Chapter Thirty-One
SCAR
One Week Later
The guilt doesn’t disappear when you decide to live. It just stops being the thing that runs you.
I learned that in the days after the sleeping cage.
I wake each morning with it already there, settled across my chest, all years of weight that feels as familiar as the scar carved into my face.
For a beat, just one, I wait for it to do what it always does…
to pull me under. To drag me back into the dark water where Astrid lives, where her eyes replay on a loop that never lets me forget the exact second I failed her.
It doesn’t.
It stays where it is.
It doesn’t take me with it.
That’s the difference.
I sit here with it for a while, feeling its shape, the edges worn smooth from time and repetition, and, for the first time, I don’t try to drown in it. I don’t reach for it like it’s the only thing I have left of her.
I just… let it be what it is.
A choice I made.
A thing I carry.
Not the thing that defines me.
My hand comes up before I think about it, fingers brushing over the raised line along my face, the scar I chose to keep, the one thing I refused to let heal because it felt like the only honest way to carry what I did.
It’s been there so long it feels permanent.
Like it should be.
Like letting it go would mean letting her go with it.
My thumb presses against it, tracing the line of it one last time, and there’s a moment, a small, quiet one, where I expect something to stop me.
Some instinct.
Some resistance.
Something that says, ‘You don’t get to be free of this.’
But nothing comes.
The bond hums beneath my skin. My mind shifts to Cali, to my obvious love for her. I need to let my guilt go so I can live my life entirely for Cali.
She deserves that.
She deserves all of me.
I have to let Astrid go.
Then slowly, the skin shifts under my hand.
Subtle at first.
Then not.
The raised edge softens, the old damage pulling back, smoothing out beneath my fingers as the scar finally gives way to what I am, to what I’ve always been capable of doing and never allowed.
It doesn’t hurt.
That’s the part that lands hardest.
It doesn’t tear or fight me.
The wound just… heals.
Like it’s been waiting.
When I lower my hand, the skin is smooth.
Unbroken.
And for the first time since that night, since Astrid sliced my face in her rage, and I chose to keep it as a memory of her, the scar heals… and I finally let her go.
I find my way to the ridge, the one that overlooks the eastern tree line where the pines grow so dense the snow barely reaches the ground beneath them. The air is sharp, clean, and brutally cold, the way New Hampshire does cold, and I stand there a while.
Not thinking. Not not-thinking. Just existing in the quiet of a forest that doesn’t ask anything of me.
And then, quietly, with no audience and no ceremony, I say it out loud for the first time. “I’ll always carry you.” My voice barely disturbs the air. The trees take it and hold it, indifferent, patient. “But I’m living now… for both of us.”
The forest doesn’t answer.
It doesn’t need to.
Something shifts in my chest like a stone that’s been rolling for centuries, finally coming to rest at the bottom of a riverbed. Still heavy. Still there. But no longer in motion, no longer tearing up everything it passes through.
I stand there until the cold works its way through my jacket, and then I turn back toward the clubhouse.
On my own terms.
Back toward my life with Cali.
The vampire and the hunter.
Who would have thought?
***
I smell them before I see them.
Leather, motor oil, and the heat signature that belongs to monsters who have been alive long enough to stop faking their nature.
Raze, Wreck, Thorn, the three of them are occupying the back corner of the main room like they always have, like furniture that’s never moved.
They see me walk in.
Raze always clocks it first. His gaze moves over me the way a president’s gaze moves over a situation, fast, thorough, reading all the variables before committing to a response.
Whatever he finds shifts something in his expression, subtle enough that most people would miss it, but I’ve known this man for centuries, and I don’t miss it.
“You look… different,” he says, clearly meaning that my face is missing the scar it’s carried for centuries.
“I feel different,” I reply.
Wreck’s hollow eyes settle on me from across the room, that gaunt face giving nothing away, the wendigo in him always watching, always measuring. Then, after a beat that stretches just long enough to matter, he says, “Good.”
One word from Wreck… that’s a speech.
Thorn says nothing, because Thorn rarely does, but the branch-lined angle of his jaw tips toward me in quiet acknowledgment, something old and steady recognizing something just as old, making a shift it understands. There’s warmth in it, the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself.
I pour myself a drink, blood-wine dark enough to pass for something else, and settle against the bar without feeling the need to explain it.
