A few months later....

  The city never slept.

  It just cried when no one was listening.

  Rainslick streets glistened under flickering streetlamps, their light too scared to stay lit. Steam curled from sewer grates like the city was exhaling something rotten. Glass crunched underfoot. The air reeked of piss, grease, and ghosts. The kind of night that wrapped around your ribs like cold wire.

  Marcus Jackson leaned against the wall outside 'Ray’s Liquor & Deli', hood drawn, cig glowing between his lips. His fingers trembled just enough to betray what his face refused to. He watched the traffic on 143rd roll by. Slow, hungry, predatory. The block hadn’t changed in years, and neither had the rot inside it.

  Same corner.

  Same demons.

  Same fwck it all heartbeat that drummed in his ears.

  He pulled on the cig, let the smoke cloud his face, let the burn remind him he was still breathing. Somewhere far off, a dog barked. Somewhere closer, a woman cursed out a man who wouldn’t stop grabbing her wrist.

  And then...

  A sound.

  Faint.

  Muffled.

  A cry ...?

  He stiffened. Flicked the cig to the ground and listened harder.

  There it was again. Not just a baby’s cry. A raw, chest-tightening kind of cry, the kind that twisted through the night like a blade. It wasn’t whining. It was begging

  Marcus’s jaw clenched.

  "Tha hell was that...?"

  He mumbled slowly, taking a good listen to make sure he ain't trippin.

  He turned toward the alley, the sound growing louder. It echoed off bricks, bounced between dumpsters, pierced deeper with every second. His boots splashed into cold water as he moved, faster now. Adrenaline wasn’t new to him, but this wasn’t that. This was something else.

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  The crying came from behind a stack of garbage bins and discarded pallets.

  He hesitated.

  Then he moved one.

  There.

  A small, shivering bundle wrapped in what looked like someone’s old hoodie. Ratty, soaked, stinking. He crouched down, heart pounding louder than the rain.

  He peeled the cloth back.

  And the world stopped moving.

  White fur. Mottled and damp. Tiny claws curled close to a chest rising too fast. Golden-yellow eyes blinked up at him through tears. A raspy breath rattled from a mouth that didn’t seem to know how to scream properly yet.

  Jay.

  Marcus staggered backward, nearly tripping over the edge of the bin.

  “...You gotta be f*cking kidding me....”

  He stared.

  Couldn’t look away.

  The crying faded into a quiet hiccup. Then silence. Jay looked at him the same way he had in the hospital. Like he knew something. Like he wasn’t seeing his father, he was seeing his future.

  Marcus swallowed, throat dry as gunpowder.

  He turned and looked around with his head, and froze again.

  There she was.

  Tyra de Hout.

  Across the street. Red dress clinging to her like sin. Hair done up. Eyes glossed with that high-class, too-expensive kind of makeup. Arm linked around some tall, smooth bastard with ears too sharp and skin too damn perfect to be human.

  Marcus didn’t even blink when the sleek black car they climbed into rolled forward. He just stood there, jaw tight, watching her laugh at something that man whispered. She didn’t look back. Not once.

  She did not, learn from her mistakes.

  Not at all.

  The car pulled off like the devil himself was behind the wheel. Tires slicing water. Red taillights glowing through the mist like hell’s gate closing.

  Marcus turned back to Jay.

  "God damn..."

  “She really did it...” he muttered. “She really f*ckin’ did it....”

  He picked the baby up, feeling how cold he was. How light. Jay didn’t cry. He just stared, tiny hands barely twitching beneath the too-big cloth.

  Marcus held him up.

  “Look at you...” he said bitterly. “Ain’t even ask to be here. And already tossed out like a busted pair of shoes....”

  Jay blinked once. Then reached, shakily, and curled a hand around one of Marcus’s hoodie strings.

  That tiny grip.

  It did something.

  Not a full break.

  But a crack.

  A thin, hairline fracture in the wall around his soul.

  Marcus looked away. Took a long breath through his nose. “I ain’t no damn father yo...” he said to the dark.

  “Ain’t no daddy in me. I don’t even know what the hell you are. But…”

  The words hung there. Heavy.

  He looked back at the alley. The cold. The garbage. The city that didn’t care.

  Then down at the baby in his arms.

  “…but damn if I’m lettin’ you rot like trash.”

  He took off his jacket and wrapped it tighter around the kid, pressing Jay’s face against his chest. The small heartbeat under his palm was weak. But steady.

  Like it refused to die.

  “Guess it’s just you ‘n me now, hu?” he whispered, stepping out from the alley. “Just two strays tryin’ to outrun the f*ckin’ storm....”

  He started walking.

  Back through the rain.

  Back toward the flickering lights of the block.

  Back into a world that would never understand either of them.

  And as he walked, Jay drifted to sleep in his arms.

  Not crying.

  Just… watching.