"What the hell happened to you?" Kael asked, his eyes immediately going to the bruises along Vyn's face and the blood darkening his clothes.
Vyn looked up, and the first person he noticed was Aris.
"Dr. Aris?"
Aris stared back at him, surprise flickering across his face.
Kael looked between the two men. "You know each other?"
Vyn seemed to realize only then how strange the scene must look. He had walked into his brother's house expecting an empty room and instead found Elio's doctor sitting there with a woman he had never seen before.
"Yeah. He's Elio's doctor."
Kael looked at Aris again. "Elio's doctor?"
Vyn nodded, then turned toward Aris. "What are you doing here? And who is she?"
Aris glanced at Ada beside him.
Ada raised an eyebrow. "Ada."
"She's my sister," Aris added.
Vyn looked at him, then back at Ada. "Your sister?"
Aris nodded.
Vyn took that in, his eyes moving between the three of them. Aris, Ada, and Kael together in the same house was the last thing he had expected.
Then his expression changed.
"Elio got out," he said quickly, looking at Aris. "Onyx security didn't catch him."
"I know."
Vyn let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"Where is he now?"
"He's at the safe house."
Vyn closed his eyes for a second and let out a long breath. The relief that crossed his face was almost painful to watch. His shoulders finally dropped, as if he had been holding the weight of the entire night there.
"Oh, thank God."
His eyes opened again, and this time they went straight to Kael.
He stepped closer.
"Does Sovereign have GPS?"
Kael frowned. "What?"
"Does it track me?"
The urgency in Vyn's voice erased every other question in the room.
Kael took a step toward him. "Why would—"
"The devil injected it into me."
Kael went still.
Ada's expression changed immediately. She looked at Aris, who had gone just as alert, and then both of them turned back to the brothers.
"He did what?" Kael asked.
Vyn's jaw tightened. "He forced Sovereign into me."
For a second, Kael simply stared at him. Then his hand curled into a fist.
"That motherfucker."
The hatred in his voice was quiet, but it was enough.
Vyn barely reacted. "I need an answer, bro. Can they track me?"
Kael forced himself to focus. "No. Sovereign doesn't transmit your location. It isn't designed for that." His expression hardened. "But Onyx has other ways of finding people. Stay away from cameras and anywhere they can pull surveillance footage."
Some of the tension finally left Vyn's face.
"Good." Vyn finally seemed to breathe easier. "I stayed off the streets. No cameras. No public CCTV."
He glanced toward the door.
"If they can't track me, they can't use me to find Elio."
Aris and Ada exchanged a look.
Vyn turned to leave, but Kael caught his arm.
"Wait."
Vyn looked back.
"You're soaked."
"I need to get to Elio."
"I know." Kael glanced at the rainwater still dripping from his hair and clothes. "But you're not going anywhere like this. Dry yourself. Change your clothes. Then you can go."
Vyn looked at him for a moment.
This time, he didn't argue.
"Okay."
Kael released him and led him toward the bedroom.
A few minutes later, they returned to the living room. Vyn was dressed in dry clothes now, his damp hair pushed away from his face. He looked steadier, but the exhaustion still sat beneath his eyes.
Kael carried the medicine kit with him and set it on the coffee table.
Aris glanced at Vyn.
"Sit. Let me take a look at you."
Vyn lowered himself onto the couch without arguing.
Aris moved in front of him and examined the bruising along his ribs, then his arms and knuckles. His hands were careful and practiced, checking each injury without making a fuss.
Most of the wounds had already begun closing.
"You really are healing fast," Aris murmured.
He opened the medicine kit, took out a few tablets, and placed them in Vyn's palm.
"Take these. They'll help with the pain and swelling."
Vyn swallowed them without question and let Aris finish examining him.
Across the room, Kael watched.
His attention moved from Aris to Ada, then settled on Vyn.
Kael had suspected Ada for a while. Her closeness to Pete had never felt accidental, and now that he knew she had been digging through Onyx's systems, the pieces finally made sense.
"Hmm... I think I understand now."
Aris looked up.
Kael's gaze settled on him and Ada.
"You're trying to bring Onyx down, aren't you?"
Aris held his stare.
He didn't confirm it, but he didn't deny it either.
Kael's jaw tightened.
"Then we're after the same thing."
Before anyone could say anything, footsteps sounded from the hallway.
Axis appeared a moment later. He slowed when he saw the unfamiliar faces gathered around Kael, his gaze moving from Aris to Ada before settling on his friend.
"Hey."
