But he would. Soon. And when I told him, when I finally opened the last frozen door and let him see everything—
He'd either stay or he wouldn't.
My dragon pressed against my ribs, certain in a way I envied. It had already decided. Had decided the moment Cinder's warm hands first touched my cold skin and didn't flinch.
Mate,it hummed.Ours.
"Not yet," I whispered to the empty room. "But maybe. If he'll have us."
Cinder – two days later
The apartment was cold and the smell was wrong.
Not obviously wrong. Just not my apartment, and I glanced over to the small window over the sink. It was open, and I knew I'd left it closed.
I stood in the entrance, key still in the lock, and felt the floor tilt beneath me. My pulse kicked up—not gradually, not the slow climb of anxiety I'd learned to manage with breathing exercises and grounding techniques. This was instant. Full-body. The kind of adrenaline dump that flooded your system when something primal in your brain recognized danger before the rest of you caught up.
The apartment looked the same. Same cramped studio layout, same medical textbooks on the shelf, same worn couch facingthe ancient television. Nothing overturned. Nothing missing that I could see from the doorway.
But the air was wrong.
I couldn't explain it better than that. It smelled like someone else had been breathing in my space. A faint trace of cologne—woody, expensive, nothing I owned. And something had shifted on the kitchen counter. My medication organizer, the large one, not the travel one I kept aligned with the edge of the counter because I was particular about things like that, had been moved. Not far. Maybe an inch. But enough.
My hands started shaking.
I stepped inside, leaving the door open behind me because the thought of closing myself in made my chest seize. My eyes swept the room methodically—training kicking in even through the panic, cataloging details the way I'd catalog symptoms. Kitchen: had I left the mug dirty? It didn't sound like me. Bathroom door: closed, not open the way I'd left it. Bed: made, sheets tucked tight, hospital corners.
Except the book on my nightstand had been turned over.
I'd left it face-down, open to my page. Now it was face-up, closed, the bookmark sitting on top like someone had picked it up, looked at it, and set it back down without caring that I'd notice.
Or wanting me to notice.
My stomach lurched. I backed up until my shoulders hit the half-wall, my breath coming too fast, too shallow, my vision narrowing at the edges the way it did when a panic attack was building momentum.
Gavin.
The thought hit instantly. But it couldn't be Gavin. He didn't have a key. He'd never had a key to this place—I'd moved here after I left him, specifically choosing a building he didn't knowabout, on a street I'd never mentioned, in a neighborhood we'd never visited together.
But the texts. The threats. The reporters who'd found us at the restaurant. If he could track me to a private dinner in Vancouver, he could find my apartment.
Couldn't he?
I fumbled for my phone, fingers so clumsy I nearly dropped it twice. My first instinct—the smart, self-sufficient, don't-be-a-burden instinct—was to call the police. File a report. Handle it myself the way I'd handled everything since I was seventeen.
But my hands dialed Taz before my brain gave them permission.
It rang once. Twice. I pressed my back harder against the wall and tried to remember how oxygen worked.
"Cinder?" His voice was alert despite the hour, that quiet steadiness I'd started depending on more than I wanted to admit.
"Someone was in my apartment." The words came out thin and reedy, nothing like the calm professional who'd faced down reporters and performed CPR on strangers. "I don't—I can't—Taz, someone was here."
A beat of silence. Then his voice went low, controlled, dangerous in a way I'd only heard once before—in the parking lot, facing down Gavin. "Are you inside right now?"
"Yes."
"Is anyone still there?"