The air shifted. Thickened. Heavy silence closed in like a storm breaking overhead.
Rowen's throat worked. Robin's shoulders tensed.
And Riven… Riven did not move. His gaze locked on them, calm, unblinking, the first stir of his pheromone curling into the air like heat rising off stone. Controlled. Precise. Dangerous.
He stepped closer. His fists slowly uncurled. His shoulders loosened. And then—he let go.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't violent. It was inevitable. Five years of exile, silence, and buried fury, compressed into a single release.
His dominance hit the room like a pressure wave.
The temperature spiked. The air grew metallic, electric, clinging to skin, flooding lungs.
Rowen flinched first, his knees dipping before he forced himself upright again. Robin's breath hitched, his hand pressing to the wall, sweat beading at his temple.
They tried to resist. Tried to hold their ground. But every second dragged them lower. Instinct buckled before sovereignty.
This wasn't dominance. This was a command.
The kind that erased the argument. The kind that demanded the body yield, no matter what pride whispered.
Riven's scent—sharp, clean, edged with fury—wound around their throats like a leash. Every breath reminded them of who held it.
Rowen strained, forcing his own pheromone into the air, but it collapsed on contact, smothered to nothing. Robin's pulse spiked, then faltered, his body trembling as though gravity itself had chosen sides.
The secretary crumpled unconscious, her collapse a punctuation mark neither brother could ignore. Their own chests heaved, their bodies folding under a power they could not match.
"Stop—" Rowen rasped, voice breaking, eyes wide with something perilously close to fear. "Stop this—you're trying to kill us?"
Riven finally moved. Not toward them—toward the door. Calm, measured steps, leaving them drowning in what he could do but hadn't.
At the threshold, he paused. Back still to them. His voice was quiet, even. And it cut like glass.
"You wanted proof I don't belong to this family? Fine. I don't. Families protect their own."
He glanced once over his shoulder, his eyes cold fire.
"And I've already buried mine."
Then he walked out, his pheromone pulling back in a razor-edged retreat, leaving only silence—and the wreckage of what remained of his brothers.
"Save your breath," Riven said without turning. "You'll need it."
A pause. Quiet. Lethal.
"You call restraint weakness. You call silence submission." His voice dropped lower. "But I never needed to prove myself to you."
He glanced back once, eyes glinting like steel.
"I don't use my dominance to feel powerful. I use it when I'm done being polite."
Then, quieter, trembling with contained rage:
"This doesn't even scratch the pain you gave me. But since you still dare to call this family… fine. I'll let you crawl out alive. Just this once."
He stepped into the hall. The moment he crossed the threshold, his pheromone snapped back—tight, precise, controlled. The effort cost him. His chest seized. His knees buckled.
Before he could hit the floor, arms closed around him.
"I've got you," Nyxen murmured, voice steady, fingers threading through his hair with deceptive gentleness. He held him close, possessive as much as protective. "You did well. You didn't have to hold back. But you did."
Thayer's boots clicked closer. His gaze flicked from Riven to the sealed door.
"Check on the brothers," Nyxen said, shifting Riven's weight with ease. His tone carried no warmth now—only command. "Make sure they're still breathing."
Thayer hesitated, eyes narrowing. "You dropped the suppression, didn't you?"
Nyxen's mouth curved—not quite a smile.
"You already know the answer."
"Right. Why did I even asked?"
Nyxen's voice dropped softer, shadow curling at the edges. "And Lior?"
"Still asleep," Thayer replied. "Your soothing pheromone's holding. He didn't feel a thing."
"Good." Relief flickered across Nyxen's face, but it sharpened quickly, as though even his care was calculated. He carried Riven away, slow, unhurried, every step deliberate—as if parading proof that this strength belonged to him alone.
Thayer waited until they vanished from sight. Then he opened the conference room door.
And froze.
Rowen's secretary sprawled unconscious. Rowen and Robin knelt on the floor, slick with sweat, gasping like men dragged from drowning. Their eyes were wild, unfocused. Their bodies shook.
It wasn't a defeat. It was humiliation.
The heirs of Lucien Virellian—reduced to trembling on their knees by the brother they had erased.
Thayer stood in the doorway, watching them writhe, and muttered under his breath:
"One surge. That's all it took. And they still dare to call him weak."
Rowen tried first, forcing himself upright, shoulders trembling with the effort. Rage twisted his face, but his body betrayed him—knees buckling, chest heaving.
Robin pressed against the wall, sweat beading along his hairline, pulse erratic. His pride kept him standing, but only barely.
Riven hadn't crushed them. He didn't need to. He kept the pressure tight—just enough to choke, just enough to remind them who they were beneath him. His scent coiled around their throats like an invisible leash, daring them to defy him.
Rowen tried. He dragged at his own pheromone, straining to push it into the air. It fizzled the moment it met Riven's. Swallowed whole. Robin's heartbeat spiked, a ragged sound in the silence.
They weren't collapsed. Not yet. But they bent all the same—forced low by nothing more than the fact of him.
Riven said nothing. He didn't need to. His silence was the judgment.
Then—like the air releasing a long-held breath—the pressure vanished.
Riven turned for the door, unhurried, unshaken, leaving his brothers gasping in the wreckage of their own weakness.