Owen's POV
The streets of the human world always felt heavier somehow. Not in gravity—but in weight of memory. Of regret. Of stories that should've stayed fiction but somehow bled into the very skin I now wore.
I wasn't Owen Yates.
Not the one who walked this world before me. Not the one who fell in love, got betrayed, divorced, and disappeared.
But everyone here believed I was him. And I planned to keep it that way.
The wind whipped against my coat as I stepped onto the familiar cracked sidewalk leading to what used to be Owen's childhood home. It was long abandoned, the paint on the fence peeling like dead skin, the garden overgrown. But hidden beneath the debris was what I came for—a stash of old journals the original Owen had buried beneath a loose floorboard in the back shed. I uncovered them with careful hands, each page holding fragments of the man I now had to pretend to be.
His pain. His dreams. His failures.
He was a good man. Too good for the fate he was dealt. And now, it was my burden to finish what he started—but on my own terms.
As I closed the last journal, footsteps echoed behind me.
I froze.
A presence I hadn't felt in months flooded the air—familiar, sharp, dangerous.
"Found you."
Her voice.
Yvette Jennings.
I turned slowly, masking my reaction with a calm expression.
She stood at the edge of the shed's entrance, dressed in sleek black, her gaze a storm I wasn't ready to weather.
"Owen," she breathed, as if saying the name gave her air to live.
"I didn't think you'd come here," I said casually, dusting my hands. "This place isn't exactly your style."
Her eyes narrowed. "You've been gone for months. No word. No trace. You just disappeared after the divorce—after you dropped everything and signed those papers like I never mattered."
I didn't flinch. I couldn't. Not now.
"I thought the papers made it clear," I said coldly. "You didn't matter. At least not anymore."
She recoiled slightly—just slightly—but caught herself.
"You really want to play this heartless game now, Owen?" she snapped. "Because I know you. I know that's not you."
You don't.
I wanted to scream that in her face. You don't know me. You never knew me. I'm not Owen Yates—I'm the soul of something far darker, far older. I am the blade honed in war, the breath of another world. You're searching for a ghost, and all you've found is a stranger.
"I've changed," I said instead. "Maybe I'm not the man you used to know."
"Clearly," she hissed. Her fists clenched. "But at least the old Owen would've talked to me. Given me a chance. I wanted to tell you everything—about the past life, about the truth. I knew what I did was wrong, but I never crossed the line—"
I cut her off. "Enough."
Her words were becoming a threat. She was close. Too close to truth.
"I came here for closure," I lied. "That's all. I have no interest in rekindling dead flames."
She stepped forward. "I don't believe you. I've watched you from afar, seen the way you vanish and reappear in places no normal man would walk. You're hiding something. I know it."
She was clever.
Too clever.
"I'm not hiding," I said with a smirk. "I'm healing. Something you never really gave me the chance to do when we were married."
Her expression cracked—guilt, maybe. Or frustration. But I needed to end this now.
"You should go, Yvette," I said quietly. "Before this turns into something neither of us can walk away from."
Her lips parted, but no words came. I saw the war behind her eyes, the thousand things she wanted to scream but didn't. Her pride wouldn't let her beg. Her wounds wouldn't let her leave.
But finally, she stepped back.
"I'll find the truth," she said, voice like broken glass. "Even if it's buried behind layers of lies. I'll find it."
And then she turned, her heels echoing in the silence as she walked away.
As soon as she was gone, I collapsed onto the shed's wooden bench, head in my hands.
"That was too close…"
I couldn't afford to be discovered. Not yet. Not by her.
Because if Yvette Jennings ever found out that the real Owen Yates was long gone—replaced by a man who once ruled as Martial King—it would be war.
And I wasn't sure the human world was ready for that.