Vyn froze.
The person standing before him was different.
Framed by the cold neon spilling through the window, Elio's hair had grown slightly longer, the dark strands falling around a face that had lost its familiar warmth.
Then his gaze found Elio's eyes.
Air stalled in his chest.
They were the same eyes from the photograph Auntie Celeste had shown him.
Quiet. Empty in a way that never should have belonged to someone so young.
Looking at him now, Vyn was thrown back to their very first meeting in the dressing room—that untouchable composure, that careful distance, the unreadable calm that never let anyone come too close.
This wasn't his Omega.
None of it mattered.
He had missed him too much.
Vyn crossed the room in a desperate stride and pulled Elio into his arms, crushing him against his chest as if he could force their lives back together.
"Elio… god, Elio," Vyn breathed, his voice cracking.
He buried his face against Elio's hair, as though letting go would make him disappear.
"I missed you."
The words came out rough and unsteady, as though he'd been holding them back for far too long.
He only held him tighter, words tumbling out in a frantic rush. "How are you? Where have you been? Why was your phone off?"
His voice cracked.
"Please… tell me what happened."
Elio stood entirely still.
"I've been looking everywhere. I didn't know if—I didn't know what happened to you. Please, just tell me you're okay."
Elio didn't pull away, but he didn't melt into it, either. His voice was quiet and devastatingly calm.
"I'm okay, Vyn," he murmured. "I just... needed a place to recover."
Vyn's instincts shuddered, but he shoved the feeling down. He pulled back just enough to frame Elio's face, pressing frantic kisses to his temples, his cheeks, the corners of his lips.
Every touch was a confession of how badly he had starved for him.
He shifted, pressing his nose to the crook of Elio's neck to breathe in the scent he'd dreamt of for fifty-two days.
His chest tightened.
The scent of frozen mint and lilies was there, but the biological connection—the deep, comforting hum that anchored his soul—was gone.
There was only a cold, endless silence.
Then, his lips brushed Elio's scent gland, and he felt it.
Vyn pulled back, his fingers trembling as they slid down Elio's jaw. In the dim light, he saw the mark. It was wrong. A mating bite was supposed to be a living, breathing pulse between two people.
This was raw, angry, and inflamed. It didn't look like a bond; it looked like a wound that refused to heal.
"Elio... your mark," Vyn whispered, his thumb tracing the burning edge. "Does it hurt?"
"No," Elio said, his voice flat.
Vyn searched his face, desperate for a flicker of the person he used to know.
Elio looked right through him, his eyes carrying a deep, quiet exhaustion. Behind that calm exterior, Elio's chest felt hollow. Every time he looked at Vyn, he saw the face of Maximillian Mercier.
The realization poisoned everything they had built.
"Vyn—" Elio said softly. "Let's end this."
Vyn froze, his hand dropping. "Elio, what the fuck are you saying?"
"Let's end whatever we have," Elio said. He didn't sound angry; he just sounded tired.
Vyn let out a bitter, panicked laugh and gripped Elio's shoulders.
"You can't just say that. We're bound."
Elio didn't flinch.
He wrapped his fingers around Vyn's wrists and pulled them off, dropping them into the space between them. He tilted his head, forcing Vyn to look at the raw skin on his neck.
"Look at it, Vyn," Elio said quietly. "There is no bond. You knew it. You cannot feel me anymore."
Vyn's eyes remained fixed on the mark, his mind scrambling. He tried to catch even a faint echo of his own Alpha scent, but there was nothing. Just an unyielding, detached coldness.
"What's going on...?" Vyn whispered.
"The connection's gone, Vyn," Elio said with quiet finality. "My body rejected your mark. You never actually claimed me—not really."
Vyn's hands hovered in the air, shaking. He stepped forward again, a fierce, desperate denial taking over his features.
"You can deny the bond all you want, but I know your body still turns toward me."
"It's over, Vyn," Elio said.
Reality caught up with Vyn. The tether he'd been relying on was gone. Elio didn't belong to him anymore.
