Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8W34PF3TTQX64F5J5SBK0Y

The third deadbolt slid back with a heavy clunk. Aurora Carter peered through the narrow gap the security chain allowed, the dim hallway light catching the platinum blond hair first. Her breath hitched. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane, the other tucked into the pocket of a charcoal suit that looked tailored within an inch of its life. The amber and black eyes found hers through the gap. “Rory.” The sound of his voice, that low Marseille accent wrapping around her nickname, unlocked something in her chest she’d bolted shut months ago. She didn’t move. “You’re a hard woman to find.” He didn’t smile. “Three deadbolts. Eva’s paranoia is rubbing off.” “What do you want, Lucien?” “To talk. May I come in, or shall we conduct our business in the hall? I believe your neighbor is listening.” He tilted his head slightly toward the door across the landing, behind which a television blared. Aurora pushed the door shut, slipped the chain, and opened it fully. She didn’t step back, forcing him to brush past her in the cramped doorway. The scent of him—sandalwood, ozone, something metallic and dark—flooded the small space. He moved into the flat with the familiar, slight hesitation she remembered, the cane a quiet tap on the floorboards. She closed the door, reset all three locks. The sounds were overly loud in the silence. When she turned, he was standing amid the chaos of Eva’s research, his gaze taking in the towers of books, the unfurled scrolls on the kitchen table, the cat Ptolemy watching him from the top of a bookshelf. “Charming,” Lucien said, though his tone held no mockery. “Eva’s at the library. She won’t be back for hours.” “I didn’t come to see Eva.” Aurora crossed her arms, leaning against the door. The small crescent scar on her left wrist itched, a nervous habit. “Then say what you came to say and go.” His heterochromatic eyes settled on her. The amber one seemed to glow in the flat’s weak light. “You left London. Suddenly. No word. Then I hear you’re back, living above a bar, working for a restaurateur, and your ex-boyfriend with the violent temper is asking around Soho about a black-haired girl with bright blue eyes.” The facts, delivered in that calm, analytical tone, felt like stones dropped into still water. “Evan is not your concern.” “He became my concern when he started frequenting establishments that cater to my clientele, asking questions with more money than sense. He’s looking for you, Rory. He’s not just angry. He’s funded.” A cold trickle traced her spine. She pushed away from the door, walking to the kitchenette to put the kettle on. A pointless, domestic gesture. “I can handle Evan.” “Can you?” The cane tapped as he followed her, stopping at the edge of the cluttered table. “The Aurora Carter I knew was pre-law, poised, always three steps ahead. The woman I see now delivers dumplings and hides in a friend’s book-hoard. Handling things does not appear to be going well.” She spun, the kettle forgotten. “The Aurora Carter you knew was naive. She thought a half-demon fixer in a pretty suit was something other than a dangerous complication. She was wrong.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I never lied to you.” “You didn’t have to. The omissions were enough.” The words hung between them, the old hurt swelling in the room like a physical presence. They had spent six months in a blur of late-night conversations in his curated Mayfair apartment, a heady mix of intellectual sparring and a tension so thick it tasted like electricity. It had ended the night a ghoul’s blood splattered across her coat because she’d been with him. He’d told her it was part of his world. She’d told him she couldn’t live in it. She’d walked out and never answered his calls. “Why are you really here, Luc? To warn me about Evan? You could have sent a note. You have people for that.” He leaned his cane against the table and slowly, deliberately, removed his leather gloves, finger by finger. “I saw the report of the incident at the Golden Empress. A broken window, a scuffle. Yu-Fei Cheung is connected, but not that connected. I put it together.” “So this is professional curiosity? A broker tying up loose ends?” “This is me standing in a room that smells of old paper and curry, looking at you.” His voice dropped, stripped of its usual polished edge. “Looking at the shadows under your eyes. At the way you hold your left wrist when you’re nervous. I came because the thought of Evan Pierce getting within a mile of you made the demon in my bloodline want to peel the skin from his bones.” The raw violence in the words, so at odds with his impeccable exterior, stunned her silent. Ptolemy meowed from the shelf. “You left,” Aurora whispered. “After I ended it. You just… stopped.” “You asked