His hands framed her face. Thumbs tracing her cheekbones. He tilted her head back, deepening the kiss until she made a small sound against his mouth that dismantled the last structural support in his self-control.
She moved lower. Under his shirt. Fingers tracing the ridged plane of his stomach, the scar tissue from the blade cut—still healing, still tender. She found it. Traced it with a gentleness that cracked him open wider than the wound itself.
She pulled back. Bent her head. Pressed her lips to the scar.
His breath left him.
Her mouth against his healing skin. The softness of the gesture against the violence of how he’d gotten it—fighting his way to her through a shattered door. She kissed the mark and his fingers went to her hair, threading through it, cradling her skull the way she cradled his damage.
He drew her up. Kissed her again—deeper, slower, his hands sliding to her waist, the curve of her spine, pulling her flush against him. She arched into it. She gripped his shirt.
They didn’t go further. Not tonight. The day had stripped too much. The confession, the drawer, the hidden art exposed on both sides—it was enough. More than enough. The line had moved irrevocably and they both knew where it pointed.
She pulled back. Forehead against his. Breathing hard.
“I should go.”
“You should.”
Neither moved.
“I’m going.” She kissed the corner of his lips. Picked up her sketchbook. Looked at the open drawer—his hidden pages still visible, exposed. “Are you going to lock that?”
He looked at the drawer. At her. At the honesty he’d been hiding.
“No. Not anymore.”
Her expression shifted—complicated—gratitude and fear and hunger tangled up in the same breath. She nodded. Walked to the door. Paused.
“For the record,” she turned, “your secret art is better than your published work. By a lot.”
She left.
He sat alone with her perfume on his shirt and the ghost of her lip balm and the compartment open behind him. The last locked thing inside him—sealed as long as that compartment—had given way.
He didn’t close it.
TWENTY-SIX
LUMI
They’d talked until almost dawn.
She’d stayed. After the sketchbooks, after the kiss, after the drawer finally open between them—she’d curled into the corner of the studio couch and saidokay, explain the wolf thingwith the same focus she brought to a new technique, and he’d explained it. The biology, the recognition, the pack language for what he’d known before he had words for it. By the time she’d left the studio, the certainty had settled—not lighter, but cleaner.
Three days later, the investigation moved from theory to evidence.
Nyx’s office hadn’t changed since Lumi’s first visit—windowless, sublevel, the persistent hum of servers—but the content on the monitors had.
Three screens. Three different kinds of damage.
Nyx stood with her arms crossed, the blue light catching the flat planes of her face. She didn’t ease into the briefing. Nyx didn’t ease into anything.
“Your assistant’s devices.” She tapped the left screen. A file directory expanded—folders labeled by date, organized with the efficiency of a person who intended to be thorough.“Unpublished Nightbloom spreads. Process sketches. Pencil roughs I’m guessing you hadn’t shown anyone outside your studio.”
Lumi’s fingers curled around the edge of the desk.
“Encrypted communication logs.” Middle screen. Email chains—redacted sender addresses, but the routing patterns formed a clear line between Tessa’s account and a domain Nyx had already identified. “The recipient address traces to Harlan Cray’s personal server. Not his studio account. Personal. Whoever set this up wanted distance from the professional side.”
