Epilogue
SCAR
Six Months Later
The argument has been going on for twenty minutes.
Twenty. Fucking. Minutes.
“I’m just saying…” Rhett insists, sprawled across the common room sofa as though he owns it, one leg thrown over the armrest, “… that statistically speaking, there’s a seventy-three percent chance they burn down the clubhouse before their first anniversary.”
Bennett, perched with rigid posture in the adjacent chair like he’s attending a church service instead of listening to a hellhound spout nonsense, doesn’t even look up from cleaning his blade. “You can’t just make up statistics.”
“I didn’t make it up. I calculated it.”
“Based on what methodology, exactly?”
“Vibes.” Rhett grins, all teeth and zero shame. “And the fact that Roxy set the kitchen on fire last week, trying to make breakfast.”
“That was an accident,” I point out from my position behind the bar, not because I particularly care about defending Roxy’s cooking skills, which are admittedly catastrophic, but because watching these two idiots argue is somehow both entertaining and exhausting in equal measure.
“And Raze put it out in thirty seconds.”
“With ice breath,” Rhett counters. “Which means he had to shift partially, which means his control is still shaky when she’s involved, which only proves my point.”
Bennett finally looks up, pale eyes gleaming with something that might be amusement if angels were capable of such base emotions. “Your point is based on vibes and a sample size of one kitchen incident. That’s not proof, that’s conjecture.”
“Big words for someone who’s about to lose fifty bucks.”
“I haven’t agreed to the bet.”
“Because you know I’m right.”
“Because gambling is a—”
“Sin. Yeah, yeah.” Rhett waves dismissively. “You say that every time, and yet somehow your wallet always ends up lighter anyway.”
“That’s called charity, hellspawn.”
“That’s called losing and being too proud to admit it, feathers.”
I should intervene. As VP, mediating brother disputes technically falls under my job description, especially when said brothers are prospects who haven’t even earned their full patches yet and probably shouldn’t be gambling on the president’s relationship stability.
Should is the operative word.
The word sits heavy in my mind as I watch them bicker, their voices filling the space with noise, life, and the kind of easy camaraderie I’ve spent five centuries never quite achieving.
Rhett throws a peanut at Bennett’s head.
Bennett catches it without looking and eats it while explaining probability theory in a tone that could freeze hell.
Wreck drifts past them toward the hallway, hollow-eyed and silent, feeding on the low-level irritation they’re generating without either of them noticing.
Normality.
This is what our normal is like now.
The thought sits strange in my chest, foreign and uncomfortable.
The clubhouse is full, brothers scattered throughout the building, club girls claiming their spaces, the steady hum of illegal operations running smoothly beneath the surface of domestic routine.
Flux is in the back office, counting tonight’s fight ring profits.
Coil is on the phone with a buyer in Prague, negotiating prices for stolen fae artifacts.
Maul is running perimeter patrol in wolf form.
And somewhere upstairs, Raze and Roxy are probably tangled together in their room, fire, ice, and magic all twisted up in sheets that’ll need replacing by morning.
Six months since their transformations.
Six months since I watched Roxy choose immortality, choose him, choose this life with the kind of certainty I haven’t felt about anything in longer than I can remember.
Six months of watching my president, my brother, my friend for over a century, find something I killed three hundred and fifty years ago.
Contentment.
The crystal dome still stands in the center of the clubhouse, fractured but not removed. No one tried to fix it. The crack that split it the night Raze reclaimed his fire cuts through the crystal like frozen lightning, jagged and honest. Instead, the brothers turned the ruin into a monument.
Inside the broken shell rises a sculpture forged from melted chains and dragon-scale shards, twisted together with blades of glass shaped into flames that climb toward the shattered ceiling.
They catch every flicker of light in the room, throwing reflections across the walls that almost look alive when Raze walks past, reacting to the fire that now lives under his skin instead of behind glass.
Beautiful, brutal, and unapologetically real.
A reminder of what he survived, and what the rest of us never learned how to keep.
“Scar.” Rhett’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “You good, old man? You’ve got that brooding vampire look happening.”
“This is just my face.”
“Nah, you’ve got like three different brooding faces. This is the existential crisis one.”
