“You’ve been reassigned.”

That was the first thing he said when he stepped into my room the next morning. Same guy as before—pressed shirt, cold eyes, all sharp angles and control.

I didn’t ask for a name. I didn’t care.

“Your performance yesterday got the boss’s attention,” he continued. “But not for the reasons you think.”

I sat up slowly, still dressed from the night before, muscles stiff and head pounding.

He studied me for a beat, then flicked his fingers. “Get dressed. You’ve got someone to meet.”

I didn’t ask questions. Just moved.

He didn’t take me down to the client halls this time. We went up—higher than I’d ever been inside the compound. Past levels I’d never seen. The air changed. Cleaner. Pressurized. Controlled.

“Where are we going?” I asked finally.

“To meet the Supreme Leader’s pet project.”

I stilled. “Another hybrid?”

“Not just any hybrid. The omega.” He paused long enough to glance over. “They made him special. From the ground up.”

“For what?”

A smirk curled at the corner of his mouth.

“You’ll see.”

The hallway narrowed. Doors disappeared. It started to feel more like a private wing than a lab. The floors were softer here—thick carpet underfoot, muffling every step.

He stopped in front of a large silver door with no handle.

“Your new job,” he said, “is behavioral conditioning. Your profile flagged high in psychological adaptability and empathetic mimicry. So they want you to teach him… feelings. Reactions. How to emote.”

I blinked.

“They want me to teach a hybrid how to be… human?”

“Exactly.”

He placed his hand against the door panel. It hissed, then slid open.

“Go on,” he said. “He’s waiting.”

I stepped inside.

And stopped breathing.

The room was soft light and glass. It looked more like a luxury suite than a cage, but it was still a cage—just dressed in silk and illusion.

And in the center of it stood the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

He turned when he heard me. Slowly. Gracefully.

White hair fell in silken waves over his shoulders, glowing under the ambient lights. His eyes—gods, his eyes—were the color of amethysts, clear and strange and ancient, like they didn’t belong in this world.

He was barefoot, dressed in loose, sleeveless gray that clung to the fine lines of his body. Tall, but slight. Fragile, almost, until you looked at the way he held himself—controlled. Perfectly still. Like a porcelain doll afraid of being cracked.

He tilted his head. Studied me with quiet curiosity.

And something inside me snapped.

It wasn’t my heart. It wasn’t fear.

It was older than either of those.

It was instinct.

It was fire.

It was him.

My lungs didn’t work. My legs didn’t move. Every part of me screamed without sound.

And then—

“MATE!”

Nyx’s voice tore through my head like thunder, shrill and euphoric.

I stumbled, catching myself against the wall, my fingers curled hard into the metal paneling as if that would anchor me. My vision blurred for half a second.

He didn’t move.

Just watched me with those impossibly violet eyes.

He didn’t smile.

Didn’t speak.

But I knew.

I knew.

My second chance mate was a hybrid.

A creation.

Engineered.

And I had no idea what that meant.

Only that everything I thought I knew about survival had just been rewritten.

And this—he—was going to ruin me.