Chapter Seven
ROGUE
The decision settles in my chest before dawn, as I’m loading the truck.
The cabin.
Pack territory.
Because training her here is a death sentence—hers or someone else’s, maybe both.
The cabin sits two hours north of the compound, deep in territory my ancestors claimed generations before motorcycles replaced horses, before the Eternal Sins MC existed as anything more than Crave’s wild idea about building something permanent.
Pack lands, lycan lands, the kind of wilderness where humans don’t venture because something old and territorial warns them away at a gut level they can’t articulate but know better than to ignore.
No neighbors for miles, no towns, no gas stations, hiking trails, or accidental encounters with lost tourists. Nothing but forest, mountains, and the kind of silence that reminds you civilization is optional, temporary, barely a footnote in the longer story the earth tells about itself.
It’s perfect.
Loading the truck takes less time than it should.
Supplies pile onto the bed with military efficiency, each item chosen for function rather than comfort.
Cases of water bottles, non-perishable food I won’t need, but she might crave before the bloodlust settles into something manageable.
Medical supplies because new vampires heal fast but not instantly, and Charlie’s transition was violent enough to leave damage.
Chains—heavy ones—the kind designed to hold creatures with strength that exceeds human limits.
I hate looking at them, and I hate knowing I might need to use them, but pragmatism wins over sentiment when the alternative is her killing someone and Crave making good on his threat.
Blankets, a change of clothes, basic toiletries, and the mundane items feel obscene next to the chains, as if I’m packing for both a camping trip and a kidnapping simultaneously, which isn’t far from the truth when I strip away the justifications and look at what I’m actually doing.
Taking a terrified woman against her will to an isolated location where no one will hear her scream.
My wolf snarls at the implication, and I don’t argue with him. We both know what this is.
There’s a difference, even if the surface actions look identical. She asked for help, begged for it, her voice breaking on the plea in a way that carved itself into my memory with edges sharp enough to draw blood.
‘Help me. Please, I don’t want to be this.’
I am answering that plea.
The fact that she won’t understand that her fear will interpret protection as imprisonment until the hunger settles enough for rational thought to reassert itself doesn’t change what this is.
What it has to be.
The walk down to the basement drags, every step heavier than the last, my boots carrying a weight they weren’t built for.
Below, reinforced concrete and layered wards turn the lower level into a supernatural prison, built for threats too dangerous to kill outright, too volatile to leave unbound.
The air changes down here. It is colder, and laced with the metallic tang of blood magic worked into the walls by Hex’s careful hand, and containment spells stacked deep enough to hold creatures that make humans look like insects.
Charlie’s locked behind the furthest door.
The brothers insisted, their instincts unanimous about the threat she represents, even if none of them wanted to say out loud what enforcing that call would actually cost.
Only Sloane spoke in Charlie’s defense, her blood magic reading something in the scioned vampire that the others missed. Something worth saving. Crave listened to his Old Lady, factored her input into his calculations, and still ordered maximum security.
Because he is right to be cautious.
Because Charlie is dangerous.
Because scion vampires are walking disasters wrapped in skin too thin to contain the monster underneath, and the fact that she’s my fated mate doesn’t make her any less capable of killing everyone in this building if the bloodlust wins.
I pause outside her door, my hand resting against reinforced steel that’s probably overkill but feels appropriate given what waits on the other side.
My enhanced hearing picks up movement. Pacing.
The restless, agitated energy of a predator caged against its will, wearing grooves into the floor through repetition because stillness is impossible when every cell screams for release, for blood, for the satisfaction of needs she doesn’t know how to satisfy without killing.
Her scent reaches me through the door’s seal.
Familiar now in ways it shouldn’t be, distinctive enough that I’d recognize her in a crowd of a thousand vampires, my wolf listing every note with possessive thoroughness that has nothing to do with duty and everything to do with instincts older than language.
Fear, hunger, confusion, rage, all of it tangled together into a signature that pulls at something deep in my chest, something that wants to tear this door off its hinges and get between her and whatever’s causing that quality of distress.
