I crouch slightly, bringing us eye to eye. “And you tell him this only happens once. Try us again, and next time Iwon’tleave anyone standing to deliver the message.”
For a long beat, the fae warrior just stares at me with those ghostly white eyes.
Then, he bows his head in understanding.
I step back and lift my hand. “Go.”
He doesn’t argue, scrambling to his feet and vanishes into the tree line, wounded, humiliated, and very much alive—the worst kind of messenger.Only then do I turn back to my brothers.
Scar is already moving, eyes sharp as he scans for injuries. Wreck’s shadows retract as he straightens, hunger satiated for now. Maul shifts back to human form with a snarl, blood streaked across his ribs, but standing. Flux reforms beside Coil, Thorn’s roots retreating reluctantly back into the earth. Ruckus meets my gaze and gives a short nod, luck always on our side when he’s near.
“You good?” I ask, my voice carrying across the ridge to my brothers.
A chorus of answers comes back—bruised, bleeding, yet still standing.
That’ll do.
I give a short nod, letting my gaze sweep over them, taking inventory one last time. “Good work,” I say. “You held the line. Nobody went down. That’s what matters.”
A few shoulders loosen. A couple of grins flash through blood and dirt.
“We sent the message,” I continue. “They heard it. They’ll remember it.” My eyes lift briefly to the tree line where the lastfae disappeared. “If anything starts hurting later, you tell Scar. Otherwise…” I turn toward our bikes. “Mount up. Let’s ride.”
There’s no cheering, no noise beyond engines firing up one by one, the sound rolling through the trees, a promise rather than a threat now. Headlights cut through lingering frost as we fall back into formation, the ridge left scarred, silent, andveryaware of who holds it.
The ride back to the clubhouse takes longer than it should. The cold sinks deeper than usual, settling into bones that don’t shake it off as easily as they once did. But the road is clear, the night is quiet behind us, and the message has been delivered exactly as intended.
We holdourterritory.
Maul’s ribs are bleeding, not life-threatening, but enough to require Ivy’s attention the moment we pull into the compound. Flux sports a gash across his forearm where a fae blade caught him mid-shift, the wound still sluggishly bleeding as he dismounts with a grimace he doesn’t bother trying to hide. Thorn’s bark-covered skin is scored with silver scratches where fae blades found their mark, the wounds already knitting themselves closed but slowly, painfully, and the nightbark moves with the careful deliberation of someone whose connection to the forest has been temporarily frayed.
And Rhett? Rhett dismounts one-handed, the fae blade still buried in his shoulder because nobody on the ride back could figure out how to remove it without making the damage significantly worse, hellfire flickering weakly around the wound as his body tries to heal itself around the foreign object lodged in its tissue. Bennett rode beside him the entire way back, close enough that their bikes were nearly touching, close enough that if Rhett swayed on the saddle, the angel would catch him before he fell.
They didn’t say a word to each other.
They didn’t need to.
As much as they pretend to hate each other, we all know they would kill anyone who tried to hurt the other.
Because we’re family.
We’re brothers.
As I slide off my ride, the silence that follows carries a weight different from the one before the battle, heavier, earned, saturated with the particular brand of exhaustion that comes only from surviving something that could have gone catastrophically differently. Blood crusts my forearm where the fae blade caught me, already scabbing over, and I don’t bother cleaning it as I dismount and stride toward the clubhouse doors.
The compound is quiet when we arrive, and for a moment, the only sounds are engines cooling and boots hitting gravel, the brothers moving with the careful efficiency of men who know just how badly they’re hurting but refuse to show it until they’re inside.
Ivy appears at the clubhouse entrance before I’ve crossed half the clearing, bark-textured hands already glowing green, her eyes sweeping the formation and cataloging injuries with the speed and precision of someone who’s been patching us back together for longer than most civilizations have existed.
“Maul first,” she calls, her voice carrying that deep resonance of ancient forests. “Then Rhett. The rest of you can bleed on the floor while I deal with the ones who might actually die if I’m not fast enough.”
She hands me a shirt as the brothers file past her with the practiced resignation of men who have heard this particular speech a hundred times before. Somewhere in the organized chaos of wounded being triaged and blood being cleaned from leather and skin, Scar’s laugh cuts through the air, dark, satisfied, carrying the particular edge that tells me he fed well tonight and enjoyed every second of it.
“We keep what’s ours,” I say, pulling the shirt over my head, my voice filling the space between the clubhouse walls with enough cold certainty to silence every other sound. “Always.” The words settle into stone and the bones of every brother present, a reminder carved deeper than any fae symbol could ever cut.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, my attention drifts.
Not to damage reports.
