Chapter 97: Chapter 97: The Raven

THE BREEZE SHIFTED, carrying the scent of city asphalt and faintly of summer rain, and with it came the flicker of movement.

Mailah stilled, her fry halfway to her lips.

A raven landed on the terrace railing. Not unusual—birds swooped through the skyline all the time—but this one was different.

Its feathers gleamed almost too black, edges catching light in a shimmer closer to oil-slick than ordinary plumage.

Its eyes—unblinking, fixed—seemed to take her measure with unsettling intelligence.

Her skin prickled.

She looked at Grayson.

He had noticed.

She saw the flicker in his gaze, the small tightening of his jaw, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Didn’t so much as twitch toward the bird.

And just like that, the warmth between them evaporated.

Mailah dropped her fry into its container, appetite gone. “You saw that,” she whispered, half-hoping he would deny it, brush it off.

But Grayson leaned back, expression smooth as glass, as though nothing at all had happened. “My brothers will be bothering you much more once you decide to step into my world,” he said, voice cool, clipped.

Mailah blinked at him, thrown by the sudden shift. “Bothering me,” she repeated flatly. “Is that what you call it? Sounds like I’m about to be dealing with schoolyard bullies, not demons who think they own the city.”

His lips curved in a humorless echo of a smile. “You won’t find them charming, Mailah. And they will not forgive your presence.”

Her chest tightened.

She leaned forward, matching the steel in his gaze. “The moment I took Lailah’s life, I put a target on my back. Don’t you think I know that? Do you really think I can pretend I’m not part of your world when your kind can hunt me in my sleep?”

Grayson’s eyes flared with something sharp—anger, pain, maybe both—but he said nothing. He didn’t argue, didn’t deny.

He just… stayed silent.

And that silence was worse than anything he could have said.

Later, when she excused herself back inside, Mailah found herself drifting toward the common floor, away from the terrace and its suffocating tension.

She laughed too loudly at one of the interns’ jokes, accepted a cup of coffee she didn’t need, let herself dissolve into the rhythm of ordinary office chatter.

It was easier than replaying every fraction of a second on that terrace. Easier than wondering why his silence always cut deeper than his words.

Grayson remained in his office long after.

The skyline sprawled beneath him, glass and steel glittering against the mid-afternoon haze, but he hardly saw it.

Mailah’s words replayed instead. Whether I like it or not, I’m already part of your world.

He pressed his thumb to his temple, trying to banish the thought, but it clung stubbornly, as persistent as the scent of her perfume in his office, as distracting as the memory of her lips when she’d smiled over dumplings.

For centuries, hunger had been his shadow. His every waking thought had circled the need to feed, to consume. Now? Now it wasn’t hunger that plagued him.

It was her.

Mailah had cracked something open in him, something he hadn’t realized was still alive.

He’d been too busy being a ghost of himself—an absentee husband, a businessman, a demon who refused to indulge his own nature.

And now here she was, reminding him not only of everything he had denied, but of everything he might still lose.

And then there was the anniversary.

The Ashford Anniversary—where his brothers would gather like wolves scenting blood. They would drag him into their orbit, test his loyalties, and probe at the seams of his carefully built exile.

Mailah didn’t understand what she was asking of him. Or maybe she did, and that was even more dangerous.

A soft sound broke the silence.

Not a knock.

A laugh.

Low, familiar, dripping with mirth.

Grayson froze, every muscle locking into steel.

“I was wondering when you were going to visit me,” Grayson said at last, his voice low, steady, though his hand still tightened against the edge of his desk. “Lucson, Carson, and Mason have already had their turns. Some of them even saw fit to introduce themselves to Mailah.”

Grayson turned slowly.

He didn’t need to look to know.

He had already felt him at lunch, already seen the flicker of black feathers at the edge of the terrace railing.

The answering laugh was smooth, unhurried, echoing faintly in the corners of the room.

From the shadows near the window, a figure stepped forward.

Ravenson.

His brother.

The raven.

