24. Lumi
TWENTY-FOUR
LUMI
The Axan Dark lobby was polished marble and museum lighting. She blew past the front desk. Past the elevator. Took the stairs two at a time because the stairwell matched her energy better than a quiet metal box.
Third floor. The studio door was open.
Zeir stood at the window, phone in hand, still wearing the suit from the press conference—charcoal, no tie, collar unbuttoned.
The bruise on his jaw from the break-in had yellowed to green.
The cut on his side was hidden beneath layers of expensive fabric, but she knew it was there.
She’d pressed a cotton pad against it herself.
He turned when she came through the door. His expression shifted—relief first, then the rapid recalculation of a man who recognized incoming fire.
Smart man.
“You made a public statement about MY career without consulting me.”
He started to speak.
“I wasn’t finished.” She crossed the room. “You staked your company’s reputation. Your personal credibility. On MY originality. Without asking me. Without a phone call. Without a text. You went to a podium and spoke for me like I’m a subsidiary.”
“You’re right.”
“I’m not finished being angry.”
“Take your time.”
“You don’t get to be reasonable right now.” Her voice rose. “I came here to FIGHT and you’re agreeing with me. That’s not how this works.”
“How does it work?”
“You’re supposed to be wrong so I can yell at you!”
“I am wrong. Yell at me.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She’d come here armed. Loaded with fury, rehearsed arguments, the righteous momentum of a thirty-four-minute subway ride. She’d expected a fight—his ego against her autonomy, his resources against her independence. She’d prepared for that.
She hadn’t prepared for I am wrong. Yell at me.
The fury cracked. Not in half—down the center, straight through, the way ice fractures when heat finds the fault line. Because Mika had shown up without knocking. Keanu had called before she’d asked. She’d expected them. They were hers. They’d been hers for years.
But this man—this man she’d known for weeks, who published villains and wore black like a religion and growled at coworkers in Hawaiian shirts—had stood at a podium in front of cameras and staked his name on hers.
Without being asked. Without obligation.
Without the history that earned the right to fight for her.
Her vision blurred.
Not a sob. Not a collapse. Her throat constricted and her eyes burned and two tears tracked down her cheeks before she could stop them. She pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth.
Not here. Not in front of him. Not—
He crossed the distance. Not fast—deliberate.
His arms came around her and he pulled her against his chest. No announcement.
No asking if this was okay. He just did it.
One arm across her back. One hand cradling the back of her head.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t shush her. Didn’t tell her it was going to be okay.
He didn’t move.
She buried herself in the expensive fabric of his press-conference suit and breathed in: cedar, warmth, the faint sharp edge of whatever aftershave a billionaire alpha wore to defend a woman’s career on national media.
Her hands fisted in the lapels of his jacket.
The tears were silent—four, five, six—soaking into charcoal wool.
Three years ago, I sat on my couch and watched it happen alone. Mika came after. Keanu came after. Nobody stood at a podium.
Her breathing steadied. She stayed there. His heartbeat was slow and even against her ear. The contrast between her chaos and his calm was maddening and grounding in equal measure.
“I’m not going down without a fight this time.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
His arm tightened. “No. You’re not.”
“And I’m not fighting alone.”
“No.” His chin rested on the top of her head. “You’re not.”
She stepped away. Wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. Squared her shoulders. His arms dropped—reluctantly, she noticed. Reluctantly enough that the space between them hummed.
“What do you need from me?” His voice was low. She could read the tension in his shoulders. Every line of him said fix it right now. He was asking her what she needed instead. Handing her the controls.
The words came from a place she hadn’t expected to access today.
“I need you to stand beside me. Not in front of me. Beside.”
“Done.”
One word. No argument, no negotiation, no alpha posturing. Done.
Evening. The studio had emptied hours ago. The fluorescent hum of the building at night wrapped around them—the low pulse of machinery, the creak of old architecture settling into its bones.
He’d ordered pizza. She’d protested—“I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself”—and then eaten three slices before the box hit the drafting table.
Pepperoni. Extra cheese. The kind of order that belonged to a Tuesday night between friends, not to a billionaire publisher and the artist whose career he’d publicly staked his name on that morning.
They sat near the drafting table, backs against the wall. Pizza box between them. The press conference, the blog post, the tears in his office—all of it felt like a different century.
“So.” She tore the crust off her fourth slice. “Tell me something about you that isn’t in a press release.”
He considered this. “I can’t cook.”
“That’s not a revelation. You order food like a man who’s never seen the inside of a grocery store.”
“I’ve seen the inside. I bought olive oil once. The wrong kind. Kael hasn’t let me forget it.”
“What kind?”
“Truffle-infused.”
She choked on her pizza. “For what?”
“Pasta.”
