Page 39 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
“They’ll come harder now,” I say softly.
His gaze stays on the rising sun, his voice low. “Let them.”
I look at him, really look, and I know the truth: the line has been crossed. There’s no going back. The Syndicate wanted to send a message, but so did we.
And ours was louder.
27
MALEK
The drive to Prague is long and quiet, the kind of quiet that presses against the windows and seeps into the car like fog. Michaelis sits across from me, his posture as rigid as the rifle case leaning against his leg. His eyes are forward, watching the road as though expecting blades to rise from the snow at any moment. He doesn’t ask why we’re going, and I don’t explain. He knows better.
By the time we reach the monastery, the mountains are heavy with winter, the roads winding like veins through stone and ice. The monastery itself looms out of the mist, its towers cracked, its walls eaten by centuries of wind and rain. No bells ring to mark our arrival. They haven’t rung in generations. Yet the place still holds its weight, the kind of weight that doesn’t vanish just because time pretends it should.
When I step out of the car, the air slices sharp into my lungs, bitter cold that tastes of stone and smoke. My boots crunch against the snow as I climb the steps, each one slick with ice worn smooth by ages of feet that carried vows heavier than mine. Michaelis follows close behind, his hand brushing the edge of his coat, where steel waits for the wrong kind of silence.
The great doors groan when I push them open. The sound echoes through the valley, low and aching, as though the building itself remembers what it once was and resents the reminder. The scent of damp stone greets me, cut with faint traces of incense burned out centuries ago, lingering like a ghost that refuses to leave.
Inside, the nave stretches vast and hollow. Stained glass windows still cling to their frames, cracked and weathered, bleeding muted colors across the stone floor. Red spills like blood, gold like fire, green like the last breath of a forest long since burned. The altar is gone, stripped away, leaving only a platform where power once stood. The silence inside is heavier than the cold.
He’s there, waiting.
Darius stands at the far end of the nave, framed by fractured light, his figure still and sharp. He hasn’t changed. Not really. The centuries sit on him differently than they sit on me.
His face is strong, unmarred by time, his hair dark save for the faint silver threading through it like lightning across a storm. His eyes, when they meet mine, are molten amber—the same eyes that once burned beside me in battle, the same eyes that hardened when Roman betrayed us, the same eyes that turned on me when I walked away.
The lion inside me stirs, restless, pacing.
“Malek,” he says, my name rolling deep in his chest, familiar and foreign at once. “I wondered if you’d ever crawl out of your palace of steel.”
I stop ten paces from him, my body coiled, every sense sharp. The air between us hums, thick with memory and the scent of old blood. “I didn’t come for you.”
His mouth curves faintly, though it doesn’t touch his eyes. “No. You came because Roman forced your hand. Because thePact’s blood still runs in you, no matter how long you’ve tried to choke it down.”
I draw a slow breath, steady, grounding myself against the urge to bare teeth. “The lion returns, but not for you. For her.”
His gaze flickers, only slightly. He doesn’t need me to say her name. He knows. He’s felt the bond form, the thread tugging across distance and blood.
“She’s stronger than she realizes,” he says, his voice quieter now, measured. “But you already feel it. You always walked closest to the fire.”
I don’t answer. Silence stretches between us, and in it I feel every weight of our history pressing down. Once we fought side by side, no words needed, trust as natural as breath. Now we stand as men who might as well be strangers.
I glance at the cracks in the glass above him, the way the light cuts jagged across his shoulders. “You want me to fall back in line. To bend to your call like the others.”
“I want you to stop pretending you can fight alone,” he replies. “Roman is not one man anymore. He is legions. You’ve seen what he’s building. You’ve seen what he’ll burn to get it.”
I let my voice drop low, sharp. “I’ll fight him. But don’t mistake me for your soldier. I don’t stand for you, Darius. I stand for her.”
The words hang between us, heavy, undeniable.
Something in his expression shifts—not anger, not scorn, but something like understanding. His jaw tightens, his eyes narrow, but he doesn’t strike back. He simply nods, once, slow. “And that’s enough.”
The silence that follows is not empty. It’s thick with possibility, with the echo of what might come. The Pact isn’t healed, not yet. But the wound doesn’t feel as raw as it once did.
When I step back out into the cold, snow flurries whip through the air, stinging against my skin. The valley stretcheswide and gray, the mountains standing like old sentinels around us. Michaelis is waiting at the foot of the steps, his breath curling white in the air.
“Well?” he asks as I descend, his hand hovering near the gun at his side.
