The atmosphere within the Dominion boardroom had shifted from corporate coldness to a visceral, biological emergency.
Isidore felt the world tilting on its axis. The coppery scent of the blood he had spilled—and the sulfurous remains of the egg—clung to his senses.
His blood pressure was an erratic tide, surging through his veins with a rhythmic thrum that made his vision blur. The sweat on his forehead felt like ice, and his fingers were unnaturally cold, trembling with the residual tremors of an adrenaline crash.
Zayn moved with the practiced reverence of a man handling a glass heirloom. He placed a firm, grounding hand on Isidore's back, his palm moving in slow, soothing circles to dispel the heat radiating from the Omega's skin.
"Breathe, Davenant," Zayn urged, his lilac eyes dark with a protective intensity. "We're leaving. Right now. If you stay here a minute longer, you're going to burn this entire tower down."
Isidore didn't argue. He couldn't. The bile was rising in his throat, and the temper had left him hollow, replaced by a crushing, nauseating fatigue. Zayn steered him toward the private elevator, shielding him from the curious, terrified eyes of the staff. He had to get Isidore back to the Davenant penthouse before the his precarious health shattered entirely.
Across the city, within the hushed, high-tech corridors of the Davenant penthouse, Maurice was conducting his own silent war.
The physician sat at his mahogany desk, his piercing emerald eyes scanning the digital tablets displaying Isidore's medical telemetry for the week. The data was a disaster. The graphs showed a jagged mountain range of stress spikes, elevated cortisol levels, and a cardiovascular system pushed to the brink of a catastrophic event.
"What the hell is happening to this family?" Maurice hissed, pinching the bridge of his nose until the skin turned white.
He was drowning in the collective stress of the Davenant name. Between Isidore's spiraling condition, Maurice felt his legendary composure fraying at the edges.
The door to his study creaked open, and the scent of cedarwood and toasted butter preceded the man. Leon stepped in, carrying a tray with the casual, predatory grace that Maurice found both infuriating and magnetic. He placed a plate of eggs and golden toast before the doctor, the domesticity of the gesture feeling alien in the middle of a crisis.
Maurice's mouth twitched with irritation. "What the hell is wrong with you, you old, grumpy man?"
Leon didn't flinch. He leaned in, his massive frame casting a long shadow over Maurice's desk. His mismatched eyes—one blue, one brown—shimmered with a playful, obsidian intent.
"I'm not that old, Doc," Leon rumbled, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. "But the way you're insulting your my pride isn't exactly good for your health. Or mine."
Maurice crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze icy. "Oh, really? Someone like you is actually daring to cross boundaries now? I am busy with a medical emergency, and you're playing what? A waiter."
"Be careful, Doctor," Leon countered, his voice dropping to a dangerous, flirtatious register. "If you keep stressing yourself out and skipping your breakfast, I might have to find another way to satisfy my own hunger."
Maurice snapped his eyes shut, his pulse quickening. "Then eat it yourself! I don't need your charity or your toast."
Leon didn't move. He slid the plate closer, then leaned down until his face was inches from Maurice's. The air between them crackled with the memory of their broken barrier, a secret that sat between them like a loaded gun.
"I wasn't referring to the eggs, doctor," Leon whispered.
Maurice's eyes flew open, but he was too late. Leon's hand shot out, his fingers hooking under Maurice's chin with a firm, inescapable grip.
He pulled the doctor upward into a heavy, passionate kiss. It was a collision of fire and ice—Maurice's initial temper melting into the prehistoric strength of the Beta. The kiss was desperate, obsessive, and tasted of the lingering tension of the house. When Leon finally broke away, a thin, silver thread of saliva trailed between their lips, a visceral mark of their shared heat.
Leon leaned in again, his breath hot against Maurice's mouth, but the doctor finally found his footing. He turned his head sharply away, his face a vivid, volcanic red.
"Stop doing that!" Maurice barked, though his voice lacked its usual bite. "Or else I'm going to call Zayn. I'll tell him you're harassing the medical staff."
