“Based on what methodology, exactly?”
“Vibes.” Rhett grins, all teeth and zero shame. “And the fact that Roxy set the kitchen on fire last week, trying to make breakfast.”
“That was an accident,” I point out from my position behind the bar, not because I particularly care about defending Roxy’s cooking skills, which are admittedly catastrophic, but because watching these two idiots argue is somehow both entertaining and exhausting in equal measure. “And Raze put it out in thirty seconds.”
“With ice breath,” Rhett counters. “Which means he had to shift partially, which means his control is still shaky when she’s involved, which only proves my point.”
Bennett finally looks up, pale eyes gleaming with something that might be amusement if angels were capable of such baseemotions. “Your point is based on vibes and a sample size of one kitchen incident. That’s not proof, that’s conjecture.”
“Big words for someone who’s about to lose fifty bucks.”
“I haven’t agreed to the bet.”
“Because you know I’m right.”
“Because gambling is a—”
“Sin. Yeah, yeah.” Rhett waves dismissively. “You say that every time, and yet somehow your wallet always ends up lighter anyway.”
“That’s called charity,hellspawn.”
“That’s called losing and being too proud to admit it,feathers.”
I should intervene. As VP, mediating brother disputes technically falls under my job description, especially when said brothers are prospects who haven’t even earned their full patches yet and probably shouldn’t be gambling on the president’s relationship stability.
Shouldis the operative word.
The word sits heavy in my mind as I watch them bicker, their voices filling the space with noise, life, and the kind of easy camaraderie I’ve spent five centuries never quite achieving. Rhett throws a peanut at Bennett’s head. Bennett catches it without looking and eats it while explaining probability theory in a tone that could freeze hell. Wreck drifts past them toward the hallway, hollow-eyed and silent, feeding on the low-level irritation they’re generating without either of them noticing.
Normality.
This is what our normal is like now.
The thought sits strange in my chest, foreign and uncomfortable. The clubhouse is full, brothers scattered throughout the building, club girls claiming their spaces, the steady hum of illegal operations running smoothly beneath the surface of domestic routine. Flux is in the back office, countingtonight’s fight ring profits. Coil is on the phone with a buyer in Prague, negotiating prices for stolen fae artifacts. Maul is running perimeter patrol in wolf form.
And somewhere upstairs, Raze and Roxy are probably tangled together in their room, fire, ice, and magic all twisted up in sheets that’ll need replacing by morning.
Six months since their transformations.
Six months since I watched Roxy choose immortality, choose him, choose this life with the kind of certainty I haven’t felt about anything in longer than I can remember.
Six months of watching my president, my brother, my friend for over a century, find something I killed three hundred and fifty years ago.
Contentment.
The crystal dome still stands in the center of the clubhouse, fractured but not removed. No one tried to fix it. The crack that split it the night Raze reclaimed his fire cuts through the crystal like frozen lightning, jagged and honest. Instead, the brothers turned the ruin into a monument.
Inside the broken shell rises a sculpture forged from melted chains and dragon-scale shards, twisted together with blades of glass shaped into flames that climb toward the shattered ceiling. They catch every flicker of light in the room, throwing reflections across the walls that almost look alive when Raze walks past, reacting to the fire that now lives under his skin instead of behind glass.
Beautiful, brutal, and unapologetically real.
A reminder of what he survived, and what the rest of us never learned how to keep.
“Scar.” Rhett’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “You good, old man? You’ve got that brooding vampire look happening.”
“This is just my face.”
“Nah, you’ve got like three different brooding faces. This is the existential crisis one.”