Kael returned the greeting. "Hey."
But Axis's attention had already gone to Vyn.
Something in Vyn's face made him pause.
"How's Dane?" Vyn asked.
Axis's expression fell.
"He's asleep."
His voice was quiet.
He looked away, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck before adding, "Still the same."
Vyn lowered his gaze.
The relief he had felt after hearing that Elio was safe disappeared beneath a fresh wave of guilt.
"I'm sorry."
Axis looked at him for a moment.
Then he shook his head.
"You don't have to apologize for this, Vyn."
Vyn looked up.
"It's not your fault."
Something about the way Axis said it made the room go quiet.
Ada recognized him almost immediately. There was no mistaking Axis, even without the stage lights and cameras.
Seeing him here, stripped of the polished image people knew, made the situation feel even stranger.
Kael glanced toward the hallway, then back at Aris and Ada.
"If you're really looking into Onyx, I have something you need to see."
Aris's expression sharpened.
"What?"
Kael hesitated for a moment.
"You can decide whether you trust me after."
His gaze shifted toward the hallway.
"Come on."
He turned and walked toward his private office.
Aris and Ada exchanged a brief look before following him.
Kael opened the door and stepped inside. Once everyone was in, he closed it behind them.
He sat behind his desk and opened his laptop.
He entered his password, then a second security code, waiting until the encrypted system finished loading before turning the screen toward them.
His attention settled on Ada.
"Okay. Tell me what you found."
Ada hesitated.
Her eyes moved toward Aris, silently asking how much they could safely reveal.
Aris understood. He looked back at her, equally uncertain.
Kael noticed.
"You're still wondering if you can trust me."
Aris met his gaze.
"How can we trust a Mercier?"
There was no accusation in his voice. That almost made the question heavier.
Kael leaned back slightly.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then his gaze dropped to his hands.
"I hated that name too."
His voice had changed. The calm certainty from earlier was gone, replaced by something quieter.
"Everything it stood for. Everything my father built with it."
He looked up again.
"I've spent years gathering everything I could against my father. Against the company he built. Against the things he hid behind those walls."
His fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.
"Because somewhere in all of it, he took the person I loved most from me."
He swallowed.
"I couldn't save him."
Vyn watched him silently.
Kael turned back to the laptop.
"That's why I deleted Elio's data. I didn't want Vyn to lose someone he cared about the same way I lost someone I loved."
His gaze briefly shifted toward his brother.
"And Vyn was the one who asked me to."
Aris and Ada exchanged a look.
The revelation changed something in their expressions. They had known Vyn was protecting Elio, but hearing that he had gone to Kael himself—and that Kael had risked everything to erase Elio from Onyx's system—made the connection between the brothers clearer.
Kael returned his attention to the laptop.
"So when Elio's records suddenly appeared in the system again, I wanted to know who put them back."
He opened a secured folder.
File after file filled the screen: Onyx Biomedical reports, internal research documents, restricted medical records, extraction logs.
The sheer amount of it made the room feel smaller.
Kael selected one file and opened it.
04/13/2020 // ONYX BIOMED // SUBJECT: SA-00127
The video loaded.
Aris and Ada recognized the format immediately. The Onyx Biomedical stamp. The restricted archive code tucked into the corner. It was the same structure Ada had seen when she broke into the restricted server, the same kind of files she had copied and sent to Aris and Elio.
Whatever they had expected to find, neither of them was prepared for the face that appeared on the screen.
The camera showed a sterile laboratory washed in harsh white light. Machines crowded the surgical table, their cables running across the floor and disappearing into monitors flickering with unstable readings.
A young man lay restrained at the center of it.
"This is the final phase of harvesting," Kael said quietly.
Aris looked at him.
Ada's breath caught. Her hand rose slowly to her mouth.
She knew him instantly.
"Lucian..." The name came out broken, barely more than a whisper.
She turned toward Aris, but he was already staring at the screen.
Years had changed the boy they remembered, but there was no mistaking that face. Those eyes. That familiar face they had grown up beside at the children's home.
But this recording was different from the footage Ada had recovered before.
There was something about it that made Aris's stomach turn.
His hand tightened against his thigh until his knuckles turned white.
On the recording, Lucian suddenly convulsed against the restraints.
The monitors erupted into alarms.
His heart rate shot upward before dropping so sharply that one of the specialists stepped toward the screen.
"Cardiac rhythm's unstable."
"Adjust the extraction."
"It's already at maximum."
