It takes another minute for Saint to let me go before he just nods, my feet taking me toward the one man who never saw me until another club took interest.
Varina follows despite not being asked, and Rook trails behind her like a shadow with fists. The lot is mostly empty, though two Obsidian prospects linger near the far gate pretending to check something on a bike. Canon stops beside his bike and turns on me with the expression he used to wear when I was younger and had disappointed him by existing too visibly. “You’ve been inside a week,” he says. “I want details.”
I stand with my hands at my sides. “Good morning to you too.”
Varina’s eyes flick toward me, startled, but Canon’s face only hardens.
“This isn’t a joke, son.”
I hold back a bitter laugh. He hasn’t called me his son in nearly twenty years. “No, it really isn’t.”
“What have you seen?”
I take a breath. “A lot of men eating breakfast at an uncomfortable wedding.”
Rook scoffs. “Cute.”
Canon steps closer. “Don’t be difficult.”
A week ago, that tone would have folded me around the edges. I feel the old shape waiting inside me, the instinct to lower my eyes, soften my voice, make myself useful enough to survive the next five minutes. But Saint’s cut is on my back, Saint’s signature is beside mine, and Canon had looked me in the face not long ago and called my usefulness a consolation prize.
“No,” I say.
Canon stills. “No?”
“No, I’m not giving you details.”
Varina lets out a sharp breath. “Oisín.”
I look at her. “You asked me once. I answered.”
Canon’s gaze cuts to her. “You spoke to him?”
Varina’s expression closes too late.
Rook mutters, “For fuck’s sake.”
Canon turns back to me, anger gathering in the lines around his mouth. “You think because Masters put a ring on this and leather on your back, you stop being blood?”
“I think blood didn’t seem to matter much until I was on the other side of the room.”
Canon’s hand lifts. It isn’t even high enough to strike yet. Just the beginning of movement, the old threat my body knows before my mind has time to name it. I go still, and I hate myself for the way my shoulders tighten.
A throat clears a few feet away and everyone looks over. Saint is just a few feet away, one hand in his pocket, the other twirling a small box in his hand. I don’t know how long he’s been there. Long enough, though his eyes are on Canon’s raised hand.
“Finish that motion,” he says, “and I’ll break it in three places before your boy there clears leather.”
Rook’s hand twitches toward his cut.
Bricks appears behind Saint like he was grown from the shadow of the building itself. “I’d rethink that.”
Canon lowers his hand slowly. Saint walks forward, unhurried, the lot seeming to shrink around him with every step. He reaches me, catches my wrist, and pulls me out of the circle of Rogues with enough force to make the statement clear and enough care not to hurt. Then he turns, placing himself slightly in front of me without fully blocking my view.
“Canon,” he muses, his tone almost pleasant, “Oisín is no longer a Rogue, no longer your son in any way that gives you authority, and no longer your problem. He’s wearing an Obsidian cut, and he’s my husband, which makes him mine.”
Canon’s face darkens. “You don’t get to erase blood because of paperwork.”
“You were fine reducing him to paperwork when it got you paid.” A wild smile splits across his lips as he pulls me to his side and stuffs the small box he was holding into my hand. “I only came outside because I was forgetting something. You can’t exactly be my husband without a ring can you?”
