Chapter 1: Ashes and Emeralds
The heat wasn't the first thing that tipped me off. It was the smell—that nasty, metallic scent of burning carpet and old wallpaper that only a place as budget-friendly as the Royal Crest Hotel could produce.
I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead with the back of a gloved hand, leaving a smear of grey dust behind. God, my head was killing me. It felt like someone was playing a heavy metal solo on my skull with a rusty hammer. I'd been fighting this fever for three days, but "no work" meant "no food" for Maisie, so here I was, scrubbing the baseboards of Room 412 like my life depended on it.
"Mommy, look! It's a birdy!"
I turned, forced a tired smile, and looked at my five-year-old. Maisie was tucked into the corner of the room, sitting on a pile of clean towels I'd "borrowed" for her to sit on. She was holding a piece of scrap paper she'd folded into something that vaguely resembled a crane.
"That's beautiful, baby," I rasped. My throat felt like I'd swallowed a bag of glass. "Just stay right there on your island, okay? Mommy's almost done with this floor."
"But it's getting smoky, Mommy. Is someone making toast?"
My heart didn't just skip a beat; it did a full-on Olympic dive into my stomach. I stopped scrubbing. The room was hazy. A thin, ghostly ribbon of black smoke was snaking its way under the door, curling upward like it was looking for us.
Oh, hell no.
I scrambled to my feet, but the fever made the world tilt. The walls pulled a 180-degree turn, and I had to grab the edge of the bed to keep from face-planting. "Maisie, come here. Now!"
I didn't wait for her to move. I lunged, scooped her up, and pressed her face into my shoulder. My chest was tight—not just from the smoke, but from a soul-crushing panic that told me we were in deep, deep trouble. I ran for the door, grabbed the handle, and hissed, pulling my hand back instantly.
"Crap!"
The metal was scorching. It had literally cooked the skin of my palm in a split second. I looked around, my eyes stinging, my lungs starting to burn. There was no balcony. We were four floors up, and the hallway was a goddamn furnace.
"Mommy, you're shaking," Maisie whispered, her little hands gripping my work shirt.
"I'm okay, baby. We're okay." I was lying through my teeth.
I dragged a heavy chair toward the door, trying to block the smoke, but the fever chose that exact moment to peak. My knees turned to jelly. The world went from "emergency" to "static." Black spots danced in my vision, and the roar of the fire outside the door started to sound like a distant ocean.
I slumped against the wall, sliding down until I was sitting on the floor, still clutching Maisie. I couldn't breathe. Everything was too hot.
"Stay low, Maisie... cover your mouth..." I tried to say, but it came out as a pathetic wheeze.
Then, the door didn't just open. It exploded.
The wood shattered like it had been hit by a freight train. Through the wall of orange flame and thick, oily smoke, a shadow moved. He didn't look human. He looked like some kind of dark demon, covered in heavy black gear, a visor reflecting the fire, and—was that a gun? Why the hell did a firefighter have a gun?
I tried to scream, but my lungs gave up. My eyes met the dark visor of his helmet just as the room turned completely black. The last thing I felt was a pair of massive, calloused hands—hands that felt like they were made of solid oak—pulling me and Maisie into the cold, beautiful dark.
[CADEN'S POV]
The building was a deathtrap. Arson, clearly. Nobody lets a grease fire get this out of hand unless they want the place to ash out.
I kicked through a fallen beam, my boots crunching on embers. My squad was outside handling the perimeter, but I'd doubled back. Something felt off. A "hunch," my old man used to call it. I call it a pain in the ass.
I slammed my shoulder into the door of 412. It gave way with a satisfying crack.
The smoke was so thick you could carve it, but then I heard it. A tiny, high-pitched cough.
I swung my light around. In the corner, slumped like a discarded rag doll, was a woman. And she was holding a kid.
Damn it.
I dropped my weapon to its sling and moved. Most people in fires are a mess—screaming, clawing, making things harder. But this woman was out cold. As I reached down to haul her up, her head fell back.
My heart hit a brick wall.
Even through the grime and the soot, she was... luminous. It was the only word for it. Her skin had this weird, golden glow despite the grey ash, and her blonde curls were a tangled mess around a face that belonged in a museum, not this dump.
"Help my mommy," a small voice piped up.
I looked down. A little girl, chestnut hair, eyes as green as a damn jungle in the middle of a war zone. She wasn't crying. She was just looking at me like I was supposed to be some kind of hero.
"I got her, kid. Grab my vest and don't let go."
I scooped the woman up. She was lighter than she looked, but she felt like she was made of pure heat. Fever. Great. Just what we needed.
