The scarlet leviathan—a long, crimson luxury sedan—purred to a halt in front of the private hospital's clinical facade. It was a splash of violent color against the sterile white of the medical district.
The door swung open, and out stepped a vision of high-fashion audacity. Jane Ashford didn't just exit a vehicle; she reclaimed the earth. She wore a deep, viridian green dress that clung to her curves like a second skin, draped in a luxurious fur that wrapped around her arms. Her heels were obsidian daggers, clicking against the pavement with predatory rhythm.
Her hair—a cascading symphony of crimson curls—fluttered in the breeze, a stark contrast to her dark, sleek glasses. Behind her, Jesper followed like a trembling shadow, his eyes darting around as if he expected the hospital walls to collapse under the sheer weight of Jane's presence.
Jane reached Tristan's private suite and didn't bother with the pleasantries of a knock. She slammed the door open with enough force to make the hinges groan in protest. Jesper stood behind her, wincing, his hands hovering nervously over his glasses.
Inside the room, Tristan Ashford nearly levitated off his bed His nerves, already frayed by the scandal and the distance from Isidore, were ill-prepared for a sudden assault. He flinched, his crystalline eyes wide with a flash of genuine terror.
"Olivia?" he gasped, his voice thin.
Jane snatched her glasses off, revealing eyes that matched his—crystalline, sharp, and currently brimming with theatrical outrage. Tristan let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief, leaning back as his heart rate slowed from "cardiac arrest" to "extreme annoyance."
"It's not Olivia, you idiot," Jane snapped, her voice a sharp vibrato. "It's Jane. Do you have any idea of what you did?."
Jane marched toward her brother, her heels clicking like a countdown timer. Tristan flinched again as she loomed over him, her face a mask of tragic disappointment.
"How could you do this to us?" she began, her hands flying to her chest in a gesture that would have made a Victorian actress proud. "The Ashford name is being dragged through the digital mud, and you're sitting here... scratching your cheek!"
Tristan's mouth twitched. He reached up, awkwardly scratching his face as he tried to find a coherent thought. "Jane, look, I don't have time to explain the logistics of my life right now. It's complicated."
"Complicated?" Jane shrieked. "You really had a... a thing with that man. What was his name? The one in the headlines?"
She spun around toward Jesper, who nearly jumped out of his skin. He adjusted his glasses frantically. "It's Mr. Isidore, Ma'am. Isidore Davenant."
Jane turned back to Tristan, her chin held high. "Yes. That's what I said. Inside-door."
Tristan went dead still. His jaw tightened so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn't shatter. Jesper, meanwhile, looked like he wanted to dissolve into the floorboards out of sheer embarrassment.
"It's Isidore, Jane," Tristan corrected, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "Not a piece of architecture."
The tension was snapped by the sound of the door opening once more. Joshua Ashford limped into the room. He looked like a man who had survived a high-speed collision with a brick wall—specifically a brick wall made of Zayn Maverick's shoe.
He stopped short, seeing his radiant sister standing there like a vengeful goddess and Jesper looking like a deer in headlights. Tristan's face crumpled into an expression of pure, unadulterated misery.
"And what brings the family circus to the hospital today?" Joshua asked, his voice strained.
Jane turned on him instantly, crossing her arms over the viridian silk of her dress. "I told you, too! You are a police officer, Joshua! An officer of the law! And yet, you let this... this tragedy happen under your nose!"
Joshua's mouth twitched. The pain in his lower abdomen was still a throbbing reminder of his failure in the Davenant courtyard, but Jane's intensity was a different kind of agony.
Jane placed a hand on the bridge of her nose, letting out a long, weary sigh. "Think of what will happen if Olivia finds out. Think of the fallout when she hears about Tristan and... Inside-door."
The room went silent. Tristan's eyes darkened, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Jesper covered his face with one hand, unable to witness the linguistic car crash.
Then, the sound started.
It began as a high-pitched, whistling wheeze. Joshua, the man who had been nearly incapacitated by a Davenant Alpha, began to shake. He forgot the pain in his groin. He forgot the humiliation of the handcuffs. He forgot the burning rage he felt for Zayn.
