Slow.
Not because I’m scared.
I’m not sure if he’ll let me do it again.
And because I think I might want to.
His eyes follow the motion, not in confusion, but in acknowledgment.
He nods once, slowly, then leans back in the chair with a weight that feels more like surrender than rest.
“You should go to bed,” he says, voice lower now. “You look tired.”
“So do you,” I say, crossing back to the couch. “You gonna stay?”
“For a while.”
I don’t ask what that means.
I just grab the throw blanket from the armrest, settle into the cushions, and close my eyes.
And in the quiet that follows, I hear him breathe like it’s the first time in a long time he doesn’t have to brace for a nightmare.
9
RAFE
Sleep never comes easy for me. It’s a fight, like everything else, a negotiation between my mind and whatever’s living under my skin. Tonight it doesn’t come at all. I stretch out on the cot in my room above the old storage hall, staring at the cracked ceiling, listening to the pipes groan and the faint thump of bass from the club two blocks over. My fists are already tight without me realizing. The sheets smell like iron. My body feels heavier than it should, every breath dragging like it’s pulling chains.
When it happens this time, there’s no trigger. No noise from the street. No memory bubbling up. The beast just wakes. I feel it under my ribs first, a heat rolling out from the center of my chest, into my throat, down my arms until my knuckles ache to split. My teeth press against each other like they’re grinding stone. My skin crawls. My eyes blur and clear and blur again, vision sharpening in unnatural ways.
The bull wants out.
I swing my legs off the cot and sit hunched forward, breathing through my nose, palms pressed to my thighs. I tell myself it’s not happening. I’ve done this a thousand timesbefore. I know how to clamp it down. But my hands are already swelling, the bones shifting, nails scraping at the air like claws. I close my eyes hard.
And then I see her.
Not like she is when she’s sitting across from me in that calm way, notebook closed, watching like she’s holding a match in a room full of gasoline. This is different. She’s inside the darkness behind my eyelids. Kaleigh. Barefoot, hair loose, wearing something soft that moves like smoke. She’s standing at the edge of a storm made of my own rage. She lifts a hand.
The sound that comes out of my throat isn’t human. It’s a low, guttural rumble, deep enough to make the metal frame of the bed creak. But in the dream, she doesn’t back away. She steps closer. Her hand touches my jaw and everything slows, like she’s cutting through the noise. Her voice—if it’s a voice—isn’t words. It’s a feeling. A weight sliding off my shoulders. A warmth against my spine.
I wake up gasping, bent forward, fists digging into the mattress hard enough to leave impressions. My body’s half-shifted, my arms thickened, veins standing out, breath steaming in the cool air. My eyes burn. Sweat runs down my back.
I drag myself upright and stumble to the sink, twist the tap, splash cold water over my face again and again until the shivering starts. In the mirror, for a split second, I see horns behind my reflection, curving up from my skull like shadows. Then they’re gone.
This isn’t normal. Not for me. I’ve always had the beast under lock. I let it out when I choose, not when it chooses. I tell it where and when. But now it’s rising without warning, like it’s been waiting for the right moment to show me who’s really in charge.
And the worst part—the part that should scare me but doesn’t—is that in the middle of it, I didn’t see blood. I didn’t seeviolence. I saw her. Kaleigh. The only thing in that storm that didn’t break.
The sun’s not up yet, but the city’s already stirring by the time I head downstairs. The men are in the main hall, voices low, smoke curling from cigarettes as they check weapons and bills. Pilar leans against a crate, scrolling through her phone, eyeliner smudged from last night’s work. She glances up at me but doesn’t smile.
Mateo’s in his usual corner, cream suit today, shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He’s got a glass of espresso in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other, like we’re running a shipping company instead of a blood economy.
“Calderon,” he says without looking up. “Walk with me.”
We cut through the back hallway toward his office. The floor here is polished concrete, always too clean, and the smell of disinfectant burns faintly at the edges of the air. He shuts the door behind us and takes his seat at the big desk made from repurposed church wood, knuckles drumming lightly on the surface.
“You skipped an assignment,” he says.
