She reached under the couch.
The private sketchbook. The one no one saw. Not Mika. Not Keanu. Not Ozara. It was small, bound in dark leather, the pages thick and cream-colored and filled with work that had nothing to do with Nightbloom.
She opened it to the last drawing.
Two silhouettes. A man and a woman. Reaching for each other across a gap that was more than physical—it was the space between wanting and risking, between loneliness and the terrifying possibility of being known. She’d drawn them a dozen times. The poses shifted—sometimes the woman was reaching harder, sometimes the man. The gap never closed.
She picked up a pencil. Sketched new lines. The woman’s hand extended, fingers spread, the gesture both invitation and warning. The man’s silhouette leaned forward—not reaching yet, but oriented. Turned toward her. Listening.
She stopped before the hands touched. She always stopped.
Closed the sketchbook. Pressed it between her palms. The leather was lit by the lamp.
She’d made peace with the distance. Or told herself she had.
She shoved the sketchbook under the couch. Picked up her phone.
Mika’s words circled:putting Nightbloom in front of people who deserve to read it.Ozara’s voice:You don’t have to do it all alone.*The Shadowfang volumes on the shelf behind her, spine-cracked and Post-it flagged, the work of a man whose creative philosophy ran through her veins whether she admitted it or not.
She typed a text to her agent.
Fine. Set up the meeting. But if he tries to make Nightbloom “more accessible,” I’m walking. And by walking I mean I’m setting his vintage first editions on fire. Metaphorically. Probably.
She hit send. Watched the screen.
Her agent’s reply was a single emoji: a champagne bottle popping.
Lumi tossed the phone onto the couch. Leaned back. Stared at the ceiling where the pendant lamp threw a circle of amber against the exposed brick.
In twelve days, she had a convention—already half-planning to postpone it, if the meeting went the way she needed it to. In less than that, she had a meeting with a man whose work had taught her everything she knew about darkness. A man she’d studied, admired, and borrowed from in ways she’d never admit.
This is either the best decision you’ve made since going indie or the worst. Knowing your luck, it’ll be both.
On the windowsill, Moriarty’s vine had crept back toward the ink tray.
She didn’t stop it.
FOUR
ZEIR
Five miles before dawn and his wolf still wouldn’t shut up.
Zeir Axan ran the Chelsea streets at a pace built to punish, feet striking concrete in a cadence that should have drained the restlessness from his bones. September air. Cold enough to sting, warm enough to carry the last breath of summer. The city at five in the morning was stripped to its architecture—shuttered galleries, sleeping storefronts, a bodega cat watching him from a fire escape with the bored superiority of an animal that had never once been expected to lead anyone.
He envied the cat.
The run didn’t work. The cold shower after didn’t work. His wolf had been restless for days—a low-grade agitation that lived beneath his ribs like a second heartbeat, too persistent to ignore, too shapeless to address. It wasn’t threat. He knew threat. Threat was specific: a scent, a sound, a territorial incursion he could track and neutralize. This was worse. This was an itch under his skin that no amount of pavement or ice water could reach.
By six-thirty, he stood at the top-floor windows of Axan Dark Publishing, coffee in hand, Manhattan assembling itself below in layers of light and stone. The Hudson was a steel ribbon tothe west. Chelsea’s gallery district stretched south, the glass-front art spaces catching early sun in sharp geometric flashes. His building sat among them like a quiet statement—five stories of red brick and industrial windows, the original printing-warehouse bones preserved and reinforced. A wolf’s eye logo etched above the entrance in deep charcoal, subtle enough to overlook unless you were looking for it.
He preferred being missed. Being noticed invited questions.
His office matched the preference. Floor-to-ceiling windows for the light, dark wood for the gravitas, minimal furniture because anything extraneous was a distraction. Bookshelves of first-edition graphic novels arranged by decade lined the back wall. An antique drafting table sat by the east windows, positioned to catch the morning sun at the angle that made ink glow. The desk was where the alpha worked. The drafting table was where the artist used to.
Nyx’s security report glowed on his screen. He scrolled through it—perimeter logs, access records.
His wolf paced. That nameless, directionless ache rolling through him like a tide with no moon to blame.
