Chapter Two #2
Everyone looks up when Cruz and I enter. Then everyone looks away. I peel off my shirt and toss it onto a bench. My skin feels too tight. The beast paces beneath it, dragging horns along the inside of my skull.
Cruz walks to the board and checks the names from earlier tonight. “Your options are limited unless you want to fight the ghoul, and I’m pretty sure he already lost three fingers.”
The ghoul raises his stitched arm. “Two fingers and a thumb.”
“Apologies,” Cruz says. “Very different.”
“I’ll fight him,” the jackal says.
His eyes are too bright, pupils blown wide. Adrenaline. Maybe something else. Some creatures take tonics before matches. It makes them faster. Stupider too.
Cruz looks at me, and I nod.
“Submission,” Cruz says. “Human forms only. No killing. No permanent maiming. Knox, that last one is mostly for you.”
I say nothing.
The jackal grins and spits blood onto the floor. “This big bull looks tired.”
Cruz winces. “Wrong thing to say.”
I step into the cage. The door locks behind me with a metallic clang that settles something inside my chest. The cage has rules. Boundaries. Here, violence is honest. Nobody pretends it’s anything else.
The jackal circles me, light on his feet. He is fast, lean, and cocky enough to think speed can save him from mass. It might, if I were fighting clean. Tonight, I am not.
Cruz stands outside the cage, arms crossed, face hard. He knows me well enough to watch for the moment control slips.
The bell rings.
The jackal moves first. He darts in low, aiming for my ribs. I let him land the hit. Pain blooms along my side, dull and distant. He is already moving out when I catch the back of his neck and slam him into the cage wall.
The steel rattles, and the room goes quiet. The jackal grunts, twists, and drives an elbow into my jaw. My head snaps to the side. Blood fills my mouth where my teeth cut the inside of my cheek.
For one second, I see Briana’s throat. Smooth now. Healed today, but it was torn once. The beast rises. I catch the jackal’s next punch and squeeze. Bones shift beneath my grip, and he yelps.
“Knox,” Cruz warns.
I release his hand before the bones break. Barely. The jackal stumbles back, fear finally cutting through whatever he took before the fight. Good. Fear makes people smarter. Usually.
He shifts partially instead. Claws burst from his fingers. His jaw elongates, teeth snapping sharply through a mouth that’s no longer human enough for the rules.
Cruz swears. “Shift violation.”
The bell rings once. I hear it, but I ignore it.
The jackal lunges. His claws rake across my chest, opening four hot lines from shoulder to ribs. Pain flashes so bright it clears some of the red from my vision. I grab him by the throat and lift him off the floor.
His feet kick. His claws scrape my forearm.
The beast likes that too much.
I slam the jackal down onto the mat hard enough to knock the air out of him, then drop my knee onto his chest and pin him there. My hand stays around his throat. Not crushing. Not yet.
He stares up at me with wide yellow eyes.
Yield, I think. Say it.
He wheezes, and my grip tightens.
Briana’s voice slips through the roar in my head. I am alive.
My hand loosens, and the jackal slaps the mat.
“Yield,” he croaks.
I push off him and stand. My chest heaves. Blood slides down my torso, warm and familiar. The cage door opens, and Cruz steps inside, putting himself between the jackal and me as the ghoul drags the idiot out by one ankle.
“Done,” Cruz says.
I shake my head.
“Yes,” he snaps. “Done.”
The beast rams against my control, furious and unsatisfied. I turn away before Cruz can see my eyes, but it’s too late.
He lowers his voice. “You need air.”
“I need another fight.”
“No. You need to stop trying to beat a mate bond into silence.”
I round on him, and the demons stop playing cards. Cruz doesn’t even blink.
I breathe through my nose. Once. Twice. The air tastes like blood and concrete and old magic. Not enough. Not right. Not her.
That’s the problem. The only thing that calmed the beast tonight was Briana’s hand near mine and her voice telling me she was not afraid. Which means I am well and truly fucked.
A slow clap comes from the stairs. Every creature in the room goes still.
Aldron descends like a shadow that learned elegance, dark hair tied back, sleeves rolled to his forearms, pale face unreadable. He wears black, as always, but there’s blood on one cuff.
Not his. Probably not anyone we will miss.
His gaze moves from the jackal being dragged away, to the gouges across my chest, to the cracked tape around my hand.
“I leave my establishment unattended for a few hours, and you start redecorating with testosterone,” Aldron says.
Cruz points at me. “Mostly him.”