Lucian's chest heaved beneath the forced heat being driven through his body. His S-Class biology had been pushed into extreme pheromone production, every system forced to give more than it could safely produce.
The extraction apparatus continued pulling from him.
For several seconds, the fluid running through the collection line remained golden.
Then it began to change.
The color slowly deepened.
Ada pressed her hand harder against her mouth, her eyes burning as she watched him.
"Jesus fucking Christ..."
Her voice trembled with disbelief and anger.
Aris said nothing.
He couldn't take his eyes off the screen. Grief and hatred had settled so tightly across his face that they were almost impossible to separate.
The specialists watched the monitors instead—the flow rate, the collection volume, the numbers climbing on the screen. No one looked at Lucian anymore. To them, he wasn't a person lying strapped to a table.
He was only a subject.
Aris's fingers dug into his thigh.
Another violent tremor tore through Lucian. His back lifted from the table as his body arched against the restraints, his fingers clawing uselessly against the surface beneath him. His jaw locked tight enough to make the muscles along his face stand out.
A strangled breath escaped him.
Then his heart rate dropped again.
"Pressure's falling," one of the specialists said.
"Keep going."
Ada pressed her fingers harder against her mouth.
"No... please... stop."
The word was barely audible, more breath than voice.
The machine kept running.
The collection canister darkened further until the golden fluid became almost completely black.
One of the specialists stared at it.
"Biological rejection."
"Do we terminate?"
The question hung in the room.
Then came the answer.
"It's a failure."
Aris forgot the room around him. For years, Lucian had existed in his memory as a boy running through the halls of the children's home, laughing too loudly, always finding some way to make Ada and Elio smile.
Now he was watching that same boy die beneath Onyx's lights.
Aris's jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
He couldn't look away.
Beside him, Ada made a small, broken sound.
Vyn hadn't moved.
He stared at the screen, his face drained of color. The forced heat, the restraints, the machines, the extraction—he understood what he was looking at even if he had never seen this particular room before.
His mind went straight to Dane.
Vyn's breathing faltered.
He drew in a breath, but it came too shallow. He tried again, slower this time, forcing air into his lungs as his eyes remained fixed on the screen.
Behind him, Axis stared at Lucian, his face slowly going pale.
He didn't know why the sight unsettled him so deeply. There was something familiar about it, something that made his stomach turn.
Then he thought of Dane.
Scentless.
Empty.
No instincts left in him. No ability. No spark of the Alpha he used to be.
Axis swallowed hard and looked away.
Lucian's chest rose once more, a shallow breath barely moving his body against the restraints. Another followed, weaker than the last.
The monitor screamed.
His heart rate dropped.
Twenty-eight.
Seventeen.
Then nothing.
The continuous tone cut through the laboratory.
The specialist checked his pulse.
"Subject has no detectable cardiac activity."
Ada covered her mouth again, a broken breath escaping through her fingers.
Aris remained standing, his eyes locked on the screen. Whatever grief had broken through his expression was quickly swallowed by the anger rising in its place, leaving his whole body tense as he stared at the screen.
"No..."
The word was barely a whisper.
The specialist looked toward the others.
"What do we do?"
Someone answered from outside the camera's view.
"Continue monitoring."
Aris shut his eyes.
He couldn't watch anymore.
But the recording continued.
Lucian lay motionless beneath the harsh white lights, the machines around him still running.
Then the footage cut to black.
Ada broke.
A sob tore out of her before she could stop it. She covered her mouth, but it did nothing to quiet the tears spilling down her face. Her shoulders shook as she stared at the dark screen, finally looking away as though she couldn't bear to see Lucian's face again.
Aris moved without saying a word.
He pulled her against him, one arm wrapping tightly around her shoulders as she buried her face against his chest. He held her there, his hand moving slowly over her back while his own face remained tight with grief.
Kael watched them in silence. Vyn did the same.
Vyn's gaze stayed on Ada for a moment before shifting to Aris, seeing for the first time just how deeply Lucian's death had cut into both of them.
Axis had gone still beside Vyn, his gaze flickered briefly toward Ada in Aris's arms, then back to the screen, grief and shock settling heavily across his features.
Kael had already looked away before the screen went dark. He couldn't watch Lucian die again. His hand remained on the trackpad, but his eyes stayed lowered, fixed somewhere beside the laptop.
He stopped the video.
The office fell silent.
Even the faint hum of the laptop seemed too loud after what they had just watched.
For several seconds, Kael couldn't bring himself to look at anyone.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.
