Chapter 62: How I Came Here

DRAVEN’S POV

Nico and Dante were about to go at it.

Rex sat in the corner looking unbothered, like he already knew how it would end. Rafael had been appointed as referee, standing in the middle with that casual authority he always wore like a second skin.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" Gia chanted from the side, hyped up and loud.

I didn’t know if she had a boyfriend in the ring or just genuinely loved watching two people try to kill each other. Either way, she was committed.

"Three... two... one... action!" Rafael called out, and the bell rang.

Those two went at each other like death was a competition and neither of them was willing to lose. Every punch they threw drew blood ... fast, clean, brutal. No warming up. No hesitation.

Then Nico managed to press Dante down to the floor and locked him into a submission hold.

Dante was yelling, but Nico wasn’t letting go. His hands were coiled around Dante’s legs, twisting them at an angle that looked genuinely wrong. Painful wrong.

Dante refused to tap out. Somehow, through sheer stubbornness, he managed to manoeuvre out of Nico’s submission and flip it into one of his own. Nico slipped free almost immediately ... but the damage was already showing.

Dante’s arm was bent at a bad angle. None of us really believed he was going to make it out of this clean.

I found myself silently wishing Rex would just call the damn thing off.

It was starting to look like this didn’t have a nice ending.

Nico hit Dante with a running knee ... clean, devastating ... then followed it up with a relentless string of punches until Dante was barely standing. Nico drew his arm back, ready to deliver the final blow.

Rex stepped in.

"Nico." His voice cut through everything. "You’ve beaten him. I trust you’ve gotten your satisfaction."

Nico nodded, blood coating his mouth and chin, staining his teeth red.

Dante was on the floor. He couldn’t even lift his head to answer a question. They carried him out of the arena on a stretcher. Rex had decided to spare his life ... for now.

"Let this be a lesson," Rex announced to the room. "If you fight each other again, it will be to the death."

He paused, then added, "And if someone fucked your girlfriend ... fuck their girlfriend back. Tit for tat. We’re mafia wolves, for crying out loud."

He stormed out of the arena.

Nobody cheered that last part.

Obviously. Because nobody wanted their girlfriend fucked either.

I’d been there once. The person who did it to me was a government official, so I couldn’t touch him. But if I could have? I would have pressed hot iron against his back and held it there until he begged.

Nothing cuts as deep as someone else riding the wolf you love.

I figured Jade would go take care of Dante. At least keep him from dying before morning.

A few hours later, she came to my room.

The moment she stepped inside and her scent hit me, my mind went straight back to the last night we’d spent together. Every detail of it. My body remembered before my head did.

But I knew that wasn’t why she’d come. I kept that thought filed away ... always present, always ready ... and focused on her face instead.

"Hey, Draven." She closed the door quietly and sat on the edge of my bed.

"I just came to check on you."

"I’m fine," I said. "How’s Dante?"

She sighed.

"Dante’s... not good right now. He has a few broken bones. They’ll need to be stretched and reset over the next couple of days."

"That’s rough," I said.

She leaned in and kissed me. Somewhere in the middle of it, she pulled back just enough to speak.

"I want you to tell me something."

I pulled her back in, kissed her deeper, filled the space between us with everything I wasn’t saying yet. She was a good kisser. She made the foreplay feel like a whole conversation on its own.

"What do you want to know?" I asked when we finally broke apart.

"How did you end up here?" She held my gaze. "And don’t say it’s a long story. We have time."

She settled back, waiting.

I looked at her for a moment.

"Can you handle the darkness?" I asked.

"What haven’t I seen at this point?" she said.

I gestured for her to get more comfortable on the bed.

"I told you I was exiled, right?"

She nodded.

"I was exiled because I killed someone."

She went still but didn’t look away.

"I was sleeping with my mate’s sister in the library on a festival night. I was so deep in it ... drunk, caught up ... that I didn’t even notice her sister had walked in on us. Not until the sister made it known. So I went after her. I couldn’t let her walk out and talk."

I paused. The memory tasted like ash.

"A library cleaner got in the way. He tried to intervene, tried to protect my mate. I killed him. And then I hit my mate hard enough that she went unconscious, and I framed her for the murder."

Jade’s expression shifted ... not disgust exactly, but something heavy settled into her eyes.

"My mate was convicted and exiled for something she didn’t do," I continued. "But later, the case was reopened. There were inconsistencies ... details that didn’t line up with the evidence we’d submitted. We were called back to court. A new investigation was launched, and this time they found us."

I almost laughed at how simple that part was.

"Turns out the guy we paid to wipe the camera footage didn’t do a thorough enough job."

Jade’s mouth fell open slightly.

"We were caught and found guilty. My mate’s sister ... the one I’d been sleeping with ... fucked a government official to get herself out. The best she could do for me was make sure I got banished instead of executed. Exile over death."

"I’m so sorry," Jade said, and her voice had gone soft. Her eyes were wet.

"That must have been a brutal thing to carry. I wouldn’t want my mate touching anyone else ... not even for their own freedom." She shook her head.

It is what it is.

She pulled me into a hug then. A real one ... both arms, her head against my chest, her warmth pressing into the coldest parts of the memory. It didn’t fix anything. But I felt a little lighter when she held me like that.

"You’ll be alright here in Valdris," she murmured. "I’m here. And I mean that ... if you ever need someone to talk to, someone to hold onto... or someone to fuck." She pulled back and looked at me, completely serious.

I laughed. Genuinely. It caught me off guard.

She stood to leave, and something came back to me ... something someone had said to me at the party.

"Jade."

She turned.

"Do you belong to everyone?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your body," I said. "Does it belong to everyone?"

She smiled slowly, like she’d been waiting for me to ask.

"You’ve been listening to gossip, haven’t you?" I didn’t answer. "My body doesn’t belong to everyone," she said. "And it doesn’t belong to anyone either."

Then she walked out.

I sat with that for a moment before getting up and heading to the bar. By the time I got there, Jade and I were just two people who happened to be in the same room. Nothing between us. Nothing showing.

We minded our own business.

The bar was back to normal ... everyone moving, drinking, talking, existing like there hadn’t been a man carried out on a stretcher an hour ago. Everyone except Dante, who was somewhere having his bones reset.

Then everything changed in seconds.

A boom shook the building. Tear gas flooded the room from every direction.

The air turned toxic. We were all coughing, stumbling, grabbing for walls and each other just to stay upright. The glass panel in front of us shattered inward.

And just like that ... we were in trouble.