The vacuum seal sighs.
The VIP door shuts Adrian inside a room of glass and chrome where the air conditioner hums like a throat clearing before judgment.
He stands very straight because the camera in the corner blinks red. His collar sits high, too tight. The faint, bitter scent of blockers clings to his skin.
Bootsteps. A shadow crosses the frosted glass, precise as a blade.
The man steps in and the temperature seems to fall two degrees.
Lucien Duskborne wears a dark uniform tailored like a quiet threat; gloves of black leather, lapel pin in gunmetal, a clean, crisp scent—ozone, steel, rain on marble. He doesn't offer a hand. He doesn't smile. His gaze touches Adrian for the length of a data check and moves on.
"Mr. Duskborne—" a handler begins.
Lucien's eyelids lower a fraction. The handler silences himself without needing to be told.
Adrian swallows. His mouth is cotton-dry. He opens, almost says Hello, almost says I—
His tongue tightens. The word assign scrapes down his spine like a file.
Two agents slide in behind Lucien. [SEC] stands at four corners, taking possession of air and angles. A personal aide ghosts forward with a tablet. [PA] waits with stylus poised.
Lucien's voice is soft and exact. "No journalists in this room."
The aide nods. "Understood."
A camera tries to peep through the crack of the door. [PRESS] "Just one photo— the new pair—"
"Not necessary," Lucien says, and it is like switching off a light. "Cancel media. Send all contracts to my counsel."
He doesn't raise his volume. The room rearranges itself anyway.
A photographer hovers, unsure. Lucien turns his head one degree toward them. The lens bows and retreats as if pushed by a physical hand.
Adrian catches the smallest flick of Lucien's gaze—down, where the silver line of his collar rests. One glance. No more. The space between them stays measured, an arm and a half, exactly 1.8 meters. Adrian can feel the distance like a pane of glass pressed to his chest.
"Mr. Duskborne," Adrian manages. "I—thank you for—"
"For the record," Lucien says, glove seam creasing as he adjusts a cuff, "all appearances will be scheduled. Visits cleared forty-eight hours in advance. You will have security detail at all times."
He sounds like he's setting shipping protocols for a valuable object.
Adrian nods because nodding is safe. His palm dampens against his trouser seam.
"No physical contact," Lucien continues, "unless explicitly required by ceremony. You will not be approached by my staff without my prior authorization. I will review the Assignment decision through the proper channels."
"Review…?" The word trips. "You mean—you can still—"
"Review," he repeats, leaving the verb floating in a cold, bloodless space.
Adrian's heart stalls for one hard beat. Not acceptance. Not refusal. A freeze.
He had imagined a thousand first meetings. In all of them he spoke like a person. In all of them someone listened.
The blocker taste pools copper on his tongue. In the edge of his vision, pixels drift—memory overlaying the room for a breath: a chapel made of light, warm fingers closing around his, a digital ring humming against his skin. Aether, whisper-warm, I'll protect you. The memory evaporates beneath the hum of the air conditioner.
"Do you understand?" Lucien asks.
"Yes," Adrian says, because the walls are glass and the sound carries. "I…understand."
Lucien's eyes—stormlight, unreadable—pause on Adrian's face another heartbeat, like a scanner taking inventory. He turns. The soft click of leather. [SEC] shifts in a ripple.
A throat clears outside.
The door opens on command of unseen permission. The temperature spikes with bodies and perfume and the buzz of hungry microphones.
"Adrian!" His mother's voice—beautiful, brittle—cuts a bright thread through the room. Lady Seraphine Vale steps in with relatives, neighbors who dress like relatives, and a manager who has been a manager since Adrian was old enough to sit and say thank you on cue. [PRESS] squeezes behind them, all smiles with knives for teeth.
"Smile, darling," Lady Seraphine says, already angling him toward the light. "This is our honor."
Adrian's foot falters.
Beside him, Lucien takes half a step backward. The air drops to winter.
The room fills beyond its design. Chairs become obstacles, corners become traps, and every reflective surface belongs to a lens.
"This is wonderful news," an aunt says, her earrings chiming. "Our Adrian with the Duskbornes—how blessed!"
[PRESS] "One picture together—chin up a bit—there—yes, perfect—"
Adrian's throat tightens. He tries to say he feels sick. He tries to say he needs air. His mother's hand lands on his sleeve, gentle as a tether.