Bennett actually nods in agreement. “He’s right. You get this particular expression when you’re contemplating mortality versus immortality and the inherent loneliness of eternal existence.”
I stare at them both. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“We pay attention,” Bennett says simply.
“Also, you’re not subtle,” Rhett adds. “Nobody stares at Raze and Roxy like that unless they’re thinking deep thoughts about love and shit.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” they say in unison, then glare at each other for the synchronization.
Christ.
I need air.
Even though I don’t technically breathe.
“Figure out your bet,” I tell them, pushing away from the bar. “But if either of you actually puts money on the president burning down his own clubhouse, I’m making you both clean the fight cages for a month.”
“That’s not fair,” Rhett protests.
“Life’s not fair. You’re hellspawn. You should know that better than anyone.”
I’m out the door before he can formulate a comeback, letting it swing shut on Bennett’s quiet laughter and Rhett’s indignant sputtering.
The night air hits cool and clean, June settling over the mountains in that early-summer hush where the heat finally loosens its grip.
It carries the scent of pine, damp stone, and distant rain, a softness that doesn’t touch me anymore but stirs memories from a life so far behind me it feels like someone else’s skin.
The clubhouse sprawls behind me, all reinforced stone and warded windows, our fortress built into the mountain like we’re part of the landscape.
Lights glow warm in scattered windows. Soft music threads through the corridor, Calder’s playlist on repeat, less about escape now and more about filling the quiet spaces between battles.
Family.
That’s what this is.
What we’ve built over decades of blood, violence, and choosing each other when the rest of the world wanted us dead, controlled, or locked away in cages.
And I’m five hundred years old, standing outside in the dark, feeling something uncomfortably close to loneliness while surrounded by more connection than most supernatural beings achieve in multiple lifetimes.
Fucking pathetic.
I move without conscious decision, boots crunching over gravel as I head toward the perimeter, needing distance, space, and not to think about the way Roxy looks at Raze like he’s salvation wrapped in scales, or the way he guards her like the world might try to steal her back.
Needing not to remember Astrid.
The thought of her name still hurts, still cuts, still bleeds despite three and a half centuries of scar tissue built over the wound.
She loved me.
I killed her.
Both things are true.
Both things will always be true.
And watching Raze get his happy ending while I carry her death in my bones like shrapnel—
The scent hits me mid-step.
Unexpected.
Impossible.
And instantly recognizable despite not having encountered it in decades.
A dhampir.
My senses sharpen, vampire instincts snapping to full attention as I scan the treeline. There, disturbed underbrush, broken in a pattern too deliberate to be animal. I move silent, following the trail with predator focus, every nerve alert.
Boot prints in the soft earth near the eastern boundary. Size seven, maybe eight. Deep impressions suggesting tactical boots, someone who knows how to move. The prints lead to a vantage point overlooking the clubhouse, stop at a spot where someone clearly spent time observing.
Surveilling.
A cigarette butt is still faintly warm when I crouch to examine it. American Spirit, barely smoked, crushed deliberately rather than casually discarded.
Dust patterns on a fallen log show where someone rested a rifle, not aimed, just positioned.
Watching, not hunting.
The distinction matters.
Then I see it.
Pinned to an oak tree at perfect eye level, a silver blade driven deep into the bark, holding a photograph in place. I recognize the blade immediately, hunter’s weapon, blessed silver, the kind that would burn like acid if it pierced vampire flesh.
A calling card and warning all at once.
The photograph shows a vampire I know. Knew. Konstantine, one of the rogue bloodsuckers who’s been causing problems in our territory for the last three months, running feral, killing indiscriminately, refusing to acknowledge the King’s authority.
We’ve been tracking him.
In the photograph, he’s dead.
His heart torn out with brutal efficiency, body positioned against a warehouse wall, eyes still open in final shock. The kill is fresh, I can tell from the blood patterns, the way his skin hasn’t fully grayed yet.
No note.
No explanation.
Just the picture and the blade.
Whoever did this wanted me to know.
Wanted me to see their work.
Wanted me to understand that they could move through our territory undetected, execute our problems, and leave evidence of their skill like a business card.
Bold and goddamn dangerous.