By noon, I had reached my limit.

  I needed out.

  The three of them weren’t doing anything, exactly. That was the problem. They weren’t terrorizing me with outright malice. They weren’t torturing me with fangs and claws or demanding sacrificial offerings. No, their method of attack was far worse—constant presence.

  They were always here.

  Elly and Lily were in the middle of yet another argument—this time about whether or not my wardrobe was an affront to civilization. My sweatpants were apparently “a war crime against taste,” and my favorite faded hoodie had been dubbed “evidence in a crime against texture.”

  Meanwhile, Euryale sat perched on the windowsill like a very disinterested cat goddess, calmly polishing her sunglasses with a pristine cloth as if nothing in this world—not my crumbling sanity, not my rapidly declining privacy—concerned her in the slightest.

  I saw my opportunity.

  While the debate about if my socks were “truly haunting” or just “fashionably tragic” reached a fever pitch, I slipped into my jacket, moving like a man preparing to breach a military perimeter. I edged toward the door, slow and silent, heart thudding with a desperation I could barely hide. Just a quick break. A walk. A breath of fresh air away from the insanity.

  I made it to the threshold. One step. Two—

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I froze.

  Slowly, like a doomed protagonist in a horror movie, I turned around.

  Three pairs of eyes were locked on me.

  “I—uh.”

  Lily leaned against the couch, arching a perfectly manicured brow. “You wouldn’t be sneaking off, would you?”

  “I—uh, no?”

  Elly narrowed her eyes. “Daniel.”

  That one word. My full name, used like a weapon. I backed up slightly against the door, trying to hide behind the concept of autonomy.

  “Look,” I said, palms up, “I appreciate the concern, I really do, but I need some air. I am losing my mind.”

  That, at least, was not an exaggeration.

  They were always there. Watching. Judging. Rearranging my bookshelves in alphabetical order. Elly had even started categorizing my mugs by “emotionally resonant color palette.” I didn’t even know what that meant.

  Every attempt at normalcy had been thwarted.

  Breakfast? A battlefield.

  I tried to make toast. Lily stole it. “Carbs are bad for you,” she said, eating the whole thing.

  Euryale declared my eggs an insult to the culinary arts and made her own, which were annoyingly perfect and full of mysterious Greek spices I didn’t even know I owned.

  Coffee? Confiscated.

  Elly took my last packet of instant and physically threw it out the window. “I’ll brew something real,” she said. It took her twenty minutes. And she added cardamom. Who does that?

  The bathroom? A zone of concern.

  I’d gone in once with my phone and come back out to find Lily had opened all my drawers and was reorganizing my underwear by “seduction tier.” I didn’t even know I had seduction-tiered underwear.

  Even trying to unwind—something I used to be good at—was now an exercise in public humiliation.

  I tried playing video games. Surely, surely, they wouldn’t care about that.

  I was wrong.

  Elly leaned over my shoulder. “You missed a dodge.”

  Lily, curled beside me like a cat with opinions, purred, “Oh? You play this game? How adorable.”

  Euryale said nothing. She picked up the controller, selected a character at random, and wiped the floor with me. Years of practice, ranked matches, trophy unlocks—all reduced to ash beneath the heels of a Gorgon who had never played before.

  I switched tactics. Something single player. Something narrative. Something that might appeal to the romantic in me.

  Bad idea.

  Lily gasped. “Oh no! Not the tragic backstory!” Her eyes lit up like fireworks. “Danny, are you crying? Because I find emotions very attractive in a male. I’ve made so many cry.”

  “I am not—”

  Elly snorted. “Oh, he’s definitely crying.”

  Euryale, from the armchair: “Predictable.”

  I turned off the console in silence and stared at the black screen like I’d just buried a friend.

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  There was no peace.

  No corner of my life they hadn’t invaded. They had filled the space like smoke—cloying, intoxicating, impossible to breathe through.

  Now, standing at the door, I was cornered yet again.

  Lily crossed her arms. “You do look awfully desperate to get away from us, Danny”

  “Because I am!” I burst out. “I have zero privacy, my bathroom is apparently a biohazard, and I haven’t had proper cheap instant caffeine in hours! I am going outside, and none of you are coming with me!”

  There was a long silence.

  Then, Elly sighed. “Fine.”

  I blinked. “Wait. Really?”

  “Sure,” she said, too easily. “If you really want to be alone.”

  Lily smirked. “Go ahead, darling.”

  Euryale just shrugged, like this had nothing to do with her.

  I knew a trap when I saw one. I was aware this was probably a test. But I had reached the end of my proverbial rope and set it on fire.

  I bolted.

  Straight out the door. Down the hall. Past the elevator. Taking the stairs like a man fleeing an exorcism.

  Finally—finally—some freedom. Some sanity.

  The air hit my face like a blessing as I stepped onto the sidewalk. The sun was warm. The sounds of the street washed over me. No mocking. No insults. No ancient creatures rearranging my Funko Pops.

  I walked three blocks without direction, without a plan, just letting the quiet bloom inside me.

  And then… I stopped. A chill ran down my spine. Something was watching me.

  I felt it the way you feel a storm before the lightning. A tickle under the skin. A stillness behind the eyes. Not the kind of attention you want. The kind that slithers down your back and whispers run into your bones.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, turning just slightly, just enough to glimpse the alley behind me.

  Nothing. But I didn’t believe that for a second.

  I’d left three supernatural women in my apartment to reclaim a scrap of my life.

  Instead, I walked straight into something worse.

  Actually, I ran.

  Well, “ran” might be generous. It was more like a flailing sprint fueled by panic and spiked cortisol. But my legs were moving, my lungs were burning, and my survival instincts—long dormant—were now screaming at me like they'd just come out of retirement.

