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I built something here instead. Found the Kings, earned my patch, and found brothers who wanted me beside them instead of beneath their fucking boot.

Hell stopped owning me a long time ago.

Or I thought it did.

My chest pulls tight as everything Malgrave has done suddenly takes on a whole different shape.

Taking my voice.

Coming back for more.

Reaching inside me whenever the fuck he wants and pulling at the power Sentinel and I created together.

This was never some Hellwarden enforcing a law.

The Devil has been using him to put his hands on me.

A-fucking-gain.

Something hot and vicious tears through my chest, and my hellhound slams forward so hard my fingers tighten around the back of Echo’s chair, the wood creaking beneath my grip.

No! Fuck that.

I spent too long on my knees in that place the first time. Nobody from Hell is putting me there again.

Echo reaches back, her hand finding mine where I’m gripping her chair, and my head snaps toward her. She doesn’t ask what’s wrong or tell me to calm down. Her fingers simply work their way between mine, easing my grip on the wood until I’m holding on to her instead, while I drag air into lungs that suddenly don’t seem to remember how the fuck breathing works.

I turn my hand and lock it around hers, which helps.

This table helps.

Raze at the head of it, Sentinel beside me, and every patched bastard sitting around it.

This isn’t Hell.

I’m not chained.

And I’m sure as fuck not that kid anymore.

Across the table, Wreck stares at Sentinel like he’s waiting for the angel to take it back. Scar leans forward, forearms hitting the wood as his eyes cut from Sentinel’s burned hand to me.

Ruckus finally breaks. “The Devil?”

Sentinel looks at him. “Yeah.”

“As in the Devil?”

“How many do you fucking know?” Sentinel grumbles.

Ruckus drags both hands down his face. “Just checking, because I was really hoping there might be some lesser, significantly less fucked version we were talking about.”

Nobody laughs.

“Fuck,” Wreck mutters.

Pretty-fucking-much.

Raze has been watching me through all of it, and I know damn well he’s seen more than I wanted him to. He knows enough of what happened before he found me to understand exactly where my head just went. His eyes drop briefly to Echo’s hand locked around mine before coming back to my face. “He wants what you and Sentinel made.”