Bennett actually nods in agreement. “He’s right. You get this particular expression when you’re contemplating mortality versus immortality and the inherent loneliness of eternal existence.”
I stare at them both. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“We pay attention,” Bennett says simply.
“Also, you’re not subtle,” Rhett adds. “Nobody stares at Raze and Roxy like that unless they’re thinking deep thoughts about love and shit.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” they say in unison, then glare at each other for the synchronization.
Christ.
I need air.
Even though I don’t technically breathe.
“Figure out your bet,” I tell them, pushing away from the bar. “But if either of you actually puts money on the president burning down his own clubhouse, I’m making you both clean the fight cages for a month.”
“That’s not fair,” Rhett protests.
“Life’s not fair. You’re hellspawn. You should know that better than anyone.”
I’m out the door before he can formulate a comeback, letting it swing shut on Bennett’s quiet laughter and Rhett’s indignant sputtering.
The night air hits cool and clean, June settling over the mountains in that early-summer hush where the heat finally loosens its grip. It carries the scent of pine, damp stone, and distant rain, a softness that doesn’t touch me anymore but stirs memories from a life so far behind me it feels like someone else’s skin.
The clubhouse sprawls behind me, all reinforced stone and warded windows, our fortress built into the mountain like we’re part of the landscape. Lights glow warm in scattered windows. Soft music threads through the corridor, Calder’s playlist on repeat, less about escape now and more about filling the quiet spaces between battles.
Family.
That’s what this is.
What we’ve built over decades of blood, violence, and choosing each other when the rest of the world wanted us dead, controlled, or locked away in cages.
And I’m five hundred years old, standing outside in the dark, feeling something uncomfortably close to loneliness while surrounded by more connection than most supernatural beings achieve in multiple lifetimes.
Fucking pathetic.
I move without conscious decision, boots crunching over gravel as I head toward the perimeter, needing distance, space, and not to think about the way Roxy looks at Raze like he’s salvation wrapped in scales, or the way he guards her like the world might try to steal her back.
Needing not to remember Astrid.
The thought of her name still hurts, still cuts, still bleeds despite three and a half centuries of scar tissue built over the wound.
She loved me.
I killed her.
Both things are true.
Both things will always be true.
And watching Raze get his happy ending while I carry her death in my bones like shrapnel—
The scent hits me mid-step.
Unexpected.
