Author's note (14 Aug): Not too different from the original version! But I alluded more directly to Blaise's past with Oliver and Rhea.

‘I studied art in uni, so it’s pretty common for people in my school to have one or two tattoos. I didn’t have the guts to do it until I was … twenty-three, I think? Oh yeah, last year of uni. I was afraid of the pain—people always ask this, oh, does it hurt? Yes, of course it fucking hurts. The face tattoos are the worst. I’m sweating just thinking about them.’

Hector smirks. ‘Are you a masochist? Was it worth it then? Putting yourself through all that pain for Nireus’s slave number?’

‘Of course, it’s worth it.’ Blaise says, exasperated. ‘Well, you know I’m omega now, so … Nireus’s story is an inspiration to us omegas, you know. He took power. He became emperor.’

‘Do you think he will make a better ruler than Cephalus?’

Blaise hums thoughtfully, taking a long drink of beer. ‘I doubt it. He would be abysmal, but he would leave the actual running of empire to the council, I reckon. The empire will collapse either way, whether it’s Nireus or Cephalus ruling it, so I don’t suppose it matters in the end. But I would have liked them to have a happy ending.’

Hector rolls his eyes. ‘Not that again. Don’t you see—all right, never mind, we will certainly argue if we go on.’ Blaise makes a face, and Hector grins, continuing: ‘We were talking about your tattoos. I have never met someone with as many tattoos as you have. Which was your first?’

It takes a moment for him to remember: he has collected over thirty tattoos in the past five years. ‘A pair of scissors. Talon gave me my first tattoo at the studio he was with at that time. He doesn’t normally take omega clients, but he liked what I had drawn. I was looking for an artist to do the tattooing, and not so much the design.’

‘Where is it?’

‘On my bicep.’ Blaise sets his can on the table, shrugging off his wool cardigan to reveal an oversized black T-shirt with a graphic of an exploding kitten on the front and his densely inked arms. ‘I needed to get it somewhere I could easily cover up—Cas would have had a heart attack back then—but I also wanted it somewhere I could see it.’

He rolls up his left sleeve. His left arm is covered in what Thalia has dubbed his witchcraft tools: a cauldron with steam in the shape of a skull, a knotted wand crossed with a tattoo gun, a pair of hands holding up a sparkling spell book, and his first tattoo, a pair of scissors snipping a thin red thread. Flowering vines twist through them, binding these tools together with his lower arm, which is covered in chrysanthemums and lilies.

He looks up uncertainly. Not every tattoo has a meaning, but they are still a representation of his taste in art, and it feels unnerving to be showing them off to Hector. If he does not like them, well, that would be a sign of his taste too, and Blaise would have to reassess this friendship.

Hector’s gaze is reverent: deep and dark, as if he has glimpsed the shape of his god in the prayer hall. Blaise is pinned in place, breathless and numb. The alpha leans forward, his hands clasped around his mug, but the touch of his eyes is as tangible as a warm, calloused hand tracing the lines of the broken red thread drawn on Blaise’s skin.

Roasting chestnuts and logs splitting apart in a spray of sparks: the smell of autumns in a manor house thickens in the air.

‘What does it mean?’ Hector asks, voice thick.

He clears his throat, flicking a quick look at Blaise’s face. Blaise blinks, looking away. He has not thought about the scissors and the broken red thread in a while. Five years on, and his uni years are distant behind the soft warm fog of nostalgia, with the occasional bright-white clarity.

The wind carried the salty tang of the sea, wintry cold, and Blaise was distracted by his shivering, reaching out for his cup of tea, when Oliver said it’s time for you to take my bite, love. Mustn’t have other alphas sniffing around you when I’m not there.

Rhea stared at him, her eyes wide and grey and filled with tears, like brimming thunderclouds. Blaise! Over here! Oliver called from somewhere behind them, and Rhea looked away, blinking, tears spilling over the curve of her cheek, and when she looked at him again, she was smiling.

Dead. Accident. She was drinking—car spun out of control—the road was wet. Rhea’s fathers’ wails echoing through the hospital corridor were reality ripping itself into half: one side where there was no accident, and this side where she had died and Blaise was empty, a void where his heart should have been, because he knew she loved Oliver, and he still took him from her anyway.

‘I had a boyfriend in uni. It was a bad break-up.’ The words burn like acid in his throat.

Why does that feel like the wrong thing to say? He is twenty-eight; it would not be unusual for a bloke to have had one or two relationships by now, and yet—the sickly sweet scent of a burnt-out house rotting in a humid summer rises in the air.

The polite thing would be to ignore it. Alphas and omegas—how easily these sexes fall to their base instincts. On some sad, primal level, Hector’s inner alpha desires Blaise because he is omega, and—oh, this tastes like dirt to admit—so does he want Hector on some subliminal level, but these urges are not them. They are not logical.

So, until their friendship deepens to a level akin to pack brother like with Talon and Iris, they must deal with this awkwardness: Hector thinking he wants Blaise, thinking he must be jealous of the other alphas around this available omega barely an arm’s length away, so close for the taking. But those are merely Hector’s visceral instincts; they are not logical, and Blaise must discourage them.

‘I got this to symbolise cutting all connections between us. I never want to have anything to do with him again.’

Shit. Did that sound like he was trying to assure his alpha? Tell him you have nothing to worry about, alpha, that bastard was in the past, you know, and we are here now. You are the alpha here now.

He peers up from beneath his eyelashes. Hector has not looked away, his face still enough to be carved from marble, his dark eyes flicking from the tattoo to Blaise’s face. His scent is for once, opaque: vaguely smoky. What, Blaise wonders despairingly, do I smell like right now?

‘I’m sorry,’ Hector says softly. ‘I didn’t mean to make you talk about it.’

Blaise shakes his head wordlessly.

Hector points at the wand and tattoo gun. ‘And is that for when you started tattooing?’

Blaise looks at him, abruptly suffused with warm gratitude, and smiles slowly, shyly. ‘Do you want to hear about it?’

He returns his smile. ‘Of course. I have all night.’