Leon smirked, a dark, handsome glint in his eyes as he straightened up. "Then do it, Mr. Doctor. Let Zayn see exactly what we've been into. I'm sure he'd love a distraction from his own problems."
Maurice's green eyes widened. The threat of exposure—the thought of the Davenant patriarch finding out, sent a cold shiver down his spine. He stood up abruptly, nearly knocking over his chair.
"You have no sense of decorum! You don't know how to be polite at all!"
Leon watched him, a playful, satisfied smile dancing on his lips. He looked at the doctor—his oversized lab coat, his messy hair, and the way he looked "claimed" even when he was yelling.
"Okay, okay," Leon said, raising his hands in mock surrender. "I'll play nice. As long as you sit down and eat every bite of that breakfast, I'll let you go back to your charts."
Maurice glared at him, huffing a breath of pure frustration before sitting back down. "Get out. So I can eat in peace without your prehistoric eyes staring at me."
Leon chuckled, turning on his heel. He walked toward the door, his steps heavy and confident. He stepped outside and closed the door, but couldn't resist. He paused, leaning back to peek through the small gap in the doorframe, watching as Maurice finally picked up his fork and began to eat with a ravenous, repressed hunger.
Inside, Maurice didn't even look up. "I can see you, bastard. How pathetically you're peeking."
Leon felt a rare, hot blush creep up his neck. He pulled back and shut the door with a sharp click, his heart racing in a way that had nothing to do with anything.
Once the sound of Leon's footsteps faded down the hall, Maurice's fierce expression softened. A small, almost imperceptible smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. He looked at the empty room, the taste of Leon still lingering on his lips, and for the first time in a week, the stress of the Davenant bloodline felt a little further away.
But that wasn't for too long, when discordant roar of voices drifted up from the courtyard below—a sharp, jagged sound that cut through the expensive insulation like a serrated blade.
Maurice placed his fork down with a slow, clinical precision. His emerald eyes darkened.
Below the sweeping balcony, the air was thick with the scent of ozone and unspent aggression. Zayn had successfully transitioned a trembling, blood-pressured Isidore into the capable, silent hands of Leon, who had appeared at the foyer like a guardian gargoyle.
"Take him up," Zayn had commanded, his voice a low, vibrating baritone. "And Leon—if he tries to leave, lock the door. I have a pest to exterminate."
Zayn turned back to the driveway, his lilac eyes sparking with a lethal, crystalline light. Standing by a sleek, parked cruiser was Joshua Ashford. The younger brother of the legendary Tristan was leaning against the hood, looking entirely too comfortable in the middle of a Davenant war zone. He wasn't just there; he was performing.
"I am not here for your nonsense, Zayn," Joshua began, his tone a mocking sing-song that set Zayn's teeth on edge. "I am merely the messenger of truth. A delivery boy for the divine."
"You absolute jackass," Zayn barked, his Alpha aura flaring, turning the air around him heavy. "Get to the fucking point. If you dare to mess around with me today, I swear on every god you worship, I will make you regret the very act of standing on this pavement."
Joshua's eyes widened in mock horror, his hands flying to his chest as if he'd been struck by a physical blow. "Woah, woah! Easy, big tiger! I didn't mean any harm. I thought we were colleagues in this grand theater of justice."
Zayn's brows knitted in a mask of pure frustration. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, his posture a wall of immovable obsidian. Above them, from the penthouse balcony, Leon watched the exchange with a ghost of a smirk. He shook his head—every man associated with the Davenant name seemed to share the same explosive, "lava-like" threshold for annoyance.
"You know it's Ansel Adams, don't you?" Joshua said, his voice dropping an octave, the playfulness momentarily replaced by a sharp, investigative edge. "The Lockwood switch, the knife, the media leak—it's all his masterpiece. He's the one holding the brush."
"I know who did what!" Zayn snarled, taking a predatory step forward. "I have already orchestrated a counter-plan that will—"
Joshua suddenly stepped into Zayn's personal space, placing a single, slender finger against Zayn's lips to silence him.
The reaction was instantaneous. Zayn's face turned a violent shade of red. He batted Joshua's hand away with a force that made the younger man stumble. Joshua looked at his hand, shaking it dramatically as if he had just been mauled by a lion.