"No..." Vyn breathed, panic seizing his chest. "Elio… even if the mark didn't work, we still have us. We chose each other. Don't do this."
He lunged, slamming into Elio and winding his arms around his waist in a possessive grip. He crashed his lips against Elio's, desperate to find a spark, driving him backward until Elio's spine hit the cold window glass.
Vyn's kisses were rough, bruising, and jagged—a wordless, desperate plea.
When Elio didn't respond, Vyn dropped to his throat, burying his face against the side of his neck.
There.
That familiar scent.
He inhaled deeply, his grip tightening as if he couldn't get close enough. His lips brushed along Elio's throat while he breathed him in again and again, scenting him with a quiet desperation that bordered on obsession.
For weeks, there had been nothing. No bond. No trace of Elio.
Now that he was finally here, Vyn couldn't stop touching him.
But Elio was stone. His lips remained frozen beneath Vyn's, refusing to give back a fraction of heat.
Vyn finally pulled back.
"Please," he whispered. "Tell me what happened."
"Nothing happened," Elio replied.
Vyn stared at him.
Anyone else might have believed him. Elio had always been good at hiding the truth, smoothing over every crack until no one thought to look beneath the surface.
But Vyn knew him. He knew this silence. He knew this look. It was never because nothing had happened.
It was because something had.
"Don't lie to me, Elio."
"I'm not."
"Then why are you looking at me like a stranger?" Vyn's voice broke.
Elio looked directly at him, the weight of Maximillian's shadow resting heavily between them.
"Because I don't know how to look at you anymore."
Vyn swallowed hard, his hands trembling as he reached out, though he didn't dare touch him.
"What does that mean?" His voice trembled. "Did I do something wrong? I can't understand if you don't tell me."
"It hurts to even think about you now," Elio said, his voice barely a whisper. "I try to find one good thing to hold onto, but all I see is what I lost."
"Why?" Vyn asked. "Dammit, just tell me. Tell me how to fix this."
"You cannot fix it. I don't know how else to say it—it's not you. I'm sorry, Vyn."
"I could endure anything," Vyn choked out. "Everything. Just tell me what to do."
He folded against Elio, burying his face in the crook of his neck as the musky scent of charred sandalwood spread heavily through the room.
God, how I missed this scent.
The thought alone made Elio's stomach twist. He felt sick—traitorous for even wanting it.
"But this?" Vyn whispered, his voice raw against Elio's skin. "You're ripping out the only part of me that was ever good."
He tried to steady his breathing, but it caught somewhere in his throat. When he spoke again, his voice finally gave way.
"If you push me away, Elio…" The words broke apart as a tear slipped free, warm against Elio's neck. "…there won't be enough of me left to keep going."
Elio stared at the dark wall over Vyn's shoulder, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides.
Your father killed my brother. He killed Aris and Ada's parents.
He kept repeating the names like a prayer, trying to hold onto the hate.
But it wasn't enough.
Even now, knowing exactly who Vyn was, part of him still wanted to stay in those arms.
Shame settled heavily in his chest. Like he was betraying Lucian, Aris, and Ada just by letting Vyn touch him.
Steeling his heart, Elio reached up and firmly peeled Vyn away.
"Please leave, Vyn," he said, looking away. "I just want to be alone."
"Elio, no…" Vyn begged, his face tracked with tears.
He reached out frantically, his fingers trembling. "Don't throw us away like this. I can't—I don't know how to exist without you."
Elio didn't argue. He placed his hands against Vyn's chest and guided him backward, using steady, unyielding pressure to push him toward the door.
Vyn resisted, his boots scuffing against the marble as he grabbed Elio's forearms.
"Stop, please! Elio, look at me! I am going to go insane without you. Don't do this."
Elio didn't break his silence, nor did his expression soften. He simply shifted his weight, broke Vyn's hold, and delivered one final, decisive push that sent Vyn stumbling out into the hallway.
