Author's note (14 Aug): Slight edit to the last paras—since Blaise has reconciled with the fact that he does know Hector in the previous ep, it makes more sense for him to more determined to keep this friend who knows him so well.

A man is weeping. He kneels at the end of a shadowy hallway, head cradled in his hands, figure swathed in voluminous carmine robes trimmed with gold embroidery. A heavily jewelled crown is nestled in his dark curls. He looks up, and Blaise startles to see Hector’s face wet with tears, expression shattered. The alpha reaches out, palms up in supplication.

‘I meant to tell you,’ he sobs. ‘I’m Sibyl. I meant to tell you. I lied.’

Blaise touches his shoulder—his head is bowed again—Hector’s head snaps up, his teeth clenched in a jagged sneer, cold as the onyx glinting in his crown: ‘Don’t touch me, you pervert! You draw porn of me and jerk off to it—do you think I’m an idiot? I understand fandom, remember? You’re a fucking perv!’

‘No, I—’ Blaise staggers, shaking his head, and the shadows blur.

He is sitting in the kitchen, and the party swirls around them, laughter and alcohol and euphoria in a whirlpool anchored by their stillness at the heart of it. Hector leans across the table, head tilted, as he asks: ‘Didn’t you realise? I’m wearing a mask.’

He reaches a hand up to his face, and lifts it to reveal—the brutal-faced Greek tragedy mask with the empty dark stare. The blank space where a mouth is supposed to be lifts in a puppet’s grin, wood chips falling off the face, and his voice echoes.

‘You scare me,’ he pronounces it like a death sentence spoken by a god from atop Mount Olympus. ‘You scare me.’

Blaise flinches, an arm flying up with a wordless shout. Hector recoils violently, as if Blaise has hit him—he did not, he did not—and the Greek mask is knocked aside, clattering to the ground, and it is Oliver sitting across from Blaise now, and they are crowded around the table at the Starbucks on campus every student went to study.

Rhea and Thalia are on either side of him, their elbows knocking into his, but he is looking at Oliver, and Oliver is looking back at him, a lazy, teasing smile curling at the edges of his plush lips. What? he mouths. What are you staring at, spitfire? Spitfire, because he saw Blaise slug a beta for pestering Rhea at a pub, and said admiringly, wow, remind me not to nark you off, and he heard Thalia say Blaise and thought blaze, fire, it fits you, you’re a spitfire.

Oliver’s arm is around him, and his scent of evergreens and crackling pinecones, as they walk to dinner with Mother at the manor. She waits in the dining room—the formal one they used to entertain Father’s guests when he still lived here—and she grants them a rare smile: ‘How lovely to see you, Oliver. You are here to ask for Blaise’s hand in marriage, are you not?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Oliver is smiling down at Blaise softly.

‘What?’ Blaise draws back, but the alpha’s arm is locked around him, and Mother stands there, smiling, and Oliver’s thickening scent, so overpoweringly alpha, is flooding his mouth, and he tastes blood like he has bitten down on a pinecone and its ragged edges catches on the soft insides of his cheeks, and he is choking.

Thalia and Rhea are next to them, back at their usual table in Starbucks: he is still choking on Oliver’s scent, and Mother is there too, smiling, and Rhea has been hurt, but he cannot look at her. Thalia gazes at him solemnly, as he struggles against Oliver, who continues smiling at him. My little spitfire. He scrapes his fingernails against his burning throat, gasping for breath. HELP ME!

‘I tried to warn you,’ Thalia sighs wearily. ‘Do you know what you’re getting yourself into? Hector Westbrook wears many masks. He’s lying to you.’

Who?

‘Hector, of course.’

Blaise shakes his head, more in bewilderment than denial. But he’s real. The flimsy plastic chair is hard beneath his arse, as he laughs at Hector’s face, twisted with disgust because he found a hated olive on his pizza slice. Hector smiles at him over his beer, reaching over to clink his bottle against Blaise’s, cheers, mate. Blaise tilts his head, pressing his cheek against Hector’s knuckles, and this time, he says: ‘You smell so good.’

Hector smiles conspiratorially, his voice low as he murmurs: ‘You said that about Oliver too.’

No! Blaise jack-knifes up in his bed, gasping, his scream echoing in his mind. The room is dark around him, the ceiling painted in slanting lines from the streetlights leaking in, the darkness caught in the stillness between deep night and dawn. He clutches his blankets soft in his fists, damp with sweat, his heart rabbiting in his chest.

It is sweltering. He tosses the blankets aside, staggering to his feet. Leaving the lights off, he ducks into the bathroom and splashes his overheated face with icy water, biting back a gasp. His mind is still meandering slowly through the tendrils of Dream.

He remembers the shape of his terror, and his throat hurts from choking on some stench. His mother must have made an appearance, because his stomach is twisted with the familiar urgency to flee. Hector—Hector was there. Hector Westbrook wears many masks: yes, Thalia said something like that earlier tonight, so a memory. How much of his dreams are memories?

He lifts his head, staring at his face dripping wet in the chipped, water-stained mirror. Faint orange light is glowing around the window blinds that are always half falling down, and his tattoos are darker in the shadows, like he has inked the night into his skin.

The ghost of Hector’s touch, heat tingling along the single claw curving on both his cheekbones: he calls them dragon claws, but creatures of fantasy are always based on the reimagining of some commonplace creature—a bird, or a cat, more like. That is what his tattoos are meant to do—turn him into something more, turn him into something unknowable. People are usually so busy staring at his skin, they do not see him; and that has been working out perfectly for him.

Is it the same for Hector? Hector Westbrook, one of the world’s highest paid actors, People’s Sexist Man Alive, sixty-eight million followers on Instagram. Distract them with masks, or slivers of masks that are like mirrors really, reflecting what his fans want to see in him. But he’s real, his protest in his dreams fades like smoke. Hector is as real as he wants Blaise to think. The man is an actor.

He touches the North Star beneath his right eye. He has forgotten its guidance in the past few weeks, giddy and exhilarated from enjoying Hector Westbrook’s exclusive attention. You’re worth the pain. You are so talented. You scare me. It does have something to do with Hector’s shameless manipulation of his alpha scent: Blaise is after all, bred by nature to crave it.

Shaking his head, dismissing the remnants of his dreams, he wipes the water from his hot face, and repeats his North Star adage: you don’t need an alpha.

Hector is his friend. He does not have many, Thalia is right, because he needs to be careful and it is exhausting, but Hector—he has not met anyone whom it is so easy to know, oh Hector would understand what I’m about, I wouldn’t need to explain so much, he gets me. That is it: he gets me, and Hector is a friend he needs to keep.

He does not need an alpha.