I carried them out through the gauntlet of flames. As we hit the stairwell, the woman's eyes fluttered open for a fraction of a second. Emerald green. Deep, intelligent, and absolutely terrified.
She looked at me—really looked at me—and I felt a jolt of electricity shoot up my arms that had nothing to do with the fire.
"You're okay," I growled, my voice sounding like gravel in a blender.
She didn't answer. She just sagged against my chest, her head tucking into the crook of my neck.
I've saved hundreds of people. Usually, I forget their faces by the time I hit the showers. But as I walked out into the cool night air and saw the way the moonlight hit her face, I knew.
This one was going to be a problem.
I woke up to the sound of a steady, annoying beep-beep-beep and the aggressive smell of lemon-scented bleach. My eyes felt like they had been glued shut with sand. When I finally forced them open, the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital ceiling felt like needles poking directly into my brain.
"Maisie?" My voice was a wreck—a dry, pathetic croak.
"I'm here, Mommy."
A small, warm hand slipped into mine. I turned my head, ignoring the spike of pain in my neck, and saw my daughter. She was sitting on a plastic chair that looked way too big for her, still wearing her soot-stained shirt. She was holding a plastic cup of water with a bendy straw, her emerald eyes wide and surprisingly calm.
"The big man brought us here," she said, leaning in. "He told me you were just taking a nap because the fire was loud."
The memory hit me like a physical punch. The smoke. The heat. The door exploding. And that man—that giant in the black gear who felt like a mountain of solid muscle. I looked down at my hands. They were bandaged, and an IV line was taped to my arm, pumping something cold into my veins.
A nurse with tired eyes and a messy bun walked in, checking a clipboard. "Oh, you're back with us. Easy there, Amara. You took in a lot of smoke, and that fever of yours was nearly 104."
"I... I can't stay," I stammered, panic rising in my chest. Panic wasn't about the fire anymore; it was about the math. A hospital stay plus an ER visit plus whatever meds they were giving me? That was a bill I couldn't pay in ten lifetimes. "I don't have insurance. I need to go."
I tried to sit up, but the world did a somersault. The nurse gently pushed me back down. "Relax. Your bill is already settled."
I froze. "Settled? By who? My boss at the hotel? He's probably the one who let the place burn down to save on taxes."
"The donor asked to remain anonymous," the nurse said with a small, knowing smile. "Just some 'concerned citizen' involved in the rescue, I guess. Everything—the room, the treatment, even the pediatric check-up for your daughter—is covered."
I sank back into the thin pillow, my mind racing. A concerned citizen? People in this city didn't just drop thousands of dollars on a nameless cleaner. I thought of the man from the smoke. The way his hands felt—rough but strangely careful. Was it him?
"He was handsome, Mommy," Maisie whispered, her whole body getting involved in her giggle, just like it always did when she was excited. "Like a superhero, but he didn't have a cape. He had a gun."
"Yeah, the gun part is a bit weird, baby," I muttered, rubbing my aching forehead.
Three hours later, they cleared me to leave. I felt like a ghost walking out of those sliding glass doors. I had a bag of generic antibiotics, a pair of bandaged hands, and exactly forty-two dollars in my pocket.
We took the bus back to my neighborhood, but as we turned the corner toward my street, my heart stopped for the second time that day. There were city crew trucks everywhere. A main pipe had burst, and because our street was at the bottom of the hill, the water had nowhere to go.
I stood there, clutching Maisie's hand, watching brown, murky water swirl around the front door of our basement apartment. My shoes—the only ones I owned—soaked through instantly.
"Mommy? Is the house taking a bath?"
I couldn't even answer. I felt the vibration of a high-end engine before I heard it. A matte-black SUV, looking like something out of a spy movie, crawled through the water and stopped right in front of us.
The window rolled down, and a man looked out. He wasn't wearing a mask now. He had a sharp, carved jawline covered in a dark stubble and eyes so black they looked like midnight. He looked like he belonged in a boardroom or a high-end architecture firm, not in a flooded slum.
But I knew those shoulders. I knew that slow, deliberate way he looked at me, like he was reading my soul and finding it "messy."
"The hospital said you'd be stubborn enough to leave early," he said. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that made the hair on my arms stand up.
I squared my shoulders, pushing my wet blonde hair back. "I don't like hospitals. And I don't like being followed."
He ignored my attitude, his gaze shifting to the flooded doorway behind me, then back to my emerald eyes. "You're homeless, Amara. And your kid is shivering."
"We'll figure it out," I snapped, though my voice trembled. "We always do."
Caden—though I didn't know his name yet—unlocked the doors with a loud thud. "Get in the car. It wasn't a request."