Chapter 1 The Eyes that Broke me

SERA

I knew I was going to die.

The certainty didn’t come from the gun in my ribs or the van waiting at the end of the alley.

It came from the way the streetlights started flickering the moment they dragged me deeper into the dark. Like something had finally found me. 

Galk's grip tightened, bruising my arm. The alley smelled like rot and damp concrete, the kind of place where screams disappeared and bodies were forgotten.

“You shouldn’t have run, little bird,” he murmured, his breath hot against my ear. “Mr. Sergei doesn’t like it when his property runs.”

“I’m not property,” I said, my voice shaking.

“You are when you owe him two hundred thousand dollars.”

When my brother Marcus died in a "car accident" that I knew wasn't accidental, the debt transferred to me. Family ties, they called it. Blood debt.
I'd been paying what I could, scraping by on my waitressing job at a dingy diner in Pinatta, but it wasn't enough. Sergei's enforcers had started showing up—first with warnings, then with bruises.

Dmitri walked on my other side, his hand resting on the small of my back in a mockery of gentleness. To anyone watching, we might have looked like friends. Maybe even lovers.

“Please,” I whispered. “I can get the money. Just give me more time.”

Dmitri laughed. “Sergei doesn’t do ‘more time.’ But he might accept… alternative payment.”

Bile rose in my throat.

They dragged me deeper into the alley towards the van, back doors open like a mouth ready to swallow me whole.

I knew what Sergei did with women who owed him money. I’d heard the stories. Seen the girls who came back broken, if they came back at all.

That’s when I saw him.

Tall. Dressed in black. Standing under the dim glow of a streetlight like he didn’t belong to the same world as everything around him.

There was something… wrong about him. Not wrong in a bad way, wrong in a way that made my pulse stutter.

His eyes met mine, and everything stopped. The fear. The noise. The world.

For a brief second, it felt like a thread had snapped tight between us.

He went completely still. So did I.

He looked dangerous, like someone who could help. So I made the sign, the one I'd learned from a self-defense class I'd taken years ago, back when I thought knowing how to throw a punch would be enough to keep me safe. 

His eyes narrowed, and for a moment, I felt a flicker of hope that he got it—that he would actually come. But then, he looked away. My heart dropped.

"Who were you looking at?" Galk snarled. He followed my gaze and saw the man in black walking away. "You know him?"

"No. I don't know anyone. I was just—"

"Move." Dmitri shoved me forward.

The van loomed closer.

Closer.

This was it. I sucked in a breath and did the only thing I could.

I screamed.

MALRIK

I don’t help humans. Not after Prague.

Forty-seven years ago, I learned exactly what humans do to monsters who try to save them. 

They bind you with chains blessed by priests, jab you with needles, and slice you open with scalpels. I spent three long years being dissected, all in the name of figuring out what I really was. 

When I finally broke free, and I always break free, I left nothing but ash and bone in my wake. The building burned for three days. Investigators called it a gas leak. They always do.

So when I saw her, I turned on my heel and walked away. I only got three blocks down the road. Three blocks of convincing myself it wasn’t my issue. Three blocks filled with memories of Prague. Three blocks spent trying to shake off the haunting look in her eyes. Those goddamn eyes. Stormy grey. Desperate. Trusting.

"Fuck."

The word emerged, raspy and strained. Something was wrong.

I could still feel her—not physically, but something else. Something... pulling.

I turned around. My demon senses stretched out, searching. I could smell her terror.

Then I heard the scream. I moved.

Humans think they're fast. They're not. Not compared to what I am. I crossed three blocks in seconds, my form blurring, reality bending around me in ways that would make physicists weep. The alley was dark, but I see perfectly in darkness. It's where I was born, after all.

Two men. One woman. A van with its engine running and two more men inside.

The woman, her, was fighting. Clawing at the one holding her, her feet kicking out, connecting with shins and knees. She was small, maybe five-foot-five, but she fought like she was twice that size.

Brave. Stupid. Definitely going to get herself killed.

"Get her in the fucking van!" one of the men shouted.

I stepped into the alley.

"Gentlemen," I said, my voice carrying easily over the sound of the struggle. "I think the lady would prefer not to go with you."

They all froze and turned to look at me.

The one holding her, tall, blond, with the kind of muscles that come from steroids and gym obsession, sneered. "Walk away, asshole. This doesn't concern you."

"You're right," I agreed. "It doesn't."

I should have walked away then. Should have turned around and left her to whatever fate she'd earned. But then she looked at me. Those eyes. Those fucking eyes.

"Please," she whispered.

That single word broke something in me that I thought was long dead.

"Too late," I said, though I wasn't sure if I was talking to her or to myself. "I'm already involved."

The blond one let her go and reached for something at his back. A gun. They always have guns.

I was on him before he could draw it. My hand closed around his throat, lifting him off his feet. He weighed maybe two hundred pounds. To me, he felt like nothing.

"I'm going to give you one chance," I said softly, my face inches from his. "Leave. Now. Forget you ever saw her. Forget this night ever happened."

His eyes widened. Not because of my words, but because of what he was seeing. My eyes had changed. I could feel it: the heat, the glow. The demon showing through the human mask.

"What the fuck-" he choked out.

"Wrong answer."

I threw him, hard enough that he hit the brick wall with a satisfying crunch and slid down, unconscious.

The second one, dark-haired, Russian accent, pulled his gun. He actually managed to fire it.

The bullet hit me in the chest, right over my heart. It hurt-bullets always hurt-but it didn't stop me. Didn't even slow me down.

I looked down at the hole in my jacket, then back up at him.

"That was rude," I said.

His face went white. I moved again, faster and disarmed him. Literally. I didn't rip his arm off-I'm not a savage-but I dislocated his shoulder and broke his wrist in three places. His screams echoed off the alley walls.

The two in the van decided they weren't paid enough for this shit. The engine roared, tires squealed, and they were gone, leaving their companions behind.

I turned to the woman. She was pressed against the wall, chest heaving and eyes wide, staring at me. She looked at the hole in my jacket where the bullet had struck, then at my eyes, which were no longer human. Yet, the fear I expected was absent; instead, there was shock, confusion, and something that looked almost like awe.

"You're..." she started, then stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "What are you?"

"Someone you should run from," I said.

She didn't run. Instead, she did something that shocked me more than anything that had happened in the last forty-seven years.

She stepped forward, closed the distance, and wrapped her arms around me. Hugged me.

Her scent enveloped me all at once.

I stood there, frozen, arms at my sides, completely unprepared for this. For her.

 For the way her scent seemed to sink into my skin, my lungs, my blood.

For the way my demon-the part of me that was all hunger and darkness and need-stirred for the first time in centuries and whispered one word:

Mine.

Suddenly, the streetlight above us exploded. She flinched in my arms.

I looked up into the dark and knew, with cold certainty, that we were no longer alone in this.