“You made pasta with truffle oil?”
“Kael ate two bites and threw the rest away. And I’m quoting: ‘This tastes like a forest floor had a nervous breakdown.’”
The laugh escaped before she could catch it—full, unguarded, the kind that bent her forward and made her press her hand against her sternum. He watched it happen. The way it transformed her face—the guarded edges dissolving, the sharp wit softening into pure, uncomplicated delight.
“Your turn.” The words came out lower than he’d intended.
“I haven’t been on a date in two years.” The words went to the pizza box, not to him.
“After Harlan—not because of Harlan specifically. If I could be that wrong about a mentor, how could I trust myself to pick someone to—” She stopped.
Shrugged. “Mika says I weaponized my independence. She’s probably right. ”
“Two years.”
“Don’t make it sound tragic. I had Nightbloom. I had deadlines. I had a printer in Queens who kept getting my page order wrong. Romance was low on the priority list.”
“I haven’t drawn for myself in several years.” The admission came out before he’d authorized it. “The drawer has been locked since the elders decided art was a liability for an alpha. Kael’s the only one who’s seen what’s inside.”
“Years.” She turned the number over the way he’d turned hers. “That’s a long time to hide the best part of yourself.”
He looked at the pizza box. At the wall. At her—cross-legged on his studio floor with tomato sauce on her thumb and mascara still smudged from crying in his office. The most beautiful person he’d ever shared a meal with.
She was quiet for a moment. “My parents curated the living side of my loft. The furniture, the art on the walls—that’s their taste, their eye.
When I moved in, they spent a weekend arranging it.
My mom cried when she hung the last piece.
They’ve never seen the studio side in full chaos.
I think it would terrify them. Or maybe it wouldn’t.
My mom told me once that fear makes terrible art. ”
“Smart woman.”
“She’s terrifying. You’ll—” She caught herself. Flushed. Redirected with the speed of a woman who’d been rerouting conversational near-misses for years. “She makes this Dominican sancocho that could end wars. Mika says it’s the reason I survived indie publishing.”
He noticed the redirect. Filed it. You’ll— what? Meet her? Like her? Survive her interrogation? He let it pass because she needed him to.
“Revka—my mother—makes brisket that could achieve the same geopolitical effect.” He paused. “She also has no concept of personal boundaries. She told a woman at a fundraiser that I drew portraits unconsciously and needed to find someone worth drawing.”
“Did you? Find someone worth drawing?”
The question hung between them. Pizza box. Cold coffee. The hum of a building that had housed a press conference and a breakdown and was now hosting an evening that felt—impossibly, improbably—like a first date.
“Yes.”
She held his gaze. Then looked away. Reached into her bag.
The sketchbook she’d never shown anyone.
“I’ve never shown anyone this.”
She set it on her crossed knees.
He opened it. Page by page. Slow. The same focused attention she’d watched him give museum originals, gallery pieces, the rare first editions in his collection. Except this wasn’t reverence for history—this was reverence for her.
Romantic silhouettes. Reaching for each other across empty space. Never touching. A man and a woman separated by a gap that her pencil refused to close. The loneliness rendered in graphite—tender, aching, the output of a woman who drew love in secret because she was afraid to live it.
He stilled on a page near the middle. Two figures backlit by a window. The woman’s arm extended. The man’s hand half-raised. The space between them glowed.
She looked at the floor. Her pulse hammered.
“These are extraordinary.”
She didn’t answer.
“Lumi.”
She looked up. His expression—she’d mapped every version of his face over weeks. The professional mask. The alpha control. The unguarded flash that broke through when he caught her elbow at Chelsea Market. None of them matched what she saw now.
He sees it. He sees all of it. The loneliness and the wanting and the fear.
“There’s more.” Her throat was dry. “Not in the sketchbook.”
She didn’t plan to say it. Mika’s question from weeks ago—are you going to let Harlan take this too?
—had been lodged under her ribs like shrapnel.
And today, knowing Zeir stood at a podium and staked his name on her work without asking, watching him absorb her anger without flinching, watching him say done like it was the simplest word in the English language—
The shrapnel dislodged.
“Sable’s ideology. The way she’s selective about what she protects.
The way her logic holds even when her actions are monstrous.
” She kept her gaze on his. “I didn’t build that from nowhere.
I’ve been reading your villains for years.
Shadowfang. The Architect. Crimson Doctrine.
Your characters taught me how to build a villain who’s relatable without being redeemed.
Sable has your fingerprints on her.” A breath. “Not your designs. Your philosophy.”
The building hummed. Rain against the windows. She waited for the word thief to land between them. For the accusation that would confirm her worst fear—that the line between what Harlan did to her and what she did with Zeir’s output was thinner than she could survive.