CHAPTER ONE #2
I still don’t know how it happened. She won’t tell me the details, only that they met “by accident” and that it’s “complicated” and that she refers to him only as “the man I’m dating” because using his actual name out loud would, in her words, “make it too real and then I’d have to deal with the fact that I’m in way over my head. ”
I understand this more than she knows.
“Lunch,” Trish says breathlessly, arriving at my desk with her bag already over her shoulder. “Now. Please. I need to talk.”
“Scale of one to ten?”
She considers this. “Seven. Maybe eight. Definitely not below a seven.”
I save my file and grab my lunch bag. “Roof?”
“Roof.”
THE ROOF TERRACE IS technically for all employees, but nobody ever comes up here except us.
It’s too windy for most people, and the altitude makes some of the human employees dizzy.
But I like it up here. The view is staggering, endless peaks and pine forests and sky that goes on forever, and the wind is the sort that makes you feel clean, like it’s blowing away everything you don’t need.
We sit on our usual bench, and I unpack my homemade onigiri, which has been my best budget-saving hack thanks to an amazing YouTube recipe reel. Beside me, Trish unwraps something that looks like it was prepared by a professional chef.
I eye her bento box. “Let me guess. The man you’re dating.”
Trish goes pink. Not just her cheeks. Her entire face, her neck, all the way to her ears. It’s sort of magnificent. “He found out I’ve been eating vending machine food for lunch.”
“And?”
“And now there’s a delivery service. Every day.
To my desk. The packaging is completely unmarked so nobody can trace it, but the food is.
..” She gestures helplessly at the bento box, which contains what appears to be seared salmon, perfectly arranged vegetables, and some grain that I’m pretty sure costs more per ounce than my monthly rent. “...this.”
“That’s really sweet, Trish.”
“It’s really terrifying.” She picks up her chopsticks and stares at the salmon like it’s personally offended her. “What sort of person arranges an anonymous gourmet lunch delivery service for someone they’re dating?”
“A Caro?”
She goes even pinker. “Zia.”
“I’m just saying. From what I’ve read, Caros are...” I search for the right word. “Intense about the people they care about.”
This was one of the things I’d learned after That Day, when the preter world came out of hiding and suddenly everyone was googling supernatural races like they were studying for the world’s weirdest final exam.
Caros were known for being fiercely protective and, according to multiple sources, incredibly aloof, incredibly obsessive, incredibly ruthless, and just about everything incredible in a Cruel Intentions sort of way, I suppose.
Which is a very clinical way of saying: when a Caro likes you, they really like you.
“It’s just lunch,” Trish mumbled.
I give her an uh huh look, and she buries her face in her hands. “I really don’t think it means anything special.”
“But you said this is a seven-maybe-eight situation.”
She peeks at me through her fingers. “Do you think it’s too fast?”
And there it is. The actual question underneath all the blushing and the chopstick-staring and the magnificent full-body flush. Is this real? Can I trust it? Is it safe to feel this happy?
I know that question.
I’ve asked it myself, once, about a boy who made me feel like the center of his world for two years before reducing our entire relationship to four sentences on a phone screen.
But Trish isn’t asking about Billy. She’s asking about her own story, and her story isn’t mine.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that the man you’re dating is going out of his way to make sure you eat well. And I think that says something good about him.”
Trish lowers her hands. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She smiles then. Small, private, the smile of someone who’s falling and hasn’t hit the ground yet and is still in that breathless, terrifying, wonderful space in between.
I smile back.
And I don’t think about the fact that nobody has ever sent me anonymous gourmet lunches.
Or that the one person who was supposed to be my scientifically compatible match chose his parents’ money over me.
Or that I’m eating onigiri on a rooftop while my best friend’s secret Caro boyfriend sends her food that looks like it belongs in a magazine.
I don’t think about any of that.
Mostly.
THE AFTERNOON PASSES the way afternoons at Lykaios Holdings usually do: quickly, because the work is absorbing, and quietly, because the design wing operates with a focused hush that I’ve come to love.
I’m working on packaging prototypes for a new line of portable safety devices, compact units that emit a frequency only vampires can hear, designed to give humans a few crucial seconds of warning during an attack.
The technology itself was developed by a joint team of Caro and Lyccan scientists, and my job is to make the outer casing intuitive, durable, and something that a person would actually want to carry around every day rather than shove in a drawer and forget about.
I’m saving my final files when I hear it.
Laughter. Not real laughter. The sort that’s sharp at the edges and aimed at someone.
I don’t look up. I’ve learned, over the years, that sometimes the best thing you can do is not look. Not engage. Not make yourself a target by acknowledging that you’ve heard something you weren’t supposed to.
But the voice carries.
“...honestly can’t believe they hired a human for the design team. I mean, it’s not like there’s a shortage of qualified preters who could actually—”
The voice drops. More laughter. Lower this time, conspiratorial.
I keep my eyes on my screen. I click save. I click it again, even though the file is already saved, because the repetitive motion gives my fingers something to do that isn’t curling into fists.
It’s not the first time.
That’s the part that nobody warns you about when you’re a human working in a preter-run company.
The outright hostility is rare, Lykaios Holdings has strict policies about discrimination, and most people follow them.
But the undercurrent is always there. The glances that linger a beat too long.
The conversations that pause when you walk into a room.
The particular way certain colleagues say “human” like it’s a diagnosis.
