Trixie stood a few feet away, trembling, with her arms wrapped around her body. He walked to her in three longstrides. She looked up at him, eyes wide, voice barely a whisper. “Someone betrayed you because of me.”
Cyclops shook his head. “No. Someone betrayed me because they were weak.”
Her throat bobbed. “My father would have killed me.” Cyclops pulled her into his arms.
“No,” he murmured into her hair. “Because I’ll kill whoever he sends here first.”
Somewhere behind them, a gunshot echoed through the compound, and Trixie flinched. Cyclops held her tighter. “This ends now,” he said, voice dark and certain. “Not when your father decides that it ends. We’re going to finish this war now.” She lifted her head. “And we’ll take him down.”
A breath shuddered out of her. “We?”
He cupped her face, thumb brushing her cheek. “Yeah,” he said. “We.” And this time, she didn’t argue.
TRIXIE
The gunshot echoed through her long after the sound died. Even with Cyclops holding her against his chest—warm, solid, and real, Trixie couldn’t stop shaking. It wasn’t from the cold, or from fear, but from something deeper. It was something hollow and disorienting that made her chest ache.
A man had died because of her. A man she barely knew. He was a kid, really. Cory was young, stupid, and reckless, but he was still human. And until twenty minutes ago, he was still breathing, but thanks to her, he was dead now.
She’d seen men die before. They were victims of her father, disposable bodies locked in freezers, or tossed in rivers, and silenced forever. But this was different. This one, she had been part of it. This one had a place, a brotherhood, and a purpose. It had loyalty—even if he betrayed it.
She exhaled shakily, pressing her forehead against Cyclops’s shirt. It smelled like sweat and leather and the faint, metallic tang of gun oil. A smell she shouldn’t find comforting. A smell she shouldn’t want near her skin. But every inhale steadied her more than the one before.
Cyclops rubbed a slow hand down her back, comforting without smothering. “Talk to me,” he murmured.
“I can’t.” Her voice cracked.
“Then breathe,” he said softly. “Just breathe.” She did, and it helped a little, but the tremor in her chest wouldn’t go away. Cyclops tipped her chin up until she met his gaze. His eye held hers with a fierce steadiness she didn’t deserve.
“He betrayed this club,” Cyclops said. “Not you.”
“Because of me,” she whispered.
“Because he was weak,” he corrected. “A weak link breaks under pressure. Your father found his crack and pried it open. That’s on Cory. Not on you.”
She shook her head. “You can’t know that.”
“I do,” Cyclops said. “We choose our actions. Even fear doesn’t change that.”
“Fear changes everything,” she said quietly.
He brushed his thumb across her cheek. “I’m not afraid to be with you, honey, no matter what your past was, or who your father is.” Emotion punched through her chest like a fist. She pushed away from him, too raw and exposed. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“How do you do that?” she asked. “Say things like they’re simple, when they are anything but simple.”
Cyclops leaned against the wall, arms crossed—controlled power in every line of his body. “I can’t control what life throws at me,” he said. “But the men I’m responsible for listen to me. And right now, you’re a member of my club.”
She froze. “I’m not?—”
He cut her off. “You’re under my protection. My responsibility. That makes you family to this club.”
Her breath stilled. “Family?”
He nodded, “Family,” he repeated. She didn’t know what to do with that. Not when her father’s version of family was a leashand a cage. He demanded complete control and pretended to love her. It was a weapon disguised as love. Family was the thing that had broken her. But hearing Cyclops say it with no threat, no demand, just a declaration—it felt different. It felt dangerous, like stepping on thin ice and not caring if it cracked under her feet.
Trixie opened her mouth to say something; she didn’t even know what to say, but the door behind Cyclops swung open. Ink stepped out, wiping his hands on a rag. He looked grim, but steady. “It’s done,” he said.
Cyclops nodded. “Good. Send his body back to Trixie’s father to let him know that he’s lost his nark.”
