25. Jasmine
JASMINE
Ordinary life refuses to fit without Sebastian. I push to stay calm. "I sent the updated portfolio Tuesday. You said the partners loved it."
"They did." The recruiter's pause says everything. "Jasmine, something came up. A reference. I can't get into it."
"A reference from where? I gave you three. Call any of them."
"It didn't come from your list." Not Owen directly, then. Someone using the old rumor with new reach. Papers shuffle on her end, the sound of a woman already moving to the next name. "I'm sorry. The role's closing internally."
"Two days ago it was mine to lose."
"Take care of yourself." She hangs up.
My temper rises to throw the phone, but I just hold it tightly, which I count as restraint. All clean references, and somebody is getting to people I've never met to give them a lie I don't recognize. I remind myself I can get through this.
Sebastian comes to the forefront of my mind.
The steadiness of his hands, how he'd already have the recruiter's name and the lie stapled to it.
Missing him doesn't unmake what he did. The rotten sum I keep refusing to balance is I walked away to stay whole, not because desire packed its bags with mine.
Every corner of my apartment performs independence with the enthusiasm of a bad actor.
Coffee goes cold beside my laptop. Another job board opens, all those tidy titles pretending work can be pressed into tidy uniforms. Executive coordinator.
Strategic operations lead. Senior support partner.
None say woman reconstructing her spine after loving a monster who knew tenderness like a private language.
Still, I press apply. Ordinary has become a muscle gone slack. Fine. Muscles have memories.
Garlic hangs in my Mom's apartment, the cure she swears by for everything. She talks over the television, a cooking show she pretends not to follow, sorting mail into "junk" and "worse."
"Mrs. Adeyemi's boy got into the dental program," she says. "You'll send a card."
"Sure."
"You're losing weight, Jazz." A plate of food lands on my knees, no asking. "Eat. You think I can't see when you're skipping meals?"
I do as says, otherwise I'd never hear the end of it. For five minutes I'm only her daughter, nobody's problem to solve, nobody's weakness to guard. Then something through the window catches my vision.
A woman in a navy coat, still, facing my direction. Not waiting for a bus. Not waiting for anyone. She's—
"—so I told the super, fix the radiator or I fix him," Mom says.
The woman doesn't lift a phone. Doesn't pretend to do anything else.
"Mom. You know her? Across the street?"
Mom leans, squints. "Who? Nobody out there worth the glass." She squeezes my wrist. "You must be tired to be worried about some random stranger."
I laugh for her. I stay another twenty minutes so she won't fret, then kiss her cheek and say I've got an early start. I couldn't bring myself to admit I'd left my job.
The crosstown is packed, everyone pretending the next body doesn't exist. I hold the rail and read faces.
A figure in a charcoal jacket boards two stops after me and stands nearer than requires, eyes forward, never touching.
I drift down the aisle. He doesn't follow—but in the window's reflection, a second face is turned toward me, three rows back, a plain woman who drops her gaze the instant I look.
I step off a stop early. Charcoal jacket too, then strolls the opposite way. He doesn't disappear though. That's the part that crawls. Like he wanted me to see.
My lobby is quiet, and my lock turns like always.
Inside, nothing is out of the ordinary, everything how I left it.
I head to make a drink, and find an envelope with my name in bold, black marker written on it.
The handwriting I don't recognize—not Sebastian's lean slant, not Gideon's blunt capitals, not Elias' tidy print. I open it carefully.
I work near the people deciding what happens to you, and they've decided.
The faction wants you dead. A human mate kills them slower than any weapon—in the politics, and in heart.
They'll lay your body down as proof that your kind is too dangerous to keep alive.
Staying in this city makes you a gift to them.
The ticket leaves tonight. Take it. Don't tell anyone.
A plane ticket slides loose. One way. Australia.
Run? Vanish into a life a stranger picked for me, a stranger with no name.
I've had a lifetime of being moved for 'my own good.
' I tear the ticket once, twice, and drop the pieces in the sink.
The letter I fold into my bag, because a threat is information too, and I am finished being the last to know.
I hear a flurry of voices and car doors banging. Two, three, four. I peek through the curtain gap, and see a black SUV, double-parked, hazards off. Four men out on the sidewalk. One of them I've seen—at the gathering, planted behind Cyrus. The world Sebastian drew me into is right outside my door.
I don't wait for the buzzer. Instead, I snatch everything I need. Phone. Bag. Keys. I'm moving—through the bedroom, to the fire escape I curse every August. I ease the sash down and take the steps fast and low, the metal humming under me.
In the alley I flatten against brick and pull one full breath. Above, a fist knocks. I consider calling Sebastian, he'd come, but I choose not to.
I grab my bag, shove the letter inside and move toward the opposite end of the alley, away from the SUV, away from the men who came to collect me like a misplaced object.
The street opens ahead, loud with traffic and strangers, and for once the crowd does not feel like safety. It feels like cover. Useful. Temporary. Mine to use.
My phone is in my palm. Sebastian's name sits three taps away. I don't press it.
He would come. I know that with a certainty that hurts worse than fear.
He would tear through the city, put himself between me and every monster, and call it love.
Maybe part of it is. Maybe most of it is.
But I did not leave his house just to become a distress signal the first time the dark knocked.
The letter crackles inside my bag. Cyrus wants me dead. Not because I stayed with Sebastian. Not because I left him. Because men like Cyrus fear the bond, and they do not need permission to make a woman useful in their war. That is the part that settles cold and clean.
Leaving Sebastian did not free me from this. It only proved the cage was bigger than him. I step into the crowd and keep moving.
I left because I don't feel the need to be protected. I'm not running to be saved. I am going to find out who put that letter in my kitchen, and who bought that ticket. This war found me on my own. Fine. Then I meet it on my own feet.