The bassline was a heartbeat inside a cracked ribcage—loud, uneven, desperate. The air hung thick with sweat, perfume, and cigarette smoke, curling like a lazy ghost through the dim, colored lights. At the back of the club, half-swallowed by shadows and synthetic fog, Wryn Hudel was laughing too loudly, a glass of amber poison in his hand, another bottle already halfway gone at his feet.
He leaned against a booth, surrounded by men with sharp jaws and dead eyes, a pack of wolves without a leader. One of them snorted a line off a phone screen. Another was halfway into a girl's neck like he thought he could drink her. Wryn was louder than all of them, his voice breaking through the music like a blade through silk.
