I pull in a breath and square my shoulders. My hand throbs from the cut, though it is already healing. My entire body isstill trembling in that deep, uncontrollable way. Rogue’s arm remains around me, and I let it, because letting him hold me stopped being something I argued with several weeks ago.
We know where she is.
We know where she made me.
And where she is making others.
And for the first time since the night Valeria’s hands found my throat on top of a parked car, the thing moving through my chest isn’t terror.
It isfury.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ROGUE
The Next Night
Every brother is already seated by the time Crave calls Church, their chairs pulled into a rough circle around the battered table, the air between them heavy and charged, as it gets before a storm breaks.
No one’s joking.
No one’s leaning back with a beer in hand the way they might on an ordinary night. The patches on their cuts catch the overhead light, Eternal Sins MC stitched in faded thread above ink, scars, and centuries of survival.
I take my seat to Crave’s left. Sloane stands near the wall behind him, her arms loose at her sides, that quiet strength she carries now sitting differently on her than it used to, like she’s grown into the power rather than wrestling it. Beside me, Scorch drops into his chair, cigarette already burning between his fingers, the ember a small, furious orange point in the dim room.
Oracle slides in next to Scorch almost unnoticed. Dread folds into his seat next to him, his presence the kind of still that isn’t peaceful. On the other side of the table, Hades takes the seat next to Hex, unhurried, the faint smell of old earth and cold stone following him the way it always does. And Grizz takes the far end, having to sit at the end of the table due to his sheer size.
The three club girls, Eden, Reyna, and Seraphine, are even standing at the back wall for this Church. It seems everyone is in on this briefing.
And then there’s Charlie.
She lingers in the doorway for a second before stepping inside, dragging a breath through her nose first. She’s checking the room while feeling out the heartbeats around her and how hard they hit before she lets herself all the way in. It’s not a weakness. It’s discipline.
Weeks ago, she didn’t have any.
Now she uses it like armor.
She sits beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushes mine, and something in my chest settles the way it does whenever she’s in reach. I don’t reach for her. Not here. But my wolf tracks her anyway, the way it always does.
Crave lets the quiet hold for exactly three seconds before he speaks, “Sloane found Valeria’s location through the blood trace.” He doesn’t ease into it. His voice carries the weight of centuries of command, flat, certain, and leaving no room for debate. “She is currently at an abandoned church on the northern outskirts. She’s been using it as a base of operations. Our intel puts at least twenty newborn scions inside, possibly more.” His gaze moves around the table, landing on each of us in turn. “We end this tonight.”
“Hex and Grizz hold the compound, protect the perimeter, ensure no secondary force moves on our people while we’re gone.” He pauses. “No heroics from either of you. You hold this ground.”
Grizz nods once from the back of the room, steady as bedrock, his Stonehide almost visible in the set of his jaw.
Hex doesn’t look thrilled. I see the argument building behind his eyes, but he swallows it.
Then Crave’s gaze shifts to the far side of the table, where Ronan sits with his boot propped against the chair leg, one of his lucky coins turning over and over between his knuckles in that restless fae habit of his. Beside him, Jet is completely still by contrast, the smoky black of his soul tether coiled at his forearm,his pale eyes giving nothing away. The two of them together look exactly like what Crave once called them, miracles and monsters, side by side.
“Ronan…” Crave’s voice carries the note it gets when he’s about to hand someone a responsibility they need to understand fully before they accept it. “You’re on the strike team. Valeria’s church will have wards, traps, contingencies. She’s had months to build her stronghold, and she is meticulous. I need your Luck Bending inside that building before the first engagement, bending the odds in our favor before she can tip them against us.” He pauses just long enough to let the weight of it land. “Do not burn through your tally carelessly. I need the probability shifts where they count most, not scattered.”
Ronan stops the coin mid-roll. His molten gold eyes flick to Crave, and the grin that crosses his face isn’t the easy cocky one he wears when he’s deflecting. It’s sharper than that, genuine, lit from the inside by the kind of excitement a leprechaun can’t entirely suppress when fate is about to be bent. He taps the tally marks on his forearm once. “She wants to play the odds against us. She’s picked the worst possible night for it.” He pockets the coin. “I’m in.”
“Jet…” The name falls quiet, and his pale eyes sharpen without his expression changing at all. “You’re compound defense. I need your Phasemind and your Soul Resonance inside these walls tonight, not a mile away.” There’s no softening in Crave’s tone, no apology, and Jet wouldn’t respect one if there were. “If Valeria sends a secondary force while our backs are turned, you are the thing that moves through walls and hears them before they arrive. You work with Hex and Grizz. The compound doesnotfall.”
He responds with silence, not disagreement. Jet holds Crave’s gaze for a long moment with those eyes that always look like they’re reading something the rest of us can’t see. Whatever hehears, it satisfies something. He exhales a slow breath through his nose, smoke drifting from the cigarette burning low between two fingers. “Compound stays standing,” he says, and his voice is the flat, sardonic kind that other people might mistake for indifference. Everyone in this room knows better.
From beside him, Ronan leans back with exaggerated ease and nudges Jet’s shoulder with his. “Look at us, mate, one holds the fort, one tilts the universe. The twins of bad timing, finally given their moment.”
