***   

The ride home was quiet.

Eron sat curled in the back seat of the black car, a new throw blanket that his mother had provided wrapped tightly around his shoulders. The cappuccino he'd sipped earlier had gone cold in his stomach, and now the sweet aftertaste clung to his tongue like guilt.

Outside the window, the city blurred. Glass buildings bled into narrow alleyways. Trees swayed like shadows in slow motion.

Ivy sat beside him, hands folded stiffly in her lap. She didn’t speak, didn’t glance his way. Her silence was soft, like something carefully rehearsed, meaning to give him space, though this pressed down on the air just as heavily as words might have.

Oaklen drove in silence, his fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He kept stealing glances at his son through the rear-view mirror, but Eron didn’t meet his eyes.

The manor came into view minutes later, a soft silhouette against the greying sky. Roses clung to the trellises like veins across pale stone. The wind rustled through the leaves, dragging petals into the gravel driveway.

The car rolled to a stop, but neither parent moved to open their doors.

Eron opened his first.

The wind was colder than expected. He tightened the blanket around himself and walked toward the house, boots crunching quietly beneath him. Ivy followed at a distance, while Oaklen stayed behind, lighting a cigarette he wouldn’t finish.

Inside, the house was warmer, but not necessarily kinder.

The polished wooden floors echoed underfoot. Family portraits lined the walls, some newer while others faded with time. Eron didn’t look at them. He walked straight past the dining room, ignoring the soft clatter of cutlery being laid out by the house staff.

He headed upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door gently behind him.

In complete silence.

He sat at the edge of his bed, not bothering to turn on the lights. The soft grey of the blanket around him nearly matched the bedsheets. His fingers toyed with the hem of his sleeve. His body still felt like it belonged to someone else. It felt loose and hollow.

He tilted his head back against the wall and exhaled slowly.

Dr. Pace had said progress, but all Eron felt was tired.

 He lay motionless atop his bed, the dim light from the curtained window casting long shadows across his pale skin. He had been lying like that for what felt like hours, his thoughts scattered like ash on a dying wind. The silence of the room was oppressive, broken only by the faint ticking of the antique clock across the hall and the occasional creak of the old manor's bones.

He tried to move, even just a little.

He willed his arms to push against the mattress, to shift his weight and sit upright, but his limbs were like iron, heavy and rusted. His muscles trembled under the strain of even the smallest effort. The simple act of breathing felt like it took too much space, too much will. A soft, broken sigh escaped his lips as he slumped back down, defeated by his own body.

The exhaustion wasn’t the kind that sleep could cure. It clung to him like damp wool, seeping into his bones, weighing down every cell in his body. 

His chest ached. Not just from all his injuries, but also from the hollow grief gnawing at him from the inside out.

His eyelids, too, began to lose the fight. They fluttered, heavy and warm, as though dipped in lead. The ceiling blurred above him, and the world faded into a dull hush.

He felt the tension in his body, always coiled and always ready to flinch, slowly unspool. His shoulders drooped. His fingers, once tightly curled around the edge of the blanket, slipped loose. He let go of everything. Of the day. Of the effort and the ache.

Just as his mind teetered on the precipice of sleep, it returned. To that vast and horrible darkness. Acheron started running.

His feet pounded against the floor. Was it wood? Cement? Water? he couldn’t tell. The sound echoed into a void that never answered. The world around him blurred at the edges, smeared like wet paint, every corner too dark or too bright. The air felt too thick to breathe and too thin to live.

Something was chasing him. No Someone.

He could hear the lazy, measured footsteps that came from behind. They weren’t rushing; they didn’t need to. They were confident and patient. They knew that Acheron wouldn't be able to get away.

Acheron’s breath hitched as a wall slammed into him from nowhere. Disoriented, he scrambled up and looked back, only to spot a bright red flash.

Hair the colour of flame, tousled like it had been dragged through wind and war and a crooked grin that used to make his stomach flutter, now it only made his skin crawl. 

It's him.

“Acheron,” his voice sang out, sweet and poisonous. “Don’t you remember what we had?”

Acheron bolted in the other direction, but the corridor twisted under his feet, moving like a living thing. Light flickered ahead, and behind him, something larger stirred. A faceless shadow, hulking and wrong, its form shifting with each flicker of light, as though even the dream itself could hold its shape.

It was coming for him, the boy who had once held his hand and then used it to shove him into ruin, the person who should have protected him became his attacker, formless and grotesque, whose presence felt like static under his skin.

He pushed forward into the dark, his hands scraping along walls that felt too close. His lungs burned. His legs screamed. Every door he passed was locked. Every window is sealed. 

There was no way out.

He stumbled into a room with no ceiling, the sky above black and roiling. A storm churning, clouds splitting apart like open wounds. Wind lashed at him, and the scent of ozone and rain wrapped around his throat like silk. 