"This is one of the hundreds of files I copied from Onyx. But the recordings connected to him were different. I removed them from the archives, but I kept copies."
Aris looked at him, his arm still around Ada.
"Why?"
Kael kept staring at the black screen. He could still see Lucian there if he let himself look too closely—the restraints, the machines, the way his body had finally gone still. His throat tightened.
"Because I couldn't leave what they did to him sitting there."
He swallowed.
"Because by the time I understood what my father's company was doing, I was already too late."
He had spent months believing Lucian's death had been a suicide. Months going through records, reports, medical histories—anything that might explain why the man he loved had disappeared so suddenly and left nothing behind.
He had been looking for an answer.
He never imagined the answer would lead back to his own father.
"I thought I was helping build medicines," Kael said. "Suppressants. Inhibitors. Things that were supposed to keep people safe."
His fingers tightened against the edge of the laptop.
"I didn't know what was happening behind the doors of the labs I couldn't see."
His voice grew quieter.
"Instead, I found the truth."
The words caught somewhere deep in his throat.
"I didn't even know he was in there," Kael said, his voice rough. "I didn't know what my father was doing to him. I didn't know what Onyx was doing to people like him."
His eyes glistened.
"I should have seen what was happening inside my own father's company."
"Who was he to you?" Aris asked bitterly.
He finally lifted his eyes.
"Lucian," Kael said quietly. "He was the most precious person in my life."
Ada's eyes widened, her tears momentarily forgotten. Aris stared at Kael, surprise cutting through the grief on his face. For a second, neither of them seemed to understand what they had just heard.
Vyn looked at his brother.
Now he understood what Kael had been carrying all these years—not only the loss of Lucian, but the guilt of learning too late what had been done to him.
Kael looked back at the dark screen.
"I met him eight years ago."
The memory came back with painful clarity.
Eight years earlier, Kael had been twenty-three and already working inside Onyx Biomedical. He had spent years moving between university laboratories and Onyx's research facilities, traveling overseas for pharmaceutical research and development before returning home to work on suppressants and inhibitors.
Lucian was nineteen then, still a trainee at Empire Onyx and waiting for his chance to debut.
Their first meeting happened in an elevator.
Kael had already been inside when the doors opened again. He stood near the back with a tablet tucked under one arm and a paper cup of coffee in his other hand, his mind buried in the suppressant data he needed to discuss with the hospital director upstairs.
More people stepped in.
Then more.
By the time the doors began to close, the elevator was packed tight.
Kael shifted back with the crowd until his shoulders met the wall. Someone behind him was pushed forward, and another body squeezed into the remaining space.
A young man in a simple dark shirt and jeans ended up directly in front of him, forced backward until his back settled against Kael's chest.
Kael barely had time to register the contact.
He looked down.
Then up.
And forgot what he was doing.
The young man turned his head slightly, giving Kael a brief glimpse of his face.
Then Kael caught his scent.
White tea and golden amber, clean and bright with a quiet warmth underneath.
Kael's attention sharpened.
S-Class.
There was no attempt to assert dominance, no deliberate push of pheromones. But Kael's instincts recognized him immediately. Their senses were too sharp to mistake another S-Class Alpha for an ordinary presence.
The elevator jolted upward.
The young man shifted to steady himself, his back pressing more firmly against Kael.
Kael tightened his grip around the coffee cup.
Then the elevator stopped hard at the next floor.
The crowd lurched forward.
The young man was pushed back with them, his shoulder knocking against Kael's arm.
The coffee tipped.
Hot liquid splashed across the front of Kael's white lab coat.
Kael looked down at the spreading stain.
For a second, he just stared.
When the doors opened and people began filing out, the young man finally turned around properly.
His eyes dropped to the ruined coat.
"Oh, shit."
He looked genuinely horrified.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"It's fine."
Kael heard himself say it before he had even decided whether it was.
The young man looked at the stain again.
"No, it's not. I'm so sorry.."
Kael glanced down at his coat, then back at him.
The young man gave him a small, apologetic smile.
Something about it caught Kael completely off guard.
"I'll pay for the laundry."
"You don't have to."
"I spilled it. I insist."
He pulled out his phone and held it toward Kael.
"Give me your number. I'll send you the laundry fee."
Kael stared at the phone for a moment before taking it.
Their fingers brushed.
A strange warmth passed through him.
He ignored it, entered his number, and handed the phone back.
"There."
The young man checked the screen before slipping the phone into his pocket.
"Thanks."
Kael gave him a nod.
The young man offered one last apologetic smile before disappearing into the hallway.