"Did you really hate me that much?" Joshua pouted, his brown eyes glimmering with a tragic, theatrical sorrow. "That you can't stand a single minute of looking at my face? I'm hurt, Zayn. Truly, deeply wounded."
"What the hell is your problem?" Zayn scoffed, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off a burgeoning migraine. "Are you here to help, or are you here to audition for a tragedy?"
Joshua's smirk returned, slow and dangerous, stretching across his face like a predator finding a weakness. He tilted his head, his gaze becoming uncomfortably piercing.
"Have you forgotten that night, Zayn?" Joshua whispered, the words drifting between them like a ghost. "The night you caught a moment of weakness? The night you kissed someone and then fled like a thief in the night?"
Zayn's mouth twitched. The fury in his eyes was replaced by a flash of genuine, startled shock. The memory—brief, heated, and entirely unprofessional—surfaced in his mind like a drowning man.
"What the hell are you here for?" Zayn hissed, his voice dropping to a dangerous, subsonic rumble. "To awaken some fucking fantasy? Or to do your job?"
"Maybe both," Joshua winked, the dramatic investigator returning to his post. "But mostly, I'm here to tell you that Ansel is moving. If you don't act early, Isidore is going to be the headline of every scandal rag from here to the coast.
he suddenly began to whistle a light, haunting melody, his eyes tracking a bird in the distance as if he hadn't a care in the world. The sound was like a needle scratching against the surface of Zayn's already frayed nerves.
"If you aren't here to explain the strategy, then leave," Zayn snarled, the "lava" of the Davenant household finally bubbling to the surface. "Now!"
Joshua stopped whistling. He didn't step back; he coiled. With the predatory, explosive speed of a field-trained officer, he lunged. Before Zayn's Alpha instincts could even telegraph the threat, Joshua had surged into his space.
In a blur of clinical precision, Joshua snatched Zayn's wrists. A metallic snick echoed through the gravel driveway—the cold, unforgiving bite of steel handcuffs. In a heartbeat, Zayn was spun around, his back pressed hard against Joshua's chest, his arms wrenched behind him in a classic arrest hold.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Zayn barked, his voice a jagged rasp of disbelief and fury. "You motherfucker! Release me!"
Joshua didn't pull away. Instead, he leaned down, burying his face into the crook of Zayn's neck. He inhaled deeply, a slow, possessive draw of breath that made the hair on Zayn's arms stand up.
The intimacy was a violation, a psychological weight that felt like something cold and wet crawling across Zayn's skin.
"What kind of cologne is this?" Joshua whispered, his voice a velvet purr against Zayn's pulse point. "It's fantastic. It's been haunting my dreams."
Zayn shivered, a violent tremor of shame and adrenaline. He thrashed against the cuffs, the metal digging into his skin, but Joshua's grip was a vice. The younger Ashford slid a hand upward, the palm flat and warm, disappearing beneath the hem of Zayn's silk shirt.
"I've waited for this, for too long," Joshua murmured, his breath hot against Zayn's ear. "Ever since that night. You can't run away this time."
The rage in Zayn's chest surpassed his common sense. He wasn't just an executive; he was a man cornered. He stopped struggling for a fraction of a second, letting Joshua believe he had won, letting the Ashford relax his guard just a millimeter.
Then, Zayn struck.
Using the tension in his bound arms for leverage, Zayn pivoted his weight and threw his leg back with a vicious, unmitigated force. His heel connected squarely and brutally with the center of Joshua's groin.
The sound that left Joshua wasn't a scream; it was a pathetic, airless wheeze.
"Agh—h-haaaah..." Joshua's voice was a wrecked, airless rasp. He lunged for the bumper of his car, his fingernails screeching against the metal as he fought for balance.
"You... you vicious... damn..." He couldn't finish the thought. He sucked in a jagged, trembling breath, his face turning a ghastly shade of bruised plum. A string of cursed, broken syllables tumbled from his lips as he squeezed his eyes shut. "God... Zayn... I think you... you actually... broke me."