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I put on my coat, gathered the flowers against my chest, and paused near the door. The city outside looked washed-out under late-afternoon light, all wet stone and glass glare. For one second, my body refused to move. My hands tightened around the flowers.

I walked back with the flowers hugged to my chest, collar high, eyes down, every black car earning a hard glance. The city moved around me with its usual mix of demons, exhaust, and neon signs. People rushed past with briefcases and mate marks.

My apartment building waited on Harlow Street, brick damp from old rain, blue front door crooked in the frame. The watcher ward carved beside my door hummed when I reached the hall, recognizing me with a soft ripple over my skin.

The lock turned.

I stepped inside and stopped dead. There was a couch in my apartment. It wasn’t my old sagging disaster of a sofa, the one Lux had collapsed on and bled all over. This was a new one.

It was dark-green velvet, deep enough to swallow a person, too nice for my crappy apartment. A delivery slip sat on the cushion. Vale had signed on it.

I set the flowers on the counter and picked up the slip between two fingers.

Premium delivery. Paid in full. “Of course,” I said to the empty room. “Of course you replaced the couch.”

I wanted to be angry, but I was also exhausted.

I stood there for another second, flowers wilting against the counter, my sneakers making damp marks on the floor, my whole tiny apartment rearranged by a man who claimed to be giving me space while his money kept walking through my locked door, uninvited.

Was he watching me right now?

I turned in a full circle. Kitchenette. Window. Bookshelf. Door. Corners. Ceiling. Checking just in case.

No cameras . . . At least, none I saw.

I double checked anyway.

Behind the books. Above the curtain rod. Under the shelf. Along the smoke detector. Inside the cheap lamp with the crooked shade. My hands moved fast at first, then slower. Nothing.

I shoved the flowers into the only clean jar I owned, kicked off my shoes, locked the door, and marched into the bathroom before I made the tragic mistake of sitting down and forgetting I was still supposed to be mad.

The shower hissed alive with hot water that took thirty seconds to warm and five more to start scalding. My bathroom mirror had fogged at the edges by the time I stripped.

Lux’s shirt hit the floor first.

I stood there staring at it.

Black cotton. Expensive. Too big. Smelling faintly of smoke, blood, and him.

My throat closed.

All day, I had kept moving. Stems. Ribbon. Customers. Advice. Jokes. If I kept my hands busy, I didn’t have to hold the grief, to admit I missed him. If I stayed angry, I didn’t have to feel the silence through the bond and wonder why he hadn’t reached back, why he’d locked me out.

I stepped into the shower.

Hot water hit my skin and dragged a groaning sound out of me. My muscles loosened one inch at a time. I scrubbed my hair twice. Scrubbed my neck carefully around the sensitive mark. Scrubbed my arms, my thighs, my stomach, every place that still remembered his hands with humiliating detail.

I cried for maybe thirty seconds. Then I got mad about crying and rinsed the conditioner out of my hair.

“You are fine,” I told myself, water running into my mouth. “You are a functioning adult. You worked a shift. You did not text your criminal mate. You found no cameras. Everything is fine.”

My voice cracked on fine.

The shower curtain sagged from one ring. The tile had a rust stain near the drain. Steam pressed against my face. I was not fine. I had powers now . . . and a mate.

The me I had always known, whether I liked it or not, was dead. Who was this new Olivia? What did her life look like?

I had been powerless when the mark stayed bare. Powerless when customers talked over me. Powerless when Lux watched me.