Chapter Thirteen
CRAVE
The clubhouse looks like a war zone.
Shattered glass grinds under my boots as I survey the damage.
Bullet holes pepper the walls, leaving torn plaster and exposed concrete behind.
Blood stains the floor—human, vampire, and things in between—creating abstract patterns that tell stories of violence I’ve seen too many times.
The acrid smell of burned vampire flesh still hangs in the air, mixing with gunpowder and the lingering scent of Sloane’s awakening.
The scent of burning iron laced with something ancient coats everything now.
My clubhouse.
My brothers.
My soul.
I can still sense her upstairs. Not as a thought, not as memory, but as a steady thrum beneath my ribs, a second rhythm that isn’t mine and yet feels inseparable from my own.
She sleeps, her body mending itself after the transformation, after what we did together.
After what I turned her into. The weight of that choice sits heavily on my shoulders.
“Prez.” Hex’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
He’s hunched over his laptop at the bar counter, surrounded by monitors that somehow survived the attack.
His eyes glow with an unnatural blue while his technomancy is active and is burning through every digital connection he can find. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Just one?” The words taste bitter. “That would be a fucking miracle.”
He doesn’t smile. Hex only loses his sense of humor when things are truly dire.
“The supernatural dark web is on fire… literally. Someone hacked three major forums just to spread the word faster.” His fingers fly across the keyboard, screens flickering with encrypted messages and video feeds I don’t want to see.
“Everyone knows about Sloane. What she is. What you did.”
My jaw clenches so hard I hear my teeth grind. “How bad?”
He pulls up a split screen, mainstream news on the left, social media on the right.
“It’s holding.” The tension in his voice is the closest Hex gets to relief.
“I spent the last six hours building the narrative. Every piece of footage Viktor uploaded, I’ve flagged and tagged as AI-generated.
Planted metadata inconsistencies. Seeded the tech forums with frame-by-frame ‘debunks,’ lighting errors, motion artifacts, rendering tells that don’t actually exist, but humans won’t know that.
” He gestures to a trending thread on the right screen.
#VampireHoax is number two worldwide. “The internet did the rest. Humans love nothing more than proving something is fake.”
I stare at the feeds. News anchors are already laughing about it. ‘An elaborate AI stunt or the world’s most convincing deepfake?’ The chyron rolls beneath a panel of digital forensics experts, all of them lining up to explain exactly why the footage couldn’t be real.
The irony is almost elegant.
“How long will it hold?” I ask.
“Long enough.” Hex’s jaw tightens. “The supernatural world knows the truth. But humans? They want to believe it’s fake. Makes the world feel safer. I’m just permitting them to believe what they already want to.”
I let out a slow breath. One front, at least, is contained.
The Law of Silence bends. But it does not break.
Not today. “Every major faction is talking about her. Vampires, witches, demons, hell… even the fae courts are paying attention, and they never pay attention to anything outside their own political bullshit.” He spins one of his monitors to face me, and the chatter scrolls past in dozens of languages.
“They’re calling her the first Blood Witch in three centuries.
They want to study her. Control her. Some want to kill her before she becomes too powerful. ”
“Over my dead body.”
“That’s what they’re counting on, brother.
” Hex’s expression is grim. “Viktor didn’t just attack us.
He orchestrated this whole thing. Got it on video, the partial transformation, the magical explosion, all of it.
Uploaded it everywhere before we could stop him.
The Law of Silence isn’t just broken, it’s fucking shattered. ”
The words land with a physical blow. For a thousand years, I’ve upheld that law, protected it, used it to keep the supernatural world hidden from humanity, to prevent the chaos that would erupt if mortals knew what walked among them.
And in one night, to save one woman, I’ve destroyed it.
“Show me,” I growl.
Hex pulls up a video. Grainy, shot from a distance, but clear enough. I watch myself give Sloane my blood. Watch her heart stop, then restart with that thunderous beat that shook the building. The crimson-gold light exploded from her body as she awakened into something that shouldn’t exist.
The video ends with her eyes opening, molten and otherworldly, and the timestamp shows it’s already been viewed seven million times across supernatural networks.
Fuck.
“There’s more.” Hex switches to another feed. “The Coven of Crows sent a message. It came through on every channel simultaneously, text, audio, video, and even some old-school blood sigils appeared on walls across the city. They made sure we couldn’t miss it.”
