He went rigid. Every muscle locked. A total stillness that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with a man who hadn’t been grabbed like this in so long that his body had forgotten the protocol.
Then his arms came up. Slow. Careful. One across her back. One cupping the base of her skull, threading into her hair. He pulled her in—not gentle, not tentative. Tight. The kind of tight that cracked ribs and didn’t apologize for it.
She breathed against his neck. Her nose pressed against his pulse point—and his heart was hammering, and she had to feel it, the same way she’d felt it race under her palm weeks ago. He couldn’t slow it down. Didn’t try.
She’s shaking. She’s holding on. She’s not running.
His grip tightened. His mouth pressed against her temple—not a kiss, not quite—and a tremor ran through her. He felt it against his chest, his arms, everywhere her body touched his.
“Stay.” The word came out muffled against his throat. “While Nyx does whatever she’s going to do with this crime scene. Stay.”
His arm locked around her. He didn’t answer with words. He answered by pulling her closer—impossibly closer—until the terry cloth and the gauze and the first aid kit were the only things between them and even those seemed like too much.
She pressed the cotton pad against his laceration without pulling back. He breathed in: antiseptic, paint thinner, the faint sweetness beneath it, and the copper edge of her split lip.
He didn’t let go.
Nyx arrived fourteen minutes later.
She came through the mangled doorframe—what remained of it. Two pack members flanked her in human form, both radiating the controlled intensity that Lumi was beginning to recognize as a species trait.
Nyx surveyed the scene.
Ruined window. Ink-soaked hardwood. Nightbloom originals scattered in every direction. Two unconscious men zip-tied with electrical cord—Lumi’s handiwork, because apparently the woman’s response to witnessing a supernatural transformation was to secure the crime scene. The bronze gargoyle, smeared with red ink and something darker, sat on the kitchen counter where Lumi had placed it with the tenderness of a woman who planned to keep it forever.
Then Nyx’s attention tracked to the couch. Zeir, wrapped in a throw blanket, side bandaged with bathroom gauze. Lumi beside him—split lip, ink-stained, barefoot on a floor littered with debris—sorting pages into piles. Not crying. Not collapsed. Categorizing.
Originals here. Process sketches here. Contaminated pages here—still legible but they’ll need archival treatment. This pile is beyond saving.
Nyx looked at Zeir. Looked at Lumi. Looked at the zip-tied men, the sorted evidence, the bloodied gargoyle stationed on the counter like a sentry.
“I’m going to need a bigger incident report. Plus, a door and lots of plywood for those windows.”
She extended a first aid kit—the professional grade, not the bathroom-cabinet version Lumi had been working with. Their gazes met. Nyx maintained the contact for two seconds. Then nodded.
Once. Short. Final.
From Nyx, that nod was basically a standing ovation.
Lumi returned the nod.
Outside, the rain kept falling. November crowded against the exposed frame. Nyx’s team moved through the wreckage—photographing, documenting, doing the precise mechanical work of turning chaos into evidence. Then came the plastic and plywood over the windows and finally a door to keep the neighbors’ noses out of her business.
Lumi sat on the couch with a man who’d torn into her home in a form that shouldn’t exist and was now holding gauze to his own injury with careful, steady pressure. Her loft was wrecked. Her lip was split. Her best ink decorated the hardwood like a crime scene rendered in pigment.
She reached for his hand. Laced her fingers through his. Held on.
He held back.
TWENTY-THREE
LUMI
The headline landed that morning.
Moriarty’s vine had migrated to the kitchen-side sill. Untouched. Of course, Moriarty was untouched—the pothos had survived everything Lumi had ever subjected it to, and three intruders with an agenda were apparently no different. The plant had simply waited it out.
“Nightbloom’s Origins: Did Lumi Stone Steal From Her Mentor?”