The nod was small. Final. Different from the one she’d given at the security orientation. That nod had said: You asked the right questions. This one said: You held Sera. You stayed.
Nyx left.
Lumi pressed closer against his side. “I got blood on my favorite jacket.” Muffled against his shoulder. “That jacket survived three years of indie publishing. It did NOT survive tonight.”
His mouth pressed against her hair. “I’ll buy you a nice new one.”
“You can’t replace emotional attachment with money.”
“I can try.”
“Howniceare we talking?”
His arm pulled her closer. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head.
Outside, Nyx’s team secured the perimeter. The corridor bore the marks of what had happened.
Inside the studio, on the couch, a woman who’d chosen his pack slept against his side. The ruined leather still pressed against her chest.
He didn’t sleep. He watched the dawn fill the windows and planned what came next.
Korr was still out there. Slade was still funding the war. The legal battle still ahead.
But the woman against his side had held Sera and called hermineand that word—that single, devastating word—had rewritten every calculation he’d made about what strength looked like.
He breathed her in.
She slept.
He kept watch.
THIRTY
LUMI
Keanu’s conference table had disappeared.
In its place: a command center. Laptops arranged in a semicircle. Timeline boards propped against the window. Printouts organized by date, category, and severity across every available surface, including the floor. Three empty coffee cups formed a sad little graveyard near the phone charger. A fourth—still warm—sat at Keanu’s elbow.
Her brother worked the way he litigated: with a surgeon’s focus and a grudge that never quite went dormant. He’d cleared his entire caseload. Cancelled two depositions. His assistant had stopped asking when he’d be available and started forwarding everything to his junior associate with a note that read, per Mika’s delighted report, “Mr. Stone is indisposed until further notice.”
Lumi sat cross-legged on the floor surrounded by her own archive. Years of paranoia, spread across Keanu’s Midtown carpet in chronological order.
This was the thing about keeping obsessive records: they made terrible therapy and excellent evidence.
Dated sketchbooks. Every page stamped with the date she’d started it and the date she’d finished. Digital files backed upto three separate drives, each with creation timestamps that predated Harlan’s fabricated “originals” by years. Photographs of work-in-progress pinned to her corkboard—captured accidentally in the backgrounds of studio shots, process videos, and one deeply unflattering selfie Mika had taken during a late-night inking session in 2021.
That selfie was about to become the most important photograph of Lumi’s career.
“Oh my God.” Mika stopped scrolling through her phone’s camera roll. Her thumb hovered over a photo Lumi hadn’t seen in years—Mika grinning at the camera, new highlights on full display, Lumi’s studio wall visible behind her. And pinned to that wall, in sharp focus because Mika’s phone had an absurdly good camera, were three early Sable character sketches. Pencil roughs. The first iterations of a design that wouldn’t be finalized for another eight months.
Three years before Harlan’s “originals” supposedly existed.
“Lu.” Mika’s voice had gone strange. High and tight, like she was trying very hard not to scream. “My selfie is your proof. My drunk selfie from 2021 is about to save your career.”
“It’s timestamped.” Lumi leaned over to look. The date was right there in the file properties. November 14, 2021. Indisputable. “Three years before Harlan’s supposed originals.”
Mika pressed both hands against her face. “I was trying to show off my new highlights and I accidentally created legal evidence. This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”
