Fault lines are forming in the club, between fear and loyalty, survival and honor, old laws and new bonds.Between what they are and what they might have to become to keep that motto true.
Nobody fucks with the Kings.
The mark on my shoulder pulses once, in agreement or warning, I can’t tell.
I curl closer into Vex’s chest, breathing in the cold, holding tight to the one thing in this moment that feels solid, my choice.
If the world is going to burn, I think, it won’t be because I ran from it. It’ll be because I stood my ground and dared it to catch me.
Chapter Fourteen
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Vex
The cabin is silent.
Not the comfortable silence of a place at peace, but the kind that makes every supernatural instinct I have prickle with unease.Two days since the last attack.Two days of nothing but waiting, watching, and feeling Tessa’s restlessness through the bond we share.
Blade thought distance would help.Sent us here to a safe-house forty miles from town, nestled in a valley where the cell signal is shit and the nearest neighbor is a moose.The place is small but well-stocked.There is a single bedroom, a kitchen that smells like cedar and old coffee, and windows that look out onto nothing but snow and pine trees stretching to the horizon.
I stand at those windows now, arms crossed, watching the twilight paint everything in shades of blue and purple.Behind me, I can hear Tessa moving around the kitchen, the soft clink of mugs, the hiss of the kettle.Domestic sounds that shouldn’t make my chest tight but do anyway.
Through the bond, I feel her nervous energy.The way she’s trying to keep busy, keep her hands occupied, keep her mind from spinning out into the dark places where fear lives.
“Tea?”she asks, her voice carefully casual.
Turning, I find her standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living area, two mugs in her hands.She’s wearing jeans and one of my hoodies, the one she stole from my room three days ago, and the sight of her drowning in black fabric withKings of Alaska MCemblazoned across the chest does something dangerous to my control.
“I don’t drink tea,” I say.
“I know.”She walks over anyway, pressing one of the mugs into my hands.“But I made you one anyway.It’s chamomile.Very...calming.”
The corner of my mouth twitches despite myself.“You think I need calming?”
“I think we both do.”She sinks onto the worn leather couch, curling her legs under her, both hands wrapped around her mug as though it’s a lifeline.“This waiting is driving me insane.”
