Prologue
The rain was a cold, relentless curtain, turning the alley into a blurred watercolour of neon and shadow. Ajax Brogan moved through it like he was born in it—silent, lethal, every sense tuned to the faint electromagnetic hum that had dragged him here tonight.
The syndicate had been chasing ghost signals for months: fragments of old temporal tech, black-market experiments that could rewrite contracts, erase witnesses, or open doors no sane man should touch. He’d tracked this one himself, knife in his boot and pistol at his spine, expecting another dead drop or a rival crew trying to muscle in.
He never expected her.
One second the alley was empty except for the dumpster and the distant pulse of 2026 traffic. The next, the air split open with a sound like tearing silk and screaming electricity. Violet light bled through the tear, jagged and wrong, and something—someone—tumbled out of it like a discarded painting ripped from its frame.
She hit the wet concrete hard.
Ajax froze mid-step, gloved hand already reaching for the gun that suddenly felt heavy and useless.
Long, layered auburn curls spilled across the pavement like spilled blood and fire, soaked dark by the rain. A crop top clung to her torso, riding up to reveal a strip of pale skin at her waist. The bright rara skirt—something absurdly, achingly 80s—had flared during the fall and now rode high on her thighs, black leggings torn at one knee. She pushed herself up on shaking arms, hazel eyes wide and disoriented, mouth parted on a gasp that sent a single raindrop sliding down her lower lip.
She looked… soft.
Soft in a way nothing in his world had been for years. Soft like the girls in faded photographs his mother used to keep before the syndicate burned the past out of her. Soft like the kind of innocence that got people killed in his line of work. And yet there was something stubborn in the way she lifted her chin, the way those curls framed her face like a halo he wanted to ruin.
His chest tightened. Not with pity. With hunger.
A single, vicious thought sliced through the professional detachment he’d worn like armour since he was sixteen:
Mine.
Not for the syndicate. Not for the rift she’d just vomited out of. Not even for the tech that could make him untouchable.
Just… mine.
He watched her brush wet strands from her eyes, the motion innocent and artless, and something dark uncoiled low in his gut. The kind of possessiveness that had no business existing in a man who dealt in corpses and contracts. He imagined those curls wrapped around his fist. Imagined pressing her back against the alley wall until that naïve little gasp turned into his name. Imagined keeping her locked away from every bullet, every rival, every filthy hand that would try to touch what had just fallen into his territory.
She wasn’t from here. That much was obvious in the way she stared at the holographic billboards flickering overhead like she’d never seen light itself before. Forty-six years, maybe more. The rift had spat her out still dressed for a different decade, still carrying the scent of turpentine and hope.
Ajax took one step forward, then another, boots silent on the wet pavement.
She looked up. Those hazel eyes locked on his, wide with fear and that heartbreaking down-to-earth confusion, and the rewiring happened all at once—clean, irreversible, like a bullet finding bone.
The assassin who had spent years carving out a reputation in blood suddenly didn’t give a fuck about closing the rift.
He wanted to keep the tear open if it meant she stayed.
He wanted to burn every timeline that tried to take her back.
He wanted to hear her say her name while he stripped that ridiculous little skirt off her and taught her exactly what survival looked like in 2026.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he said, voice coming out rougher than intended as he closed the distance. One gloved hand caught her elbow—gentle enough not to bruise, but firm enough that she’d feel the claim in it. Up close she smelled like rain and charcoal and something sweet he couldn’t name. Her curls brushed his wrist, damp and heavy.
She tried to pull away. He didn’t let her.
His thumb brushed a raindrop from her cheek, slow, deliberate, already memorizing the way her breath hitched.
Whatever her name was, it didn’t matter yet.
She was Freya now.
His Freya.
The girl who’d fallen out of time wearing a rara skirt and every soft thing he’d forgotten how to want.
And Ajax Brogan—the man who never kept anything that could be used against him—had just decided he was never letting her go.
