She gathers her things quickly, efficiently, but pauses at the door. Her fingers rest on the handle, and she glances back at me.
"Draco?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you're staying."
"You might change your mind about that," I warn her. Part of me hopes she does.
Because she doesn’t know me yet—not the parts that don’t fit neatly into pretty cottages and curated quiet. I’m not dangerous to her, but I’m not domesticated either, and most people don’t expect the difference. If she’s going to regret this, it’ll be because she realizes I don’t smooth out just because someone invites me in.
"I doubt I’ll change my mind." A small smile curves her lips. "Tomorrow morning, then."
And then she’s gone, leaving me alone in the cottage with the lingering scent of her perfume and the absolutecertainty that I just made the most dangerous decision of my very long life.
Somewhere between her first nervous question and that determined smile, I stopped thinking of her as just another mark or another temporary shelter.
I started thinking of her as someone worth protecting.
And that, I know from hard experience, is when everything goes to hell.
Chapter Six
Draco
Three AM, and I'm wide awake, staring at the cottage ceiling.
The bed is more comfortable than anywhere I've slept in months. Maybe years. The sheets are soft, the pillow doesn't smell like someone else's head, and the room is quiet except for the distant sound of wind through trees.
That's the problem.
It feels too good. Too safe. Too much like something I could get used to.
My eyes track across the ceiling in the darkness, cataloging the expense even here in what's supposed to be a simple cottage—hand-plastered crown molding, real wood beams, the kind of construction that costs more than most people make in a year. On the nightstand, a leather-bound book of poetry sits next to a lamp that probably cost more than I made in a month of busking.
Different worlds.
The kind of different that ends badly for guys like me.
I've been here before. Not this cottage, not this century, but this exact situation—lying in a bed too comfortable to belong to someone like me, in a house too fine, accepting kindness from people too wealthy.
The memory rises unbidden, sharp as broken glass.
I was fourteen, maybe fifteen. Old enough to know better, young enough to be stupid about it.
Marcus Fabius was a merchant—successful enough to own a house in a decent part of Rome, not wealthy enough to rub shoulders with senators. He found me working a corner near the Forum, palming coins with the kind of speed that comes from desperation and natural talent.
Instead of calling the vigiles, he offered me a job.
"Work for me," he said. "Legitimate work. I need someone quick with their hands for my warehouse, someone smart enough to keep inventory, someone who won't steal from me because I'm paying them fairly."
I thought I'd won the lottery. A real job. A room in his house—small, but mine. Three meals a day. He even hired a tutor to teach me to read properly, said a smart boy was wasted on the streets.
For six months, I thought I'd finally found it. Safety. Belonging. A future that didn't end in an alley or the arena.
Then, his wife returned from visiting her family in Ostia.
Livia was twenty-three, married at sixteen to a man twice her age, bored out of her mind in a house where her only job was to look decorative and produce heirs she hadn't managed to deliver. Shewas beautiful in that untouchable way wealthy women are—like art you're not allowed to touch.