Kael remained in the elevator, watching him disappear into the crowd.
The doors began to close.
Only then did he look down at the coffee stain again.
He had no reason to remember the stranger in the elevator.
It had been an accident. A ruined lab coat, spilled coffee, and a number exchanged because someone had to pay for the laundry.
That should have been the end of it.
It wasn't.
That night, Kael was still working through reports in his apartment when his phone lit up.
Unknown Number: Hi. This is Lucian from the elevator.
Kael stared at the message for a moment.
Another one followed.
Unknown Number: Sorry again about your coat. Can you send me your account number? I'll transfer the laundry fee.
A faint smile pulled at Kael's mouth before he could stop it.
He sent his account details.
A minute later, his phone lit up again.
Lucian: Sent
Kael looked at the screen.
He should have left it there.
Instead, he typed:
Kael: You really don't have to pay for a coat.
The reply came almost immediately.
Lucian: I spilled coffee on you. Let me have this one.
Kael shook his head, smiling.
Kael: Fine. Thank you.
Lucian: Good. I feel less guilty now.
Kael looked at the words longer than he meant to.
There was something easy about the way Lucian talked. No attempt to impress him. No careful politeness beyond what was necessary. Just a strange little warmth that made a conversation feel as though it had already been going on for longer than it actually had.
Kael set his phone down.
A few minutes later, he picked it up again.
He had no reason to smile.
He did anyway.
Somewhere during their exchange, Lucian told him he was a trainee at Empire Onyx.
A few days later, Lucian asked if he could make it up to him with dinner.
Kael almost said no.
He had work. Lucian had training. Their schedules barely left room for anything else.
But somehow, they found an evening that worked.
Dinner was supposed to last an hour.
It lasted three.
After that, Lucian's messages slowly became part of Kael's everyday life. They talked about everything and nothing—food, training, bad weather, whatever ridiculous thing had happened that day. Kael began learning his little habits without even realizing it.
Lucian sent him photographs from training, meals that looked terrible, and random views from whatever city he happened to be in. Kael saved every one.
He never told Lucian.
Their meetings became quieter, too. A restaurant across the city where nobody from Empire Onyx seemed to go. A small café tucked down a side street. Late dinners after Lucian's training ended. Short walks whenever Kael managed to steal an evening from work.
There were no declarations. They simply kept finding their way back to each other.
Three months passed before Lucian finally found the courage to say what had been quietly growing between them.
They were walking through the park late at night, following a quiet path beneath the trees. The city hummed beyond the park, but around them, everything felt still.
Kael had stopped at a small flower stall on the way and bought a bunch of blue statice.
When he found Lucian waiting beneath a streetlight, he held the flowers out to him.
Lucian looked at the flowers, then at Kael.
"You remembered."
"You mentioned them once."
Lucian took the bunch from him, glancing down at the small blue flowers.
"I didn't think you were listening."
"I was."
A faint smile touched Lucian's mouth.
"You pay attention to everything."
"Not everything."
Kael started walking again.
"Just you."
Lucian shook his head, but the smile stayed on his face as he fell into step beside him.
For a while, they walked without saying much.
Lucian held the flowers loosely in one hand, occasionally brushing his thumb over the stems.
Kael noticed he had gone unusually quiet.
"You've been thinking about something."
Lucian glanced at him.
"Uhm... Can I tell you something?"
"Of course."
Lucian looked ahead again, his fingers fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve.
"I like you."
Kael slowed.
Lucian took another step before realizing Kael had stopped. He turned back, suddenly looking much more nervous than he had a moment ago.
"I know it might sound sudden," he said. "We haven't known each other that long, and you're always busy, and I'm barely surviving training half the time. But I keep looking forward to seeing you."
Kael smiled faintly.
Lucian looked down, embarrassed but determined to finish.
"I look forward to your messages. When something happens during training, you're the first person I want to tell. And when you're busy and don't reply, I catch myself checking my phone like an idiot."
That made Kael laugh softly.
Lucian gave him an offended look.
"I'm serious."
"I know."
Kael stepped closer.
"I've been trying not to say anything because I didn't want to make things complicated for you. You're working toward your debut, and I know how much it means to you. I didn't want you worrying about me when you already have enough to deal with."
Lucian's expression softened.
"But?"
Kael looked at him for a moment before answering.
"But I like you too."
Lucian went quiet.
Kael smiled.
"I like talking to you. I like hearing about your day, even when half of it is you complaining about training. I like that you somehow manage to make me forget about work whenever I'm with you. And when I'm overseas, you're usually the first person I think about when I finally get a quiet moment."
