Epilogue
ROGUE
Two Months Later
The guilt tastes like failure.
It coats my tongue every morning when I wake, settles heavy in my gut throughout the day, and follows me into restless sleep each night. No amount of whiskey burns it away. No amount of training beats it into submission.
It just sits there.
A constant weight pressing against my ribs.
Reminding me of the moment I became exactly what a lycan should never be.
Useless.
Frozen.
A guardian who couldn’t guard a damn thing.
I lean against the clubhouse wall, watching the sun bleed across the horizon in shades of amber and gold.
Two months since the battle.
Two months since Viktor’s death and Thanatos’ exile.
Two months since the Coven of Crows left us standing in a kill zone painted with blood and ash.
Two months since I failed him.
The memory crashes over me in visceral detail, sharp and unforgiving.
Thanatos’ power slammed into me mid-leap, reality itself solidifying around my body like invisible chains. My muscles locked. My lungs seized. Every cell in my body was screaming to move, to fight, to protect, while magic held me suspended in the air like a fly trapped in amber.
And I watched.
God help me, I watched as Viktor drove that Original-forged blade into Crave’s chest. Once. Twice. Three times. Each strike punching through ribs that should have been invulnerable, spilling blood that should have stayed eternal.
My Alpha.
My brother.
The vampire I’ve been bound to for over two centuries, the one my family lineage has protected since the First Vampire rose from darkness.
Bleeding out.
Dying.
While I hung there, a puppet with cut strings, absolutely fucking helpless.
The lycan inside me howls at the memory, clawing against the cage of my human form.
It wants out.
Wants to run.
To hunt.
To tear something apart to prove we’re still capable of violence.
That we’re still worthy of the mantle we carry.
But what’s the fucking point?
When it mattered most, when Crave needed me, I was nothing.
A snarl rips from my throat before I can stop it.
The sound echoes across the empty parking lot, feral and raw.
My hands ball into fists, nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood.
The pain grounds me, barely. Keeps the beast from surging too close to the surface, where it might do something I’ll regret.
“You keep growling at nothing, brother, and people are gonna think you’ve gone feral.”
I don’t turn at Scorch’s voice. I don’t need to. I feel his heat signature approaching from behind, the air around him shimmering with barely contained dragonfire. He stops beside me, silent for a moment, then lights a cigarette. The flame dances at the tip before settling into a steady burn.
“I’m fine,” I say, the lie tasting bitter.
“Bullshit!” He exhales smoke, and it curls through the air in patterns that look almost alive.
“You’ve been snapping at everyone for weeks.
Jet nearly phased through a wall yesterday when you went off on him for leaving his bike in your spot.
Your fucking spot. Since when do you give a shit about parking? ”
“Since I fucking say so!” The words come out harsher than I intend, edged with a growl that makes Scorch’s eyebrows rise. He doesn’t back down, though. Dragons don’t scare easily, especially not from lycans they’ve known for decades.
“There it is,” he says quietly. “That rage you’ve been choking on.”
I finally turn to look at him, and the concern in his eyes almost breaks something in me. Almost. “I said I’m fine, Scorch. Drop it.”
“Can’t do that, brother.” He takes another drag, the ember glowing bright before fading.
“You’re part of this pack. This family. And when one of us is hurting, we all feel it.
” His gaze sharpens, seeing too much. “Talk to me. Or talk to Crave. Hell, talk to Oracle if you need the wise-old-man routine, but stop swallowing this poison like it’s medicine. ”
The mention of Crave’s name sends another spike of guilt through my chest.
I haven’t talked to him.
Not really.
Not beyond the necessary club business, the tactical discussions, the surface-level shit that lets me avoid looking him in the eye for too long.
Because every time I do, every time I see him moving with his new Apostate grace, I remember.
I remember him bleeding.
I remember being powerless.
I remember failing my sworn duty, the oath my bloodline has carried since Khaos himself forged the first lycans from dying wolves and fallen warriors.
Protect the vampire.
Guard the bloodline.
Die before you let them fall.
My family has lived by those words for millennia.
We were created for one purpose—to be the shield between vampires and the chaos that hungers for their power. It’s in our DNA, our instincts, our very souls. The bond between lycan and vampire isn’t just loyalty.
It’s sacred.
Unbreakable.
Or it’s supposed to be.
