Chapter 22
Willian put down a screwdriver slowly on his worktable and blinked at him through his magnifying glasses.
“You would rather have Grasson?”
Ehlian looked away from his friend’s shocked face, grimacing. “That’s what I said.”
Lifting up the glasses, Willian leaned closer and tapped on Ehlian’s forehead.
Ehlian batted his hand away. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking if there’s anything in there,” Willian said. “Sounds hollow. It’s fucking empty.”
“I wish it was,” Ehlian rubbed a hand over his face. “My head was a mess that night. Too much noise.”
“I’ve told you,” Willian sighed. “When you fixate on those thoughts, your power only amplifies them and drowns out the rational ones.”
And it still did. The noise was there.
Two weeks. Two weeks of sleepless nights, two weeks of finally bringing himself to recount every little detail of Hayce's visit to Willian.
“But I’m glad you didn’t mindlessly run back to him and revert to your prison dynamic.” Willian said. “It worked for survival, but it was hardly a viable relationship.”
“I know,” Ehlian said, recalling Hayce’s reaction just hearing Ehlian wasn’t part of his pack anymore. “I think I made that pretty clear to him, just not sure if that’s what he wants too.”
“He had to follow those unwritten prison rules for survival too. Just as you, he had little choice, you tend to forget that,” Willian said. “But you’ll never know what it could be like with him now if you don’t even consider giving him a chance.”
He didn’t quite know what to do. He’d been out of prison for a year now and was still stuck with these infuriating feelings.
Hayce had only been out a few months, still in the headspace of prison.
There would come a point where Hayce would want something more…
someone else. Whatever he felt for Ehlian would fade into nothing.
“Ah, damn it,” Willian cursed, sensing Ehlian’s hesitation. “And I was hoping I’d get these spare parts for a generous discount if you worked things out with him. You’re not good for business. Can’t flirt, can’t get me a discount. Truly a shit friend, you know?”
Ehlian grinned. “Sadly, you can’t expect more from a criminal.”
“I need a new friend,” Willian shook his head, but his expression softened into something more serious a moment later. “And you’re not a criminal. Not to me.”
“Maybe not as much as Sandar,” Ehlian shrugged. “But I still have a record, don’t I?”
And at least Ehlian had no dark connections, so that counted for something.
The Apex was still at large, rumoured to be hiding in Dravox, the same country where Sandar had been eventually captured.
Dravox was the most corrupt nation on Arox, ruled by power-hungry leaders and dirty politics.
Cut off from the rest of the world, it attracted only the insane and the criminally desperate.
Once inside, escape was nearly impossible, at least alive.
Overlords roamed freely there, ruthless and unpunished.
“That’s the other thing bothering you?” Willian’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. “Your record?”
Before Ehlian could answer, the shop door opening bellowed through the thick curtain of the back room. He let out a sigh, ready to stand—
“No, you stay and give that empty head a rest,” Willian said, tossing his glasses on his worktable. “I’ll get this.”
After his friend disappeared behind the curtain, Ehlian tapped his holowatch. No messages.
What was he really waiting for? Sure, there was no doubt Hayce already had Ehlian’s number, but why would he message him?
He scrolled through the projected screen and opened the map, the address of the Cartivair residence marked red on a hillside outside the city.
Marked red for destination, for a plan to go there, for urgency.
Sure, he’d just show up and knock on the big-ass gate.
After what he’d said to Hayce, he’d be thrown out. Minimum.
The curtain was suddenly drawn back, Willian stepping into the room. “Someone is here to see you.”
Ehlian switched off the holowatch. “Me?”
“Yes,” Willian sat back down at his desk. “I wouldn’t make them wait.”
Fuck, it was Dael, wasn’t it? Ehlian hadn’t returned his messages in the last two weeks, which was a shit move, but his not-empty mind was on a completely different frequency.
When he stepped out into the shop, the apology he’d quickly rehearsed froze in his throat.
Calia stood there with a strict air, placing a luxuriously wrapped gift bag on the counter, Cartivair curving across it. The sight, the setup, was awfully familiar: something for something.
Ehlian decided to get ahead of things. “Are you here to buy me off so I won’t see Hayce again?”
Calia stared at him with a blank expression. “You really do like jumping to conclusions. The wrong ones, at that.”
“That last time a Cartivair visited me here I was offered a very one-sided deal, so naturally I don’t trust easily.”