"Elio—"
The door clicked shut. The deadbolt slid into place like a gunshot.
Vyn stood motionless.
For a moment, he could do nothing but stare at the wood separating them. The reality of what had just happened settled over him with suffocating weight.
"Elio! Open the door!"
He slammed his hand against the panels, his chest heaving with ragged cries.
"Elio, please..." he gasped. "Just talk to me."
The silence on the other side was deafening.
"You can't do this," he whispered, his voice fraying at the edges. "You can't leave me like this."
He knocked again, harder this time.
The sound echoed down the empty hallway.
The distance between them felt wider than anything Vyn had ever known.
—
Elio stood before the vanity, motionless for a long moment.
When he finally reached up, his fingers trembled as they grazed the edge of the contact lens—that thin, synthetic veil hiding his mutation. With a sharp, stinging pinch, he peeled it away.
In the reflection, his left eye stared back, unmasked. Seeing it brought the memory rushing back, vivid and suffocating.
He remembered waking up and jolting upright, his breath hitching.
The air had felt different then—not the subtle, comforting traces of his own scent that usually lingered in his unit, but the heavier, lived-in warmth of the safehouse he shared with Aris and Ada.
A figure stepped from the shadows.
Aris.
His expression was unreadable, though his eyes lingered on Elio with a tethered intensity. His gaze snagged on Elio's left eye, where the familiar iris had curdled into a piercing, icy blue that had faded into an almost winter gray—a jagged shard of ice cutting through his natural color.
"How are you?" Aris asked, his voice steady. "You've been asleep for six days. Your body took a massive hit from that surge."
Elio drew a shaky breath, his chest feeling tight. "I think… I think I'm okay now."
Aris didn't respond right away. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and switched it on. The beam cut through the dim room, steady as it traced Elio's eye.
After a moment, he clicked it off and sat at the edge of the bed.
"Vitals are stable. Neurological activity finally leveled out," Aris said. "I checked your markers against my father's medical logs we recovered from Onyx, and I also contacted an expert. There's no doubt."
Elio's stomach tightened. "No doubt about what?" he asked quietly.
"You're an Enigma," he said. "The rarest secondary gender we know of. One in a million, perhaps even rarer. Your biology was never built to function like an Omega's. It was built to override."
Elio stared at his hands, his head still spinning.
"All those years… every doctor kept telling me I had a disorder because of my heat cycles. If I'm this… why did they call me a defective Omega?"
Aris held his gaze for a moment before answering.
"Because that's what everyone believed you were," Aris said.
"Secondary genders are inherited, but Enigmas don't always follow predictable patterns. The trait can remain dormant for generations before suddenly appearing. Someone in your family carried it without ever knowing."
Elio looked up slowly. "Inherited?"
"From what I know, my mother was an Omega… and my father was an Alpha."
"That doesn't rule it out," Aris said. "Either side of your family could have carried the gene without ever knowing. The trait simply surfaced in you."
He leaned back slightly before continuing.
"Enigmas are still poorly understood. They're studied, but confirmed cases are so rare that there simply isn't enough data to establish reliable medical patterns. Most physicians—including me—never encounter one in an entire career."
His voice remained calm, patient.
"So when you presented, your test results didn't fit any established Alpha, Beta, or Omega profile. Medicine interpreted them using the closest explanation it had. That's how you were diagnosed."
He met Elio's eyes.
"You weren't diagnosed incorrectly because anyone was careless. You were diagnosed based on everything medicine understood at the time. Your biology was the exception."
Elio blinked, his vision swimming. His hand rose instinctively to his face.
"And my eyes?" he whispered. "Why did they change?"
Aris watched him quietly before answering.
"Your body is shedding the artificial restraints it lived under for years to make way for its true physiology. As that transformation progresses, even your pigmentation changes. The color is leaving your iris because your body is no longer trying to be what it never was."
Elio's fingers drifted to his neck, to the mark there.
Vyn's mark.
Still burning in a way that never fully settled.
