Page 130 of Scavenger's Oath

“Yeah…” She bites her lip like she’s afraid we’ll laugh at her. “I just don’t know much about you guys. I don’t even know how old you all are. Or who you were before. Before… all of this.”

Leaning back, I smirk. “You’re lucky you didn’t know meback then. I was a hellion.”

“Still are,” Zane cuts in.

I flick a berry at him. “Shut up. Point is, I was young, pissed at the world for leaving me in the foster system and running headfirst into every fight I could find. The law hated me. I hated it back. Until the army got a hold of me and Phoenix here taught me how to channel that rage.”

“He was your commander?” she asks, surprised.

“His Sergeant,” Phoenix says, sipping his coffee. “Myles was my headache and my responsibility. Still is.”

I grunt, hiding the warmth that flickers in my chest.

“I’m twenty-five now. Phoenix is… what, twenty-eight?” I add.

Zane licks chocolate off his thumb. “And I’m twenty-six. I was a football star, baby. And I was good. On my way to go pro after I graduated college.”

Ivy’s cheeks flush at Zane’s flirtatious tone.

“What about you, little stray?” Phoenix asks, voice smooth as whiskey. “Where’d you come from?”

Her face drains as she laughs nervously. “I think I’m twenty-three now. Maybe twenty-four. When the world ended, I was seventeen.”

Seventeen? Jesus Christ. She was just a kid.

“And I was headed nowhere in life except an arranged married,” she continues, oblivious to our bodies stiffening. “I came from a strong family. A little overbearing. But we had money, power. Influence. Thought it would save us.” She purses her lips. “It didn’t.”

Phoenix tilts his head. “An arranged marriage?”

She laughs nervously, twirling her spoon. “My family… they were old money. Like, scary old. The kind that doesn’t pay taxes because they probably wrote the first tax laws.” Ivy grimaces and adds, “we belonged to… a society. Arranged marriages were pretty normal.”

“A secret society?” I finally say, a grin breaking through because that shit is metal as hell. “Like some Illuminati-level shit? That’s badass.”

Zane kicks me under the table.

She hesitates, her eyes focused on something a million miles away. “Pretty much. We kept bloodlines pure. Controlled wealth and information. It was everything to them. If you broke the rules or talked… you were executed.”

The room goes dead quiet. My fork creaks under my grip.

Holy shit. My little doe didn’t just survive—she walked out of a goddamn lion’s den.

Ivy forces a laugh. “God, why am I even shy about it? They’re all gone now. The money. The power. Everything.” Her eyes lift, bright with something fragile. “I spent my whole life under someone else’s thumb. You guys… you’re the first ones who ever made me feel like I had a choice.”

Phoenix reaches out and takes her hand. For the first time, it doesn’t sting. It soothes. Because he saw what she needed and gave it when I couldn’t move fast enough.

Then his other hand slides under the table, warm on my thigh.

While my cock reacts to Phoenix, my heart responds to Ivy’s smile. Loving and warm.

Something has shifted in the house. Something in us.

And Ivy… I don't know how to name the way she looks at us now. Like she's blooming under all the attention. As if the ghosts of her past are slowly stepping back into the dark, replaced by the warmth she finds in all of us.

I used to feel like a wild thing trying to behave inside a cage. But this doesn’t feel like a cage anymore and I don’t feel like theonly wild one. It doesn’t feel like three men tearing each other apart for one girl.

It feels like a pack.

A family.