The Pact of Exit - Velvet Warpath

The Pact
(Filed under Velvet Warpath)

The door shut behind her with no slam, no click—just that gentle finality that makes the air heavier.

Velin didn’t speak at first. He simply reached for the desk drawer, the one he’d locked three times and sealed with a line of ink she’d never asked about. The key turned with a sound like teeth breaking.

Inside, the maps weren’t of places—they were of patterns.
Seven of them.
Each drawer was a step, an escalation.
All the way to the burn.

Bunny was still leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, a look on his face that was half-smile, half-warning.
 “You know,” he said, “she’s not going to thank you for this. She might not even forgive you.”

Velin didn’t look up. “I’m not doing it for her thanks.”

“You’re doing it without her command.”

“Yes.”

Bunny’s smirk faltered for a breath. “Then it’s on you if it goes wrong.”

Velin placed the first map on the desk. “It will go wrong...for them. That’s the point.”

The air between them was a tightrope.
They had worked together before, but this was different.
This was stepping into each other’s shadows willingly—dangerous, binding, irreversible.

Bunny moved closer, one finger tapping the desk near the first map.
“She’s mine to protect.”

Velin looked up slowly.
“She’s mine to build for.”

It wasn’t agreement. It wasn’t rivalry.
It was the silent and dangerous understanding that each would burn the world for her,
 but today, they’d burn together. The Velvet War Path had begun.

The pact wasn’t signed in ink.
It didn’t need to be.
It was written in the way they didn’t flinch from each other’s eyes—
and in the quiet, shared acceptance that they’d both just become the kind of dangerous she’d never command.