The bond doesn’t ask permission before it acts.
It just pulls.
And I’m tired of fighting it.
I key in the code Hex gave me, mechanisms disengaging with a series of heavy clicks that echo through the corridor.
The spelled lock releases last, Hex’s magic unwinding from the frame in a ripple that prickles along my skin, copper and heat biting at the back of my throat.
The door swings open on hinges that don’t make a sound despite the weight they’re moving.
Charlie’s on the far side of the room, pressed into the corner with her back against concrete and her eyes too wide, too red, too feral to belong to the woman who stumbled into a diner looking for a friendly face.
She’s wearing the same clothes from last night, blood-stained and torn, the fabric hanging off her body in ways that emphasize how much the transition has changed her physically.
Faster. Stronger. Deadlier.
Terrified.
She sees me and her lips pull back, fangs descending in a flash of instinct that has nothing to do with aggression and everything to do with the hunger that’s been eating her alive for hours, however long she’s been down here fighting herself while my brothers debated her fate upstairs.
“Stay back.” Her voice breaks around the words, human speech wrestling with vocal cords that want to produce something closer to a hiss, a growl, the warning sounds predators make when cornered. “I can’t… you smell like… God, why do you smell so good?”
The question hits different than it should, bypassing my brain entirely and landing somewhere in my chest that doesn’t have defenses against that particular combination of desperation and need.
She’s not talking about cologne. She’s talking about blood.
About the way lycan blood calls to vampires differently than human blood does, carrying power they can taste, strength they crave, a high they’ll chase into dangerous territory if given half a chance.
I don’t move closer.
Not yet.
“You’re not going to,” I say.
She blinks. “What?”
“Attack me. Whatever your instincts are saying right now, they’re lying to you. You’ve been fighting this for hours, and you haven’t lost yet.” I keep my voice level. “You’re not going to lose right now either.”
Something shifts in her face. Not quite belief, but the hunger backs down half a step, as if being told she’s stronger is almost enough to make her act like she is.
“You sound very sure about that,” she says, her voice rough.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because you haven’t moved… Charlotte.” I keep my voice low, letting the lycan rumble thread through the syllables, the tone my wolf uses to calm my pack, to soothe aggression, to communicate safety without requiring words to carry the full weight.
“I’m not here to hurt you. But you can’t stay in this room.
The club can’t protect you here, not long term, and you can’t learn control locked in a basement with nothing but your hunger for company.
” I cross the room slowly and lower myself to sit against the wall beside her.
Not close enough to crowd but close enough to be real.
She looks down at me, startled. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting with you. You’ve been down here for hours.”
Her jaw works, but she doesn’t tell me to move. After a moment, she slides down the wall too, until we’re both on the floor, shoulders a foot apart.
“I killed four people,” she says, low.
“I know.”
“And you’re sitting on the floor of a basement with me anyway?”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us says anything else for a while.
She shakes her head, the movement too sharp, too fast, vampire reflexes making human gestures look wrong.
“You should kill me. Whatever your president said, whatever he wants you to do, you should end this. I killed her. I killed that woman, Trudy, in the diner, and three more people along the way… I can’t—” Her voice cracks, tears mixing with the red that hasn’t left her eyes since she turned.
“I can’t be this. I can’t be a monster!”
I don’t answer her for a long moment because the truth is more complicated than whatever she needs to hear right now. She did kill those people. “I know.” Those are facts that don’t unmake themselves because she’s sorry. I’m not going to lie to her about that, not even kindly.
But I’m also not going to let her stay on that floor.
“I’m not going to tell you you’re not what you think you are,” I say finally. “Not yet. You get to work that out for yourself, and you haven’t had time. But I’ll tell you what I know. Monsters don’t beg for help, Charlotte. You did.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“Come with me. We’ll work through the rest.”
“Why?” The question is quiet. “Why would you help me? You don’t know me. I’m nothing to you.”
She’s so fucking wrong.
So completely wrong it would be funny if the situation weren’t balanced on a knife-edge between salvation and slaughter.