Chapter Ten
CALYPSO
Meet Raze, discuss the shit that’s going down, and get the hell out of here before my urge to kill one or more of these fucking creatures get the better of me.
That was the plan.
At least it was, right up until Roxy turns those bright, earnest eyes on me and says, “You’re eating with us tonight,” in a tone that doesn’t have a question anywhere in it, and my brain, which has kept me alive through a dozen situations that should have ended me, goes completely blank.
So now I’m sitting at a table the length of a small aircraft carrier, surrounded by what is technically an outlaw motorcycle club full of supernatural beings who were ready to put weapons in my direction approximately four hours ago, and I am eating roast chicken.
Roast-fucking-chicken?
I honestly never thought this was what the Kings of Anarchy would have at their dinner table. A virgin sacrifice, or at least a goat sacrifice. Some kind of sacrifice! But not a fucking home-cooked family meal like it’s any given Sunday.
The room is loud in that loose, familiar way that comes from people who have spent enough time together to stop watching what they say.
Not the loud of a threat, but the loose, sprawling noise of a family that has no idea it’s being watched.
Voices layered over voices, the crack of a beer cap, someone’s fist hitting the table hard enough to rattle the cutlery, followed by boisterous laughter.
I keep my back to the wall.
Raze is at the head of the table, one arm loose around Roxy’s shoulders, the other wrapped around his beer like it’s been there all night.
He doesn’t ask, just pulls her into his lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and she goes with a laugh that tries to stay quiet and fails somewhere halfway through, her hand bracing on his shoulder as she settles against him.
He leans in without hesitation, mouth brushing her temple, his voice dropping low enough that it should disappear into the noise of the room, into the steady hum of conversation, movement, and the easy chaos of the clubhouse at full volume, but it doesn’t.
“I can still smell you on me from this morning,” Raze murmurs, rough and unhurried, like he knows exactly what it’s going to do to her. “Thought about it all damn day.”
The reaction is immediate. Roxy’s breath catches, just enough to be noticeable if you’re looking for it, her shoulders tightening under his hand as heat rises fast along her skin, the firelight catching the edge and softening it without quite managing to hide it.
The rest of the table picks up on that much, of course. There are grins, a few low comments thrown across the space, the kind of reaction that comes from knowing something was said without having access to what it actually was.
But the rest of them didn’t hear it.
The words themselves never reached them because Raze had spoken so low that only Roxy could hear. But my sensitive dhampir ears pick up things more clearly than most.
The realization settles in slowly once I register how clearly I heard him from across the room. Every word is sharp enough to land clean where I’m sitting.
Vampire hearing.
Of course.
And before I even look, I know I’m not the only one.
My attention shifts, drawn not by movement but by something more precise, something that feels a little too close to instinct, and when I glance up, Scar is already watching me.
There’s no surprise in his expression, just that same controlled stillness he carries through everything, and beneath it, something quieter, something that acknowledges the moment without needing to make a show of it.
The faintest shift at the corner of his mouth follows, not quite a smile but enough to confirm what doesn’t need to be said.
He heard every word.
I know it the same way I know he knows, because I heard it too.
Nothing changes on the surface. The clubhouse dining room stays loud around us, brothers talking over each other, cutlery scraping across plates, chairs dragging against the floor while somebody argues about beer near the kitchen.
But the space between us shifts anyway. Like something invisible just locked into place.
The same hearing with unnatural clarity. The same awareness of exactly what passed between us, without anybody else in the room understanding.
And underneath that?
Something else settles deeper.
Something that feels a hell of a lot more dangerous because it keeps lingering long after it should have passed.
As much as we try to ignore it, we are the same kind of monster.
I hold his gaze a second longer than necessary, long enough to confirm it, before I look away again, not out of discomfort, not because I have to, but because choosing to end the moment feels like the only way to keep control of it.
The table erupts. Someone makes a noise like a dying cat. Ruckus bangs his beer down in theatrical approval, grinning like he’s been waiting years to see something, and he’s finally getting it.