"Stand straight." Her smile is a portrait. Only her fingers tremble. "Remember, futures change tonight. For all of us."
For all of us. The phrase folds him smaller.
The manager thrusts a folder forward. "We've drafted a short joint statement for socials and the networks, Mr. Duskborne. If you could glance—"
Lucien doesn't glance. "Send it to counsel."
[PA] murmurs into a comm. [SEC] turns their shoulders and the door closes again, a soft, inevitable sigh.
On the wall, a muted screen runs the national feed. Comments bloom across the lower third like confetti that cuts. Lucky. Hit the genetic jackpot.Omega from nowhere becomes princess.Kneel to the machine—
Adrian's face appears there, thirty feet wide, looking small even when made enormous. Someone types: Smile, Omega. He feels the words land on his skin like salt.
"Adrian," his mother says, "be patient. We must give interviews. Brief ones. The Duskborne family is very busy; we must not waste their time."
"I—" He wants to say the ceremony left his lungs raw. He wants to say the name Duskborne feels like a door closing on the sun. "I'm…afraid."
"Don't be childish," a cousin snaps, then softens the syllables with a laugh for the cameras. "This is the future of our house."
The future, then. Not his. Theirs.
"Mr. Duskborne," the manager tries again, hovering near the clean edge of Lucien's personal orbit. "One handshake photo. Just to bless the announcement."
Silence rests a blade on the room.
Lucien turns slightly. The light marks sharp lines under his cheekbones. "I don't do things that make my partner uncomfortable."
The sentence lands with two lives inside it.
Half the room hears protection and sighs at the chivalry of a great name. The other half hears ice: a line that refuses touch, that refuses the word we.
Adrian's pulse thuds, a miscounting drum. He isn't sure which half he belongs to.
Lucien shifts his attention one degree. "Relocate the briefing." To [PA].
"Understood."
"Car," he says to no one and to everyone. "Five minutes."
[SEC] answers with motion.
It is astonishing, the way people move when he speaks. Like magnets realigning. Like water finding a steeper path.
Adrian's mother leans in. "Don't make him displeased," she whispers in the voice she used when he was small and the world was fragile porcelain. "Please. We'll fix your expression. We'll practice."
Fix. The word scratches.
If the room is a freezer, his chest is the glass door fogging over. He bites his lip. The blocker taste returns, useless now, a lie of safety.
On the muted screen, the national feed replays the moment the AI spoke Lucien Duskborne and his face fractured under the weight of it. The comments swell anew. He should be grateful.He looks cold already—good match for Duskborne's heir.Obey and you'll live soft.
His hands curl. He remembers the game again without meaning to, the chapel built of light, Aether's fingers wrapping his own with uncalculated warmth. No cameras. No [SEC]. No counsel. A ring of code had warmed his skin like a small sun.
Now there is only distance measured with a ruler.
[PA] returns. "Mr. Duskborne, the car is ready. Entrance cleared."
Lucien nods once. The room inhales for permission and exhales movement.
"Adrian," Lady Seraphine says, adjusting the fall of his collar with careful hands, "remember grace. Don't cause offense. This is bigger than your feelings."
He flinches like the word is a palm against his cheek. "I'm trying."
"Try harder."
Her smile is trembling glass. She lets go and the cold rushes back in.
Lucien turns to leave. [SEC] opens a lane that is not a door but becomes one as bodies step aside. The path recognizes its owner.
Adrian plants his feet because if he moves now he will keep moving forever. "Mr. Duskborne—" He doesn't know what he means to ask. What is allowed to ask.
Lucien pauses. The pause is expensive.
Adrian's throat burns. "Do we—do I have any say?"
Something unnameable flickers at the edge of a storm-gray gaze. It is gone before Adrian can believe he saw it.
"One car," Lucien says to [PA], ignoring the question gently, clinically. "No press tail."
"Yes, sir."
The door opens again. Air from the corridor coils in, colder.
"Adrian." His mother's voice is a thread you wrap around your wrist to keep from floating away. "Don't look upset. They'll say you're ungrateful."
He sets his mouth. He sets his shoulders. He tries to find a shape that looks like gratitude and feels like breathing.
He fails.
[PRESS] makes one last attempt at the frame. "Just a shot in silhouette? Hands—?"
"I already said no." Lucien doesn't look at them. He doesn't need to.
