7
KENDRA
Aiden spins toward the small table, fumbling with the pizza box. Behind me, Kojo paces in a tight circle, his massive frame radiating restless energy with nowhere to direct it. He picks up the towels from the table, then puts them back down with hands that don’t seem to know what to do with themselves. He fills a plastic cup from a water bottle, then lowers himself into the chair beside the bed. The wooden frame creaks beneath his weight as he sets the cup on the nightstand next to a bottle of pills and a tube of something medicinal.
“Mother Kade brought these,” he says, tapping the pill bottle with one thick finger. His voice carries that strange formal cadence.”
Mother Kade? The name means nothing to me, just another puzzle piece in this nightmare I’ve stumbled into. I shake my head and don’t bother asking. Do I really want to know who else is involved in whatever this is? My world has already expanded far beyond what I can process in one night.
I take the cup. The water is room temperature and tastes faintly of chemicals, that distinct flavor of liquid stored too long in cheap containers, but my throat has been desert-dry forhours. I drain half of it in desperate gulps before lowering it, the relief immediate even as the taste lingers on my tongue. The pills are standard ibuprofen, nothing special, and the tube reads arnica gel. At least they’re not trying to drug me with anything exotic.
My eyes drift to that strange feature I noticed earlier. “What’s that fur on your back?”
Kojo’s features transform with a smile that catches me off guard. There’s a boyish pride in it that doesn’t match his intimidating presence. He stands so quickly I flinch backward, my body still operating on survival instinct despite the gentleness he’s shown since I woke. He turns to his side and reaches behind himself, pointing to the strip running up his back through the slit in his shirt.
What happens next defies everything I thought I knew about biology. The individual strands shift under his touch like they’re responding to his will, thickening, stiffening before my eyes. I watch the texture change in real time, soft fur hardening into something rigid and calcified, individual blades lifting from the strip like bone rising through skin, defying gravity and natural law simultaneously. He runs his fingers along the formation, pale-tipped and sharp, each one approximately the length of my index finger.
“This is my Ridge,” he explains, and there’s that pride again, the same tone someone might use to show off a particularly impressive tattoo. He taps one of the spikes with his nail, and it doesn’t yield. Solid as bone because it is bone. “When I am threatened, it becomes armor. When I am calm, it lies flat.” He drops his hand, and I watch in fascination as the blades soften, settling back into dense fur, the transformation so seamless the spikes might never have been there. “When I am with you, it lies flat.” He says that last part quieter, almost to himself, and sits back down, the chair protesting beneath him once more.
Aiden approaches with a small paper plate holding two slices of pizza, the cheese slightly congealed from reheating. I sit up on the bed and immediately regret the movement as pain lances through my cheek. I press my fingers to the swelling, feeling the heat and tension beneath the skin. The left side of my face throbs, and I’m not certain I can chew without crying, but my stomach growls with such ferocity that both men hear it. I don’t have the energy to feel embarrassed anymore. Hunger trumps dignity when you’re this exhausted.
“How much about the lore of Wintermoon do you know?” Aiden asks.
I scrunch my nose, immediately regretting it when my bruised cheek protests. “I’m a tech nerd. I know nothing about the lore of anything other than coding.” The admission feels like conceding ground I can’t afford to lose, but lying seems pointless.
Aiden smiles, a quick flash of white teeth against his dark skin, and against the dresser, arms folded across his chest. Both men watch quietly as I take a careful bite of pizza, chewing deliberately on the right side where my jaw still functions properly. The pizza is old, the crust stiff and slightly rubbery, but it’s warm enough to taste like actual food, and my body accepts it with something approaching gratitude.
Kojo’s eyes never leave me while I eat, and the look on his face is unlike anything I’ve seen directed at me before. He looks simultaneously terrified and fascinated, like I’m made of the thinnest glass and the slightest wrong move might shatter me into irreparable pieces. His gaze tracks every movement, the careful working of my jaw, the path of my fingers as they navigate the food, the way I wince when the bruised side of my face protests the smallest movement. There’s something unsettlingly intimate about being watched with such intensity while performing the most basic human function.
I finish the bite and swallow, the food settling heavily in my empty stomach. “So what are you going to do with me?”
“Kade will be here soon with a vehicle to transport you both to Wintermoon,” Aiden says, as though announcing a completely normal travel arrangement instead of what sounds suspiciously like a kidnapping.
I set the pizza down on the plate, appetite suddenly evaporating. “Hold on. What did you just say?”
“You must come with me.” Kojo scratches the back of his neck, those massive fingers raking across his scalp in a gesture that seems oddly vulnerable. The word that follows comes out strained and effortful, like he’s disarming an explosive device rather than pronouncing a name: “Kendra.”
I can’t help it. A smile breaks through despite everything, because this enormous man who threw my car into a building and paralyzed two armed men with his voice is genuinely struggling to address me by my actual name. How his mouth works around the word like it tastes fundamentally wrong on his tongue, how he keeps catching himself before “my queen” slips out. He’s not performing; he’s fighting every instinct hardwired into his being just to call me by my first name.
“Fine.” I hold up a hand before he combusts from the effort. “You can call me majesty. Last thing I need right now is you freaking out.”
He drops to his knees so quickly the floor shakes beneath us, the vibration traveling through the bed frame. His head bows low, and the words pour out of him in a rush, relief saturating every syllable: “Thank you, thank you, majesty.”
I stare at the top of his head, at the ridge of fur lying flat and soft against the back of his neck, at how his massive shoulders finally relax for the first time since I’ve been conscious in this room.
“I can’t go to Wintermoon with you,” I say, picking up the plate again. He takes it from my hands instantly, cradling the flimsy paper like it’s fine china. “I have a life here. Responsibilities.”
“You’re a gig worker.” Aiden delivers this assessment flatly, factually, no cruelty in his tone but no cushioning either.
I glare at him. “Oh please don’t act like you’ve never been on hard times.”
“I’m not saying that.” He pushes off from the dresser, fists sliding into his pockets as he approaches. “But you’re rejecting a life of worship for gig work and a society that’s practically sending women back to the Stone Age.”
The words land clean, finding the soft spots in my armor I didn’t know were exposed. I swallow hard and look between him and Kojo, feeling suddenly cornered by truth rather than physical restraint. Aiden straightens his shoulders, satisfaction evident in the set of his jaw. He knows he just humbled me with logic, and I hate that he’s right enough for me to feel the sting of it.
“And you call this a better life?” My voice cracks, but I push through the weakness. “I can’t even leave of my own accord. For all I know, you’re both going to have your way with me and discard me when you’re done.”
Kojo’s reaction is visceral. A groan rises from deep in his chest, low and wounded like I’ve physically struck him. His head drops, and he steps backward to put distance between us, as though proximity to such an accusation might contaminate him. His shoulders curve inward, arms falling to his sides, the paper plate forgotten on the bed. I’ve just accused him of something that clearly cuts deeper than any other barb I’ve thrown tonight.