“Coward,” I mutter.
“Alive coward,” Cruz replies.
Aldron’s eyes settle on me. Ancient. Amused. Tired in a way only old vampires can be tired. “Walk with me, Knox.”
That’s not a request.
I grab my shirt, but don’t put it on. The fabric will stick to the bleeding claw marks, and I am already irritated enough. Cruz follows until Aldron glances at him.
“Not you.”
Cruz’s brows rise. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s private.”
My twin looks at me, and I nod once. He doesn’t like it, but he stays behind.
Aldron leads me through a side corridor lined with old brick and iron sconces that burn with blue witch flame. The hallway slopes beneath the building, deeper than most people know The Gin Room goes. Older rooms sit down here. Storage. Cells. Safe spaces. Dangerous spaces.
Aldron has owned this building for centuries. No one knows all its secrets but him. Maybe not even him.
He stops outside a heavy oak door carved with symbols I have never learned to read. With one hand, he pushes it open and steps inside.
His private office below the bar is nothing like the public one upstairs.
This room has no velvet, no polished charm, no carefully curated atmosphere.
Stone walls, a massive desk, and shelves crowded with old books and older weapons.
A glass cabinet full of blood vials labeled in neat script.
A map of New York covers one wall, marked with pins in colors that probably mean someone’s death or debt.
On the desk sits a black wax seal inside a small glass dish.
A circle with a slash through it, and three drops beneath.
The beast inside me goes still, and I stop in the doorway.
Aldron looks at the seal, then at me.
“So,” he says. “She remembered.”
My hands curl into fists, and the bandage tears. “You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you are getting while you look like you might put your fist through another wall.”
I step into the office and close the door behind me. “What is it?”
Aldron moves behind his desk, but he doesn’t sit.
“A mark used by a blood-ring that has operated under different names for at least seventy years. They specialize in rare blood, coerced donors, illegal bindings, addiction draughts, and private auctions for creatures wealthy enough to believe morality is for the poor.”
The room narrows, and my breathing turns slow. Dangerously slow.
“Who runs it?”
“That’s the problem.” Aldron picks up the glass dish and studies the wax through it.
“For the last decade, I thought they had been reduced to scattered cells. Petty predators. Opportunists. The group that took Briana shouldn’t have had resources, protection, or enough organization to acquire this seal. ”
“Who runs it?” I ask again.
Aldron looks up. Something cold moves behind his eyes.
“They used to answer to Lucius.”
The name hits like a match dropped into oil. Aldron’s brother.
A vampire older, crueler, and far less interested in pretending monsters can be anything but monsters.
Lucius has been a shadow over The Gin Room since before I started working here.
Not always present. Not always named. But there.
In Aldron’s rules. In the protections around the building.
In the way old vampires lower their voices when certain debts come up.
I stare at the seal. Briana saw that mark while chained and bleeding. Lucius’s people touched my mate. The beast rises so hard my horns press beneath my skin.
Aldron’s voice sharpens. “Control yourself.”
My laugh comes out wrong. “Control?”
“Yes. That thing you are currently losing.”
“He touched her.”
“We don’t know that.”
“His people did.”
“Possibly.”
I slam my hand onto the desk, and the thick wood cracks beneath my palm.
Aldron doesn’t move, but the air in the room goes colder.
“Careful,” he says softly.
I lean over the desk. “Don’t ask me to be careful about this.”
“I am not asking.” His fangs slide down.
“I am telling you. Because if you tear through Brooklyn tonight following a scent trail that may not exist, you will alert every creature involved. They’ll scatter.
They’ll hide. And if Briana is still a target, your fury will put her in more danger, not less. ”
The truth of it cuts through me, and I hate him for that.
I step back, chest heaving. Blood from the claw marks trails down my stomach and drips onto Aldron’s old rug.
He glances at it. “That rug survived the Civil War.”
“I don’t care.”
“I assumed.”
Silence stretches between us while I force my fingers open one at a time.
“What do you know?” I ask.
“Three humans have disappeared in the last month from areas around clubs that cater to mixed supernatural clientele. Two were known donors. One was a bartender.”
My stomach turns. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because until tonight, I didn’t have the seal. And because I was hoping I was wrong.”
“You’re never wrong.”
His mouth curves without humor. “That’s untrue, though flattering.”
“Briana needs to know.”
“Yes.” His answer surprises me enough that some of the rage stutters.
Aldron watches me. “Don’t look so shocked. I don’t make a habit of keeping victims ignorant of the monsters hunting them.”