Lucian's eyes warmed.
Kael reached for his hand.
Their fingers slipped together naturally.
"I don't know what this is going to look like yet," Kael continued. "I don't want to rush you, especially with everything you're working toward. But if you're telling me you like me because you want this to be more than just a few messages and stolen evenings together..."
He gave Lucian's hand a gentle squeeze.
"Then I want that too."
Lucian held his gaze, the corner of his mouth lifting into a small, almost shy smile.
"Okay."
Kael smiled.
"Okay?"
Lucian gave a quiet laugh and shook his head.
"Nothing. Just..."
He glanced down at their joined hands, then back at Kael.
"I'm just happy."
Something softened in Kael's expression.
He reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair away from Lucian's forehead. His hand lingered against the side of his face, and Lucian leaned into the touch without thinking.
Kael looked into his eyes.
Lucian closed the distance first.
Their lips met gently, almost hesitantly, as though both of them were still getting used to the feeling of finally saying it out loud. The hesitation didn't last. Kael's hand settled at Lucian's waist, pulling him closer, while Lucian's fingers curled into the front of Kael's shirt as the kiss deepened.
The traffic and rustling leaves seemed to fade around them.
When they finally pulled apart, they stayed close, their foreheads resting together.
Lucian's fingers remained curled loosely around Kael's shirt, and Kael's hand stayed warm against his waist.
For a while, neither of them moved.
From then on, they simply chose each other.
They kept the relationship to themselves. Lucian was still a trainee, with his debut getting closer, while Kael was being prepared to inherit Onyx Group and spending more and more time overseas for research and development.
The distance became part of their relationship. Kael's work kept him overseas for months at a time, while Lucian's training left him exhausted by the end of most days. They learned to work around the time difference, calling whenever their schedules happened to line up and sending messages whenever they couldn't.
Lucian: Are you done working yet?
Kael: Just finished.
Lucian: And you went straight home?
Kael: Yes. Why?
Lucian: Just checking.
Kael: Mmm... Sounds suspicious.
Lucian: Maybe I wanted to see if you had time for me.
Kael: You could've just said you missed me.
Lucian: Who said I missed you?
Kael: I can feel it.
Lucian: Wow. Arrogant.
Kael: Am I wrong?
Lucian: ...Okay, maybe a little.
Kael: A little?
Lucian: Fine. A LOT.
Kael: There you are.
Lucian: What?
Kael: My clingy boyfriend.
Kael would smile at the screen, no matter how tired he was. Sometimes they talked for ten minutes. Sometimes they stayed on the phone until one of them fell asleep.
It wasn't always easy, but they made it work.
And whenever Kael came home, Lucian was always the first person he wanted to see.
By the second year, the distance had become something they knew how to live with. Their relationship was quiet, steady, and certain. Neither of them needed to question what they were anymore.
No one knew.
Kael didn't mind. If anything, he liked having something that belonged only to them.
Lucian's debut plans had been pushed back again, giving them a little more time together, even if neither of them knew how much time that really meant. His training continued, and Kael's work kept pulling him farther away from home.
Then Kael had to leave again.
The next assignment was supposed to last several months.
Before he left, Lucian held him a little longer than usual.
"Come back before your birthday."
Kael smiled against his hair before gently pulling back. He cupped Lucian's cheek and leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead.
"I will."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
Lucian pulled back just enough to look at him.
"You better."
Kael laughed softly.
"I will. Even if I have to swim across the ocean to get back."
Lucian snorted.
"Please don't. I don't want my boyfriend drowning before he makes it home."
Kael grinned.
"Fine. I'll take a plane like a normal person."
"Good. I'd rather not explain to anyone why my boyfriend tried to swim home."
At the time, neither of them knew how much that promise would come to matter.
The first change was small.
Lucian stopped replying as quickly.
Then there were days when he didn't reply at all.
Kael told himself it was training. Lucian had always been exhausted during preparation periods, and the closer the debut came, the worse it became.
When they finally spoke, Lucian insisted he was fine.
"Just tired."
"You look terrible. Are you eating properly?"
"I am just exhausted."
Kael studied him through the screen.
Something was different.
Lucian's face looked thinner, dark shadows settling beneath his eyes. Even his smile seemed to fade almost as soon as it appeared.
But whenever Kael asked, Lucian would smile and say, "I'm okay."
Kael wanted to believe him.
So he did.
At least for a while.
Then Lucian started missing calls.