"What..." Joshua gasped, his face turning a blotchy red as he doubled over. "What did you just call him?"
Jane looked at him with genuine confusion. "Inside-door. The Davenant man. Why are you making that hideous sound, Joshua?"
Joshua let out a sound that wasn't a laugh—it was a pathetic, hysterical wheeze. He clutched his stomach, tears pricking the corners of his eyes as he surrendered to the absurdity. "Inside-door! Hah! Oh, god... Inside-door!"
He began to laugh like a pathetic idiot, the sound echoing off the sterile hospital walls. It was the laugh of a man who had lost his mind, his dignity, and his physical health all in one night.
"Shut up, Joshua," Tristan hissed, his voice vibrating with a lethal, crystalline fury.
But Joshua couldn't stop. He was wheezing, clutching the back of a chair for support as he repeated the name. "Inside-door! Is that... is that where he lives? In the doorframe?"
Jane huffed, crossing her arms even tighter, her crimson curls bouncing with her indignation. "You are all impossible! I come all the way from America to save this family from ruin, and all I get is mockery!"
Joshua Ashford continued to tap the mahogany table with a frantic, rhythmic beat, his body trembling as he succumbed to a fit of hysterical asphyxiation.
Every time he tried to catch his breath, the memory of Jane calling the most formidable Omega in the city "Inside-door" triggered a fresh wave of wheezing.
Jane ignored him with the practiced ease of an older sister who had spent a lifetime treating Joshua like a noisy houseplant. She sighed, her crimson curls swaying as she turned her piercing gaze back to Tristan.
"How did all of this happen, Tristan?" she asked, her voice dropping the theatricality for something sharper, more predatory.
Tristan shifted his gaze from his laughing brother to his sister's crystalline eyes. He looked like a man standing before a firing squad.
"You've hidden so much from us," Jane murmured. She leaned in, the scent of her expensive perfume filling the space between them. With a flick of her manicured thumb, she turned her phone screen toward him. "Don't you dare deny that this cute little bear... this porcelain masterpiece... isn't your child."
Tristan went stone-cold. His heart seemed to skip a beat as he stared at the high-resolution image of Julian. The boy was smiling, his eyes reflecting the same Ashford clarity that Jane and Tristan possessed.
"I..." Tristan started, his voice thick. He cleared his throat, but the words felt like jagged glass.
Jesper, standing in the corner, began to shake his head in a slow, panicked arc. He knew the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) walls were finally crumbling.
Jane didn't wait for a confession. She began to pace the room, her long heels clicking a rhythmic death march. She didn't spare a glance for Joshua, who was still clutching his stomach and gasping for air.
"You never told me I was an aunt," Jane whispered, her voice dangerously soft. "Three years, Tristan. Three long years of growth, first steps, and probably his first words—and you kept him in a digital vacuum."
"It was complicated," Tristan managed to say, his jaw tightening. "From the very beginning, it was a minefield of contracts and reputations."
"Complicated?" Jane leaned down until her face was inches from his. "You are cooked, Tristan. Absolutely scorched. Pray for your soul when Olivia finds out. She won't just be angry; she'll be a hurricane."
She turned her gaze back to the phone, her expression softening into something genuinely affectionate as she traced the image of the child. "He's adorable. He has the Ashford chin... and that 'Inside-door' man's hair."
While the Ashford siblings were tearing each other apart inside the suite, the hallway was a stage for a different kind of drama.
Zephyr was moving with the purposeful stride of a man whose life was measured in seconds. He held a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other, his violet eyes scanning a fresh batch of data Joshua had sent him.
At the same time, Jesper was stumbling out of the room, his mind a whirlwind of panic. He wasn't looking ahead; he was lost in the terror of Jane Ashford's wrath.
Jesper let out a sharp gasp as he hit the solid wall of Zephyr's chest. He lost his balance, his feet tangling as he began to fall backward, Zephyr's phone skittered across the linoleum, and his coffee—a dark, scalding brew—erupted over the front of his expensive, dove-gray trench coat.
