Felix vanished the second he was free.

There was a sharp hiss of displaced air, the activation of a high-grade emergency transport ward embedded directly into the floorboards, and the ninety-three-year-old monster was simply gone.

Arik did not even glance at the empty space.

He did not care about Felix.

He did not care about the manor, the trap, or the vengeance that had burned in his veins for two centuries. In that fraction of a second, the entire universe violently contracted until it was no wider than Liam’s shoulders.

Arik pulled Liam into his arms.

His hands, which only seconds before had been absolute, bone-shattering weapons, turned terrifyingly careful. One cupped Liam’s jaw. The other pressed firmly at his back, holding him upright as Liam’s knees betrayed him for one brief, humiliating second. Arik’s thumb caught the hot drop of blood slipping past Liam’s lip, and the golden fire in his eyes changed.

It was no longer the arrogant fury of an emperor.

It was chaotic.

Desperate.

Entirely terrified.

The poison in the room was beginning to thicken, a cloying, sweet rot Felix had left behind like a closing snare. It crawled through the air in fine, invisible threads, slipping toward Liam’s lungs and burning along his ether channels with a sharpness that made the edges of the room blur.

"Liam, look at me," Arik commanded.

His voice was a low, vibrating rumble that bypassed Liam’s ears and struck directly at his bones.

Liam’s vision tilted. The massive portrait of Goliath blurred into the dark walls, gold eyes and old shadows melting together. His chest tightened until breathing became a calculation his body no longer knew how to solve.

"Arik..."

"Do not speak."

Arik’s arms locked around him, forming a solid, unbreakable shield against the collapsing room.

Then the air exploded with Arik’s pheromones.

It was not the polite, restrained pressure he used in public nor the measured dominance he kept leashed beneath imperial manners and cold self-control. It was an absolute flood of burnt ozone, dark caramel, and scorching heat, rolling through the suite with such violent force that the sickening sweetness of Felix’s poison recoiled from it.

The glass cases rattled.

The torn glove on the carpet froze at the edges.

The abandoned cane rolled half an inch across the floor and stopped.

"Take a deep breath," Arik ordered.

Liam’s lungs seized harder.

His body screamed at him to stop breathing entirely, to shut the venom out before it could reach his heart. He instinctively tried to hold his breath, his fingers gripping the lapels of Arik’s shirt hard enough to wrinkle the fine fabric.

"Liam," Arik said.

This time, his voice cracked.

"Breathe me in. Only me. Do it now."

Liam looked up into those blinding golden eyes.

For anyone else, he would have suffocated before obeying. He would have locked his jaw, fought the order, and passed out with spite intact before giving even the appearance of submission.

But this was Arik.

Arik, whose hands were shaking with restraint.

Arik, who had let Felix vanish because Liam had started bleeding.

Liam parted his lips and dragged a ragged, desperate breath deep into his lungs.

He inhaled the heavy, scorching scent of his alpha.

It burned like swallowing pure fire, but the moment it flooded his body, the agonizing paralysis in his chest loosened. Arik’s pheromones wrapped around the fraying edges of his ether channels, brutal and possessive and frighteningly precise, acting less like a temporary tourniquet around something Felix had tried to tear open.

Liam’s head fell briefly against Arik’s shoulder.

Arik’s hold tightened.

"Again."

Liam’s eyes watered as the second breath came easier.

Arik lowered his mouth to Liam’s hair, his voice rough against the loose strands Andreas had insisted on leaving down.

"Hold onto me."

Liam’s fingers tightened in his shirt.

The world shattered.

The transition was violent.

Liam felt the terrifying sensation of being ripped through the fabric of reality, wrapped entirely in Arik’s unyielding heat. Space folded around them in a blinding flash of golden light, the pressure of it so immense that it threatened to crush his ribs and scatter his thoughts into the ether stream.

It did not feel like moving.

It felt like being carried through the place movement went to die.

The agonizing pull lasted nearly a full minute, though Liam suspected time had become deeply unreliable somewhere between Felix’s suite and Arik’s arms. He could not see. Could not breathe properly. Could not feel the floor, or gravity, or the shape of his own body beyond the points where Arik held him.

There was only heat.

Gold.

The scent of burnt ozone.

And Arik’s voice, low and constant against his temple.

"Stay with me."

Liam wanted to tell him that he was being dramatic.

His mouth did not cooperate.

Then gravity slammed back into them.

The oppressive gloom of Canmore Manor vanished.

The heavy, sick scent of dried ether-blooms and old poison was replaced by the sharp, sterile bite of medical antiseptics, clean Agaron steel, and active diagnostic wards.

They materialized with a deafening crack of displaced air in the center of a brightly lit, expansive room.

The pressure wave blew a stack of secure medical files off a nearby steel desk. A tray of instruments rattled violently against a counter before spilling onto the floor. Three glass vials shattered at once, their contents hissing harmlessly against the sterilized tiles. The ether lamps flickered from white to blue, then back to white.

They were in the Agaron diplomatic palace.

Arik’s temporary stronghold in Wrohan.

Directly inside Marin’s private medical office.

For two seconds, the omega physician simply stood behind his desk, staring at the center of his office with the expression of a man who had spent decades treating royal emergencies and still found this particular one personally insulting.

Then his eyes moved to Liam.

The blood beneath his nose.

The way Arik held him flush against his chest, supporting nearly all of his weight.

The frosted ether spreading from Arik’s shoes across the medical floor.

The violent brightness in the crown prince’s golden eyes.

Marin’s face emptied of every trace of irritation.

Arik lifted his head.

The Crown Prince of Agaron looked at the physician with the terrifying, murderous intensity of a cornered beast holding its wounded mate.

"Fix him," Arik snarled.

The command echoed through the sterile room like a death sentence.

"Now."