Chapter 28 No Self-Preservation
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon and melted chocolate.
Snow drifted past the windows in thick lazy flakes while a Christmas song played softly from the radio near the fridge.
Mom stood at the stove stirring pancake batter, still wearing her fluffy pink slippers and oversized sleep shirt.
Harmony sat on the counter beside the mixing bowls, shoveling chocolate chips into her mouth whenever Mom looked away.
“You’re disgusting,” I told her, reaching for the bag.
Harmony smacked my hand away. “Get your own.”
“Mom!” I pointed accusingly. “She’s eating all of them again.”
Mom laughed without turning around. “Then maybe stop tattling and help me cook before your sister finishes the whole bag.”
I rolled my eyes and moved beside her anyway, stealing a piece of bacon from the plate.
Harmony gasped dramatically. “Thief.”
“Cry about it.”
The warmth pressed softly against my skin. The radio crackled. Snow drifted outside. Then the light changed. At first I barely noticed it. The kitchen glow deepened from soft yellow to orange, shadows stretching strangely across the cabinets. Heat brushed the back of my neck.
I turned. Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
For one disorienting second both kitchens existed at once. Mom still stood at the stove smiling faintly. Harmony still sat on the counter swinging her legs. But underneath it was something else. Burned curtains. Blackened walls. The table overturned on its side.
Then the first kitchen vanished. Heat slammed into me hard enough to steal my breath. I stumbled backward, coughing violently as flames roared across the ceiling. The chair behind me collapsed in burning splinters when I hit it.
“Mom?” My voice sounded wrong. She lay motionless on the floor.
I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled toward her, choking on smoke. Every breath burned worse than the last. The kitchen stretched strangely around me, growing farther away no matter how hard I moved.
Mom’s eyes stared at nothing. Harmony lay crumpled near the overturned table, one cheek pressed against the floorboards.
“No!” The scream tore out of me as flames exploded up the walls.
I woke with a scream I cut off halfway, my lungs burning like I had actually inhaled smoke.
The blanket was twisted around my hips. My shirt clung damp to my spine. My breath came fast and shallow, and my hands were clenched so tightly my fingers had gone numb. I forced them open, one finger at a time, until the tremor eased.
I rolled toward the nightstand, grabbed my phone, and blinked at the bright screen until the numbers stopped blurring.
Monday. 4:47 a.m.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling, waiting for my pulse to settle.
I should have expected the nightmares to get worse.
Being back in Ridgeview meant being closer to the monsters who had made me, closer to the ones who still haunted my sleep.
Monitoring John through the cameras I'd installed was a constant reminder that I wasn't finished.
Killing two of them had carved out a little breathing room inside my chest, but it hadn't lasted.
Not while the last two were still breathing the same air as me.
Friday would mark ten years.
Ten years since my mother and sister died.
Ten years since Thomas Black walked away with everything.
I scrubbed both hands over my face and forced myself out of bed before I could disappear too far into my own head.
The cold morning air bit at my skin when I stepped into the backyard.
I went through my morning drills the way I always did—strikes first, then footwork, then balance work until the rhythm settled into my bones.
The familiar sequence steadied me more than anything else could.
By the time I showered, dressed, and made it to track practice, I felt mostly human again.
Coach wasted no time throwing us back into hell after our Saturday break. Friday’s meet and win were already old news. State was coming, which meant nobody got to breathe. Practice became a relentless cycle of laps, intervals, and exhausted swearing.
Afterward I headed toward Environmental Science, still distracted enough that I barely registered the students moving around me.
My thoughts kept circling back to the nightmare, to the anniversary, to whether checking John's cameras again tonight would calm me or make everything worse. So when a hand landed on my shoulder, my body reacted before my brain could catch up.
I twisted sharply, left arm rising to deflect as my right elbow drove hard toward the attacker’s throat. The only reason it didn't land was because he moved first. He knocked my arm aside and stepped back, both hands raised, palms open.
I stared at him, heart hammering against my ribs. The adrenaline was still there, but my brain finally caught up. Jackson stood in front of me with his hands still raised, watching me carefully.
“Oh shit,” I breathed, voice rough. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
I dropped my hands quickly, pressing them flat against my thighs to hide the slight tremor in my fingers.
