"Open it," Neville said.

Grayson looked at the box for a second before reaching out and lifting the lid.

The pearls caught the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Against the black velvet, they practically glowed; each one was like a tiny captured moon. The iridescent threading between them throws faint prismatic sparks on Grayson’s fingers.

Grayson didn’t have much change on his expression aside from the wide eyes as he looked at this pearl bracelet in silence.

"This is too much," he said quietly.

Neville smiled and lightly said, "It’s not much at all."

"Neville," Grayson said aloud with a slightly reprimanding tone. "If you’re giving me this because of the things I bought for you, you don’t have to."

Neville had already expected that Grayson would say something along these lines. He leaned one hip against the edge of the desk and shrugged. "You took my gem and turned it into a necklace. I figured we should have something that matches. So, I had this made for you."

Matching items meant a couple of items. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Even if Grayson was new to this romance thing, at the very least, he should still be familiar with this stuff intuitively.

Grayson’s eyes widened, and he looked down at the bracelet, then back at Neville. For a moment, Grayson looked like he had been handed something he didn’t quite know what to do with.

"The gem was originally yours," Grayson said, feeling slightly defeated. "It doesn’t count as my gift. You’re just—"

"Don’t worry about that." Neville cut him off gently. "As long as we match. That’s all that matters."

Then, Neville heard Grayson exhale through his nose and conceded defeat.

"How do I put it on?" Grayson asked.

Neville blinked.

He had expected more resistance, but Neville found Grayson already holding the bracelet up. He turned it around into the light, his brow furrowed as he searched for a clasp or mechanism.

Then, Neville recalled that everything he saw in this era was either magnetically sealed or just automatically open and locked. The concept of a simple toggle-and-loop closure was not used for a long time.

"Here," Neville said as he rounded the desk.

He took the bracelet from Grayson’s fingers and unhooked the small, deceptively simple clasp that Shelly had designed to look like a knot of thread. He reached out for Grayson’s wrist and flipped it over. He could feel Grayson’s pulse beating fast under his fingertips.

Neville wrapped the pearls around once, positioned the clasp, and pressed it shut with a faint click.

The bracelet contracted imperceptibly, settling against Grayson’s skin, adjusting its size to fit without anyone noticing. The iridescent thread dimmed to near-invisibility as the pearls pressed flush against his wrist bone.

It nestled perfectly beneath the cuff of Grayson’s sleeve.

"It’s waterproof," Neville said, straightening up and stepping back to a professional distance. "You can forget it’s there."

"I like it," Grayson said as he turned his wrist.

He watched as the pearls caught the light one last time before his sleeve fell back into place. His expression softened as he looked at it.

"Thank you."

Neville smiled, nodded as he looked at it, and said in a joking tone. "As long as you wear it all the time."

"As long as you wore yours," Grayson said with one eyebrow raised.

Neville smiled cheekily and showed his own black pearl necklace hidden under his tie.

Grayson looked at it and nodded.

"I already sent you the things to sign today," Neville said before he went back to his workstation.

"I got it," Grayson said lastly as he went back to his work rhythm.

Neville walked back to his desk, trying not to look like someone who was internally celebrating.

Quest item: delivered.

Bracelet: locked on.

Target: wearing the thing without suspecting.

Easy.

Little did he know that nothing was ever easy in this life.

Beneath the crisp white cuff of Grayson’s sleeve, one of the pearls had already begun to change. Like milk slowly absorbing a drop of tea, one of the pearl’s luminous surfaces dulled a little. Its pristine white dimmed a little and gradually became muddier in color.

✦ ✦ ✦

The woman stood wearing a form-fitting black tactical suit in that red half-light. One hand was lowered as she hung up the call from Grayson.

Helena exhaled slowly through her nose.

Grayson would bring the little omega. Good.

Her gaze dropped to the floor, and another woman was lying on her feet like a broken marionette whose strings had been cut mid-performance.

Her once-pristine white dress was now ruined. Blood had seeped into the fabric from her nose, painting abstract streaks of crimson across the bodice. The skirt was gray-brown with grime from the concrete, torn at the hem where she had been dragged.

