6. Zeir
SIX
ZEIR
His mother called at noon. Revka Axan timed her calls the way generals timed flanking maneuvers—for maximum strategic impact disguised as casual affection.
“Zeir, darling. How’s the company?”
“Fine.”
“And you?”
“Fine.”
“Two fines and a silence. You sound like your father. That’s the Axan men’s entire emotional vocabulary.
” She took in a slow breath. His mother did not pause accidentally.
She paused the way a chess player paused before advancing a queen.
“I spoke with a fascinating woman at the Book Club last night. An art consultant named Ozara Stone.”
The name landed with a soft click. Like a lock finding its tumbler.
“Mother. I have a Stone portfolio on my desk.”
“What a coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence.”
“The universe works in mysterious ways, darling.”
“The universe didn’t coordinate this. You did.”
Silence. The specific, unrepentant silence of a mother who had been caught orchestrating and did not consider this a problem.
“Her daughter sounds lovely.”
Zeir pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
His mother had the strategic subtlety of a cruise missile wrapped in cashmere.
The Matchmaker’s Book Club—his mother’s society circle, the one that called itself a book club and had discussed exactly zero books—had produced at least three marriages in the past year.
All of them bore Gerri Wilder’s fingerprints, and all of them had involved mothers who claimed, with the wide-eyed innocence of career operatives, that the introductions were “pure chance.”
“This is about the work, Mother. Not about—”
“Of course, it’s about the work.” Her tone shifted.
The warmth thinned, and beneath it, he heard the steel that had once commanded lecture halls full of art history students who didn’t dare check their phones.
“Ozara says her daughter is brilliant. Stubborn. Uncompromising about her art. Sounds familiar.”
He didn’t answer. He was looking at the portfolio on the drafting table. The villain on the cover. The defiant inks.
“I’ll evaluate the portfolio on its merits.”
“You’ve already evaluated it. I can hear it in your voice.” Softer now. The steel giving way to the mother underneath. “Don’t overthink this one, Zeir. Your father overthinks. Look where it got him.”
The line went dead. She always hung up before the other person was ready. A power move she’d perfected decades ago.
He’d sworn at fourteen that he’d never take over his father’s corporate position. At thirty-two, the locked drawer suggested the oath had an asterisk.
Nyx arrived at two. Didn’t knock. Never knocked.
Compact. Efficient. Dark hair pulled tight. She moved through his office the way people move when they’ve decided wasted motion is a personality flaw. She set a tablet on his desk.
“The proxy pings. Two attempts on the digital archives this week. Foreign routing, consumer-grade encryption. I’ve locked the vulnerability, traced the origin, and set secondary monitoring.”
“Threat level.”
“Low. Expensive tools, amateur hands. Someone paid for sophistication they don’t know how to use.” Three screens swiped in four seconds. “If they try again, I’ll have the device signature within the hour.”
“Keep me updated.”
Nyx collected her tablet. Paused at the table’s edge. Her gaze dropped to the open portfolio—Sable in the throne room wreckage, dark and meticulous, a woman who’d won everything and lost more.
“New submission?”
“Potential collaborator.”
Nyx studied the page for three seconds. Two more than she gave most things.
“She’s good.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll run a background check.”
“It’s an art collaboration, not a security clearance.”
“Anyone who enters this building is a security clearance.” She tucked the tablet under her arm. “That’s not paranoia. That’s protocol.”
She left. The door closed with the soft, deliberate click of a woman who considered careless door-closing a character flaw.
The building emptied in stages.
Production first—the colorists and letterers and designers filtering out by six, their departure a slow subtraction of keyboard clicks and low conversation and the low hum of creative work winding down.
Kael left at seven, pausing in the doorway long enough to clock the portfolio still open on the work surface.
He raised an eyebrow. Said nothing. Didn’t need to.
Nyx left at eight. She never said goodbye. She stopped being present, the way security-minded people did—a skill that was both invaluable and slightly unsettling.
By nine, the building breathed with the sounds Zeir preferred. HVAC humming. Elevator cables settling. The old industrial bones creaking against the cold. Night sounds. The city beyond the windows, bright and restless, a mirror of the animal beneath his skin.
He moved to the drafting table.
The portfolio was still open. Had been all day—between meetings, between editorial passes, between the hundred small decisions that filled an alpha’s hours.
His gaze had returned to it the way a compass needle found north.
Sable’s face. The villain’s defiance. The work that made his ribs ache with a recognition he refused to name.
He reached for the key chain in the center drawer.
Cold metal. Familiar weight. The lock turned. The drawer slid open.
He picked up a pencil. Drew.
Fast. Instinctive. The lines came without permission, bypassing the editorial discipline that governed every other part of his creative life.
He wasn’t thinking. He was responding to the restlessness that had been circling him all week, channeling it into graphite and motion and the deep relief of a hand doing what it was made to do.
The figure took shape.
Wild curls, untamed, the kind that resisted control the way their owner clearly did.
Shoulders set with the defiant angle of a woman who expected a fight and intended to win it.
A structured blazer over a band tee. He drew her hands twice, obsessing over the detail, the smudge of pigment across the knuckles, the tapered fingers that held a brush like a weapon.
He stopped.
Stared.
He was drawing her. He’d built the woman from the work—from the ferocity of the brushstrokes, the defiance in the villain she’d created, the loneliness carved into every line that he recognized because it lived in his own locked drawer.
He’d never met Lumi Stone. He’d spent twenty minutes with her portfolio and his hands had decided they knew her.
His wolf was silent. For the first time in days—completely, dangerously still.
This is a professional assessment. You are evaluating a potential collaborator’s work. You are not drawing a woman you’ve never met at eleven o’clock at night because her art made you forget how to breathe.
He closed the sketchbook. Locked the drawer. Key on its chain. Chain in the desk.
He picked up his phone. Dialed.
Two rings.
“It’s almost midnight.” Kael’s voice was sleep-rough but alert—the beta never fully powered down.
“Set up the meeting with Stone.”
“Sure. Should I also book a couples therapist, or are we getting ahead of ourselves?”
Zeir hung up.
The building settled around him. Night sounds. The city beyond the glass, relentless and gleaming, a city that never softened. On the drafting table, Sable’s face gazed up from the open portfolio—black ink, crimson accents, an expression that dared the viewer to look away.
He didn’t.