One became two, then three. Kael would wake to unanswered messages and tell himself there had to be a simple reason. Training. Exhaustion. Sleep.
Anything.
Whenever he asked what was wrong, Lucian gave him the same answer.
"Nothing, really."
But Kael knew better.
Something was wrong.
He just didn't know what.
The calls grew less frequent, and the messages became shorter.
Eventually, there were days when Kael could only stare at their last conversation and wonder when the distance between them had become something he couldn't cross.
He tried calling more.
Lucian stopped answering.
He sent messages.
Nothing.
Then, sometimes, a reply would appear hours later.
Lucian: Sorry. Busy.
That was all.
Kael would type a dozen questions and delete them one by one.
He didn't want to become another person demanding something from Lucian.
So he waited.
And waited.
Still, he kept his promise.
He booked his flight home.
He landed on the morning of his birthday.
Kael had barely made it through the airport when something on one of the television screens caught his attention.
He stopped walking.
The headline took a second to register.
EMPIRE ONYX TRAINEE FOUND DEAD IN APARTMENT
His eyes moved to the photograph beneath it.
It was Lucian.
For a moment, Kael couldn't understand what he was seeing.
The people around him kept moving. Announcements echoed through the terminal. Suitcases rolled across the polished floor. Someone brushed past his shoulder and apologized.
Kael heard none of it.
He only stared at the screen.
The report said Lucian had been found dead in his apartment.
It said he had apparently been struggling with depression.
It said the pressure surrounding his delayed debut may have contributed to his condition.
It said his death was being investigated as suicide.
Kael's fingers loosened around his luggage.
The handle slipped from his hand and struck the floor.
He didn't notice.
For months, he had asked Lucian what was wrong.
For months, he had watched him disappear piece by piece through a phone screen.
And now the last thing he had given him was a promise.
Come back before your birthday.
Kael had come back.
He was simply too late.
For months afterward, he believed the same story everyone else did. That Lucian had been depressed. That the pressure had broken him. That he had chosen to end his own life.
Kael resigned from Onyx Biomedical not long after.
He couldn't walk through those halls anymore. Every corridor reminded him of a life he had thought he understood. Every laboratory door made him wonder whether Lucian had ever stood behind it.
Lucian became a ghost Kael carried with him everywhere.
Kael tried to move on. He returned to work, kept himself busy, and told himself there was nothing more he could do.
But some things refused to settle.
The timeline. The unanswered calls. The changes in Lucian before his death.
Months later, Kael asked Pete to get into Onyx's systems. Pete was someone he trusted, someone no one at Onyx knew he was close to.
Kael wasn't looking for proof of anything.
He just wanted to understand what had happened.
What Pete found opened a door Kael could never close again.
The records. The restricted files. The missing rare-tier Alphas and Omegas. The harvesting reports.
That was when Kael learned what Lucian had really been.
One of the rare-tier Alphas identified during that period.
Lucian hadn't been taken because he was a trainee. He had been taken because his glands carried a rare genetic profile that Onyx had spent years studying.
They were trying to isolate those traits and reproduce certain effects artificially—pushing ordinary secondary genders beyond what their bodies naturally allowed, trying to imitate what only an Enigma could naturally possess.
The deeper Kael dug, the more names he found.
Rare-tier Alphas and Omegas who had disappeared without a trace. Some had died during harvesting. Others had been buried in sealed files, their deaths explained away as accidents, illness, or suicide.
Every subject gave Onyx more data. Every death showed them another limit.
And after years of harvesting, the research had finally produced something.
A serum.
SOVEREIGN — DEVELOPMENT STATUS: ONGOING
The notes were clinical, almost disturbingly simple. The serum was meant to push the body beyond its existing limits, forcing an Alpha's biology into something higher than the hierarchy already recognized.
And the Recovery Serum was developed alongside it—not to save the people they had experimented on, but to keep their bodies functional long enough for the process to continue.
Kael stared at the reports for a long time.
They hadn't been searching for a way to save their subjects.
They had been searching for a way to make them survive the next round.
And eventually, among all those files, Kael found the name he had spent months searching for.
Lucian.
Not as a trainee.
Not as someone suffering from depression.
Not even as a person.
SA-00127.
A subject.
A source of something Onyx had wanted badly enough to destroy him for it.
Kael read the files until his eyes burned.
He watched recordings he wished he had never found.
He learned what had happened during the months he had spent overseas. He learned why Lucian had stopped answering. Why his face had changed. Why his voice had sounded tired even when he insisted he was fine.
