Chapter Fourteen #2
“Maul first,” she calls, her voice carrying that deep resonance of ancient forests. “Then Rhett. The rest of you can bleed on the floor while I deal with the ones who might actually die if I’m not fast enough.”
She hands me a shirt as the brothers file past her with the practiced resignation of men who have heard this particular speech a hundred times before.
Somewhere in the organized chaos of wounded being triaged and blood being cleaned from leather and skin, Scar’s laugh cuts through the air, dark, satisfied, carrying the particular edge that tells me he fed well tonight and enjoyed every second of it.
“We keep what’s ours,” I say, pulling the shirt over my head, my voice filling the space between the clubhouse walls with enough cold certainty to silence every other sound.
“Always.” The words settle into stone and the bones of every brother present, a reminder carved deeper than any fae symbol could ever cut.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, my attention drifts.
Not to damage reports.
Not to strategy.
Not to the blood drying dark along my forearms.
It slides downward instead, down the hall, past reinforced doors and concrete corridors, to a single locked room I haven’t stopped tracking since the moment we got back.
Roxy.
The shift is subtle but absolute, like a compass needle snapping into place.
The battle still hums in my veins, adrenaline and the savage satisfaction of victory burning hot enough that the last traces of ice have melted from my skin, replaced by a warmth I haven’t carried since before the curse took hold.
It makes the blood on my hands suddenly feel heavier. More conspicuous.
I turn, and a few of the brothers notice my flame in its crystal dome flickering with a brighter intensity as I walk past it. Scar’s gaze flicks to me, sharp and knowing, while Ruckus lets out a low chuckle. “Well…” he murmurs, just loud enough to carry, “… that answers that.”
I don’t respond. I don’t slow. I just keep moving, letting the long corridor swallow me whole, concrete and steel pressing in as my bare feet thump against the cold floor.
One door passes.
Then another.
Then a third.
With every step deeper into the secluded wing, the noise of the clubhouse bleeds away behind me, laughter fading into distant echoes, replaced by something tighter, quieter, charged with a tension that feels far more dangerous than any fight.
Concern.
Her door opens under my touch without resistance, the locks disengaging with a series of soft clicks I barely register.
My focus snags instead on the blood coating my hands, my arms, not mine, but enough of it to paint a picture of violence that would terrify most humans before they understood what they were seeing.
I should clean up first.
But I don’t.
Because the only thing that matters now is making sure Roxy is still standing.
She is sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed in the clothes she wore that morning, her hands wrapped around a mug that’s gone cold hours ago. It’s been untouched long enough for a thin film to form across the surface.
Her eyes lift the moment I cross the threshold and shift to my face first.
Then they drop.
To my hands.
My arms.
The dark stains smeared across my arms and throat.
She’s on her feet before the mug hits the nightstand.
It lands with a soft clink she doesn’t seem to hear as she crosses the room with quick, urgent steps, hands already reaching for me like her body decided before her mind caught up.
She stops short of touching at the last second, breath hitching as she takes in the blood up close, fingers hovering near my chest as if afraid to press and confirm what she’s seeing.
“R-Raze…” Her voice catches. “You’re hurt. ”
“It’s not mine. Well, a little bit is, but not the majority of it,” I say immediately. The words come out blunt because whatever this moment becomes, I won’t let it start with a lie.
The relief that flickers across her face is brief, almost imperceptible, but it’s there, and it hits harder than it should.
Her gaze snaps back to my face. “Then whose is it?”
I don’t answer right away.
The battle is still humming under my skin, adrenaline, ice, and satisfaction tangled together in a way I haven’t fully unwound yet.
I’m acutely aware of how close she is now, of the way the room seems to shrink around us, leaving nowhere for that energy to bleed off.
The silence stretches just long enough for her to understand what the hesitation means.
“Roxy,” I say finally, my voice low. “I did what needed doing. I reminded them who the Kings are.”