But I broke it.
Maybe not the bond itself, I still feel Crave’s presence like a second heartbeat in my chest, steady and strong now that he’s healed. But I broke my duty. My oath. Everything my ancestors fought and died to uphold.
“I let him down,” I say, the admission scraping out of me. “When it mattered most, I couldn’t protect him. I just… hung there. Useless. While Viktor carved him open.”
Scorch is quiet for a long moment, then he lets out a heated breath, “Thanatos froze half the battlefield, Rogue. Sloane was bleeding from her eyes. Dread was trapped in his own fear construct. None of us could move. It wasn’t your failure… it was a trap designed to break us all.”
“But I’m not supposed to break.” The words taste like venom. “I’m a lycan. I’m his Bloodguard. My entire existence is built around protecting him, and I failed. Do you understand what that means? What it costs?”
“Yeah.” His voice hardens, heat rising around him in visible waves.
“I understand duty. I understand what it feels like to fail someone you’d die for.
But I also understand that beating yourself to death over it doesn’t change what happened.
It makes you sloppy, distracted, and when the next threat comes…
and it will come, brother… you’ll be too busy drowning in guilt to do your job. ”
I want to argue.
I want to tell him he doesn’t get it, that he can’t possibly understand the weight of a bloodline oath that stretches back to creation itself.
But he’s not entirely mistaken.
I have been sloppy.
Distracted.
Pulling away from the pack, from the club, from the family I helped build. Isolating myself, a wounded animal licking its injuries in the dark.
And Crave has noticed.
I’ve seen it in the way he watches me during church, concern flickering behind those silver eyes. I’ve felt it through our bond, his confusion, his worry, the way he reaches for me across the connection and finds walls I’ve never put up before.
He doesn’t understand why I’m shutting him out. He doesn’t realize it’s because looking at him, being near him, feeling his presence reminds me of how close I came to losing him. And how utterly, completely useless I was to stop it.
Before I can respond to Scorch, before I can figure out what the hell to say, an alarm shatters the quiet.
Not the gentle chime of a motion sensor.
A full-blown, blaring emergency alert that makes every supernatural instinct I have snap to attention.
Perimeter breach.
Scorch’s cigarette hits the ground as we both move, muscle memory taking over.
I shift mid-stride, not fully, just enough to let my senses sharpen to lycan precision.
My eyes flash luminous blue, and my nails extend into claws.
The beast rises to the surface, eager, ready, hungry for a threat it can actually fight.
The clubhouse explodes with activity. Doors slam open, boots hit pavement, and within seconds, the whole family is mobilized. Hades, with his twin blades already drawn, Hex with his tablet glowing in one hand and a pistol in the other, Dread’s fear aura already leaking into the air like poison gas.
And Crave.
He appears at the top of the stairs, Sloane at his side, both of them moving with that eerie synchronization the Heart Bind creates. His silver eyes find mine across the distance, and I feel his command snap into place.
“Secure the perimeter. Find the threat. Neutralize if hostile.” The order flows through me like wildfire, bypassing conscious thought and hooking straight into the part of me that exists only to obey my Alpha.
My legs are moving before I register the decision, the lycan in me surging forward with purpose.
This… this is what I’m built for.
Not guilt. Not isolation. Not drowning in failure.
Action.
Protection.
Pack.
We fan out in practiced formation—Scorch taking point with his Dragonfire ready to ignite, me on his right flank with my claws extended, Dread phasing in and out of visibility as he scouts ahead.
The alarm is coming from the north gate. Hex’s security system is top-tier, laced with magic and technomancy that can detect everything from humans to demons to interdimensional rifts.
Whatever triggered it isn’t normal.
And then I smell it.
Blood.
Fresh blood, human blood, so much of it, my lycan senses reel from the overwhelming scent.
But underneath that… vampire.
Newly turned.
The bloodlust radiates from her in waves so powerful that it makes my teeth ache.
We round the corner, and there she is.
A woman. Early twenties, maybe. Covered head to toe in blood that’s already drying to rust-colored stains on her clothes, her skin, her hair. She stumbles through the open gate like a drunk trying to remember how to walk, her movements jerky and uncoordinated.
A new scion.
Fresh from the turn, probably less than a day old, based on the feral hunger burning in her eyes.
She’s going to attack.