He plays the audio. The voice that emerges from the speakers is one I haven’t heard in centuries, but it’s burned into my memory like a brand.
Nyx, my sister. The Shadow.
“Draven.” Her voice is cold, carrying the weight of ancient power and absolute authority. “You have broken the Law of Silence. You have violated the Law of Balance. You have created an abomination and exposed our world to discovery. The Coven of Crows demands your presence for judgment.”
A pause, long enough that I think the message is over.
“You have seven days. Present yourself at the site of your first turning, or we will come for your entire club. Every brother. Every woman. Every soul you’ve claimed as family. We will erase them from existence, and you will watch before we end you. The choice is yours… seven days.”
The recording ends.
Silence floods the clubhouse, thick and suffocating.
My brothers have gathered around me. Rogue stands near the shattered front entrance, his lycan eyes glowing gold with barely suppressed rage.
Scorch leans against the pool table, smoke curling from his nostrils in angry spirals.
Dread sits in a corner, his god form flickering just beneath his skin as if he’s fighting to keep it contained.
Hades stands motionless near the counter, his necromancer’s calm a thin veneer over something darker.
Grizz blocks the hallway, his massive frame tense and ready.
Oracle watches from the fireplace, flames dancing in his phoenix eyes.
Ronan paces by the windows, his usual cocky grin replaced by something harder.
Jet phases in and out of solidity, his wraith form agitated.
The women are here too.
Eden perches on a barstool, her banshee senses making her fidget with nervous energy. Seraphine sits at the stage’s edge, her siren’s song held back but vibrating through the air. Reyna stands near the entrance to the clubhouse, storm energy crackling faintly around her clenched fists.
My family.
My club.
Everyone I’ve built a life with for the past century, all at risk because I couldn’t let one woman die.
No. I push that thought away violently. I’d make the same choice a thousand times over.
“So.” Rogue breaks the silence, his voice carrying that edge of violence he uses when he’s looking for a fight. “The Crows want you. What’s the play, Prez?”
“We fight.” Scorch’s answer is immediate, predictable. The dragon shifter’s solution to every problem is fire and fury. “Fuck the Coven. Fuck their laws. We have power here, we’ve got magic. We make them bleed for every inch they try to take.”
“They’re Originals,” Hades points out quietly, his necromancer logic cutting through Scorch’s bravado. “Five of them. Each one represents a fundamental force of darkness. You can’t fight that kind of power with rage alone.”
“Watch me… brothers.” I raise my hand, and the room falls silent. Authority radiates from me, not just as their president, but as what I am. An Original vampire who’s lived thousands of years and led men through every kind of hell. “Everyone, take a breath. We need to think this through.”
“Think?” Rogue’s gold eyes flash. “They just threatened our family, Crave. What’s there to think about?”
“Strategy.” I move to the center of the room, feeling every eye tracking me. “The Coven of Crows doesn’t make empty threats. If they say they’ll erase us from existence, they mean it. Erebus alone could unmake half of you with a touch.”
“Then we run.” The suggestion comes from an unexpected source, Ronan, the luck-bending fae whose usual solution to problems is to charm or gamble his way through them.
“Scatter, regroup somewhere they can’t find us.
We’ve got connections, resources, hell… I can bend probability enough to hide our trail for months. ”
“Run?” Rogue’s voice drops to a growl, his lycan nature taking offense. “You want us to tuck tail and run?”
“I want us to survive.” Ronan faces him without flinching. “There’s no shame in a tactical retreat, wolf. Live to fight another day and all that.”
“There’s every shame in abandoning our territory.” Scorch’s veins glow brighter, heat radiating from him in waves. “We built this place, fought for it, bled for it… I’m not giving it up because some ancient assholes send a threatening voicemail.”
“It’s not just territory,” Reyna adds, her Valkyrie nature making her voice carry weight. “It’s principle. We back down from this, then every supernatural faction will see us as weak. They’ll eventually come for us anyway.”
“Better eventually than in seven days,” Hex mutters, his fingers still flying across his keyboard. “I’m monitoring supernatural communications. The bounty on Sloane is already up to seven figures. Everyone wants a piece of her, and they know she’s here.”