The Vanguard shifted beneath them, its immense body turning inside the chasm with a low, reverent roar. Red ether flashed through the intake, violent and raw, then broke into blue along the outer ring before refining into white. The interference field rose again, this time curling around Noah with less precision than it had around Mezos, as if the machine had immediately recognized a more unruly patient.

Noah inhaled and his shoulders loosened at once.

"Oh," he said.

Liam narrowed his eyes. "Do not make it weird."

"I’m trying not to."

"You are failing visibly."

Noah tipped his head back despite himself, laughter catching low in his throat as the ether sank through his skin. The owl brooch at his chest flashed a sharp red, then stuttered, confused by the Vanguard’s rhythm. For a moment, the restriction tried to clamp down on his channels.

The turbine answered. The bridge trembled. The brooch dimmed.

Noah’s grin went bright and almost feral. "Gods, that is good."

Rex looked pained. "Is everyone from Agaron going to make that face?"

Mezos adjusted his cuff, still faintly brighter around the eyes. "Possibly."

"I hate this room."

Liam watched the readings, lips pressed together. "Your intake is uneven."

Noah opened one eye. "That sounds personal."

"It is technical." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"Can it be both?"

"No."

Mezos said, "Reduce the pull from your left channel."

Noah’s grin faded into concentration. The ether field steadied, blue-white strands thinning into a cleaner flow. He absorbed more slowly this time, and the brooch barely reacted.

Liam’s expression sharpened despite himself. "Better."

Noah smiled again, his expression almost divine as his blond hair was floating with ether. "Praise?"

"Observation."

"I accept it as praise."

"You would."

Behind them, Arik moved.

He closed the distance with such quiet naturalness that Liam noticed only when the warmth of him reached the side of his body. The scent was fainter now, restrained, but not absent. Cedar. Sun-warmed stone. That cursed thread of caramel his biology had apparently decided deserved a parliamentary hearing.

Liam did not look at him. He didn’t trust his body not to fold for the alpha. "If you are about to touch me again, I will throw this console into the chasm."

Arik’s voice was calm beside him. "That would damage your turbine."

"I will throw you, then."

"You would need assistance."

"I have an uncle."

Rex said, without looking away from Noah, "Do not involve me in flirtatious violence."

"It is not flirtation," Liam snapped, red eyes burning with indignation.

Arik’s mouth curved faintly. "No?"

Liam finally looked at him, which was a mistake. Arik was too close, gold eyes catching the white ether light, expression composed in a way that made everything he did feel deliberate even when he was only breathing.

’Gods, he is handsome like a devil.’

"What?" Liam demanded.

Arik glanced toward the far lead door, where the old seal pulsed faintly with gold beneath the darkness. "Do you know what the gate was meant to be?"

"No," Liam said. "I found partial schematics, not answers. Felix stored them in a locked archive behind three layers of family paranoia and one very insulting cipher. The language was old, and the signature was the only thing I could read."

"Goliath."

"Yes." Liam studied him. "Do you know who that is?"

Arik’s smile changed into something soft that made Liam’s heart skip a beat.

"A forgotten emperor of Agaron," he said. "Before Agaron was Agaron."

Liam frowned.

"The empire was called Nuria then," Arik continued. "Before it fractured. Before names were rewritten by heirs who preferred inheritance without ghosts."

Liam stared at him for a moment, then exhaled through his nose. "That explains absolutely nothing and makes me regret being terrible with history."

"You admit that?"

"I admit many things when they are irrelevant."

"They are rarely irrelevant."

"You would say that. You look like someone who has opinions about dead emperors."

Arik’s eyes remained on him. "You still have not forgiven me."

Liam’s jaw tightened.

For one second, the turbine, the chasm, the golden seal, and Noah making an indecently pleased face in the test zone all became less important than the memory of Arik’s hand at the back of his neck and the humiliating relief of being anchored against his throat.

"No," Liam said. "I have not forgotten that you used your pheromones on me."

"I did not ask for forgiveness."

The answer was so calm that Liam’s irritation stumbled over it.

Arik’s gaze lowered briefly to Liam’s mouth, then returned to his eyes. "I acted because you were unstable. You were right to be angry. Both things can be true."

Liam hated that. He hated it intensely.

"You are very good at making yourself difficult to argue with."

"I have practice."

"With being impossible?"

"With dominant omegas with temperaments," Arik said calmly.

"Ah. Your consorts," Liam said, turning back to the main panel with the clean cruelty of a man reaching for the nearest blade.

Arik laughed.

The sound was low, brief, and unexpectedly warm. It slipped beneath the turbine’s deep thrum and reached Liam anyway, which was offensive on several structural levels.

"No," Arik said. "My brother."

Liam’s fingers paused above the controls despite himself.

"That was a sibling insult?"

"An experienced one."

"You have a dominant omega brother?"

"Yes. Cecil."

Liam glanced at him despite the fact that he had made several personal vows not to do that again. "And he has a temperament?"

"He is Gabriel and Damian’s second son," Arik said. "Temperament was inevitable."

Noah, still recovering from the yellow mark, made a small sound of agreement. "That is a generous way to describe it."

Mezos adjusted his cuff. "Diplomatic, even."

Liam looked between them, unimpressed. "So your qualifications are family exposure."

"Four siblings," Arik said. "One dominant omega brother. Years of survival."

"That is endurance training."

Arik’s mouth curved. "With occasional diplomacy."

"Family is not diplomacy."

"In imperial families, it often is."

Liam stared at him for half a second, then turned back to the panel. "That explains too much about you."

"You don’t know me," Arik said simply.

He was not offended. It was only a statement of fact. They had known each other for less than three hours, and approximately half of that time had been spent with Liam either arguing, almost vomiting from displacement, or discovering new and inventive reasons to resent the Crown Prince of Agaron.

Arik crossed the remaining distance and stepped onto the marked area.

Liam watched him for one beat too long, then looked down and pressed the sequence into the panel.

The Vanguard answered at once.

But not the way it had for Mezos or Noah.

The ether rose around Arik in a thin, luminous veil, and Liam’s hands stopped moving.

It looked wrong.

No... that was not accurate.

It looked intimate.

The blue-white interference did not gather around Arik like a resource being drawn. It moved toward him with the eager, almost desperate grace of something starved that had suddenly recognized the shape of its own home. Filaments of ether lifted from the bridge, from the turbine’s spillfield, and from the very air above the chasm, converging on him not as force but as devotion. They touched the edges of his coat, his throat, and his hands and then turned gold.

Liam’s breath caught.

The rumors.