The room murmured its agreement. Leather shifting, boots on concrete, the low rumble of men accepting a mission they'd already decided to fight before the order was given.
Kai found me in the corridor after Church.
He was leaning against the wall outside the meeting room, his arms crossed, the violet highlights in his hair faded to asoft purple that caught the light differently than it used to. He'd changed since Chen. Steadier. Quieter.
"Walk with me?" Not a demand. An invitation. The way Kai did everything—gently, with the option to refuse built into the offer.
We walked. Through the common room, past the kitchen, out the back door and into the courtyard where the desert morning was already pressing heat against the concrete. Kai sat on the low wall beside the fire pit. I stood. I always stood.
"He's the one, isn't he?" Kai's voice was soft. Certain, but gentle with the certainty. "The person you told me about. At Axel's claiming ceremony. Someone from before you patched in."
The memory surfaced: the bar, the whiskey, Kai beside me.There was someone once. Years ago. Before I patched in.I'd said it without thinking, and Kai had listened without pushing, and the conversation had ended with a toast.To finding our people.
"Yeah." One word. The same word I'd almost said to Logan at the bar before the windows blew in. "He's the one."
Kai nodded. "You didn't say much that night. Just that it didn't end well. That he left a mark." His eyes held mine. "But the way you said it told me more than the words did."
"It was all I could give, back then."
"And now?"
I leaned against the wall opposite him. The concrete warm against my back.
"Now he's sleeping thirty feet down the corridor, and I haven't slept because knowing he's here is louder than any sound he could make." Clipped. Precise. The way the words always came out when the feeling underneath was too big for the container. "Six years, Kai. Six years of keeping it locked down.And he's here, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that."
Kai was quiet for a moment. The wind moved across the courtyard, carrying the smell of sage and hot concrete.
"I'll tell you what happens." His voice was warm—present, constant, offering heat without asking for anything in return. "The same thing that happened to me when Axel stopped pretending he wasn't in love. The same thing that happened to Tank when he admitted Tyler was more than a mission. The same thing that happened to Irish when he gave Declan and Nolan those jackets." He looked at me. "You stop locking it down, Blade. And you let yourself have it."
I didn't answer. Couldn't. The words landed in a place the knife couldn't reach.
Kai stood. Touched my arm. Brief, light—the touch of a nurse who knew exactly how much pressure a wound could take.
"He looked at you during Church like you were the only solid thing in a room that's spinning." Kai smiled. The real smile, the one that had taken months to surface after Chen. "For what it's worth, you look at him the same way."
He walked back inside. I stayed in the courtyard. The sun climbing. The heat building. The compound waking up around me—Axel's bike starting in the garage, Tank's heavy footsteps in the hallway, Irish's laugh carrying from the kitchen where he was probably burning something and blaming the stove.
My world. The one I'd built when I didn't have anything else to build.
And thirty feet down the east corridor, the man who made me wonder if the building was finished.
He found me in the kitchen past midnight.
I was sitting at the table in the dark. No lights. The compound's kitchen at night was a landscape of shapes and shadows, the stainless steel of the counters catching ambient light from the courtyard windows, the smell of cold coffee and the ghost of whatever Irish had cooked for dinner. I'd come down because the walls of my room had started feeling like they were contracting, and the kitchen at least had space.
Logan appeared in the doorway. A silhouette at first, tall and broad, then the details resolving as he stepped into the ambient light: bare feet on the concrete floor, a white T-shirt that stretched across his chest and shoulders in ways the darkness couldn't hide, sleep pants riding low on his hips. His hair was wrecked from bed, the light brown strands pushed in every direction, and the disheveled mess of it did something to my pulse that had no tactical justification.
His eyes adjusted to the dark and found me at the table. "You couldn't sleep." Low, rough at the edges. He wasn't asking.
"No."
He crossed the kitchen. Ran the tap and filled a glass, the water catching a sliver of courtyard light as it rose. He sat across from me at the table. The same configuration as the bar. Two men. A table between them.
"Your club." He set the water down. Turned the glass in his fingers the way he'd turned the coffee mug at The Junction. "They're not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Criminals. Outlaws. Men who live outside the law because the law wasn't built for them." He paused. "I wasn't wrong about any of that. But I didn't expect the rest of it. The way Hawk runs a briefing like a general who actually cares whether his men come home. The couple at the table, the big guy and the lean one with the sharp eyes."
