Page 91 of Property of Scar

Rhett clears his throat.

Bennett says nothing.

Cali walks beside me. No eye contact, no words, but the space between us is tight. Something’s been building there for a while, and it is not going anywhere.

The Court is behind us.

The tunnels are ahead.

Whatever is waiting beneath the city knows we’re coming. I can feel it, the same way I felt the guard’s controlled flicker when I named the queen, something that was almost concealed and wasn’t quite.

Mordain might know we’re coming, but he’s still in for one hell of a fight.

Because ‘Nobody fucks with the Kings,’ and Mordain, he tried to fuck us all.

Chapter Twenty-Two

CALYPSO

The Next Night

The way the air inside the clubhouse walls sits heavier, it feels like it’s charged with something that presses against the skin. Every lamp throws longer shadows than it should. Every voice carries an edge it doesn’t bother to soften. The Kings of Anarchy are mobilizing, and everyone in the building feels it, the kind of shift that hits before anyone says a word.

I stand in the doorway of the main room, watching them work.

Wreck has the tactical maps spread across the long table at the center, hand-drawn, annotated in three different colors, covered in notations that track entry points, rogue patrol routes, and structural weak spots in Mordain’s underground network. He points at a corridor junction with one thick finger, his voice low and certain as he speaks to Thorn and Maul.

Thorn listens in absolute silence, arms folded, bark-textured skin catching the light. He nods once, a single, measured movement that somehow communicates everything. Maul reaches across and taps a second exit route, already mapping threats with a precision that’s been drilled into trained instinct.

They move around each other the way a club moves when everybody knows their job. Nobody is getting in anybody else’s way. Nobody is trying to be the loudest voice in the room.

Every movement has a purpose.

Just work getting done.

At the far end, Flux has claimed a table and set up laptops on it. Three screens glow in the low light while his fingers fly across the keyboards fast enough to blur. City maps, power grids, security feeds, and traffic cameras. Every system tied to the city is getting pulled apart and put back together under his hands.

He mutters something to himself, kills one feed, opens another, and reroutes a third. Then he’s gone. One second he’s in the chair, next he’s shifting, body collapsing into something smaller and leaner, all sharp angles and unnatural speed as he slips through the window. Gone before most people would register the movement. Thirty seconds later, he’s back inside, reforming as he moves, dropping into the chair, and picking up exactly where he left off. The transformation doesn’t seem to cost him a damn thing. The keyboard starts rattling again before the rest of us have fully processed that he ever left.

Ruckus is seated cross-legged on the floor near the fireplace, which would look absurd if everything about his posture didn’t suggest deliberate intention. Small cloth pouches are arranged in a careful row across his knee. He works through each one methodically, pressing a coin between his palms and murmuring something too layered to be a simple phrase, each word landing with the weight of something genuinely old. The air around him shimmers faintly at the edges, the barely visible flex of luck being shaped into something tangible. Something that will sit in the breast pocket of every brother who goes into that tunnel tomorrow and bends the world a few degrees in their favor when it matters most. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and so does everyone else in the room.

Then I find Rhett and Bennett. They’ve claimed the bench along the far wall, tucked between two weapon crates, making it look productive enough that no one questions it. Rhett is loading magazines with a methodical rhythm, an ingrained habit doing most of the work, pressing each round home with steady, practiced pressure. Bennett has a blade across his knee, drawing a whetstone along the edge in long, deliberate strokes that ring out soft and clear in the spaces between conversation.

“So when we die…” Rhett says, not looking up from the magazine, his tone light, like this is just another conversation, “… do you go back to heaven?”

Bennett continues his stroke. “I’m not going to die.”

“But hypothetically.”

Bennett hesitates, the whetstone lifts, then lowers. “Hypothetically… yes.”

“And I go back to hell.”

Bennett snorts out a laugh. “Obviously.”

Rhett slots the finished magazine into his jacket and reaches for the next. “So really, nothing changes.”

Bennett is quiet for a moment, and I watch his hands still on the blade. Something moves across his expression. “I suppose not.”