Something changes in her gaze, not fear so much as calculation. She draws a slow breath, her shoulders settling as if she’s bracing herself, her eyes never leaving mine, as though sudden movement might break something fragile between us. “You killed them,” she states, as a fact, not a question.
“Yes… some of them,” I correct. “Others will remember tonight every time they close their eyes.”
Her pulse jumps visibly in her throat.
I notice.
I shouldn’t.
Her jaw tightens. “And you’d do it again.”
Again, not a question, a mere fact.
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. No apology. No softening. “If it keeps them from touching what’s mine. If it keeps you safe. I won’t hesitate.”
The word mine hangs between us, neither of us pretending it means nothing.
She’s not backing away.
Or reaching for the door.
Her eyes are locked on mine as she takes in the whole picture, the blood, the fury still burning under my skin, the truth I don’t try to hide from her.
She’s close enough now that her human heat radiates off her in waves, alive, intoxicating, and painfully grounding. My hands curl once at my sides and stay there.
“You don’t even feel bad,” she says quietly.
“I feel justified,” I reply. “And I have no need to apologize for it.”
She studies me for a long moment, really looks, as if committing this version of me to memory, my dragon fresh from the edge of slaughter, control held by sheer will alone.
Her eyes flick, just briefly, to my mouth, then back to my eyes. The awareness snaps tight between us.
Then she nods once, drawing in a deep breath. “You are a monster,” she says, but there’s no accusation in it, no horror, no moral judgment, just clear-eyed recognition of exactly what stands in front of her, stripped of excuses and softened language.
“I never claimed otherwise, Firecracker.” The words scrape out of me rough and unguarded, the careful control I keep around everyone else already burned away.
There’s no point pretending now.
She’s already seen through it.
Through me.
“I should be afraid of you.” Her voice stays level as she steps closer, not far enough to touch, but close enough that her body heat tempers the cold barely contained in mine.
The space between us hums, taut as a drawn wire.
One step, either of us, and it would snap.
“Yeah… you should be afraid,” I reply, holding my ground. The battle high still sings through my blood, the ice stretched thin, and everything in me knows that closing the distance right now would be a mistake I couldn’t stop once it started.
“But I’m not.” Her breath brushes my collarbone when she says it.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
My dragon coils tight and watchful beneath my skin, keenly aware of exactly how much restraint this moment costs.
The admission lands between us like a stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading outward through everything that’s happened since the moment she touched my flame and made it burn brighter than it had in decades.
The blood on my hands. The violence that still vibrates through my muscles.
The way she stands here in a locked room surrounded by monsters and still looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world worth paying attention to.
Something cracks inside my chest, not loudly, not obviously, but deep enough that the ice surrounding whatever passes for my heart fractures along lines that have been forming since the first time she refused to break.
The distance between us closes without either of us making a conscious decision to cross it.
The space shrinks until the warmth of her skin becomes a temptation I cannot resist. Her hands find my shirt first, fingers curling into blood-stained cotton as if anchoring herself or maybe claiming me.
I barely register the motion before my restraint finally gives way.
A low sound tears from my chest as I catch her wrist, not to stop her, but to pull her closer, until there’s nothing left between us but breath, heat, and the crackling tension that’s been building since the moment she refused to fear me.
When our mouths meet, it’s anything but gentle.
The kiss is fierce, unguarded, all heat, hunger, and collision, Roxy’s lips parting beneath mine as if she’s been waiting for this exact moment to stop pretending distance mattered.
I taste her defiance, her courage, the quiet fire she carries like a challenge, and it ignites something savage and aching inside me in return.
My hand slides to her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek as I deepen the kiss, pouring everything I didn’t say into the press of my mouth against hers, the violence, the certainty, the promise I never intended to make and no longer have the strength to deny.
She kisses me back without hesitation.
Like she knows exactly what she’s choosing.
And for the first time in centuries, I let myself choose her too.