  My breath came in ragged, uneven bursts. Each footfall echoed too loudly against the city pavement, a drumbeat in a song no one else could hear. The buildings loomed, familiar and yet distant. The occasional car horn, the buzz of neon signs, the quiet hum of city life—it all felt too normal for what was happening.

  Because something was following me.

  At first, I’d brushed it off as nerves. After all, I’d been cooped up with three powerful supernatural women for days. That had to fry your brain at least a little. Maybe it was paranoia. Sleep deprivation. But when I turned that last corner and saw the street behind me empty—dead empty—I knew. I knew.

  The city doesn’t go quiet like that. Not even in the weird parts. There’s always a drunk guy muttering, a couple arguing in a stairwell, music thumping out a cracked window.

  Not now.

  No footsteps. No distant sirens. Just me.

  And him.

  I didn’t dare turn around. I didn’t need to. I could feel it. The stare. Heavy. Hungry. Like gravity had narrowed itself around the spot between my shoulder blades.

  I pushed faster, rounded a corner, ducked into an alley. My heart thundered. My body screamed for oxygen. But the worst part?

  There was no sound behind me.

  No echo. No breathing. No footsteps.

  Like he didn’t move, he just… arrived.

  And then it hit me—the smell. Copper. Not quite blood, but like rust and ozone. Like something dying inside an old radio or blood spattered across battery acid.

  I turned sharply, slamming into another alley wall.

  He was already there.

  Just standing at the alley’s mouth. Breathing in. Slowly. Deeply. Like he was tasting the air.

  He looked… ordinary. Which made it worse somehow.

  A man in a delivery man’s uniform: tan shirt, faded name tag that just said “Ken,” holding a generic-looking insulated bag like he was on his way to a late lunch drop-off. Ordinary. Boring. Until he opened his mouth.

  “You’ve been claimed,” he rasped.

  My stomach flipped.

  “What?”

  His nostrils flared. “You reek of it. One fae. One serpentine. And something... warm.” He took another breath and smiled. “And yet… you’re empty. Hollow. You shouldn’t even hold a scent like that. It’s impossible.”

  I took a step back. “Look, man, I don’t want any trouble. Maybe you’ve got the wrong guy?”

  He tilted his head, almost curious. “No. It’s you, claimed three times and yet not broken. That makes you... valuable. Different.”

  And then, he moved.

  Not walked. Not ran. Just shifted. Like a film splice, frame to frame.

  He was there—right behind me—and his fingers snagged my hoodie collar before I could blink.

  I hit the pavement with a bone-jarring thud, the wind knocked from my lungs. My hands scraped raw against the ground.

  The deliveryman crouched beside me. His face didn’t move like a human’s—it twitched, small muscle spasms pulling at the corner of his mouth. He set the bag down beside me and smiled like someone who’d just found their favorite flavor of pain.

  Then the bag unzipped itself.

  It opened like a flower, revealing a mouth. An honest-to-gods, flesh-and-sinew mouth, complete with twitching gums and black teeth. Saliva dripped in slow strands, and a forked tongue curled from within the insulated lining like a serpent made of hunger.

  I screamed. Not proud of it, but I screamed.

  The man just inhaled again. “Three scents,” he murmured. “Fae interference. Lust-magic residue. And… stone blood. Not claimed!”

  “I thought you said…”

  “I was wrong. Not claimed, all bound to you.” His grin widened. “But you don’t feel like them. You don’t react. You’re a ghost in their system. A break. A Null.”

  I didn’t wait for him to finish his biology lesson. I fumbled in my jacket, pulled the tiny pink canister from my pocket, and jammed it directly in his face.

  PSSSHT.

  A hiss of aerosol hell.

  The scream was immediate. Gurgling, hoarse, wrong. The skin around his eyes began to bubble as he staggered back, clawing at his face.

  I scrambled upright, coughing from the spray, vision blurring from my own dumb proximity.

  But I was alive.

  “Oh, my gods,” a familiar voice muttered. “You pepper sprayed him?”

  I turned, choking on adrenaline and guilt. “Say that to his burning eyes!”

  Elly crouched beside me, black hoodie pulled low over her head, one hand crackling faintly with glitch-light. Her nose wrinkled. “You smell like fear and garbage.”

  “Thanks for the update.”

  A few paces behind, Lily strolled in, every inch the picture of lazy dominance, arms folded, smile like a blade. “That’s such an adorable way to defend yourself, Danny.”

  Euryale’s heels clicked in from the other side of the alley, blocking the exit like an angel of vengeance with a hangover. “Honestly,” she said flatly.

  “He had a flesh-eating bag!” I shouted, gesturing wildly.

  “I saw it,” Elly muttered.

  Lily sniffed. “That’s a new one.”

  The guy was still screaming, writhing in place like something was trying to crawl out of his skin.

  For a moment, I thought maybe I’d won.

  And then… silence.

  His back arched. His mouth stretched too wide, tendons cracking. And when his eyes opened—they weren’t his anymore.

  They glowed a dull, unnatural green, and his pupils were too small. Wrong. His skin darkened, graying at the edges like ink bleeding through paper.

  Euryale stepped forward, her sunglasses lowering just enough for her golden gaze to flare. “He’s wearing someone,” she said coldly. “That’s not a man anymore.”

  The deliveryman let out a noise. Not a scream. Not a growl. A click. Like something switching tracks. He lunged.

  And I realized—I wasn’t just some guy on a bad day anymore.

  I was bait.

  And whatever had sent this thing? It knew exactly what it wanted.