Jackson stayed where he was for a beat, eyes scanning me carefully. He didn't look angry. Just watchful.
“I’m good,” he said. “Are you?”
“I’m fine. You startled me, that’s all.”
“I see that.” His gaze lingered on my hands, then lifted back to my face. “Those reflexes aren’t just from running track.”
I shrugged, trying to play it off. “Muscle memory.”
“Brian?”
“Most of it.”
He gave a slow nod. “Remind me never to sneak up on you again.” His mouth twitched faintly. “I’d rather not test how good his training really is.”
A small, shaky laugh slipped out of me. “He’d like that. You surviving the demonstration.”
That pulled a real smile from him. He stepped closer, slow enough that I could have pulled away, and brushed a knuckle gently along my jaw.
“Come on,” he said, voice low. “I’ll walk you in.”
He never pressed for an explanation. Most people would have.
Jackson just stayed. We walked to the lecture hall in comfortable silence, and he slipped into the seat beside me without a word.
Under the desk, his hand settled on my thigh, warm and steady.
Halfway through Hartley's lecture, I found myself leaning into him without thinking.
The rest of the day did not pass quietly.
I went to the grocery store after my afternoon practice. It was busy enough that no one paid any attention to me, which was exactly how I liked it. I moved slowly through the produce section with the basket hanging from one hand, picking up apples and bananas without really thinking about it.
I was halfway through the protein bar selection when my cat went very still inside me, suddenly alert. A second later the scent hit me. Wolf. Male. My pulse stumbled, not because of what I smelled, but because of who it belonged to.
I turned my head casually, pretending to study the prices on the shelf. Nothing stood out at first. Just regular shoppers moving through the aisles—an older woman carefully inspecting tomatoes, a college student pushing a cart loaded with junk food.
Then movement at the end of the aisle caught my attention. A man crossed into the next row, profile only. Broad shoulders, confident gait, dark hair cropped short. I had studied his face on a screen every night for three weeks. I knew him on sight.
John.
For a second the grocery store vanished. I was thirteen again, bleeding through my shirt while my sister screamed somewhere I couldn’t reach her. The memory hit hard enough that I had to lock my knees just to stay standing.
Breathe. I forced air into my lungs.
John shouldn’t have been here. According to the schedule I had been tracking, he was supposed to be on patrol duty right now. But I also knew schedules slipped and shifts got traded all the time. There could be a hundred innocent reasons he was off rotation tonight.
I kept walking, like I was just another student grabbing pasta and eggs. At the end of the canned goods aisle I saw him clearly for a second.
He was talking to another wolf, easy posture, a bag of something in his hand. He laughed at whatever the other man said, and the wolf clapped him on the shoulder like they were old friends. Mundane. Normal. The kind of social camouflage that made people look right past him.
The sight of him like that made my skin crawl. I abandoned my basket between the pasta and the rice and walked straight out of the store without buying anything. The automatic doors opened and cool air hit my face. Only then did I realize how hard my heart was hammering.
As far as I knew, John never noticed me. He never looked my way, never paused, never showed the slightest sign that he knew I existed.
I drew one slow breath, then another, forcing my heartbeat back under control.
The walk home was colder than it should have been. My hands stayed in my pockets, fists clenched. His scent clung to the back of my throat.
By the time I reached my front door the restlessness had settled into my bones like lead. My cat paced inside me, agitated, wanting to run, to claw, to do something. I needed to hit something until my hands bled or my mind went quiet. Preferably both.
When I arrived at the gym an hour later the place buzzed with noise and bodies. Gloves slammed against heavy bags. Someone cursed at a missed combination. Sweat and chalk hung in the air.
I wrapped my hands as I scanned the crowded room. A fight was already underway in the ring, drawing a decent crowd. I ignored all of it and headed for an empty heavy bag near the far wall.
The first impact steadied me almost immediately. Jab. Cross. Hook. My thoughts finally began to quiet beneath the rhythm.
A few minutes later voices drifted over from beside the ring.
“See the girl over there? The brunette? That’s the chick who dropped Tom last month.”
A scoff. “Bullshit.”
“Ask Finn. He still has the video.”
Curious now, I glanced sideways. The man who had called bullshit was tall and broad, dark-haired, with his gloves slung over one shoulder. Our eyes locked.