Page 2 of Blood Red Rage

Jade shrugged. “Maybe not for fun, but people say the Dragic brothers don’t mess around. They keep to themselves, they just… exist. All huge and hot and intimidating.”

Steph sighed wistfully. “It’s like the city collectively agreed they’re off-limits. Untouchable. Except every girl still tries.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re both ridiculous.” But the truth was simple. I hadn’t heard a single whisper about these men until my friends spotted them last week and exploded into a frenzy of theories, rumours, and fantasies. Suddenly the Dragic brothers were everywhere, every conversation, every group chat, every half-drunken rant about destiny and fate and catching the eye of a man built like a medieval warlord. I’d ignored all of it, right up until now.

Jade chimed in with a breathy sigh. “The tall one with the tattoos. God, I would climb that man.”

I rolled my eyes. “You say that about literally every man with biceps.”

“No,” she said, jabbing her finger at me. “This one is different. The one they call Viking? I swear…just looking at him is an emotional experience.”

I snorted. “You’re all ridiculous.”

And yet, when the black Dodge Charger pulled up beside the line, something in my chest…shifted. The crowd parted like the ocean. People moved without being asked, instinctively, like something dangerous had come to shore.

The passenger door opened first, and Draugr stepped out. At least, I was guessing it was him from the way my friends had described the brothers in their breathless, borderline feral group chats all week. He was the one whose name people only whispered because he never actually spoke to anyone. He was known as the quiet one, the shadow. And God, they were right about him being an imposing figure.

He unfolded from the car like something built, not born. Long, dark hair tied low at the base of his neck, thick enough to glint under the streetlights. A face carved from stone, all sharp lines. His eyes were the worst of it, pale and piercing, the kind that didn’t need expressions or words to communicate danger. One look made your spine understand something your brain didn’t want to process.

He didn’t even acknowledge the queue. Not a single person. His gaze swept the street, slow and methodical, as if he was weighing threats or mapping exits. A soldier’s scan, not a clubgoer’s.

And even without moving a muscle, he radiated the kind of calm that said he could kill everyone here without breaking a sweat. My friends had said he was huge, but huge didn’t cover it. He carried mass like a warning. Broad shoulders, heavy arms marked with black ink that vanished under a fitted black shirt. Boots that looked like they were meant for dirt and blood, not a London sidewalk.

People around us quieted without realizing why. Conversations died mid-sentence as the crowd shifted, respectful and afraid in the same breath. Draugr Dragic didn’t have to speak to command the space. He just existed, and the world adjusted.

Then the driver’s door opened and out stepped the other man my friends wouldn’t shut up about. Viking. He was tall with broad shoulders, dark blond hair pulled back in a low tie, a jaw cut sharp enough to break glass, tattoos licking up both arms and disappearing beneath a fitted T-shirt that seemed personally offended by the size of his chest.

But it wasn’t his body that hit me, it was his presence. A storm wrapped in a man’s skin. I got the impression that he was hot-headed, wild-eyed, vibrating with barely contained violence, like he could go from perfectly composed to setting the world on fire if someone breathed wrong. And for absolutely no logical reason, my heart punched itself against my ribs.

What the hell? I didn’t get butterflies or flustered. Men were entertainment, not inspiration for heart palpitations. And yet…here I was. Palpitating.

“Oh my God,” Steph whispered, practically vibrating. “Do you see him? Bryn, do you see him?”

I saw him. I saw nothing but him, because Viking Dragic’s gaze swept over the line, indifferent, cold and then froze. On me. Just for one second but it was enough to turn my pulse into a drumline.

His eyes narrowed, like he’d just scented something he didn’t understand. Then Draugr said something low, Viking nodded, and the two of them strode past the bouncers and into the club without a single pause.

My friends squealed like they’d witnessed a royal coronation. I, however, suddenly needed air.

“Bryn,” Jade sang, slapping my arm. “Tell me you saw the way he looked at you.”

“He didn’t look at me,” I lied smoothly.

“He absolutely did,” Steph argued. “It was like time paused.”

My skin heated. “Shut up.”

But their grins said they’d already created entire wedding fantasies in their heads. By the time we finally made it to the front of the line and into Havoc, the club swallowed us whole with lights, heat, sweat, the haze of perfume and dark liquor. The DJ was already drowning the room in an electric remix that hit hard and fast.

We pushed toward the dance floor, toward the wildness that always let me forget myself for a while. But even as my friends dragged me through the crowd, my eyes were scanning…unwillingly, annoyingly for any sign of him.

Nothing. Good. Ridiculous that I’d even looked.

We made it to the dance floor, and the moment the beat dropped, all three of my friends disappeared into the music. They were good at that, switching their brains off, slipping into the rhythm like the night existed for them alone.

I followed, slower at first. Letting my hair spill around my shoulders, letting my body sway, letting the noise and heat loosen something in my spine. This was why I came out at all. Not for the drinks or the men, definitely not for the sweaty strangers who thought grabbing a woman’s waist was a greeting.

I came because my real life was mind-numbingly dull. I worked in a construction company’s procurement office, which sounded more important than it was. Mostly, it meant emailing suppliers, hunting down missing invoices, begging subcontractors to send documents on time, and trying not to fall asleep during meetings about concrete mixes.