Amanda snorted, soft. “Feels like everyone’s doing a lot of that lately.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe you’re worth worrying about.”
She stared at me like I’d handed her something she didn’t know how to hold.
Cap’s voice carried again. “Church!”
She tensed up immediately.
I leaned close, my voice low enough for only her to hear. “I’m right next to you the whole time. You don’t look at anyone but me unless you want to. You don’t answer anything you don’t want to. You breathe. I’m right there.”
Her shoulders dropped an inch. Not enough. But it was a start.
We walked into church side-by-side. Smoke followed until Ranger snapped his fingers and told him to stay.
Amanda paused at the doorway like it might swallow her whole.
I reached back, took her hand once more, and squeezed.
When she met my eyes, something settled in her. Not calm. But trust.
She stepped inside with me.
And as long as I was breathing, no one, the Watcher, ring, or anyone else, was touching her again.
4
AMANDA
Wrecker didn’t let go of my hand until we were fully inside the church room. Even then, he stayed close enough that our shoulders brushed each time I breathed.
The room was already filling. Brutus stood by the far wall, arms crossed over his chest like he was daring someone to test him. Ranger took the chair closest to the door, leaning back like he was relaxed, except his eyes kept flicking toward every window. Ghost sat in his usual corner, mask tilted down toward a laptop he must’ve dragged in here, fingers tapping fast.
And Scout’s chair, empty, patched, waiting, sat like a wound in plain sight.
No one sat near it.
Not because Cap had said anything, he hadn’t, but because no one needed to be told. The space around Scout’s chair stayed clear, like the absence itself demanded respect. Some of the guys wouldn’t look at it at all. Others glanced at it and then away, jaws tight, shoulders stiff, like acknowledging it too long might crack something open they didn’t have time for.
I tracked it all automatically. Who shifted. Who stayed still. Who watched the door instead of the table.
This room wasn’t just where decisions got made. It was where losses were counted. Where names stopped being abstract and became something you carried with you.
And somehow, impossibly, I was sitting in the middle of it.
Ariel slipped in behind me and hovered for a second, looking small even though she squared her shoulders the same way I did. Someone, Coyote, I think, muttered, “Should the girls even be in here?”
Cap didn’t even look up as he said, “Yes. They’re part of this. Both of them.”
The room reacted without anyone saying a word.
A couple of the older guys shifted in their seats. Not hostile. Just recalibrating. Like the rules had moved half an inch and they were adjusting their footing. Brutus didn’t react at all. He just kept his arms crossed, expression carved from stone. Ranger’s mouth twitched like he’d expected the call before it was made.
No one argued.
That mattered more than the comment ever could.
Ariel exhaled slowly beside me, the sound barely there but loaded. I matched it without thinking, grounding myself in the fact that Cap hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t softened it. He hadn’t justified it.
