His mind, usually so sharp and stubborn, disconnected completely from his will. He still remembered the horror of being sixteen and realizing he had no firewall. An alpha staff member had once told him to stay in a hallway, and Liam had stood there for six hours.

He hadn’t moved, eaten, or even blinked until that person came back and told him he could go.

He completely lost the ability to say no.

In that state, Liam was nothing more than a tool waiting for instructions. If an alpha told him to kneel, his knees would hit the floor before he could even process the insult. If they told him to give up his secrets, his machines, or his body, he would hand them over with a hollow, eager-to-please smile.

Anything.

No matter how sexual, cruel, humiliating, or immoral, he would do it without a second thought, because the part of him that could resist simply died.

That was why he had spent his life building fortresses.

He knew exactly what would happen if Felix ever found out that Liam could be turned into a puppet with a single command. His grandfather would not hesitate. Liam would have been sold to the highest bidder years ago, turned into a state-sanctioned slave who built empires by day and served as a decorative plaything by night, unable to fight back, unable to refuse, unable even to hate the hands holding his leash until the heat passed and left him conscious enough to understand what had been done.

Liam could only think of leaving faster.

’Leave already!’ That was the only word his mind could hold.

He needed Ravenwood Manor. His suppressants. His locked room. His mother’s security system. Mirelle’s terrifying calm. Walls that did not smell faintly of Arik. Corridors where the air did not carry the restrained warmth of a dominant alpha who had looked at him like he had already decided Liam was his.

His fingers closed around his comm again, too tight, the edge biting into his palm.

’Leave.’

’Now.’

He opened the bathroom door.

Arik was standing just outside the door with one hand raised, caught mid-motion, as if he had been about to knock.

That should have been harmless.

It was not.

Because Arik was nearly seven feet tall.

Liam knew that, technically. He had eyes. He had stood beside him before. He had insulted him before. He had looked up at him with full awareness and continued to believe that the proper response to imperial height was usually open defiance and, when necessary, bread-based assault.

But his mind had never processed it like this.

Liam was not small. He was six feet tall on a good day, with excellent posture, expensive bones, and a personality sharp enough to make most people forget measurements entirely. He had spent his entire life refusing to feel small in rooms designed to crush him. Felix had tried. Cain had tried. George’s court had tried. Liam’s usual response to being physically or politically outweighed was to become so viciously inconvenient that size stopped mattering.

But now his body noticed.

Arik filled the doorway without trying.

His shoulders were broad beneath the rolled sleeves of his shirt. His raised hand was large enough that Liam’s mind, treacherous and terrified, measured how easily those fingers could close around his neck. His shadow fell over the pale bathroom tiles and across Liam’s bare hands on the doorframe.

Liam’s nerves, already torn open by the calendar and the memory of heats that had turned him into something obedient, translated his presence into a wall.

His breath caught, his fingers trembled against the doorframe.

He hated that he could see it. Hated that the fine, visible shake in his hand made him look exactly like what he was in that moment: not composed, not difficult, not untouchable, but afraid.

Arik’s gold eyes lowered to his face.

"Liam?" He asked, worried about how the usual spiky omega looked scared.

And Liam broke.

"My heat is close," he snapped. "I need to leave. NOW!"

The words struck the corridor so harshly that even Liam seemed to hear them a second too late.

Arik’s raised hand lowered slowly, as if he did not want to startle him.

’My heat is close. I need to leave. Now.’ The words were circling through his mind.

The truth stood between them, naked and hideous, and Liam’s body reacted as if he had just handed Arik the knife Felix had spent years looking for.

His trembling worsened.

It started in his fingers, then spread up his arms in fine, vicious tremors he could not suppress. His breathing was too fast and shallow, and each breath scraped uselessly against his ribs. The corridor narrowed around him. The pale bathroom tiles, Arik’s dark trousers, the gold of his eyes, and the clean line of his rolled sleeves—all of it became too sharp and too close.

Liam’s hand slipped once against the doorframe.

He caught himself badly, his shoulder jolting.

"Fuck," he gasped, but even the curse sounded thin.

Arik’s mischief and menace were gone.

All of that bright, unbearable imperial arrogance vanished so completely that Liam almost failed to recognize the man left behind. Arik was still big, scary, and more alpha than the hallway should have been able to hold, but something inside him calmed down. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Liam," he said, very softly. "Look at me."

Liam did, and his mind was circling again the same words again and again.

"No," Liam whispered, though he did not know what he was refusing.

Arik lifted one hand a fraction.

Liam flinched.

Arik stopped instantly.

"I am going to come closer," Arik said, his voice low and even. "Slowly. You can tell me no."

Liam’s throat worked.

He should say no. He needed to say no.

He needed to leave, get to Ravenwood, get to his suppressants, and get behind locks and wards and Enia’s fury before his body moved farther into that terrible softening place where ’no’ became a word with no mechanism behind it.

But his chest was tightening. His breath was tearing apart. His legs felt wrong beneath him. Panic had taken the machine of his mind and filled the gears with broken glass.

Arik took one step.