“I have no interest in your mind,” Calia said bluntly, in lieu of apologising for Sandar’s behaviour. Then her expression tightened with a faint accusation. “Does my brother fall short of your exacting standards?”
Whoa. High society and their arrogant egos. That was practically a threat.
“Which one of your brothers?”
Calia didn’t bother answering, but her eyes fixed on Ehlian with a shade more coldness. She wasn’t here to play games. It seemed Ehlian had met his match, and there was no winning this if he wanted to earn her favour. So he scaled back the hostility in his voice. “Hayce told you everything?”
“He told me enough. But even without that, I’m not blind,” she said. “I know what he’s like when he’s trying to hide something that bothers him.”
“I think you overestimate my place in his life,” Ehlian pushed back. “And whatever you think Hayce feels about me.”
Calia tapped on the screen of her holowatch. After a few scrolls and taps, a single file projected in the air between them.
“Open it,” she said.
Ehlian tapped it.
A seemingly endless document streamed in the air.
He swiped through one page after another.
It was a detailed log: dates, events, almost marked by the minute.
Everything Hayce had done in prison. In a few instances, even what he’d said.
Their relationship was there in black and white too, documented in perfect chronological order up until the cruel breakup.
Sandar had been monitoring Hayce the entire time through the lenses of the prison guards.
Ehlian had already known that Sandar kept a close eye, but not to such a sickening extent. Of course, his eyes didn’t reach inside their cell, so those moments had mostly stayed private for Ehlian and Hayce.
Then something else caught his eye in the floating document. Beneath the detailed account of their breakup a guard had witnessed, there was a note about Ehlian crying quietly in the middle of the night in Aric’s cell. How would a guard have known that? That was impossible.
Frowning, he flicked the document backwards: a word-for-word conversation with Aric in the showers about admitting he was Hayce’s personal guard…
then far too detailed exchanges the pack had had in the lounge…
and then a private conversation about a deal Hayce had made: You’d be safe with Kraiton if you chose his pack, but my omega insists on taking you in.
Aric’s omega will be released in two weeks. He’ll protect you.
Mouth falling slightly open, Ehlian’s shocked gaze met Calia’s through the translucent document.
“Larik was meant to replace you.” Calia said.
Ehlian scanned the lines over and over, his mind refusing to accept that Larik had been nothing but a spy. Fuck. He’d been fooled so easily. But more than anything, he felt deeply and cruelly betrayed.
“You never wondered why Sandar visited you?” Calia asked.
“I always thought he was just desperate,” he said, trying to drag his thoughts into order. “I still think that.”
“He was that too,” Calia agreed. “You weren’t the first he approached.
At the beginning of Hayce’s imprisonment he was paranoid that Hayce might be gathering evidence against him.
Of course, at the time I hadn’t pieced everything together yet, but I always knew Hayce wouldn’t have been capable of killing our father.
” Calia’s tone faltered, as if recalling that painful period, before she continued.
“Sandar got nowhere with those omegas. Just like with you, Hayce told them nothing, so Sandar stopped wasting time on them.”
“That’s why he sent his own spy?” Ehlian asked. “To make Larik earn Hayce’s trust?”
“Sandar recognised the pattern. Hayce always chose the most vulnerable omegas, the ones who needed protection and might never leave the prison alive. Sandar weaponised that instinct and sent the perfect bait. But Hayce stuck with you. He chose you over Larik.”
Ehlian’s chest tightened, all his repressed emotions threatening to break loose.
“The breakup meant to protect you and keep Sandar away, but Sandar never bought it,” Calia continued. “And even if my emotionally inept brother could see through the cracks and recognise that you were different from the rest of them, then I do not think I overestimate your place in Hayce’s life.”
Ehlian swallowed thickly, remembering how he had spent months gazing up at the sky, tracking the floating prison like some forbidden religion—still longing, still craving, still worried for Hayce.
Hayce couldn’t quite fool him either.
The confusing, loud noise in his mind slowly began to settle, brighter, more hopeful thoughts taking its place. “I think he tried to tell me this the other day.”
“You should’ve listened to him then.” she closed the projected document, her face in clear view. “So. What will you do?”
Ehlian wasn’t sure how much he could ask of her, but at the moment he didn’t really care. “Can you help me meet him?”
“I’ll send someone for you tomorrow,” she said, then pushed the gift bag slowly towards him. “My deal is not one-sided.”