Lexi's apartmentis across town, a cramped studio in a slightly better neighborhood that she shares with her girlfriend and approximately forty houseplants. I show up on her doorstep at nine-thirty at night, soaking wet from the rain that started halfway through my frantic subway ride, mascara streaking down my face, and barely coherent.
She takes one look at me, at my rain-soaked hair plastered to my face, my mascara-smudged cheeks, my jacket dripping puddles onto her doormat, my entire frame trembling with barely contained panic, and without uttering a single word, she simply reaches out and pulls me inside, kicking the door shut behind me with the decisive finality of someone who knows exactly what I need and isn't about to let me stand in the hallway looking like a drowned, heartbroken mess.
Twenty minutes later, I'm curled up on her threadbare couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket that smells like lavender detergent, clutching a mug of chamomile tea in both hands while Lexi sits cross-legged on the floor in front of me, her dark eyes concerned.
"Okay," she says gently, settling back against the worn fabric of her couch with the patient, unhurried demeanor of someone who has known me long enough to understand that whatever has brought me to her door at this hour, soaking and shattered, is going to require time and careful listening. "Start from the beginning. Walk me through it. What happened? And don't leave anything out, I need the whole story."
So I tell her. Everything. The eviction notice, Faugh disappearing for the day, him coming back bruised and furiouswith a deed to the entire building. The dowry gold. The sheer, overwhelming, impossible scale of what he just sacrificed for me.
By the time I finish recounting every devastating detail, the rejection, the panic, the overwhelming realization of what Faugh has done, I'm crying again, my voice raw and broken, the words tumbling out in a fractured mess of gasps and sobs. My hands are shaking so badly that the chamomile tea sloshes dangerously close to the rim of the mug, and I have to set it down on the coffee table before I spill it all over Lexi's already threadbare couch. My throat feels like it's been scraped raw, every syllable scraping out like gravel, and it’s difficult to see Lexi through the blur of tears that won't stop coming.
"He bought a building," I sob into my tea. "Lexi, he bought an entire building. With his family's gold. And I can't even afford to replace the broken leg on the coffee table. How am I supposed to?—"
"Okay, hold up," Lexi interrupts, holding up one hand. "Let me make sure I have this straight. Your incredibly hot, incredibly devoted Orc roommate, who is clearly head-over-heels obsessed with you, just used his own money to buy your apartment building so you wouldn't lose your home. And you're upset about this because... why exactly?"
"Because it's too much! Because I can't reciprocate! Because?—"
"Chantel, babe, I say this with love, but you're being an idiot," Lexi says bluntly. "This isn't about money. This is about him protecting what he loves. And what he loves is you."
"But I can't give him anything in return," I protest weakly, my voice cracking with my own inadequacy. "I'm broke, Lexi. I'm a complete and utter mess. Keeping my own life together is hard, let alone contribute to his in any meaningful way. I—" I gesture helplessly at myself, at my paint-stained sweater, at the accumulated chaos of my existence. "What could I possibly offersomeone like him? Someone with resources and stability and an actual plan for his future?"
"You're giving him everything he actually wants," Lexi counters. "A home. A partner. Someone who sees him as more than just muscle or money or whatever his clan wanted him to be. Chantel, the guy cleans your apartment for fun. He researched color theory to defend your art. He literally fought people to protect your living situation. Does that sound like someone who cares about financial equity?"
I open my mouth to argue, then close it again, her words sinking in.
"He doesn't want you to match his bank account," Lexi continues, her voice softening. "He wants you. The messy, paint-covered, ramen-eating, brilliant artist you. And yeah, maybe he has money and you don't, but so what? You have things he doesn't have. You have creativity and passion and the ability to make him feel like he belongs somewhere. That's worth more than gold, Chantel."
My throat tightens, fresh tears spilling over as my own insecurity threatens to crush me entirely. "But what if I mess this up? What if I'm not?—"
The front door shudders violently in its frame, the sudden impact so forceful that both Lexi and I jump, our bodies jerking in synchronized alarm.
A massive fist pounds against the wood with deliberate, measured force, three heavy strikes that echo through the small apartment like distant thunder rolling across an open sky. The sound is so loud, so physically present, that it seems to vibrate through my bones.
"Chantel." Faugh's voice, low and absolutely commanding, cuts through the door with the precision of a blade. There's something different in his tone, something that makes mystomach flip and my skin prickle with electricity. "Open the door."
Lexi's eyes go impossibly wide, her entire face registering shock. "Holy shit," she breathes out, her voice barely audible. "Is that him? Is that actually?—"
I nod mutely, unable to form words, my heart launching into my throat with such force I'm certain Lexi can hear it. My palms have gone clammy, and I can feel the nervous energy coiling through my entire body like a live wire.
Another knock reverberates through the apartment, harder than the first volley, with enough force that the doorframe actually groans and creaks in protest under the sheer weight behind it. A thin shower of dust particles drifts down from where the frame meets the wall.
"Chantel," he repeats, and there's something raw in his voice now, something desperate beneath the command. "I can smell you. I know you are in there. Open this door before I remove it from its hinges."
"He can smell you?" Lexi hisses, looking somewhere between alarmed and impressed. "That's either incredibly romantic or incredibly terrifying."
"Both," I whisper, setting down my mug with shaking hands. "It's definitely both."
14
FAUGH
Istand in the narrow hallway of this dilapidated building, rain dripping steadily from my hair and soaking through the shoulders of my shirt, and I force myself to breathe through the primal surge of panic clawing at my chest. The journey across the city took far too long, traffic grinding to a halt in the downpour, and with every passing minute, the gnawing certainty that I have lost her has grown sharper, more visceral, until it sits like broken glass .
She ran from me.
My mate, my Chantel, had looked at everything I had so carefully offered her—the stability, the devotion, the absolute certainty of my protection—and she had fled as though I were some manner of threat instead of the one person in this entire city who would burn it all down to keep her safe. And she had run.
The realization sits heavy and suffocating , heavier than the rain that continues to soak through my clothes, heavier than the knowledge that I have already crossed half the city in the downpour to find her. She had looked at me in that moment when I had finally allowed the mask to slip, when I had finallylet her see the full depth of what I felt, what I wanted, what I was capable of doing to anyone foolish enough to hurt her. And instead of accepting it, instead of accepting me, she had run.