Then, he was there.

That man with the golden eyes.

He didn’t speak or move. He simply stood in the distance, watching.

Lightning cracked behind him, illuminating the sharp edges of his face, too perfect, almost unreal. He slightly tilted his head. Thunder rumbled like a heartbeat, slow and steady. The storm bent around him.

Acheron stumbled toward him, something in his chest cracking open. The scent, that scent, hit him again much stronger now. It felt like the calm after the chaos. Still dangerous in its own right. 

The red-headed Alpha screamed something behind him, but Acheron didn’t look back. He couldn't. His feet moved toward the storm.

When he was close enough to reach out, the golden-eyed man extended a hand. His palm was open, but his expression, unreadable.

Acheron hesitated, then the roar of the Alpha behind him caused him to reach out, just before his fingertips were about to brush against the strangers—

The world collapsed.

Eron’s eyes flew open, his breath came in short, desperate bursts as though he had surfaced too fast from deep underwater. His heart pounded against his ribs in a frenzied rhythm. Like a bird slamming itself against the walls of a cage, over and over, trying desperately to escape.

His clothes clung to his skin, soaked through with sweat. Even the sheets beneath him were damp, the fabric twisted and stuck to the curves of his body. Every inch of him ached with exhaustion and tension, as if his muscles had been clenched in sleep, bracing against some unseen threat.

Slowly, he dragged himself upright, his limbs groaning in protest. Bare feet touched down on the thick, plush carpet, grounding him in the cool silence of his room. His body moved slowly, stiffly, but with purpose, as he shuffled toward the adjoining bathroom.

He usually slept in soft cotton pyjamas, but earlier fatigue had caught him off guard. Now, the tight denim of his jeans clung to his damp legs like a second skin. He stripped them off first, hating the way they scraped over bruised thighs. The discoloured splotches bloomed along his hips, in the process of fading but still there and still vivid reminders.

His shirt followed, tugged over his head and tossed into the corner. The bruises on his torso were older and darker, angry bursts of purple and green still stretching over his ribs. A painful echo of broken bones barely knitted back together. He unwrapped the gauze from his arms, revealing pale skin covered in healing scratches and neat little dots where needles had punctured him.

He didn’t pause. Didn’t even look too closely.

Until the bandages around his neck came off.

That’s when the mirror caught him.

His reflection stared back at him. Fragile, ghostlike. Red indentations curled around his throat like fingerprints burned into flesh. His collarbone jutted out sharply above his chest. His once-lustrous silver hair hung limp and damp with sweat, curtain bangs half-shadowing his glassy green eyes.

The wound on his neck wasn’t bleeding, or at least not anymore. The stitches had held. The doctors said it was healing “well,” although the scarring wouldn't fade much with time, his gland would function again, eventually.

But he couldn’t feel it.

His pheromones, once a quiet, constant hum in the back of his being, were silent now. Absent. As if something essential had been carved out of him.

He had never longed for an Alpha. Never daydreamed about being marked, or bonded, or claimed. It wasn’t who he was, but now?

Now, it was all he thought about.

Now that the choice had been stolen from him, all he could think about was how badly he wanted it. To be chosen, to be wanted, to have someone see him and choose to stay. To fight for him and to protect him.

He clenched his jaw, tearing his gaze from the mirror as hot tears threatened to spill. Pathetic. That’s how he felt. A foreign word in the shape of his name.

The person in the mirror wasn’t him anymore.

Fury bubbled in his chest, sudden and wild. He slammed the shower door open and stepped beneath the scalding stream without waiting for the temperature to adjust.

The water hit his skin like fire, and that was exactly what he wanted. It burned away everything else: the ache in his ribs, the heaviness in his limbs, the buzzing in his brain. His pale skin flushed red beneath the heat, but it was a different kind of pain. One he could control.

His fingers trembled as he pressed both palms to the tiled wall, letting the water beat down on his back. Letting it soak through the cracks.

And deep in the silence of the steam, a thought surfaced. A craving. One he hadn’t voiced in weeks. A craving to disappear and to feel nothing at all.

To feel that chemical warmth rush through his veins again, dulling everything. Erasing the noise. Erasing him.

As the thoughts started to take shape, he saw Ivy’s face. Her eyes were raw and rimmed red, her voice breaking when she tried to ask if he was okay. Next to her stood Kai, who always tries too hard to be funny and pretends things weren’t broken. Pretending he isn't scared.

He couldn’t do that to them. Not again. Not ever.

A shudder ran down his spine, and a sigh slipped from his lips; however, the ache remained.

So he stayed in the shower.

Just a little longer because at least in here, with the heat biting into his skin and the water drowning out the world, he could pretend for a while that he wasn’t falling apart.