And the worst part was that Kael had loved him through all of it without ever knowing what he was fighting.
He had been on the other side of the world, worrying about missed calls and exhausting training schedules.
While inside his father's company, Lucian had been strapped to a table and turned into something they could measure, extract, and use.
Kael had thought he was building medicines.
He had never known what those medicines were being used to protect.
Or what they were being used to hide.
The memory slipped away as quietly as it had come.
Kael blinked and found himself staring at the same black screen in front of him.
Across from him, Aris and Ada had not moved.
Neither had Vyn and Axis.
For a long moment, Kael could only look at them.
Something about the way Aris and Ada had watched the recording hadn't left him. That wasn't the grief of people hearing a tragic story for the first time. It was the grief of people who had lost someone they loved.
"You knew him, didn't you?"
Ada glanced at Aris. He held her gaze for a second, then looked back at Kael.
"Who was he to you?" Kael asked.
Ada drew a slow breath. When she finally spoke, her eyes drifted toward Vyn.
"Lucian... was Elio's older brother."
The room froze.
Vyn's breath caught.
Kael stared at Ada, the words taking a moment to settle. His eyes slowly shifted toward Vyn.
And then he remembered.
The first time Vyn had shown him Elio's data, Kael had glanced at the photograph and felt a strange sense of familiarity. He hadn't thought much of it then. The last names were different, and Lucian had only ever mentioned having a younger brother.
He had never known who that brother was.
Now the resemblance came back to him with startling clarity.
Kael's stomach tightened.
How had I missed it?
Kael said nothing. He only looked at his brother, the realization settling heavily between them.
Vyn looked at him, still pale from what he had just heard.
His gaze slowly dropped back to the laptop.
Lucian.
Elio's older brother.
Aunt Celeste's voice echoed in his head, so clear it almost felt like she was standing beside him.
They called it a suicide. Said he took his own life. But I never believed it. Not for a second. He loved Elio too much to leave him behind like that.
His stomach twisted so violently he thought he was going to throw up.
The young man on that screen... the one whose body had been treated like nothing more than an experiment... was Elio's brother.
His chest tightened.
Across the room, Aris finally found his voice.
It came out rough. Almost broken.
"The reason Elio disappeared for almost two months..."
Vyn looked at him.
Aris swallowed hard. "He watched the footage."
His jaw clenched before he forced out the rest.
"He watched Lucian being harvested."
The words hit harder than the recording ever could.
Everything Vyn had spent months trying to understand crashed into him at once.
Elio disappearing without a word.
The fear that had settled behind his eyes.
The way he had started pulling away every time Vyn reached for him.
The breakup.
The silence.
Vyn had thought Elio stopped loving him.
He had blamed himself over and over, searching for something he had done wrong.
But Elio had known.
He had watched his own brother die.
And Vyn...
Vyn was the son of the man responsible.
His father's company. His laboratories. His people. His greed. Everything led back to the same man.
Something inside Vyn gave way.
He stumbled back a step. Then another.
The room suddenly felt too small, too suffocating.
Axis moved instinctively, reaching for him. "Vyn—"
Vyn flinched away.
His hand caught the wall beside him, his fingers pressing against it as he tried to steady himself. For a moment, he stood there, breathing unevenly.
He turned before anyone could stop him.
He didn't hear Kael call his name.
He didn't hear the door slam behind him.
The rain hit Vyn the moment he stepped outside.
He kept walking until he reached the middle of the yard, the cold water soaking through his clothes and running into his eyes and down the back of his neck.
Behind him, the others followed only as far as the doorway.
They stopped there.
Vyn didn't turn around.
He could not hear Kael calling his name. Could not hear the quiet voices behind him.
All he could hear was the rain.
His hands slowly curled into fists.
Elio's face came back to him—the pain in his eyes, the way he had looked at Vyn when he said, I don't know how to look at you anymore.
It hurts to even think about you now.
I try to find one good thing to hold onto... but all I see is what I lost.
Vyn shut his eyes.
Now he understood.
"FUCK! FUCK!"
The scream ripped out of him and disappeared into the rain.
His voice cracked, raw enough to leave his throat burning.
He threw his head back, rain pouring over his face.
"Fuck..."
Because for the first time, Vyn understood there was nothing he could ever say that would make this right.
No apology could erase what Elio had seen.
No promise could bring Lucian back.
Because the young man Elio had lost had been taken by his own father. And no matter how much Vyn loved him, he couldn't undo what had already been done.
*****