There is no flame to watch anymore.
No carefully caged miracle burning itself smaller day by day.
Because it isn’t there.
It’s insideme.
Fire coils beneath my ribs now, hot and restless, threaded through the ice instead of smothered by it. It doesn’t sit quietly, nor does it wait for permission. It surges, snarls, and snaps against the restraints I’ve spent centuries perfecting, a living thing that remembers what it was to be unleashed and resents every second I keep it leashed now.
Getting my fire back didn’t soften me.
It sharpenedeverything.
Anger comes easier, faster. Rage rides closer to the surface, no longer muffled by cold calculation. I feel it in my jaw, locked too tight. In my hands, fingers flexing as if they’re looking for something to break. In the way my dragon presses against my skin, restless and violent, daring me to lose control just to remember how it feels.
The witch gave me wholeness.
She didn’t give mepeace.
And the empty space where Roxy should be only feeds it, a constant, grinding reminder that the one thing capable of steadying the fire walked out of my territory and never came back.
The dome is destroyed.
The flame is no longer contained.
The silence the witch left behind is the most dangerous thing in this room.
The clubhouse is too quiet. No sharp retorts from the kitchen where Roxy argued with Scar about laundering money. No fingers flying across laptop keys as she reorganized our financials with brutal efficiency. No laughter when Rhett said something stupid to make her smile.
Only silence. Silence broken by floorboards creaking as my brothers move like ghosts through a space that stopped feeling like home the moment the witch stole every memory Roxy had with us.
I exhale, frost crystallizing before my fire surges and devours it. Outside the windows, Ivy’s greenhouse stands with plywood replacing shattered glass, and she works among struggling plants with mechanical precision. No passion. No connection. Just going through motions because it’s what she’s always done.
Ash paces the perimeter, phoenix wings manifested despite no threat, picking fights with anyone in reach. Yesterday, she nearly incinerated Flux over fight-ring betting. The day before, she reduced a punching bag to ash and molten leather because it wasn’t hitting back.
Luna hasn’t sung since Roxy left. The selkie sits at the bar, staring into an untouched whiskey, her empathic abilities drowned in the grief and rage saturating this place. She used to sing while she worked, old selkie melodies that made the air taste like salt water and home.
Now there’s justsilence.
Wreck retreats into shadows, his wendigo nature feeding on fear and tension until he’s more nightmare than man. Coil spends most of his time in basilisk form, coiled in the lower levels where darkness doesn’t judge. Maul keeps meticulous records, but his hands shake when he thinks no one’s watching.
The prospects are affected too. Calder moves like he’s afraid to take up space, his fox-fire dimmed to almost nothing. And Rhett and Bennett aren’t arguing, and that alone tells me how bad things have gotten. They stand together, shoulders nearly touching, drawing quiet solidarity from the very being they normally can’t stand.
Because Thorn warned us.
The nightbark appeared two days ago, more thorn and branch than flesh, sap bleeding from wounds that shouldn’t exist. His voice when he spoke was like wind through ancient trees.‘The forest is whispering. War is coming for us, Prez. The fae will strike. I have no doubt.’
We have been on our guard ever since. Waiting for the Seelie Prince to make his move, but also trying to figure out what to do about Roxy.
If there’s anything we can do about Roxy.
Because the witch’s word is final.
But I can’t let that be the last time I see her.
Scar appears at my shoulder, vampire speed carrying him across the club room between heartbeats. Five centuries of existence have taught him to mask emotions, but right now there’s something raw in the set of his jaw.
“This is wrong, Prez,” he says, his voice low. “She belongs here.”