Liam stopped. Slowly, dangerously, he looked over his shoulder. "Remove your hand before I redesign it."

Liam pressed the call button again, but instead of the usual mechanical rumble, the lift arrived with a sharp, impatient chime. The doors slid open, revealing an interior that was never designed for the sheer mass of four Alphas and one very irritated engineer.

"Four," Rex noted, eyeing the brass occupancy plate. "The limit is four."

"And yet," Noah said, stepping in anyway and wedging himself into the back corner next to Mezos, "here we are, five people with a shared destiny and a very tight schedule. Mezos, move your elbow."

"Liam," Rex said, sounding like he was reciting a prayer for patience, "get in. I’ll operate the manual override so the weight sensor doesn’t trigger the lockdown."

Liam looked at the space. Or rather, the lack of it. Mezos and Noah had already claimed the rear, and Rex was moving toward the control panel. That left a narrow, vertical sliver of space against the left glass wall.

Directly in front of Arik.

"I can wait for the second trip," Liam said, his voice a pitch higher than he intended.

"You said we were late for lunch," Arik reminded him. His voice was a low, resonant vibration that seemed to bounce off the small cabin walls before reaching Liam’s ears. "And you said I shouldn’t be left unsupervised. Step in, Lord Canmore."

Liam exhaled a breath that was mostly a curse and stepped in.

The doors hissed shut, enclosing them in a cramped space that felt like being trapped inside a pressurized pipe. Rex was hunched over the panel, his back to them, as he worked the ancient lift into action. Mezos and Noah were a wall of dark uniforms behind them.

And Liam was pinned.

Liam was pinned.

His left shoulder brushed the cold glass wall. His right side had nowhere to go because Rex was braced at the control panel, muttering something viciously technical at the manual override. Behind him, Noah and Mezos had somehow become an entire architectural feature. And in front of him stood Arik.

Not touching.

That was the unbearable part.

Arik was close enough that Liam could feel the heat of him through the narrow strip of air between their bodies, close enough that the faint remnant of cedar, sun-warmed stone, and that cursed caramel note threaded under Liam’s skin before he could stop it. But Arik had one hand braced against the glass above Liam’s shoulder and the other held carefully at his side, leaving exactly enough room to prove he was trying.

Liam hated that too.

"Move," Liam said.

Arik looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. "Where?"

"Into a different moral category."

Noah made a strangled sound behind them.

"Do not laugh," Liam snapped.

"I wasn’t," Noah said.

"You were preparing."

"With great restraint."

Rex hit a sequence on the panel. The lift groaned, considered giving up on civilization, and then began to rise.

The sudden motion shifted everyone by half an inch.

Unfortunately, half an inch was all the universe needed.

Liam’s chest brushed Arik’s coat.

He went still.

Arik went still too.

Then, very quietly, Arik said, "The lift moved."

"I noticed."

"It was not me."

"I am adding the lift to the list."

"The list?"

"Things I intend to dismantle."

Mezos said, "It may be structurally useful to keep it intact."

"I will dismantle it emotionally."

Rex did not turn around. "Could you all stop threatening the elevator while I am convincing it not to kill us?"

Liam glared at the back of his head. "You caused this."

"I prevented you from committing displacement suicide twice in one day."

"I would have been elegant about it."

"You would have vomited on the transfer mark."

Noah whispered, "This family is magnificent."

Liam’s gaze cut toward him. "You are very close to being invited to lunch."

Noah’s delight dimmed. "Right. Silence."

As they passed the halfway point, the lift groaned again, sending a deep, metallic shudder up the floor cables. Level seven. Eight levels of high-tension engineering still stood between them and the relative safety of the main lab.

The floor beneath their boots tilted by a fraction of a degree, not enough to snap a cable, but enough for the lift’s safety sensors to panic. The cabin jerked, a sharp, stuttering correction that sent a jolt through the glass walls.

Liam’s heels left the floor for a terrifying millisecond.

He didn’t hit the control panel. He didn’t hit the glass. Instead, the hand Arik had braced against the wall snapped down, releasing the glass and wrapping firmly around Liam’s waist.

Arik hauled Liam flush against him, closing the final, polite inch of space Liam had been fighting to maintain. Liam’s back hit Arik’s chest with a soft thud, the black wool of the prince’s coat feeling like a furnace against his.

"Remove your hand," Liam hissed, though his fingers had instinctively clutched at Arik’s forearms to keep from sliding.

"The lift is unstable," Arik said, his voice a low, rhythmic rumble that Liam felt directly against his spine. He didn’t move his hand. If anything, his fingers splayed wider across Liam’s side, anchoring him. "Unless you’ve redesigned gravity as well as the civilian grid, you will stay put."

"I can stand on my own!"

"You were currently four inches in the air," Arik noted calmly.

The lift jerked again, a series of rapid, staccato vibrations as it fought the combined weight of four Alphas and the sheer stubbornness of Liam’s presence.

"Rex!" Liam yelled at the back of his cousin’s head. "The lift is... the lift is malfunctioning!"

"The lift is fine," Rex grunted. "The weight limit is a physical law, Liam, not a suggestion. It’s trying to compensate for the fact that I’m currently lying to its central processor."

"It’s trying to compensate for the fact that Agaron Alphas weigh as much as small moons!" Liam countered, then it hit him. "Rex... for the love of god, use ether..."

Rex froze.

Very slowly, he turned his head enough for Liam to see the side of his face. "Excuse me?"

"Use ether," Liam snapped.

"In the lift?"

"No, Rex, in your emotional development. Yes, in the lift."

Rex stared at him.

The cabin jerked again.

Noah’s shoulder hit Mezos’s. Mezos, with the patience of a saint and the grip of a professional murderer, caught the side rail before Noah could become a diplomatic incident.

"Rex," Mezos said calmly, "perhaps listen to him."

"I am listening," Rex bit out. "I am processing why Liam Canmore would ask that when we have the brooches."

"You do not have one! The lift has an old counterweight stabilizer," Liam said quickly. "Manual override bypasses the weight sensor, but it doesn’t correct the angle. You need to feed the upper brake ring just enough to balance the cabin."

Rex’s expression changed, but not to comprehension but to humiliation.

Liam stared at him. "You forgot."

"I was reading the panel."

"You forgot you could use ether."

"I was operating the manual override."

"You forgot."

Rex turned back to the controls with the dignity of a man whose personal failure had been witnessed by three foreigners and one cousin who would absolutely never let it die.

"I did not forget."

"You absolutely forgot."

Before Liam could say anything else, Arik tightened his grip on the omega’s waist, and Rex got the machine to work, bringing everyone to safety.

Liam’s face was bright red, but the makeup and treatments for the bruises let by Felix hid it.

Well, not from Arik.