Chapter Two: Two More

"It's a rash," Sloane muttered, pressing a cold washcloth against her collarbone in her bathroom mirror. "It's stress. People get rashes."

Her reflection didn't look convinced, neither did she.

She'd bolted from the diner before the stranger could say another word, leaving her apron on the floor and her manager yelling something about her shift. She didn't care. She'd run four blocks without stopping, locked herself in her apartment, and spent the last hour trying to talk herself out of what she'd seen with her own eyes.

A rash didn't glow. A rash didn't burn like something was carving itself into her skin from the inside.

She pulled the washcloth away and stared at the mark again. It's still there but faint now, more like a scar than a burn, curling gold lines just under her collarbone. She traced it with one finger and flinched, expecting pain. There wasn't any. Just heat, low and steady, like an ember that hadn't gone out.

Someone knocked on her door.

She froze. Nobody knocked on her door. She didn't have people who did that.

"Sloane Calloway?" A man's voice, unfamiliar, careful. "We need to talk to you."

"I don't know you," she called back, already backing toward the kitchen, already scanning for the nearest sharp object like that would help against whatever was happening to her life today.

"My name is Cassian. My brother met you a few hours ago. Griffin."

Her stomach dropped at the name. She hadn't given it to anyone. She hadn't even asked for it.

"Go away."

"There's another one of us," a second voice cut in, younger, rougher around the edges. "You should probably let us in before you find that out the hard way."

She should not have opened that door. She knew that even as her hand moved toward the lock, some instinct screaming at her to run instead. But another part of her, the part that had spent her whole life needing answers nobody gave her, turned the lock anyway.

Two men stood in her hallway. One tall and sharp eyed, arms crossed, studying her like a puzzle he intended to solve. The other younger, leaner, bouncing slightly on his heels like he couldn't stand still even now.

The mark ignited.

Sloane cried out and grabbed the doorframe, her knees buckling as fire ripped through her chest, worse than before, so much worse, like her whole body had been struck by lightning twice in one day. She slid down against the frame, gasping, and through blurred vision she saw both men flinch back like they'd been struck too.

"That's not possible," the sharp eyed one, Cassian, breathed. "Two of us. She's reacting to two of us."

"I feel it," the younger one said, and his voice had gone tight, strained. "Cass, I feel it, it's pulling."

Sloane pressed her palm flat against her own collarbone, tears stinging her eyes from the pain of it, and for the first time she understood something clearly through the panic. This wasn't an attraction. This wasn't some strange, sudden pull toward a handsome stranger she couldn't explain. 

This was happening to her body without her permission, without her say, like something had reached inside her and lit a fuse she never agreed to carry.

"What are you doing to me," she gasped out, glaring up at them both from the floor. "Whatever this is, however you're doing this, you make it stop."

"We're not doing anything," Cassian said, crouching down slowly, keeping distance between them even as concern flickered across his controlled face. "This isn't something we're causing. It's something you are."

"That doesn't make sense."

"None of this makes sense," the younger one muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. "Look, I'm Dax, that's Cassian and our brother Griffin, he's the one you met earlier."

"I don't want to meet any more of you," Sloane snapped, forcing herself back to her feet despite the way her legs shook. The mark had settled into a dull ache now, but the fear hadn't. If anything it had gotten worse, sharper, because now there wasn't just one stranger with answers she didn't want. There were three.

"You don't get it," Dax said, and something in his voice had shifted, gone quieter, more serious than his earlier bravado. "This isn't random. This doesn't happen to just anyone. Whatever you are, whatever's marked into your skin right now, it's real, and it's not going away because you want it to."

"I don't even know what I am," Sloane said, and hated how small her voice sounded admitting it.

Neither of them answered right away, and something about their silence scared her more than anything they could have said. She looked between them, at the careful way Cassian watched her like she might shatter, at the raw worry barely hidden behind Dax's eyes, and something in her chest told her to run before she learned whatever truth they were both holding back.

So she did.

She shoved past them, ignoring Cassian's sharp intake of breath, ignoring Dax reaching for her arm and missing, and she ran down the hallway, down the stairs, out into the cold night air with nothing but the clothes on her back and a mark burning faint gold beneath her shirt.

Behind her, she heard Dax's voice, low, urgent, meant for his brother and not for her, but she caught it anyway just before the door swung shut.

"She's not going to make it through the night alone."