I watch Roxy hide her face against Raze’s shoulder, laughing under her breath while he looks down at her with that rough-edged softness he only seems capable of around her.
Something tightens unexpectedly in my chest at the sight.
Not pain.
Not jealousy either.
Just… something.
Then Ruckus’ beer disappears. One second, it’s sitting in front of him, the next it simply isn’t there.
He stares at the empty space like he’s been personally wronged, and across the table, Flux lifts his glass, serene and entirely uninvolved, or at least pretending to be.
Ruckus reaches for a fresh one, and it disappears before his hand closes around it.
He turns slowly toward Flux, whose expression doesn’t shift a single inch.
Five seconds later, an Irish tune starts playing from Ruckus’ phone in his cut pocket, and the table loses its collective mind.
Despite myself, something moves at the corner of my mouth, but I catch it before it becomes anything.
I map the room without thinking about it. The third exit on the left gets me to the yard fastest. The window above the sink opens outward. I noticed that the second I walked in. Gun riding on my hip. Three stakes tucked inside my jacket. Blade strapped at my wrist.
Every angle, every route, every possible problem runs through my head automatically, constant as breathing.
Not because I’m scared.
Because habits like this are the reason I’m still alive when a lot of people stronger than me ended up dead.
Ivy moves around the table, sliding plates in front of brothers without breaking stride while conversations and arguments roll around her.
Drinks get handed off. Brothers twice her size shift automatically to make room for her without even realizing they’re doing it.
The light catches in her hair every time she passes, flashes of rust and gold sliding through the noise and chaos of the dining room while she moves through it all as if she belongs at the center of it.
Maybe she does.
She reaches my side without making a thing out of it, sets a plate down near my elbow, then keeps moving like feeding a room full of monsters is just another part of her night.
“You look like the type who forgets to eat when she’s busy,” she says.
There’s no pity in it or fake softness either. Just an observation dropped on the table like she’s commenting on a simple truth.
I glance down at the plate, then back at her, but Ivy has already moved on, topping up drinks and sliding through the chaos of the dining room without expecting anything back.
That part throws me more than it should because my whole life has been built on trade. Information for information. Favors for favors. Every interaction eventually costs something.
Nobody has ever handed me food just because it’s dinnertime.
My fingers tighten slightly around the fork before I finally pick it up.
From the far end of the table, Ash has one boot up on the edge of her chair, leaning back as though the room belongs to her.
Her amber eyes find me across the noise and the movement and space between us, and she doesn’t look away.
It’s the kind of look that strips you down and decides what you’re worth.
I’ve had it turned on me before, mostly right before a fight.
Here, it’s just an assessment. Thorough, unbothered, and completely direct.
I meet it, and don’t look away.
Something shifts in her expression, barely there, and she tips her chin in a single, slow nod. The way you acknowledge something real.
I go back to my dinner.
Rhett pushes food around his plate like it’s let him down in some deeply personal way. “Is this supposed to be chicken…” he says, “… or evidence of a crime?”
Bennett’s jaw tightens, like his patience has been running on fumes for a while now. “It’s perfectly adequate sustenance. Stop complaining.”
“I’m from hell. We have standards.”
Bennett stabs his fork into the meat with a force that is, objectively, excessive.
Ivy passes behind them both. She doesn’t break stride or look down. “Boys, eat or starve. I don’t care which.”
They both go quiet.
I stare at my plate for a second to keep my expression in order.
Luna drifts in from the kitchen with a pitcher, moving along the edge of the room.
She doesn’t draw attention to herself. She’s just present, filling the shape of whatever space she occupies without making a point of it.
I notice she appears near me when the table noise crests, when Maul throws his head back in a laugh that rattles the windows, when a bottle gets knocked and skids across the wood with a crack that my body wants to read as a weapon discharge.
She doesn’t crowd me. She’s just there, keyed into something in me I didn’t know had a signal.
I notice it.
I don’t understand it yet.
Coil leans across the table at some point, his voice cutting low and direct through the noise, “What do you carry?”
I look at him. “Depends on what I’m hunting.”
“Show me.”