The air shifted as though it recognized him.

His silver eyes caught the dim light first—silver like their brothers’, gleaming with unnatural sharpness—but his hair, black as midnight, set him apart.

It wasn’t simply dark. It shimmered, sleek and heavy, like raven feathers that had been spun into human form.

He wore it longer than any of he and their brothers did, brushing the line of his jaw, framing his face with a perpetual suggestion of wildness.

His presence was elegant, but not immaculate—he seemed carved of shadows and edges, less polished than Grayson, yet somehow more vivid because of it.

Ravenson dressed simply: a black coat tailored sharp enough to whisper of money but loose enough to move like wings when he turned.

Even still, he carried the weight of a predator barely restrained, the kind of being who could make a room his without speaking a word.

He smiled faintly. “And here I thought you might actually be surprised.”

“Not at all,” Grayson said. “It was only a matter of time.”

They regarded each other in silence for a long beat, a current of familiarity and difference passing between them.

Ravenson had always been the one brother Grayson could tolerate—relate to, even. Not because they agreed, but because Ravenson never pressed him too hard.

Unlike Lucson’s cruelty, Carson’s smugness, or Mason’s relentless ambition, Ravenson occupied the uneasy middle ground. He had not followed their father’s path into ruthless indulgence, but neither had he embraced Grayson’s self-imposed restraint.

He lived as he pleased, feeding when it suited him, abstaining when it didn’t, unapologetic in both.

“I don’t suppose you came to ask how I’ve been,” Grayson said dryly.

“Of course not.” Ravenson’s smile widened, all teeth. “I also came to see the woman who’s turned my ascetic brother into the talk of our family. The one bold enough to catch your eye. And…” His gaze sharpened. “To make sure you’ll be at the anniversary.”

There it was. The reason.

Grayson had known before Ravenson even stepped into the room.

Still, hearing it confirmed twisted something deep in his chest.

“You’ve never interfered before,” Grayson said. His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of an accusation.

“True.” Ravenson moved closer, pacing along the wall with the ease of a man who owned whatever ground he walked upon. His coat shifted around him like a bird stretching its wings. “But then, you’ve never given them reason to doubt your absence before. Not until Mailah.”

Her name on his brother’s tongue was like a spark dropped into kindling.

Grayson’s jaw tightened. “Leave her out of this.”

“Impossible,” Ravenson said lightly. “She’s already in it. You brought her in the moment you let her stay.”

Grayson’s mind flickered to the terrace, to the raven on the railing, to the way Mailah had looked at him when she said she was already a part of his world. She hadn’t been wrong.

“She is not a bargaining chip,” he said coldly.

Ravenson tilted his head, studying him. “Then what is she?”

Grayson didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Because he didn’t know.

Ravenson chuckled, as though he’d already read the silence. “I see. You don’t want to define it. That’s new. Usually you’re the one who has a definition for everything—hunger, abstinence, exile, control. But her?” He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “She unsettles you.”

Grayson bristled, but before he could respond, Ravenson straightened again, his tone softening.

“You know I don’t begrudge your choices, brother. Starve if you like, feast if you like—it’s all the same to me. But the others? They smell weakness. They see opportunity. And they’ll drag her through fire if it means getting to you.”

Grayson’s hand curled into a fist against the desk. “If they try—”

“They will,” Ravenson interrupted smoothly. “And you know it. Which is why you’ll come to the anniversary. To show them you haven’t gone soft. To prove you still stand with the family.”

“I don’t,” Grayson said sharply.

“Then prove you don’t,” Ravenson countered, his voice sharp now, silver eyes flashing. “But do it there. In front of them. Because hiding won’t save her, Grayson. It never does.”

The words sank into the silence that followed, heavy and unyielding.

Grayson hated that they carried truth.

For all Ravenson’s ambiguity, for all his flaws, he was not wrong.

The Ashford Anniversary wasn’t just a gathering.

It was a battlefield.

And if Grayson stayed away, it might very well be Mailah who paid the price.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep