Chapter Thirty
CALYPSO
Scar’s chest jerks beneath my hand. For one terrible second, I think I’ve imagined it, that exhaustion and desperation have finally pushed me over the edge.
Then a rough breath tears out of him. The sound hits me so hard my own lungs forget how to work. Another breath follows, uneven and ragged, his body dragging air back into itself after far too long without it.
I stare at him, afraid to move or speak, afraid that if I do, whatever impossible thing is happening will disappear.
“Scar?” His name leaves me as little more than a whisper.
His fingers twitch against the dirt. The movement is small, barely noticeable. It still feels like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Relief crashes into me so suddenly that it almost hurts, sharp enough to leave my eyes burning. His jaw tightens, and a muscle jumps beneath his skin.
Then, his eyelids flicker. My pulse trips over itself, and I find myself leaning closer, one hand tangled in the front of his club cut, the other pressed against his chest as though I need the constant reminder that he’s really here.
“Come on,” I whisper. I don’t know whether I’m talking to him or myself.
“Come on, Scar!”
His eyes slowly open. Not fully at first, just enough for me to catch the confusion there as his gaze drifts across the clearing. The sun has started creeping over the horizon, pale light spilling across broken earth, shattered stone, and the wreckage left behind by the fight.
His eyes move over all of it without settling.
Fear coils low in my stomach.
What if he’s still trapped somewhere inside his own head?
What if I got him back only to lose him again?
The thoughts barely form before his gaze shifts.
His eyes find mine, and everything inside me stops. The world, the battle, the exhaustion, the pain, all of it falls away beneath the simple, impossible fact that he’s looking at me.
His gaze finds mine, and the whole world narrows to that.
My chest is still heaving. My hands are trembling, though I press them flat against my thighs so nobody can see them.
I feel the bond sitting in my bloodstream like something warm and permanent, a humming low note that wasn’t there this morning, and it’s him.
I can feel that it’s him, which means it worked, he’s here, and I can finally stop holding my breath after what feels like a lifetime.
I didn’t know if it would work.
But I did it anyway.
He reaches for me. One hand, rising to cup the side of my face, his palm is warmer than it used to be. My dhampir blood in his veins. My warmth, living in him now. Something about that cracks me open in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
Behind us, Rhett has discovered something deeply fascinating in a nearby tree. Bennett’s lips are moving in what appears to be a silent prayer of genuine thanksgiving.
“You bonded yourself to me.” Scar’s voice is rough at the edges, like something dragged through gravel, but his eyes are completely clear. There’s no confusion in them. Just recognition and certainty. Eyes sharp with gratitude… of where he is and who brought him back.
“Don’t make it weird.”
He tilts his head. “Cali.”
“You would have done the same,” I state matter-of-factly.
“I know.” His thumb traces across my cheekbone. “That’s not what I meant.”
And I understand, in the space between those words and the way he’s looking at me, that what he means is something neither of us is going to say out loud right now, not with Rhett pretending to be blind and Bennett pretending to be deaf.
He means I chose him before I knew if he’d choose me back.
He means he knows that. He means he needs me to know that he does choose—fully, consciously, and with the full weight of five centuries behind it.
He pulls me in completely, both arms wrapping around me, his face pressing into my hair, and I let myself be held for a long moment before I stop being strong about it and press back just as hard. He’s solid under my hands.
Warm. Real. Here.
The brothers materialize somewhere else. They’re good men when it counts.
Roxy’s voice drifts from a distance, soft, meant for Raze and not for us, “He’s going to be okay.”
Raze’s answer is quieter, but with our enhanced hearing, we still catch it. “Yeah, he is.”
I stay in Scar’s arms until the trembling in my hands finally eases, until the last of that adrenaline bleed settles into something I can hold without it shaking me apart.
“All right,” Raze says after a beat, voice carrying just enough to reach all of us without breaking the quiet. “Let’s go home.”
It lands differently than everything else.
Not an order.
Not urgency.
Just a man finally giving everyone permission to stop fighting.
Scar doesn’t let go straightaway, but his grip shifts, grounding instead of holding on, his hand sliding to the back of my neck as he pulls back just enough to look at me, to make sure I’m still here the same way I just did with him.