It’s a small thing, but it doesn’t feel small.
Raze comes over a moment later and takes up position beside me. He doesn’t make a thing out of it, ask how I’m holding up, or offer some bullshit piece of wisdom.
He stands there, looking out over the wreckage with me.
When he finally turns his head, it’s like he’s waited long enough for the dust to settle before deciding what matters. “About damn time,” he says finally, voice low, easy, but carrying weight.
I huff out something that might almost pass for a laugh. “That obvious?”
“It’s been obvious for a long time, brother,” he replies. Then his gaze shifts, just briefly, toward the room beyond, toward where Cali had been not that long ago, before coming back to me. “It just took the right reason for you to do it finally.”
There’s no judgment in it.
No push.
Just fact.
I don’t answer. I don’t need to.
He nods once, like that says everything that needs saying. “She’s good,” he adds, just as simply. “She is solid. Holds her ground when it matters.” He grips my shoulder, his ice-blue eyes meeting mine. “If she’s where you land…” he continues, voice steady, “… then she’s welcome here.”
It’s not permission.
It’s acceptance.
From him, that’s bigger.
His gaze meets mine properly, something quieter sitting beneath the surface.
“I’m fucking proud of you,” he says, like it’s nothing.
Like it’s not a statement that carries lifetimes of knowing exactly what that damn scar meant.
Then he pushes off the bar, already done with it, already moving on as presidents do once a decision is made.
But it lingers anyway.
Because coming from him…
It always does.
“C’mon, enough of the sap, we’ve got a ceremony to get to!” he states, and I smile, knowing what comes next is going to be fun, maybe slight chaos, but fun.
We take off for the main room, all the brothers and club girls mingling together for this milestone.
Rhett and Bennett materialize somewhere to my left in the way they always do, occupying the space with just enough casual energy to make it obvious they’re trying very hard to look like they haven’t been watching me.
They’re not subtle. They’ve never been subtle. It is, at this point, one of their defining qualities.
Rhett’s hellfire gaze flicks to me and immediately away again. The hellhound suddenly finds the far wall fascinating.
Beside him, Bennett has his arms crossed and his attention fixed somewhere over my shoulder. Which tells me neither of them wants to be caught looking directly at me right now.
I let them have it for approximately thirty seconds.
Rhett watches me, quieter than usual, like he’s lining up something in his head.
“You let your scar heal,” he says.
It’s not a question.
My hand doesn’t move, but I feel the absence of it anyway. “Yeah.”
His gaze moves toward the room, toward where Cali is standing, her eyes flick to me, a small smile crossing her face, then back to me, something settling into place behind his eyes.
“Her,” he says simply, tilting his head toward Cali.
Bennett doesn’t look away from me. “No,” he corrects quietly. “For her.”
The distinction hangs there, sharp and deliberate.
Rhett huffs out a breath, something almost like a smile pulling at the edge of it.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Figured it’d take something like that.
” Rhett’s gaze shifts again, softer this time, less edge, more certainty.
“She looks at you like you’re not already buried under everything you’ve done,” he adds.
“Like you’re still something worth reaching for. ”
Silence settles for a beat. Bennett’s voice cuts through it, calm and grounded. “She doesn’t see the scar,” he says. “She sees what’s still there.”
My eyes dart to Cali, and she softly smiles at me, like she is confirming their words.
“And you saw it too,” Bennett adds.
I let that sit just long enough to feel it start digging in, then I shake my head once, dragging a hand through my hair.
“What the fuck is this?” I mutter. “Group therapy?”
Rhett snorts immediately. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he shoots back. “You’re not paying us enough for that.”
Bennett doesn’t even blink. “If we were your therapists…” he says mildly, “… this would have happened about three hundred and fifty years ago.”
That earns a short, rough huff of a laugh out of me despite myself.
I look at both of them for a long moment. “Don’t let it go to your heads,” I say, but my voice doesn’t carry the weight I usually put behind it, and we all know it.
Rhett grins anyway, wide, bright, and utterly unrepentant. “Too late.”
“All right, enough of the bullshit, everyone shut up!” Raze takes his place at the front of the room, and the shift is immediate. Voices taper off. Chairs stop moving. Every eye turns his way.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to command a room, but Raze has never seemed to notice he’s doing it.
“Rhett. Bennett. Step up.”
They do.
And something in the room shifts.