Chapter Thirty-Six #2
“You said yes. And then you said we should film it. You giving me my first knotting.”
Dane’s tongue ran across his lower lip. “It was just — look, it was a business opportunity, Sander. Male omega in heat? That’s the holy grail of content. Every alpha on the internet would have paid through the nose for that, and they did.”
“And when I said I wasn’t sure, you said…”
“I don’t remember exactly what I said.”
“‘I won’t even put your face in the video, Sander.’” Lysander held Dane’s gaze. “That’s what you said. You said people are only really interested in your male omega bits. They want to see the slick, and what your hole looks like.”
The studio was silent except for the low hum of the hard drives and the faint crackle from Baz’s headphone jack.
“Yeah,” Dane said. “I probably did say that.”
“The video went up while I was still in heat,” Lysander said. “You titled it ‘MY FIRST KNOTTING’ in capital letters, with three exclamation marks. You used a thumbnail of my arse with your come running out of it. I didn’t find out until four days later, when my heat broke and I checked my mobile.”
“It was already at two million views by then,” Dane said.
“It was.”
“And you didn’t ask me to take it down.”
“No.” Lysander held his gaze. “I didn’t. Because by the time I saw it, the money had already hit the account, and you’d transferred half of it into my name, and I’d never seen that many zeroes outside of a maths textbook before.”
“See, that’s the thing.” Dane leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, his hands clasped. “You always had a choice, Sander. I never forced you to do anything. You were there voluntarily for every video we made together. You could have walked at any point.”
“Could I?”
“Yeah. You could.”
Lysander turned to a fresh page in his notebook. He didn’t need it, the questions were seared into his brain by now, but the act of turning the page gave him something to do with his hands that wasn’t punching Dane in his fucking Skarsg?rdian face.
“Walk me through how the content changed the longer we stayed together.”
“It’s a business, Sander. You know this better than anyone. The audience wants variety. You give them the same thing over and over, they get bored. Subscriber numbers drop. So you evolve.”
“You introduced toys within the first month.”
“Yeah.”
“And then another alpha. In the second month.”
“Liam. Big lad. You liked him, as I remember.”
“I didn’t dislike him,” Lysander said. “But I didn’t choose him. You chose him. You told me he was coming over, and when I got to the flat, he was already there.”
“It was a collab. That’s how collabs work.”
“And after Liam?”
Dane’s chair tipped back on its rear legs. “It grew. As these things do. You know all this.”
“I do,” Lysander said. “But the listeners would want to hear it from you.”
Dane blew out a breath through his nose. “Fine. We did a few more shoots with different alphas. Three, then four in a scene. Heat content was the real earner for us. You in heat with multiple partners. That’s what the subscribers were paying for. The numbers don’t lie.”
“At the peak,” Lysander said, “how many alphas were in the room during one of my heats? How many got a go at me?”
“I don’t remember the exact number.”
“Twenty, Dane,” Lysander said. “You had twenty alphas in your flat during my heat. I know the number because it was in the title of the video that went up.”
Dane’s jaw worked. He didn’t deny it.
“I was twenty by then,” Lysander said. “I couldn’t remember all their names. I couldn’t remember some of their faces. I was mid-heat, and you were standing by the bedroom door, watching all these alphas fucking me, while you were keeping a tally on your phone.”
“I was managing the shoot.” Dane ran both hands through his hair and let them drop to the armrests.
“Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was some lovely fairy tale, all right?
It was work. Hard work. And it paid extremely well, for both of us.
” He pointed at Lysander. “You’ve bought yourself a life that the kid I met on that estate in Barking couldn’t have dreamed of. ”
“I know that.”
“Then what are we doing here?” Dane spread his hands. “Seriously. What’s the question? Because it sounds like you want me to sit here and feel bad about the thing that made you rich and gave you everything you’ve got.”
Lysander turned his pen between his fingers once, twice, and set it down beside the notebook.
“I want you to apologise.”
Dane’s expression didn’t shift. His mouth stayed in its easy half-smile, even as the silence stretched until it filled every corner of the booth.
“Apologise,” Dane repeated. “For what?”
“For everything, Dane.” Lysander’s voice didn’t waver. “For building a business on an eighteen-year-old who didn’t know what he was agreeing to, or what it would become.”
Dane studied him. There was no defensiveness or guilt wrestling its way to the surface.
“I’m not sorry, Sander,” he said. “We built something massive. I got a lot out of it. You got a lot out of it. You’re sitting here right now making a podcast because of the audience we built together.
You’ve got Meredith bloody Walton returning your calls because a million people already know your name.
I’m not going to apologise for the best business decision either of us ever made. ”
Lysander’s nails pressed into the meat of his palm beneath the desk.
His pulse had climbed into his throat, and the adrenaline wanted him to say every vicious thing he’d been storing in his mind for years.
He could take this man apart. Dismantle him with his own words and leave the wreckage on tape for the world to hear.
Instead, Lysander breathed out through his nose and uncurled his fingers.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s move on, then.”
And he turned the page.
They recorded for another forty minutes.
Lysander walked Dane through the business side: revenue splits, platform changes, the subscriber model, the industry’s shift towards parasocial content.
Dane was fluent on all of it, charming and articulate, and Lysander matched him point for point while his chest ached with the effort of keeping his questions clean of accusation.
When the recording time ran out, Lysander hit stop.
The red light on the console went dark. Dane pulled off his headphones, hooked them over the mic stand, and stood.
“That was good,” Dane said. “That was actually really good, Sander. You’re a natural at this.” He extended his hand. “Send me the edit when it’s done, yeah? I want to hear how you cut it together.”
Lysander shook his hand. “I will.”
Dane held on. “It really is good to see you,” he said, and the warmth in his voice was genuine. “You look happy, and I’m glad for that. I mean it.”
“I am,” Lysander said, and let go.