"If I'm meant to override," he asked quietly, "why did I submit to Vyn?"
Aris sighed.
"Because your body spent years believing it was something else."
Elio looked up.
"I don't understand."
"You weren't just diagnosed as an Omega," Aris said. "You lived as one. Every heat cycle, every suppressant, every medical treatment, every expectation placed on you reinforced the same biological pattern."
He rested his forearms on his knees, his voice gentler now.
"The brain is built to adapt," Aris said. "When it's exposed to the same signals long enough, it accepts them as normal. Your hormones changed. Your scent followed. Even your responses became part of that pattern."
His gaze lingered on Elio.
"And some patterns take root early. Especially after the kind of fear you lived through as a child. Your body held on to what felt familiar, even when it wasn't your true nature."
He paused.
"So when you submitted to Vyn, it wasn't instinct. It was adaptation."
Another thought surfaced.
"Then… my Alpha resistance?"
A faint smile crossed Aris's face.
"It was never an S-Class Omega trait at all. It was your Enigma biology pushing through. We just didn't recognize it for what it was."
Elio lowered his eyes.
"So what's happening now?"
"Your natural biology is taking back control," Aris said quietly. "Years of adaptation don't disappear overnight, but your Enigma physiology is becoming stronger than the conditioning your body lived under."
A long silence settled between them.
Finally, Elio asked, "Will my Omega scent disappear?"
Aris hesitated.
"I don't know."
He didn't soften the answer.
"Your system is unstable, and no Enigma has ever been documented at this stage for us to predict what comes next. If you want to control your scent again, you'll have to learn to regulate it yourself. Not suppress it… regulate it."
"How?"
"By learning how your own body works instead of fighting it."
Elio's grip tightened around the sheets.
"I need it back."
Aris nodded once. "I know. If Onyx picks up on what you are, it's over. I already had Ada erase the CCTV footage from the gala—just the window of your surge. Nothing else remains from that period."
Then his voice lowered.
"And Vyn?"
Elio's breath caught.
Aris didn't look away. "Now that you know what he is… a Mercier."
Something inside Elio cracked open.
His control broke first—sharp inhale, then a broken sound that didn't quite make it out clean. He reached for Aris without thinking, grabbing his sleeve as his body folded forward.
"I don't know," Elio choked out, the words barely making it past the knot in his throat.
He clung to Aris, his tears burning against the fabric as he struggled to breathe.
"To know that the same blood that runs through his veins is the same blood that murdered Lucian... that murdered your parents..."
His voice broke again, lower this time.
"It's killing me, Aris. How am I supposed to look at him and not remember everything we've lost?"
Aris went rigid for a moment, jaw tightening, before he exhaled slowly and pulled Elio closer—steadying him, grounding him.
"Elio…" Aris said quietly, voice low but firm. "Vyn is a Mercier, yes. But he's not his father."
Elio's eyes squeezed shut.
"I don't want to blame him," he said, the words coming out strained, as if they hurt to admit.
"I know none of this was his fault… I know that."
His breath shook as it left him, but it didn't settle.
"But knowing it doesn't make it hurt any less."
The room went quiet after that. Aris didn't say anything else. Neither did Elio. It just stayed like that for a while—heavy, uncomfortable, like something neither of them could fix but also couldn't ignore.
After that, time didn't really feel clear anymore.
Within that month, Elio had been living in a constant war with himself. Every quiet moment drifted back to Vyn—his presence, his touch, his kisses, memories that refused to fade.
It came in waves.
Some nights he barely slept. He'd lie awake for hours, the ache in his chest refusing to quiet, missing Vyn so fiercely it made him hate himself.
And hate Vyn too—not for who he was, but for how deeply he still lingered.
The afternoon heat in the backyard was heavy, but the air around Elio felt different—cool, sharp, faintly smelling of mint and lilies. He sat on the grass with his eyes closed, carefully pushing down the restless pull of his Enigma pheromones until only the mask remained in place.
