The sound isn't a knock.
It's a body hitting wood.
Kael doesn't move.
He stands there, back pressed against the wall, hand still clamped over his mouth, staring at the door like it's personally threatened him.
Which, at this point, it kind of has.
The impact had rattled the whole frame—a dull, heavy thud that he felt more than heard, vibrating up through the floorboards, through his bare feet, straight into his chest.
Not a fist.
Not a weapon.
Weight.
Someone had fallen against his door.
Okay, Kael thought, very calmly, in the way a person thinks calmly when they are absolutely not calm at all. Okay. That's fine. That's completely fine. People fall against doors all the time. Totally normal Tuesday night activity in Veltara.
He didn't move.
The storm kept going, indifferent and relentless, rattling his windows and hammering the roof like it had a quota to fill. Water dripped into the steel bowl. Tap. Tap. Tap.
And then he saw it.
A thin, dark line, snaking quietly under the door.
Rainwater—yes.
But not just rainwater.
It was too dark. Too slow. Too thick at the edges.
Kael's stomach dropped straight through the floor.
That's blood.
He stared at it for a full three seconds, completely motionless, like if he didn't acknowledge it, it would politely take itself back.
It did not.
The line crept further, spreading lazily across the uneven floorboards, finding the grooves and cracks with quiet, horrible patience.
Call the police, said the sensible part of his brain.
Absolutely not, said every other part.
He pressed his lips together, the familiar weight of that particular dilemma settling over him like a second skin.
The police in Veltara weren't exactly known for their warm reception of foreign-born, document-holding, technically-legal-but-don't-push-it residents from the lower districts.
He'd had one interaction with them, eight months ago.
A noise complaint from his downstairs neighbor—a misunderstanding, nothing serious.
It had still taken four hours and two phone calls to his immigration case worker to sort out.
Four hours.
For a noise complaint.
So no, Kael thought flatly. We are not calling the police. We are not doing anything that involves showing identification at midnight during a blackout in the middle of what is very clearly some kind of organized crime situation.
We are going to stand here and make excellent decisions.
A sound broke through the rain.
Soft. Wet. Dragging.
Like something—someone—trying to pull themselves upright against the door.
Kael's breath caught.
He could hear it now, beneath the storm. The faint, labored quality of it. The way each movement was slow and deliberate, like every inch cost something.
Not a threat.
Effort.
His feet moved before he gave them permission.
He crossed the room in careful, silent steps, stopping just short of the door. Up close, the dark line of blood and rainwater was worse. Wider than it had looked from across the room.
He crouched down slowly.
The gap beneath the door was narrow, barely half an inch. But it was enough to see the faint, broken shape of a shadow on the other side.
Someone was slumped right there.
Right on the other side of this door.
Don't open it, said logic.
You don't know who that is, said common sense.
You don't know what's out there, said every true crime documentary he'd ever half-watched while eating instant noodles at midnight.
He stayed crouched, jaw tight, running a rapid and deeply unhelpful inventory of his options.
Option one: ignore it. Go back to the desk, open the laptop, pretend this was someone else's problem.
Tempting, he admitted honestly.
Option two: open the door.
Absolutely not.
Option three: wait.
He was good at waiting. He had a master's degree in waiting, self-issued, earned through years of being someone nobody looked at twice. Waiting was safe. Waiting cost nothing.
A sound stopped him cold.
Not footsteps. Not voices.
The alpha's scent was gone—faded with the retreating chaos, swallowed by rain and distance.
But the presence at the door was still there.
Still breathing.
Barely.
He could hear it now. Shallow. Uneven. The kind of breathing that had given up on being quiet and was simply focused on continuing.
Kael's hand hovered over the door handle.
Don't.
His fingers brushed the metal.
Don't you dare.
The silence stretched, long and fragile, filled only with rain and the slow drip from the ceiling and the sound of someone on the other side of his door running out of time.
He exhaled.
I hate this city, he thought viciously. I hate this apartment. I hate this neighborhood. I hate every single life choice that led me to this exact moment—
A knock.
So faint he almost missed it.
Not forceful.
Not demanding.
Just—desperate.
Three small, barely-there taps. Like the last thing a hand could manage before it stopped managing anything at all.
Kael's chest tightened.
He pressed his forehead briefly against the door, eyes shut, jaw clenched.
Don't, said the last surviving, sensible corner of his brain.
Don't do it. You have a lease. You have a work permit. You have three deadlines and exactly forty-two credits left in your transit card and you cannot afford complications. You cannot afford to be noticed. You are nobody. You are a boring, invisible, completely unremarkable beta barista with mediocre WiFi and a ceiling that leaks—
A voice.
Barely there.
Rough at the edges, stripped of everything except the single, last-effort shape of the word.
"…help…"
Kael's hand tightened around the door handle.