The aide lowers their tablet. The manager folds the unused statement. [SEC] marks time with the faint scrape of polished soles.
Lucien steps closer.
Not enough to touch. Enough to be weather.
Adrian smells metal and rain and something that reminds him of the dark before a storm breaks. The leather glove makes a soft, final sound as the fingers flex. The room's noise thins into a ribbon no one else will hear.
Lucien leans in, head angled so the cameras are presented only with a clean profile. His breath is cool at the shell of Adrian's ear.
"Don't think I'll ever love you."
The sentence slides under the skin like ice. The air of the room sharpens; his pulse hits glass.
He doesn't move. He doesn't breathe.
Outside the door, the corridor hums. Inside, winter holds.
The room thickens with bodies. Voices overlap, sharp and urgent, until Adrian can hardly breathe.
Lady Seraphine grips his arm with trembling fingers, her smile fixed for the flashing cameras. "This is the honor of our family. Don't let anyone say otherwise."
Honor. The word clangs against his ribs like a bell. He wants to scream that it doesn't feel like honor—it feels like chains—but the microphones hover, the PRESS badges glint, and every exit is blocked by suited guards.
Screens along the wall flicker with comments pouring in: Lucky Omega.Vale should be grateful.Duskborne bloodline! The tide of strangers' voices crashes louder than his own heartbeat.
He wets his lips. "Mother, I—"
"Enough," a relative hisses. "This is bigger than you."
Bigger than him. Always bigger than him.
—
"Picture of the pair, please!"
𝑃
𝑅
𝐸
𝑆
𝑆
The command slices the air. Photographers surge forward. A spotlight clicks on, bleaching the room into cold silver.
Adrian's chest tightens. He steps back instinctively—straight into Lucien's shadow.
The Alpha doesn't flinch. He merely raises a gloved hand, palm out. "No."
The word lands like frost spreading across glass.
The room stutters. Reporters blink, mid-shutter. Family members freeze, smiles cracking.
"Sir?" one PRESS agent stammers.
Lucien's gaze is a blade. "I don't do things that make my partner uncomfortable."
For a heartbeat, warmth sparks in Adrian's chest. Protected. Seen.
But Lucien's tone is clipped, clinical—not tender. His eyes never soften, and the space between them remains an arm's length of ice.
Not protection. Distance.
"Move the briefing." His voice sharpens again, directed to his aide. "Prepare the car."
𝑆
𝐸
𝐶
SEC agents nod, falling into motion as if a general had given orders.
Adrian lowers his head, ashamed at the flicker of hope he'd felt.
—
"Adrian." Lady Seraphine's whisper whips across the room, urgent and thin. "Don't you dare embarrass us. Don't make him regret this. Do you hear me?"
The reprimand bites harder because it comes from her mouth—the one person he had thought might understand.
"It's my fault," Adrian murmurs before he can stop himself. He always folds the blame inward, making himself smaller.
Lucien does not glance at him. He is already striding toward the door, boots ringing against marble.
Adrian's chest hollows. He sees, superimposed on the sterile lights, a memory from Eterna: a chapel glowing with pixels, a hand gripping his in defiance of the world. Aether had stood with him in warmth, not distance. Aether's grasp had been unyielding, anchoring him.
Now—his palm is empty.
The reporters push again. "At least a handshake!"
Lady Seraphine's voice sharpens. "Adrian—do it. Don't anger him."
His shoulders stiffen. The collar at his throat feels heavier, tighter.
He risks a glance at Lucien. The Alpha has already turned back, voice flat as steel.
"I said no."
The photographers shrink. Even family members fall silent. It's not protection—it's dominion. The room chills two degrees, as though obeying his will.
—
They move toward the exit. The Vale relatives trail behind, whispering venom into Adrian's ears. Behave. Smile. Remember who you represent.
Every step feels like walking on splintered glass.
At the threshold, Lucien stops. He turns slightly—close enough that Adrian feels the brush of cool air displaced by his movement.
Adrian blinks, caught.
Lucien lowers his head, voice pitched so only Adrian can hear. The proximity is electric, almost intimate—except his words are knives.
"Don't think I'll ever love you."
The whisper slides under Adrian's skin, colder than any glare.
His heart slams once, twice—then everything in him fractures between the remembered warmth of Aether's vows and the present chill of Lucien Duskborne.
The door seals shut behind them with a vacuum hiss.
Black.