I’m used to it. Or at least, I’m used to the version of it that stays in the background, that whispers instead of speaks, that I can choose not to hear if I try hard enough.
But lately, it’s been getting louder, and I’m honestly not sure why that is. I haven’t done anything differently. I come to work, I do my job, I eat lunch with Trish on the roof, I go home. I don’t cause problems. I don’t draw attention to myself.
But something has shifted in the last couple of weeks, and I can’t figure out what.
The laughter fades as whoever was talking moves down the hall and away from the design wing. I wait until I can’t hear anything except the hum of the building’s ventilation system, and then I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
It’s fine.
I’m fine.
I shut down my computer, pack my bag, and take the elevator to the lobby. The shuttle is waiting in its usual spot, and I find my usual seat near the back, and I pull out my phone to text Trish that I’m heading home.
She responds immediately: He just asked me to spend Saturday with him. AN ENTIRE SATURDAY. What do I even wear for an entire Saturday with a Caro???
I type back: Layers? In case he gets bitey?
Trish: ZIA.
Me: I’m kidding. Wear something comfortable. If he’s planning a whole day, he wants you relaxed, not dressed up.
Trish: But what if it’s somewhere fancy??
Me: Then he already knows what you look like in work clothes and hasn’t been scared off yet. You’re fine.
Trish: I hate that you’re good at this.
I smile at my phone. I can picture her on the other end, sitting at her desk in the IT security wing, face the color of a sunset, typing furiously while her heart does somersaults.
It must be nice, I think before I can stop myself. To be at the beginning of something. To still be in that part where everything is new and possible and you haven’t learned yet that some people say “I love you” and mean “for now.”
I put my phone away and look out the window.
The mountains are turning purple in the fading light, and the shuttle winds its way down the road in that smooth, silent way that makes you feel like you’re floating rather than driving. I rest my forehead against the glass and watch the world blur past.
Billy used to text me goodnight, too.
At normal hours. At human hours. Because we were keeping everything a secret, and he could only text when his pack wasn’t watching, which meant late at night, after everyone else had gone to sleep.
I used to wait for those messages. I used to lie in bed with my phone on my chest, watching the ceiling, counting the minutes until that little buzz against my sternum told me he was thinking of me.
Two years of that.
Two years of being someone’s secret, and I was so grateful for the crumbs that I convinced myself it was a feast.
The shuttle slows for my stop. I grab my bag, thank the driver out of habit, and step into the cold.
My apartment is four blocks away. It’s small and it’s mine, and when I close the door behind me, nobody is waiting there, and nobody is texting me goodnight, and my bookshelf is still arranged by color, and the silence is fine.
It’s fine.
SUNDAY EVENING. JONI calls at seven on the dot, the way she always does.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
“Hi, Mom.”
We talk for thirty-eight minutes. She tells me about the neighbor’s dog that keeps digging under the fence and how she’s started leaving treats on the other side because, quote, “If he’s going to commit crimes, the least I can do is make sure he’s fed while he does it.
” I tell her about the packaging project and how I’m experimenting with a new biodegradable polymer that might solve the moisture problem we’ve been having with the safety device casings.
She listens to the polymer part with the same enthusiastic confusion she brings to all my work stories. “That sounds very important, honey. Is the poly...morphine...thing working?”
“Polymer. And yes, I think so. Early results are promising.”
“I’m so proud of you.”
She says this every call. Every single one. And every single time, I have to swallow past the lump in my throat because Joni Morgan says “I’m proud of you” the way other people say “the sky is blue,” like it’s a simple, obvious fact that she can’t imagine anyone questioning.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“And the people at work? Everyone’s treating you well?”
I think of the laughter in the hallway. The conversations that stop. The word human spoken like a diagnosis.
“Everyone’s great,” I say.
“And you’re eating enough?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
We say goodnight, and I love you, and I hang up and sit on the edge of my bed in the quiet of my apartment.
The books on the windowsill catch the lamplight, their cracked spines a little rainbow of someone else’s love stories.
I pick up the one on top, a paperback I’ve already read twice, about a girl who falls for someone impossible and somehow it works out anyway, and I hold it against my chest for a moment before opening it.
It’s fiction.
But it’s a nice fiction.
And right now, that’s enough.
MONDAY MORNING.
I’m early again, because I’m always early, because being early is one of the few things in life I can control.
The design wing is empty except for me and the cleaning crew, who wave at me as I pass because we’re on a first-name basis at this point.
I know that Carla has a daughter in middle school and that Joram is saving up for a trip home to the Philippines and that Bea makes the best empanadas in the western hemisphere and brings them in on Fridays.
I wave back, settle at my desk, and open my computer.
There’s an email at the top of my inbox.
From Human Resources.
Subject: Meeting Request — Immediate Attention Required.
My stomach drops.
I read the email twice. Then a third time, because the words keep rearranging themselves in my head into configurations that all point to the same conclusion.
I’m being called to a meeting. Today. At 10 a.m.
The location is not Human Resources.
The location is the executive floor.
And the name on the meeting request, the person who apparently wants to see me at ten o’clock on a Monday morning for reasons that are not specified and that I can.t begin to imagine—
Is Prince Alexei Lykaios.
I stare at the screen.
And then I do what any rational, professional, emotionally stable adult would do in this situation.
I text Trish.
Me: I think I’m about to be fired by the Prince of Atlantis.
Her response is immediate.
Trish: WHAT
Trish: WHAT
Trish: WHAT???
Yeah.
That about sums it up.