Ethan shook his head, still chuckling,

"If it makes you feel any better, let me tell you something."

His eyes narrowed, glinting coldly against the moonlight.

"I’ve killed people with better toys than whatever shiny new tech mecha the Military has."

The morbid confession made Xavier’s blood boil.

He gathered every shred of strength his body possessed to use the sacred golden energy of his golden tiger’s semi-transformation to fight back against the invisible suppression.

He began to glow as sacred patterns bore all around his body. But for some reason, this invisible force just wouldn’t budge, and he found this fact baffling.

If it were Grayson, then he would’ve understood it. But... Xavier glanced at Ethan, who was even yawning in boredom as he watched Xavier struggle. Who is this guy? 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Without mulling too much on his thoughts, Xavier decided to change tactics and let his right arm jerk upward. His hand found the concealed compartment strapped to his inner wrist.

His fingers closed around the mini-bomb.

It was a last-resort device, in case something unexpected like this happened. It was a shaped charge and small enough to fit in a closed fist.

It was powerful enough to sever the hand that held it and shred everything within a three-meter radius.

The blast couldn’t possibly kill Ethan in one go, unless he was stupid. But it would disrupt whatever he was using to maintain this invisible force.

A shattered hand was a fair trade for freedom.

Xavier’s thumb found the trigger.

Ethan’s head snapped as his peripheral view caught an unusual movement. His expression changed from lazy amusement to something cold.

His hand shot out fast enough to rip the mini-bomb out of Xavier’s grip.

It volleyed into the darkness between the trees.

Three seconds later, the detonation lit up the forest canopy in a sphere of white-blue light.

The shockwave rattled the branches overhead and sent a flock of emerging Lowborns shrieking to their deaths.

Ethan pressed his boot down on Xavier’s back. Not hard enough to break his spine, but enough to grind Xavier’s face fully into the dirt, humiliating him further.

"Do you seriously think," Ethan said, completely devoid of warmth, "that you could escape from me with those little trinkets?"

He pressed harder, and Xavier heard his bones creaking, on the verge of breaking.

Then, quieter, almost to himself, Ethan said: "Whose genes did you even inherit, those idiotic tendencies from?"

Xavier went still beneath the boot, not because he was thinking of what Ethan had just said, but because of another realization.

The suppression field, the display of strength—there was no way a mere beta could’ve done all that.

"You’re an alpha," Xavier said.

Ethan’s foot paused.

"A scentless one."

Then, with these pieces of information, he began to form a conclusion.

"A scentless, extremely dominant alpha."

Xavier turned his head just enough to look up at Ethan from the corner of one bloodied eye.

"That’s it, isn’t it? That’s how you’re doing all this."

He continued to say his conclusion, almost nodding to himself.

"That’s how you’re able to pin me, a dominant alpha, down like this even after the fact that I already semi-transformed."

Xavier began to list down the anomalies he found.

"That raw spiritual pressure, with condensed and weaponized inherent traits of pheromones, albeit scentless."

He looked back at Ethan.

"No beta could have such a suppression field this strong with raw spiritual power without the help of pheromones. At least, not for this long."

Xavier studied Ethan’s expression, looking for something even he, himself, probably didn’t know.

"You’ve really hidden it well all this time, hiding in plain sight the entire time."

Then, he realized something and rapidly iterated his thoughts.

"Is being scentless the real reason you know a lot of things pheromone-related?"

Ethan began to look back at Xavier with interest.

"Is that it? Seriously?"

Xavier was even more baffled as his mind continued to put the pieces together.

"You’re surely smarter than me, so you probably already know why I’m acting like this."

He asked in confusion.

"But why are you doing this? If you want to research pheromones, there are legal ways to do it! Not only could zergs give you the answers, but we, in the Imperial Star, could also surely do it too! Even faster if you helped us!"

Ethan stared at him for a long moment. Then, his smile returned, but now it was sharper and colder than before.

"Smart,"

He said softly as he stepped off Xavier’s back.

"You’re actually smart to reach this conclusion."

He circled around to face him, unhurriedly.

"I always thought the Hunter family was all brawn and no brains, but here you are, working it out while eating dirt."

Ethan crouched again, resting his chin on his palm.

"I’m really impressed." He said, which sounded like he was complimenting his dog.

Xavier looked at Ethan and concluded that this man was just unhinged and couldn’t be reasoned with.

So, as he spat blood and soil from his mouth, he asked, "What are you waiting for? Just kill me."

If Ethan was really planning to kill him, the quicker it was, the better he could save his dignity.

Ethan sighed exaggeratedly, as though Xavier had asked him something incredibly annoying.

"I wanted to do that, too."

He admitted, turning one of the daggers idly in his fingers.

"Believe me, I do. You’re troublesome, you know."

Ethan began to rant while sighing at the end of his sentence.

"You’ve been troublesome since the day you started sniffing around the Maxwell business. And you got infinitely more troublesome once you let that bulldog, Helena, take over your investigation."

He paused and looked back at Xavier.

"But I can’t."

Xavier’s brow furrowed despite the dirt caked across it.

"What?"

"I can’t kill you."

Ethan sounded almost offended, disgusted by his own words.

"Your death was not in the plan. Even more so, it was specifically said that you are to stay alive. Actually, you being alive was the main thing."

Xavier processed this and couldn’t help but wonder why they needed him alive.

What was it that they needed from him?

More like, what was the person who could order what Ethan wanted from him?