He didn't notice Ada until her heels clicked on the wooden deck. She stopped a few steps away.
She didn't speak at first, just watched him, then turned to Aris, who was outside near the steps, still checking something on his laptop.
"How is he?" Ada asked quietly.
Aris glanced at Elio before looking back down. "He's recovering well. Pheromone is stable. The masking is holding."
Elio opened his eyes and stood, brushing dirt from his jeans. His hand moved on instinct to his neck, fingers brushing the mark there.
A constant reminder of him.
He walked over, steady on the surface even if his thoughts weren't.
Ada's eyes flicked to his neck, but she didn't comment.
"I heard from Pete," she said instead. "One of the high-tiers didn't make it through the final phase. He's in the ICU. Still unconscious."
Elio's jaw tightened. "Do you think they're close?"
Ada let out a quiet breath. "I don't know. Onyx has been trying to perfect that drug for decades."
Frustration slipped into her voice. "Everything connected to it is classified. Their system is locked down so tightly we can barely get anything out of it. We still don't know if they actually have a working version."
Elio stared out toward the horizon for a moment.
"I need to return soon," he said. "Upload my data again, Ada. That's the only way we get close enough to see what they're doing."
Aris exhaled slowly, rubbing his temple. "It's dangerous," he said quietly. "But we don't have another way."
Before Elio could answer, Aris's phone buzzed on the railing. He checked it and sighed.
"It's Auntie."
He answered and kept the call short, then looked at them. "Ada's here too."
Ada leaned in first. "Hi Auntie, I miss you and your cooking!"
Celeste's voice came through warm but worried. "Tell Ada to come home… and can I talk to Elio?"
Aris handed the phone to Elio, then went inside the house.
"Hello, Auntie," Elio said.
"Elio, dear," Celeste said softly. "Are you really recovering well?"
"Yes, Auntie," he said. "I'm doing much better than before."
"That's good," she said. "Just don't push yourself too hard, okay?"
"I won't," Elio replied. "I'm being careful."
When the call ended, he placed the phone inside his pocket.
Ada watched him for a moment, then asked quietly, "Are you ready to face Vyn?"
She already knew. He had told her before.
Elio took a slow breath.
Vyn.
Even the name felt heavy.
"Yes," he said. "I'm ready."
Ada didn't say anything. She just stepped forward and pulled him into a tight hug—no words, just steady pressure, like she was making sure he didn't fall apart alone.
The memory refused to end there.
Even now, standing beneath the shower, it clung to him.
He stood beneath the spray with his head lowered, letting the hot water run over him as though it could wash away something deeper than skin.
Vyn's scent still clung to him.
Not just the scent.
The memory.
The weight of hands at his waist. The press of lips against his throat. The way his body had reacted before his mind could stop it.
Elio squeezed his eyes shut.
His hand went to his chest instinctively, pressing hard against the ache there. The tightness hit so suddenly it stole the air from his lungs. He tried to breathe, but it felt like something was wrapped around his ribs, squeezing tighter and tighter.
His other hand braced against the wall.
The hot water ran down his face, but it did nothing to ease the pressure building inside him.
A broken sound escaped his throat.
He bowed forward until his forehead rested against the cold tile, one hand still clutching his chest as his breathing turned uneven. His lungs burned. Every breath felt too shallow.
For a moment, he stopped fighting it.
He let himself miss him.
The tears came before he realized it. They disappeared beneath the water as quickly as they fell.
He thought of Vyn's arms around him. Vyn's voice. The warmth he had tried so hard to forget, only to find it still lingering.
The ache remained, but eventually it loosened enough for him to breathe again.
His grip on his chest eased.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
He stayed under the water for a little longer, not because he was falling apart anymore, but because he wanted to make sure there was nothing left to hold onto.
When he finally turned the shower off, the sudden silence felt heavier than the water had been.
Elio stood there for a moment, unmoving.
Then he wiped his face once, roughly, and stepped out.
That was the last time he allowed himself to mourn Vyn.