Thorn appears in the late afternoon, the nightbark’s bark-covered form blending with shadows in ways that make tracking his movements through the feed difficult. Branches sprout from his shoulders, thorns catching light as he moves, and when he speaks, his voice carries the rustling of leaves through ancient forests.
“We host battles every new moon.” He settles into the chair across from her desk like he is growing there instead of sitting, roots threatening to sink through the floor if he stays still too long. “Supernatural beings bet on death matches. The money moving through…” he trails off, studying her with eyes that see past flesh to whatever lies beneath. “The club takes a cut. It’s how we maintain territory, pay debts, keep peace among beings who’d rather tear each other apart than coexist peacefully.”
She stops working, meeting his gaze with steady eyes that don’t flinch away from the otherness of what he is. “Death matches?”
“Yes… to the death.” Thorn’s confirmation carries no apology, no shame, just a statement of fact delivered with the same neutral tone someone might use to discuss cute fluffy puppies. “The fight ring sometimes operates below the clubhouse, with its reinforced walls, wards strong enough to contain magic and violence regardless of what beings participate. Tonight is fight week. You’ll hear the screams. It chills most who hear it for the first time.”
I watch her process the information, the way her hands still on the ledgers, the slight tightening around her eyes that suggests horror she’s trying not to show.Most humans would fracture, would beg, would reach for powerless authorities. She does none of that.
She merely absorbs the truth of what kind of organization she’s trapped in the middle of and returns to her work with hands that shook slightly but didn’t stop moving.
Pragmatic, that’s what she is.
Smart enough to understand that moral outrage serves no purpose except getting her killed faster, practical enough to recognize that survival sometimes requires accepting truths too brutal for comfortable contemplation.
The screams start around midnight, exactly as Thorn predicted, guttural sounds of violence and death that echo through stone walls thick enough to muffle most noise. I watch her reaction through the feed, the way she flinches at the first scream, then forces herself still, breathing through the horror until it becomes background noise she can ignore while continuing to work on the ledgers spread across her desk.
She is adaptable. Another quality most humans lack after a week of captivity and exposure to truths about the supernatural world they’re not equipped to handle.
By dawn, the screams have stopped, replaced by the sounds of cleanup crews hauling bodies to disposal sites where they’ll be cremated or buried, depending on species and the requirements of the beings who lost their fighters. The fight ring floor will be washed clean, blood scrubbed from the reinforced concrete, until no trace remains of the violence that soaked into the stone and earth below.
She worked all through the night, through fear of the screams from the death fights going on. She keeps proving herself useful in ways that complicate everything.
Stubborn Woman!
The Next Day
The prospects arrive, Calder still recovering from iron poisoning but mobile enough to satisfy his curiosity about the prisoner who refuses to break. Rhett and Bennett flank him, already bickering before they even reach her door.
“Smells like fear and sass.” Rhett grins at her wolfishly, shadows clinging to him unnaturally as his hellhound nature bleeds through the human facade he wears. “I like her.”
Bennett’s lip curls with divine disdain, wings not manifested but presence carrying enough celestial weight to make the air thick. “Of course you would,hellspawn.”
“Better than being a stuck-up celestial prick.”
Scar appears between them with that vampire speed that makes transitions seem like magic rather than supernatural biology, red eyes gleaming with amusement and warning in equal measure. “Both of you,out. And Rhett, stop sniffing the prisoner. It’s creepy.”
“You’reliterallya vampire.”
“Exactly.” Scar’s smile carries fangs and centuries of predatory experience. “I have standards.”
I watch through the feed as they continue their argument in the hallway, voices fading while Scar herds them away from her door like wayward children who need supervision before they cause actual damage. She stares after them with an expression I can’t quite read, something between horror and fascination, like she’s finally processing the full reality of what she’s stumbled into.
The Kings of Anarchy MC isn’t just a club.
It’s an empire.
The New Hampshire chapter is built on violence, money, and supernatural power that humans can’t touch, protected by beings that shouldn’t exist, operating in shadows where mortal laws holdnomeaning. And she’s trapped in the middle of it, useful enough to keep alive but human enough that every day she remains here violates laws older than civilization itself.
I close the security feed and head toward my quarters, exhaustion finally catching up with the week’s complications, but the flame in the dome catches my attention as I pass through the main club room. It burns brighter now, colors shifting through gold, blue, and crimson in patterns that pulse like aheartbeat, like a living rhythm that matches something I can’t quite identify.
Alive.
More alive than it’s been in decades.
Because ofher.
Because of one stubborn, defiant, utterly human photographer who touched it and made it remember what it used to be before the curse stripped my fire away, leaving only ice behind.