Zephyr didn't curse. He didn't even look at the coffee.
With the instinctive grace of a field spy, Zephyr lunged forward to catch the falling man. He hooked a firm arm around Jesper's waist, pulling him flush against his chest to stabilize him.
In the quiet of the hospital hallway, the world seemed to shrink to the point of contact.
Zephyr felt the surprising fragility of the man in his arms. Jesper's waist was unnervingly small, a delicate circumference that seemed far too narrow for the weight of the stress he carried. A hot, uncharacteristic blush crept up Zephyr's neck, settling behind his ears.
Jesper gasped, his breath hitching as he looked up. He didn't see a regular investigator; he saw the man from the studio—the silent, violet-eyed shadow who stood beside Joshua.
"I... I am so sorry!" Jesper stammered, his voice trembling. He looked down at the dark, blooming stain on Zephyr's coat. "I didn't look... I was just... I'm so sorry."
Zephyr pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, his violet eyes flashing with a mix of annoyance and a deeper, more confusing heat. He pulled Jesper upward, setting him on his feet, but his hand lingered on Jesper's side a second too long before he withdrew it.
"It's fine," Zephyr said, his voice a low, clinical baritone. He turned his head away, trying to hide the flush that refused to fade.
Jesper reached out, his fingers trembling as he touched the damp fabric of Zephyr's coat. "Let me clean that. Please. It's my fault.
"I said it's fine," Zephyr repeated, more reverently this time, though he maintained a cold exterior.
Inside, Zephyr was reeling. He was a man of logic and data, yet the feeling of Jesper's waist was currently overriding his entire operating system. He refused to look Jesper in the eye; he knew that if he saw the guilt and the softness in those onyx eyes, he would lose his hard-won composure entirely.
"I can do it myself," Zephyr muttered, his tone icy but his heart hammering a frantic rhythm.
Jesper felt the sting of the rejection, his hand dropping from the coat. He stood there, looking like a kicked puppy in the middle of a hospital corridor, unaware that the "cold" man in front of him was currently fighting the urge to pull him back into that embrace.
Jesper, seeing Zephyr's expensive smartphone lying abandoned on the linoleum like a fallen soldier, felt a fresh surge of panic. He didn't think; he simply reacted, lunging downward to retrieve the device.
At the exact same microsecond, Zephyr, driven by a clinical need to regain control of his property, mirrored the movement.
The result was a bone-deep, audible thud. Their foreheads collided with the force of two small planets crashing in a dark corridor.
Zephyr let out a low, guttural groan, his vision momentarily fracturing into a kaleidoscope of violet sparks. He managed to swallow the sound, his pride acting as a shield, but Jesper didn't have the same defensive layer.
The Omega stumbled back, his hands flying to his head as he let out a sharp, pained wince that echoed off the polished walls.
Stars danced in Zephyr's eyes, but as they cleared, he found himself staring directly into Jesper's face. The proximity was lethal.
Jesper's onyx-like eyes were wide and swimming with unshed tears from the impact.
His lower lip was caught between his teeth, trembling as he fought back a sob of pure embarrassment and physical pain. He looked fragile, glistening, and utterly devastating.
For Zephyr, the world didn't just stop; it short-circuited. He felt a phantom heat rush to his face, a sensation so violent he feared his nose might actually begin to bleed from the sheer aesthetic shock of the man before him. His heart, usually a steady, logical metronome, was now a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ribs.
In a desperate bid for survival, Zephyr's brain scrambled for an exit strategy. He lunged forward, snatching his phone from the floor with the speed of a striking cobra.
Without checking the screen, he pressed the cold glass to his ear.
"Yes... I hear you. Proceed," Zephyr barked into the phone.
There was no one on the line. There wasn't even a dial tone. But Zephyr didn't care. He was a man of logic who had just been defeated by a pair of teary eyes and a bruised forehead.
If he stayed a second longer, if he looked at the "passionately adorable" Omega again, he knew his professional mask would shatter into a thousand irreparable pieces.