Then he releases me.
Around us, the others start to move, boots crunching over broken ground as the tension finally drains out of the space, leaving only the aftermath behind.
Raze turns first, already heading back the way we came, the rest of them falling in without question.
Scar’s hand finds mine as we follow.
And this time…
I don’t let go.
***
Later that night, back at the clubhouse, everything is different.
The change sits low and quiet beneath the surface, impossible to point at and impossible to ignore, like the entire world has rotated a few degrees while nobody was paying attention.
Scar quietly closes the door to his room behind us, and neither of us moves for a moment, just standing there in the half dark with the low amber glow of the bedside lamp, laying everything in gold, the noise of the clubhouse muffled to something distant and soft.
The bond sits in my blood like a second heartbeat, and I can feel him through it—steady, warm, there—in a way that still doesn’t feel entirely real after everything that almost wasn’t.
“You should be resting,” I say finally, my voice lower than I expect, and a bit rough around the edges.
“After today… after what he did to you—” I stop, because even thinking it feels too close to losing Scar again.
His gaze doesn’t shift. “You nearly died,” I push anyway, the words sharper now, breaking through whether he wants them to or not.
“Do you have any idea what that looked like from my side? I thought—” My throat tightens, and I shake my head once, like that’s enough to cut it off before it goes somewhere I won’t pull it back from.
“I was so scared,” I admit, the truth of it landing heavier than I want it to.
“And then the bond… whatever this is… it just…” I exhale, frustrated and overwhelmed, “… it hit like I couldn’t breathe past it.
Like you were pulling me under with you. ”
Scar doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t argue.
He watches me, something in his expression shifting. “Cali,” he says, cutting through everything I’m trying to hold onto.
He crosses to me, closing the distance until there’s barely an inch of space between us, and whatever I was about to say next gets lost somewhere in the way he looks at me.
The cold reserve he usually hides behind has fallen away.
His attention hits me all at once, like I’m the only thing in the room worth seeing.
He lifts one hand and hooks his fingers into the elastic in my hair, pulling it free with a careful ease that has nothing to do with the conversation I was trying to have and everything to do with what he’s choosing instead.
“I’m here,” he murmurs, quieter now, like that’s the only part of it he’s willing to give me.
Then his hand slides into my hair, fingers threading through it, grounding himself in me instead of anything we just walked out of.
And I feel it through the bond.
Clear as anything.
He doesn’t want to talk about what almost happened. He doesn’t want to pick apart the bond, the fear, or how close it all came to breaking. Right now, he just wants me.
“You’ve been holding yourself together all day,” he says, low. “Let go.”
The sound that escapes me is somewhere between a laugh and something that isn’t. His hands move into my hair, fingers spreading through it, and I close my eyes as the tension in my shoulders finally, finally starts to deflate.
He kisses me slowly. Not asking permission, he knows he has it, but taking his time, his mouth moving against mine with a thoroughness that makes my knees register a quiet protest. I grip the front of his shirt, and he makes a low sound against my lips that I feel inside my chest, and his hands slide down to my waist, drawing me in until there’s no more air between us at all.
“Look at me,” he murmurs against my mouth.
I open my eyes.
His eyes are fully dark now, the red burning low and deep, and the expression on his face is something I don’t have a word for, something that belongs to him specifically, ancient, certain, and devastatingly present.
“Mine,” he says. Not a question or a command.
Just a fact, settled and unshakeable. “Say it.”
“Yours.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “And you are mine.”
Something shifts in his face, a crack in the control, just for a second, and then his hands find the hem of my shirt, and he pulls it over my head in one smooth motion, dropping it somewhere behind me without looking at it.
His eyes stay on me the entire time, drinking in every inch of skin with an attention that makes my pulse stumble.
I reach for his cut first, sliding it off his shoulders, letting it fall to the desk beside us.
Then his shirt, which he helps with, pulling it over his head and tossing it aside, and I press my palms against his side where the blade wound has now healed, just for a moment to feel him, the realness of him that I was terrified I’d never get back.