"He is here," Kailith's mother said, standing before his closed study room.
She stood in the doorway of his study like she didn't quite belong there, one hand pressed flat to her chest, the other worrying at her nails until the skin around them reddened.
Kailith didn't look up.
His jaw locked, the familiar pressure settling into his bones until it felt like his face might crack under it. He welcomed the pain. It was easier than what followed the words.
Kailith was a Diamond Alpha—one of three in the world. The only one born into House Daimyra. Thirty-two years old, well past the age most Alphas found their mates, and entirely unbothered by that fact. He had built his life carefully. Strategically. He didn't want an omega.
He had never needed one.
There had always been enough distractions. Enough women. Enough willing bodies to burn off the edge of his drive. Everyone knew Diamond Alphas were difficult—too much appetite, too much dominance, too much of everything. Finding a compatible mate was rare. Staying unmated was common.
Which was why this felt like a bad joke.
Nature, apparently, had decided to play one at his expense.
Thirty years old when it happened. An omega. A civilian. A college student, of all things.
The universe had impeccable timing.
He was a presidential candidate. Poised to become the next President of the United Jovovian. Every step of his life already mapped, vetted, approved. And now this—an unwanted bond threatening to unravel it all.
"Thank you, Mother," Kailith said evenly, still facing his desk. "You can leave now."
"Kailith, son—"
"Mom." The word came out clipped, warning sharp beneath it. "I'll handle this."
She hesitated. He could feel it in the room, her worry pressing in like humidity.
"Be gentle with him," she said at last. "He didn't choose you any more than you chose him."
Kailith finally turned, just enough for her to see his expression.
"You don't need to worry," he said coolly. "I'm not a monster. But I won't pretend I'm pleased about this. Not about the bond. Not about the timing. And I'm not going to perform gratitude for anyone's comfort."
Her fingers tightened in the fabric of her blouse. The crease between her brows deepened.
"Do as you see fit," she said quietly, then turned and left him alone.
Kailith's hand closed around the cool metal handle of the study doors—twelve feet high, darkwood polished to a mirror sheen, carved with the sigil of House Daimyra: a serpent coiled around flame.
On the other side waited his mate.
The omega he had seen only once.
A year ago.
One day. One moment. Enough to tear open a life that had been orderly and controlled before it.
Enough to ensure it would never be peaceful again.
***
Thirteen months ago, at Nakanda University's three-hundredth anniversary convention, Kailith had attended as chief guest as the Soul Heir of House Daimyra and a leading contender in the upcoming presidential race.
The fifteen-hundred–square-foot seminar hall had been packed wall to wall, every seat taken, bodies standing along the aisles, eyes fixed on him. Yet even without looking, he had known.
He was there. His mate was there.
Kailith's senses had ignited like dry brush catching flame; he smelled his omega long before his gaze found the source. And when it finally did, when he spotted him seated at the far corner of the hall, small and uncertain, curly hair barely tamed, oversized glasses slipping down his nose, it took everything in Kailith not to move.
Among those thousands of them that night, and despite the fifty meters of distance between them, their eyes met like two magnets.
The omega's gaze widened, startled, like he hadn't expected Kailith to look at him so directly. In that instant, the noise of the room vanished. Kailith's heart surged awake with a roar inside his chest. It slammed hard enough to rattle his ribs. His body went taut, every nerve screaming, all of it because of one fragile, unguarded omega.
It didn't take him long to understand what he was to Kailith. He knew the instant he had smelled his pheromones in the hall. This was bad news. He left the hall immediately. He needed to process the knowledge.
He asked his assistant, Clara, to investigate. He needed to know who the omega was.
The omega's name was Felix Hall.
Nineteen years old. A second-year student at Nakanda, an art major. An omega born of violence, he was the unwanted result of a rut-driven Alpha's brutality. His omega mother had died giving birth. And Felix was raised in froster homes unaware that he was an omega until a routine school blood test exposed the truth.
An omega who had no business being Kailith's mate.
For a year, Kailith had avoided the inevitable, convincing himself time was still on his side. Ten years. Twenty, if necessary. Diamond Alphas could wait. He had always been in control.
But fate had never cared about control.
Felix had gone into heat. His first fucking heat.
And for an omega who had already scented his mate—as Felix had that day in the hall—enduring a heat without his mate would not merely be painful.
It would be unbearable.
Worse, the bond ran both ways.
No matter how far apart they were, Felix's heat would reach for him. It would tug at Kailith's mind, thread through his veins, his suffering would echo there as if it belonged to Kailith himself.
The ache had already settled deep. Kailith hadn't slept in days, not because of Felix, not entirely, but because of the unrelenting work piling up around him. And Felix's heat only aggravated his irritation.
A council meeting awaited him tomorrow. The final steps before the election.
He needed clarity. Control. A steady mind.
Instead, Felix's heat burned under his skin—constant, unyielding, a low fire that refused to be ignored.
There was only one way to quiet it.
He had to take care of Felix, blunt the edge of the omega's torment and, in turn, his own.
It wasn't desire that pushed him forward. It was necessity. It was survival.
Kailith entered the room and he was right there, standing by his desk, gnawing nervously on his nail and pacing the floor. The Nakanda jersey, a cream-colored sweatshirt and khaki pants, made him look even younger, absurdly out of place in his grand study.
Kailith's throat tightened. He smelled faintly of rain and smoke and the musk of his heat pheromones.
He cleared his throat.
Felix jumped, spinning toward him, his wide eyes reflecting both recognition and fear.
"Good morning, Mr Daimyra."