“Get out.”
Tessa stood. Swayed. Looked like she wanted to say one more thing—an explanation, a defense, a plea.
“Get out of my studio. Get out of my life. Don’t contact me. Don’t contact Mika. Don’t contact anyone in my circle.” She didn’t raise it. She didn’t need to. “If I see your name near Nightbloom again, Keanu will make sure it’s the last professional decision you ever make.”
Tessa left. The door closed behind her—quiet, final. The loft settled.
Lumi sat on the couch. Hands in her lap. Spine straight. The composure held for four seconds. Five. Six.
Then it broke.
Not the way it had broken in Zeir’s office—two tears, controlled, recoverable. The composure she’d held while Tessa sat across from her—every measured sentence, every controlled pause—crumbled. Her assistant. The woman she’d trained, championed, advocated for. Gone. And worse than gone—weaponized.
Zeir crossed the room. He didn’t speak. He wrapped around her—the same steady certainty from his office, unhesitating and absolute—and she pressed her face into his shoulder and let the damage surface.
She cried. Hard. Silent, shaking breaths that she muffled against his shirt. He held on. Didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t say it was okay. Didn’t offer platitudes or plans or the kind of empty reassurance that crumbled under the weight of real betrayal.
He stayed.
Minutes passed. Her breathing evened. She pulled back. Dragged her sleeve across her eyes. Drew a long, unsteady breath.
“Well.” Her voice was wrecked but her chin was level. “That was the worst Tuesday of my life. And I once had a flood destroy two hundred copies in storage. So the bar was already high.”
His arm stayed around her. “You’re remarkably funny when you’re devastated.”
“It’s a coping mechanism my therapist and I have discussed at length.”
He let out a breath—quiet, almost inaudible. She leaned into his side and let the warmth of him anchor her to the present.
Slade. Harlan. Tessa. Three names. A corporate conspiracy dressed as a personal vendetta.
She’d grieve later. Right now, she had a war to plan.
TWENTY-SEVEN
ZEIR
The studio was quiet. Late. Late autumn had stripped the daylight early and the city outside the windows was all sodium glow and headlights.
He’d been building toward this conversation for days—since the break-in, since the shift, since she’d pressed her lips to his scar and kissed the violence that lived beneath his skin. She deserved the rest of the truth. All of it.
She sat cross-legged on the floor near the drafting table—their spot now, the place where pizza boxes and sketchbooks had rearranged the geography of a professional relationship into a personal one. Her mascara was long gone. The remnants of the afternoon’s grief still showed in the puffiness that remained, but her gaze was clear. Focused. The same gaze she turned on anomalies—assessing, assembling, refusing to look away.
“There’s a reason.” He sat across from her. Close enough that their knees nearly touched. “For the growling. The positioning. The hearing. For the way I react to you specifically.”
“Beyond enhanced senses and territorial instincts?”
“Beyond that.”
She waited. He appreciated that she didn’t fill the silence—she gave him space to find the words, the way she gave her pencil space to find the line.
“My wolf recognized you. The first time we met.” Direct. No mysticism. No poetry. “It’s biology. Chemistry. Instinct. It’s not magic and it’s not destiny. It identified you as a potential mate. What happens after that—what we build or don’t build—is a decision. Yours and mine.”
He watched her process. The slight widening. The quick inhale. Then the recalibration—the same rapid adjustment she’d made when she watched him shift, when she grabbed a blanket and demanded he put on pants.
“You’re telling me your inner animal swiped right on me before your brain did.”
The tension in his sternum released by a fraction. She was making jokes. She was still here.
