. An orphan who grew up in foster care and became a nurse. Nothing special. Nothing that explains any of this.”
Oracle speaks for the first time, his voice carrying the weight of flame and ash.
“I’ve been watching you since you first walked into our bar, Sloane.
Trying to see your path, your future, your fate.
” He shakes his head, and actual smoke rises from his shoulders.
“I see nothing. Just darkness. An absolute void where your story should be.”
“That’s impossible,” Sloane says, but her voice wavers. “Everyone has a future. Even if it’s only death.”
“Death would be a kindness compared to what surrounds you.” Oracle’s phoenix fire flares brighter, illuminating the room in shades of gold and crimson.
“Your past is dark. Your present is dark. Your future is so dark it makes my flames dim just thinking about it. I’ve walked through fire for five centuries, and I’ve never seen anything like you. ”
The fear I’ve been sensing from Sloane shifts and transforms into something sharper. Anger.
“So what?” she snaps, her voice rising. “I’m some kind of monster?
Some evil thing that shouldn’t exist? Is that what you’re telling me?
” She turns to me, tears brimming in her eyes, but they’re fury-tears, not fear.
“Is that why you’ve been watching me? Studying me? Trying to figure out how to kill me?”
“No.” The word comes out harder than I intend. “That’s not why.”
“Then why? Why bring me here? Why tell me any of this?” Sloane throws her hands up in the air with frustration.
“Because you deserve to know what’s happening to you. You’re changing, and you need to understand what you’re becoming before it consumes you,” Oracle tries to calm her.
“I didn’t ask for t-this!” The crack in her voice hits harder than it should.
“I didn’t ask to be whatever the hell I’m becoming.
All I ever wanted was to be normal. To save lives and go home and pretend the world made sense.
But it doesn’t, does it? Nothing makes sense anymore.
” I reach for her, but she jerks away. “Don’t.
Just… don’t!” She wraps her arms around herself, trying to hold the pieces together.
“Tell me what I am. No more hints. No more cryptic bullshit. What. Am. I?”
Before I can answer, the reinforced door, the one that’s withstood police raids and rival club attacks and every threat we’ve faced in a decade, detonates inward. Wood and metal shred like paper, and through the smoking hole strides Viktor.
And he’s not alone.
Twenty vampires pour through the opening, moving with coordinated precision. Too coordinated. These aren’t feral newborns or random mavericks but soldiers.
“Well, well,” Viktor purrs, his voice carrying across the chaos. “The great Draven, caught with his guard down. How poetically tragic.”
I move instinctively, putting myself between Sloane and the threat. Around us, Hades is already summoning his death energy, bones rising from the floor in defensive spikes. Oracle’s flames ignite, his phoenix fire creating a barrier of heat that makes the air shimmer.
But it’s not enough.
Viktor’s vampires spread out with military efficiency, cutting off every exit. I hear my brothers outside, trying to fight their way in, but Viktor’s brought more than these twenty.
He’s brought a goddamn army.
“You’ve made a critical mistake, old friend,” Viktor continues, strolling through the wreckage as though he owns it, victory already in his stride.
“You exposed the supernatural world to a human. Broke the Law of Silence. And for what? A woman?” He laughs, the sound like knives skittering across glass.
“The mighty Crave, brought low by something as pathetic as feelings.”
“Fuck you, Viktor.” I let my fangs descend fully again, my Bloodfire rising. “You want me? Come take me. But you leave her out of this!”
“Oh, I’m not here for you.” Viktor’s eyes lock onto Sloane, and the hunger in them makes my vision turn red.
Then all hell breaks loose.