Her knees were in the worst condition of all. There were raw flesh and pulped things that glistened wetly in the emergency lighting. The skin was shredded down to something that barely looked human anymore, and a little white from the bone was already peering out.

Helena crouched down on one knee, the movement fluid and unhurried, like a predator settling beside its kill to inspect the quality of the meat.

This was the state Lilianna was in right now.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered like a devil.

Lilianna’s eyes were glassy, unfocused, swimming with pain as it tried to follow the direction of the sound.

A low moan escaped her cracked lips. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days and had been screaming for longer.

Helena tilted her head, stared at Lilianna’s face, emotionless.

It wasn’t the military green eyes that everyone who knew her knew.

But rather a blood-red iris split by vertical slits that caught the dim light.

"Grayson Maxwell," ’Helena’ continued, her voice soft and sweet and utterly devoid of warmth, "is going to bring his little lover to the gathering. Isn’t that nice?"

Her whole body jerked as ’Helena’ uttered Grayson’s name. It cut through the fog in Lilianna’s brain. Her clouded amber eyes were like those of a drowning woman desperately reaching for the rope, hope, and salvation.

Lilianna subconsciously reached out.

Her hand shot forward like a newborn animal. Her fingers splayed and trembled as she grasped for ’Helena’’s arm.

’Helena’ simply leaned back just enough to avoid it.

Lilianna’s hand slammed into the concrete floor with a wet, meaty sound. Her fingernails scraped against the surface as her momentum carried her forward. Two of the fingernails simply peeled away from the nail bed.

Lilianna didn’t even scream in pain. A thin, airless wheeze escaped her throat, and her fingers twitched uselessly against the ground, leaving dark smears in their wake.

’Helena’ watched this with the same expression, but there was a hint of morbid appreciation.

Lilianna tried to stand up, but her knees buckled before she could lift herself more than a centimeter off the ground.

The damage there was too severe and the tendons too compromised, making her collapse back down with a muffled cry.

But she didn’t stop there. Whatever remnant of pride or personality that still functioned inside her wrecked body had latched onto Grayson’s name, and she began to crawl.

Her elbows dragged against the floor. Her ruined fingertips left trails of blood like some grotesque calligraphy.

Each movement was agonizing, making her catch her breath. Her arms were trembling, and her jaw clenched so hard the muscles in her neck stood out.

Still, she crawled toward ’Helena’.

’Helena’ straightened up and looked down at her with a cold glint. "Do you want to see Grayson again?"

Lilianna’s head lifted. Her eyes were stripped of everything else until it was the only thing left, and she nodded eagerly.

But Lilianna, who already lost her mind, didn’t have another piece of her mind to see what really was behind ’Helena’. There was nothing else but the image of her friend’s face, clothes, and stature.

There were eleven bodies lying just in front of the door of the basement room where Lilianna was. They lay in various places—slumped against walls, crumpled over desks, sprawled across the floor, dead.

The blood had pooled and merged between them, creating a single dark mirror that reflected the red emergency lights back at the ceiling.

It made the whole scene look like it existed twice: once in reality and once in hell.

’Helena’ reached into the thigh pocket of her suit and took out a syringe. Standard military issue, the kind medics carried for field injections. It was sleek with silver housing and an auto-dosing mechanism. The transparent reservoir showed its contents clearly.

The liquid inside was colorless. Clear as water. Perfectly innocuous-looking.

"Then do me a favor," ’Helena’ said, holding the syringe out at arm’s length, just close enough for Lilianna to reach. "Inject this into your secondary gland. Only by doing that can I take you away from here."

Lilianna’s gaze couldn’t focus properly.

The syringe was a silver blur in her peripheral vision, and the clear liquid inside just a shimmer of light.

She couldn’t read the markings, nor could she assess the contents. She couldn’t do anything except understand that ’Helena’ was offering her something and attaching a condition to it.

The condition was the one and only doorway that led to Grayson.