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The rain in this city didn't wash things clean; it only turned the soot into a thick, black grease that coated everything. Raeila stood under the rusted awning of the subway exit, her breath hitching in her chest. She waited for the count of ten—long enough to hope they were gone, but short enough that she wouldn't lose her nerve.
One. Two. Three.
She adjusted the collar of her oversized coat, trying to swallow the lump of bile in her throat. The district was a graveyard of industrial ambition, filled with men who had nothing better to do than watch the girl with the haunted eyes and the porcelain skin. To them, she was a rare bird in a cage of concrete, and every one of them wanted to see her feathers plucked.
Her walk was a frantic, curated thing. She kept her chin tucked, her gaze anchored to the cracks in the pavement, counting the rhythm of her own footsteps to drown out the whistles that began the moment she crossed the street.
"Hey, little bird," a voice rasped from an alleyway. "Why the rush? The night's just getting started."
Raeila didn't blink. She didn't speed up. Experience had taught her that running only triggered the hunt. She was the prey of Raeila—a girl whose very name had become a local synonym for 'target.' The harassment followed a predictable, sickening choreography. It started with words, graduated to shadows following her too closely, and usually ended with a hand she didn't want pressing her against a cold brick wall.
Her soul felt like a bruised fruit—soft, battered, and rotting from the inside out. She was drowning in a sea of unwanted hands, and the only thing keeping her head above water was a name she whispered like a forbidden prayer.
Kai Dakza.
She saw him through the haze of the downpour. He was standing outside the entrance of a high-end, windowless club—a place where the city's most dangerous men went to forget their sins. Kai didn't need an umbrella. The rain seemed to avoid him, sliding off the leather of his dark trench coat as if he were made of something impenetrable.
He was the "God" of this district, but not the kind you prayed to for mercy. He was the kind of God who watched a city burn just to appreciate the color of the flames. He was terrifyingly beautiful, with a jawline that could cut glass and eyes that held the absolute temperature of deep space.
Raeila stopped twenty feet away, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She watched him pull a silver lighter from his pocket, the flame illuminating the hollows of his cheeks. He didn't look at her. He never looked at her. He knew she was there—he had to. He could probably hear her frantic heartbeat from across the sidewalk. But to Kai Dakza, Raeila was less than a ghost; she was background noise.
"There she is," a loud, jagged voice boomed behind her.
The hope she had felt just by seeing Kai vanished, replaced by a cold, familiar dread. Three men stepped out from the shadows of a nearby warehouse. They were regulars—men who had made it their life's mission to see Raeila break. The leader, a man named Miller with a smile that looked like a jagged wound, stepped into her personal space.
"You didn't answer me earlier, Rae-Rae," Miller said, his hand reaching out to stroke the damp hair away from her face. His skin felt like sandpaper. "I think you owe me an apology. Maybe a little more."
Raeila's eyes darted to Kai. He was leaning against the stone archway, exhaling a plume of smoke that vanished into the rain. He looked bored.
"Please," Raeila whispered, her voice trembling so hard it was barely audible. She wasn't talking to Miller. She was talking to the man in the leather coat.
"Please what?" Miller laughed, his fingers tightening on her shoulder, digging into the bone. "Please touch you? Please take you around back? You hear that, boys? She's begging now."
The other two men closed in, flanking her. One of them reached out, his hand sliding roughly down her side, mocking the curves of her body through the heavy coat. "She's shaking," the man sneered. "I like it when they shake."
Raeila's world narrowed down to the glowing tip of Kai's cigarette. She needed him to be the monster she knew he was. She needed him to be the nightmare that scared these lesser demons away. She would trade her soul just for one look—one acknowledgement that she was a human being worth defending.
Suddenly, Kai moved.
He tossed the cigarette into a puddle and stepped out into the rain. The men holding Raeila froze. Even the air seemed to go still. The sheer presence of Kai Dakza was like a physical weight, a suffocalting pressure that made the harassers' bravado leak out of them like air from a punctured tire.
He walked toward them. His boots made slow, deliberate sounds on the wet asphalt. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Raeila held her breath, tears stinging her eyes. Finally. He's coming for me.
Kai reached the group. He didn't look at Miller. He didn't look at the hands that were currently bruising Raeila's skin. He didn't even slow down. With a grace that was purely predatory, he walked directly through the gap between Raeila and Miller. His shoulder clipped Miller's chest, sending the larger man stumbling back a step.
Kai didn't apologize. He didn't stop to see if Raeila was okay. He didn't even turn his head.
He walked past her as if she were a piece of trash caught in the wind. He was so close she could smell the smoke and the cold metallic scent of his skin, yet he was a million miles away. He treated the entire scene—the harassment, her terror, her silent plea—as if it were a minor inconvenience to his path.
"Kai!" Raeila cried out, her voice breaking.
He didn't stop. He didn't even break his stride. He disappeared into the darkness of the next alleyway, leaving her alone with the wolves.
Miller recovered, a cruel, embarrassed heat flushing his face. He grabbed Raeila's arm and yanked her toward him, his face inches from hers. "You see that? Even your big, bad God doesn't want your used-up soul. You're nothing but a plaything, Raeila. And tonight, you're ours."
As Miller dragged her toward the shadows, Raeila didn't fight as hard as she usually did. Her eyes stayed fixed on the empty space where Kai had been. The pain of the hands on her body was nothing compared to the ice-cold realization that he truly, deeply did not care if she lived or died.
And in that moment, something in Raeila snapped. If she couldn't be his beloved, and she couldn't be his ward, she would be his ruin. She would make herself so loud, so broken, and so dangerous that Kai Dakza would have no choice but to look. She would set the whole world on fire just to see his reflection in the flames.
The hunt was far from over. It was just changing shape.