With practiced stealth, I slide from beneath his hold, careful not to disturb his sleep. The sheets whisper as I lift them, the cool morning air raising goose bumps across my naked skin.
For a moment, I hover above him, studying the planes of his face in repose. Sleep softens him, erasing the hunter’s edge that’s always present when he’s awake, restoring the youth his silver-streaked hair belies.
My hand drifts to my nape, fingers exploring my Mark. The raised skin, tender under my touch, forms a perfect impression of Ezra’s teeth. Over the next day, it will settle into my flesh,staking his Alpha’s right over me for the next thirty days. The knowledge sends a shiver through me, a physical memory of the moment he broke my skin, and I broke apart in his arms.
As I pull on Ezra’s discarded shirt, a metallic wink from the kitchen catches my attention. The titanium collar lies on the counter, and I walk over to pick it up, testing its weight and the smooth curves custom-designed for my throat. Beside it sits the key Ezra placed there in a gesture of trust that spoke volumes.
Without hesitation, I slip the collar around my neck, the metal cool on my skin. It settles into place with a soft click, its weight comforting now rather than confining. The key slides into my pocket, caught between my fingers for a moment as I consider what it represents.
Freedom given instead of taken. Choice over compulsion.
I pad barefoot across the wooden floor, wincing at the occasional creak, but it doesn’t disturb Ezra’s slumber. Morning sun illuminates my loft in harsh detail, revealing the destruction I’ve wrought over these past days.
Broken pencils litter my workstation, and half-finished canvases lean on walls, abandoned mid-creation when the personas they represented no longer fit.
This space, once curated to hide, now stands exposed, the wreckage of my multiple lives strewn across every surface.
I pick up a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, the lenses cracked when I threw them at the wall in frustration. One of Knox’s many pairs, now useless. Beside them lie Lorenzo’s monogrammed cufflinks, bought with money from a forgery sold in Milan, their gold surface scratched from rough handling.
On the far wall, Tobias Crane’s tweed jacket hangs, the elbows worn smooth from hours spent hunched over rare books. I run my fingers down the rough fabric, remembering the quiet anonymity it granted me, the invisibility I once craved.
The morning light catches on the jar on the windowsill and turns its contents to glittering dust. I lift it down, the glass warming my palm as I swirl the ashes from my sketches of Ezra. There’s a strange poetry in holding these remains, dozens of Ezras reduced to carbon, while the real one sleeps in my bed.
My focus drifts to the wall, where my grandfather’s legacy hangs. The realAnatomy of a Ghost.
I cross to it, fingers hesitating before I take it down and roll it up, returning it to the tube that sits propped in the corner.
This, too, must go.
Moving with quiet determination, I gather all the fragments of my discarded lives. Lorenzo’s silk handkerchiefs and monogrammed stationery. Tobias’s reading glasses and leather bookmarks. Knox’s lecture notes and fake credentials. Each item goes into a canvas tote bag.
Last, I return to the tube containingAnatomy of a Ghost, sliding it inside the bag.
Wrapped only in Ezra’s discarded shirt, which hangs to mid-thigh, I move to the spiral staircase that leads to my building’s roof. The metal steps are cold beneath my bare feet, sending shivers up my legs as I climb. Each step takes me further from what I was, closer to what I might become.
The door at the top creaks open when I push, revealing the rooftop patio bathed in early morning light. The city spreads below, buildings catching the sun’s rays, windows flashing like signals across the urban landscape. A breeze carries the scent of car exhaust and fresh bread from the bakery two blocks over, the mingled perfume of city life.
In the center of the patio stands a stone fireplace, installed by the previous tenant. It waits, cold and empty, ready to consume what I’m prepared to give up.
I arrange everything in a careful pile within the stone fireplace, a funeral pyre for the men I’ve been. Last from the bag comes the art tube.
My fingers linger on it before extracting the canvas with reverent care. The morning sun catches on the aged surface as I unroll it one last time.
This painting has haunted three generations: Valenne himself, my grandfather who forged it with heartbreaking perfection, and me, who spent years searching for this original to replace my grandfather’s creation in Ezra’s collection.
A ghost indeed, pulling strings from beyond frames and time.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the canvas, to my grandfather, to the ghost. “It’s time to let you go.”
I add the painting to the pile, watching as it curls at the edges, trying to roll inward on itself.
The lighter sits heavy in my hand as I run my thumb over the flint, striking the spark that catches flame. I hold it to the corner of a silk handkerchief, and fire catches quickly, dancing from fabric to paper, painting hungry orange trails across the funeral pyre of my past lives.
The fire reaches the canvas last, as if respecting its significance. When the flames lick at its edges, the painting fights back, the oils resisting for several heartbeats before surrendering. The ghost at its center moves within the fire, anatomical sketches emerging through the heat before dissolving into smoke.
“Are you burning more pictures of me?”
I turn to find Ezra in the doorway, wrapped in the blanket from my bed. His hair stands in sleep-mussed spikes, the silver streak catching morning light. His chest is bare beneath the blanket, displaying the tattooed journey of his own history of loss and reclamation.
