Without hesitation, she pulled the door open and stepped inside, dragging me with her.
The space was smaller than most clubs, tighter, warmer, but that would make sense with all the human bodies filling up the space.
Along one side stood a long wooden bar. Behind it, two bartenders moved as fast as they could, filling orders for the crowd pressed around it. A handful of uneven tables sat scattered through the room, their chairs mismatched and worn.
Booths lined two other walls, their seats cracked but occupied. In the far corner, a small dance floor flickered under a spinning disco ball, light scattering across the room in shifting patterns.
A few supes lingered here and there, but they stood out—paired off, tucked close to their human companions, not dominating the space the way they did everywhere else.
The tightness in my chest eased as I let out a slow breath. Lark didn’t give me time to think about it.
She wove us through the crowd, slipping between bodies until we found two open stools at the end of the bar. We slid into them just as a bartender passed, and she rattled off our order before I could even open my mouth.
Surprisingly, the drinks came fast. Grabbing hers immediately, she turned toward me with a grin as she lifted it.
“To my ridiculously smart, amazing, mechanic best friend,” she said, her voice bright as the glass hovered in the air between us. “This is just the beginning.”
Our glasses clinked, the sharp sound barely cutting through the low hum of voices around us. Lark beamed at me, her grinwide and expectant, while I forced my lips into something that resembled a smile and took a sip.
The drink burned just enough to distract me.
She kept watching me over the rim of her glass, waiting for me to match her energy, but I didn’t. My fingers tightened slightly around the glass instead.
I had called her the day after Manshu showed up.
She’d answered on the second ring, her voice bright—until I told her. I could still hear the shift, the way her tone dropped, questions coming faster, sharper. Shock, anger, disbelief—all of it was packed into the way she kept interrupting me, trying to understand how it had gotten that bad.
Then she’d gone quiet.
When she finally spoke again, her voice had softened, becoming careful, like she was trying to piece together something that would make it better.
“If you do good for him… maybe someone stronger will notice,” she’d said. “Someone better. You could… move up, ya know?”
Even now, I could hear the hesitation in it. The way she didn’t quite believe it herself, but I didn’t argue. It was the only thing I could grab onto to keep my head on straight.
She wasn’t wrong—not really. In the supe world, power decided everything. Not money. Not skill. Just power.
But that wasn’t what I wanted.
I didn’t want a master. Didn’t want to be owned or claimed like a resource someone stronger could use.
My true goal in life was just to build something. I wanted to create something amazing with my own two hands. Something that was mine.
Tilting my glass up, I took another drink, a longer one this time, as the thought left something heavy sitting in my chest.
When I lowered the glass, my eyes lifted and everything in me dropped.Why is my life such a clusterfuck lately?
“Olivia?”
The voice cut through the room, familiar in the worst way.
For a split second, I considered sliding off the stool and disappearing into the crowd, pretending I hadn’t heard him. My fingers tightened around the glass instead.
“Is that you?”
A tall, muscular man with brown hair and amber eyes stood a foot away from where Lark was sitting. It was just my luck that my human ex-boyfriend, the only one I’d ever had, was standing there, looking at me like he’d seen a ghost.
John.He looked almost the same as he did a few years ago when he left me.
