Page 146 of Property of Scar

He looks at Rhett. “You came in like a motherfucking wrecking ball, and you never once apologized for it. You leave carnage in your wake, and you do it with a grin, zero remorse, and somehow that carnage always, always, lands between your brothers and whatever’s trying to end them.” The corner of his mouth pulls. “You don’t just fight. You destroy, and you destroy precisely when and where it counts most.” Raze chuckles, handing Rhett his road name rocker. “Rhett… your road name is Carnage.”

The word detonates in the room exactly as the man deserves—loud, immediate, and impossible to ignore.

Rhett blinks hard. The reaction lands before he can hide it. I’ve watched the hellhound laugh in the middle of bloodbaths and crack jokes with broken ribs.

Usually, he’s got a defense ready for everything.

Not this time.

This one gets through clean.

His jaw tightens until it looks painful. Fire burns hot in his eyes, and he doesn’t say a word.

Just nods once.

Then Raze turns to Bennett, and something in his expression shifts again, still president, still certain, but carrying a quiet gravity, like the name has been earned in ways that cost.

“Bennett… you hold the line. You always hold the line, and you hold it long after anyone else would have broken. You don’t fight for victory. You fight so the people beside you can keep fighting. You are the thing that stands between your brothers and the dark, you do it with everything you have, and you never once ask for recognition for it.” His voice drops slightly, the words weighted differently now. “Your road name is Sentinel.”

The room holds that name for a second before it breathes again.

Bennett doesn’t move immediately. He stands there, still, like he’s waited a long damn time for this and isn’t about to rush it. Then, slowly, the light beneath his skin pulses outward, warm and genuine. He exhales through his nose, and it sounds like something releasing.

They turn to face each other.

Carnage looks at Sentinel.

Sentinel looks at Carnage.

“We made it, altar boy,” Carnage says.

Sentinel’s mouth curves, not the polished celestial expression he deploys when he’s being performatively patient, but a real one. Small, genuine, and warm. “Together, hellspawn.”

They clasp forearms.

The grip is tight.

It holds.

And then the room explodes.

The brothers roar, Raze’s voice the anchor of it, Wreck’s hollow rasp cutting through the noise with its resonance, Maul’s werewolf bellows, rattling the bottles on the bar shelf. Ruckus laughing, full throttle, like he called it early and isn’t letting anyone forget it. Coil’s precise applause somehow carries through everything else. Thorn’s low sound like timber settling, and underneath all of it, the thunder of boots on floorboards, fists on tables, the joyful chaos of a family in full celebration of itself.

I stand in the middle of it and feel something move through me that I haven’t felt in longer than I can account for.

Pride.

Not the cold, controlled satisfaction of a mission completed or a threat eliminated. Something warmer than that. Something that rises from a place I had forgotten was still capable of feeling it, that swells against my ribs like pressure finding a crack in old stone and pushing through, bright, fierce, and entirely, devastatingly real.

These are my boys.

God help me, these are my boys.

The celebration takes over the clubhouse the way celebrations always do, with no clear beginning and no foreseeable end.

Music, raised glasses, and the kind of noise that exists purely because people are happy, and happiness in this club has always been loud.

Cali finds me without looking like she was looking, which is a skill she has. A minute ago, she was somewhere else. Now she’s here, shoulder brushing mine, like the bond took one look at the distance between us and decided the space between us needed severe adjustment.