me to.” He took a step closer. The small space meant the hem of his coat almost touched her jeans. “You said my world would get you killed. What was I to do? Drag you back into it to prove you right?” “You could have fought.” “For what? You made your choice. You wanted safety, normality. I am the antithesis of that.” He gestured around the flat. “And yet here you are, immersed in Eva’s world of magical theory, living in a flat owned by a man who runs a bar for supernatural clientele. You did not escape our world, Rory. You dove into a different corner of it.” She had no rebuttal. He was right. She’d run from him to Eva, from one kind of danger to another, thinking it was safer because it was academic. It was just another layer of the same hidden city. “I was scared,” she admitted, the words torn from her. “Of you. Of what I felt. It was too much, too fast. And then the blood… it was a shock. I needed space.” “And now?” His amber eye seemed to burn. “Now I have a psychotic ex with money looking for me, and you’re in my friend’s flat telling me things that make me want to put another deadbolt on the door.” A faint, humorless smile touched his lips. “Always practical.” The kettle began a low rumble on the stove. Neither of them moved to stop it. The sound filled the room, a rising whine. “I can make Evan disappear,” Lucien said, his tone returning to its businesslike neutrality. “It would be a simple transaction. No trace. No connection to you.” “I don’t want that.” “Why? Because it’s not legal? Your father the barrister would disapprove?” He shook his head. “This is not Cardiff. This is not a courtroom. This is the street, and he is a threat.” “I don’t want you to do that for me.” She met his gaze, holding both the amber and the black. “I don’t want to owe you.” “You wouldn’t owe me.” “Everything with you is a transaction, Luc. Information, protection, favors. It’s all currency. I won’t be another item on your ledger.” The rumble of the kettle peaked into a shrill whistle. Aurora jumped, turning to yank it from the heat. The sudden silence that followed was deafening. She felt him behind her before his hands touched her shoulders. His grip was firm, not restraining, just present. The heat of him seeped through her thin sweater. “You were never a transaction.” His breath stirred the hair at her temple. “From the first moment you walked into Silas’s bar and corrected my pronunciation of ‘Mabinogion,’ you were a complication I could not quantify. You still are.” She let her head fall forward, the tension draining from her neck. “What are we doing?” “I don’t know.” His thumbs moved in small circles on her shoulders. “But I know I spent months trying to forget the sound of your laugh. I know that when I heard Evan’s name linked with yours, I came here instead of sending a messenger. That is not good business. That is something else entirely.” Aurora turned within the circle of his arms. They were close, too close. She could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the perfect cut of his hair, the pulse in his throat. The cane leaned forgotten against the table. “Something else,” she echoed. His gaze dropped to her mouth. “A mistake, perhaps.” “Probably.” He didn’t move away. The air between them crackled with all the things left unsaid—the attraction that had never died, the hurt of the abrupt ending, the fear of what he was, and the deeper fear of what she became when she was with him. “I can’t go back to what we were,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I’m not asking you to.” “What are you asking?” “For now?” He lifted a hand, his fingers hovering near her cheek before he brushed a strand of black hair behind her ear. The touch was electric. “To let me help you. Not as a broker. Not for a fee. Let me… be here. However you’ll allow.” It was the most vulnerable thing he’d ever said to her. The man who spoke four languages fluently, who navigated the underworld with an ivory-handled cane and a blade, was standing in a messy flat asking for permission to stay. The old warning bells rang in her mind. Dangerous complication. But the man in front of her didn’t look like a demon in that moment. He looked tired. He looked real. Outside, a siren wailed on Brick Lane, fading into the distance. Ptolemy jumped down from the shelf and wound himself around Lucien’s legs, purring. Aurora let out a slow breath. “The kettle’s boiled. Do you still take your tea black?” His lips curved, a genuine smile this time, small but there. “You remembered.” “I remember everything, Luc.” She turned back to the counter, pulling down two mismatched mugs from Eva’s cupboard. Her hands were steady. “It’s the problem.” She felt his eyes on her back, a weight and a warmth. The first step, however tentative, had been taken. The door had been opened, and neither of them had walked away. Not yet.