The twilight of Freenly City bled into a deep, bruised purple as the streetlamps of Vetify University flickered to life. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of damp concrete and the distant, rhythmic thud of a pile driver from the construction site.
Malcolm Ford stood by the perimeter fence, his silhouette a jagged tear against the fading light. He was looking at a blueprint on his tablet, his brow furrowed in a way that made him look like a dark god calculating the end of a civilization. He didn't hear the footsteps—or rather, he ignored them, as he ignored most things that didn't have a high net worth.
Luca stumbled.
It was a perfectly executed trip. His shoulder, softened by the oversized cream sweater, clipped Malcolm's arm. The leather bag slid off his shoulder, and a stack of papers spilled across the pavement.
"Oh! I—I'm so sorry!" Luca's voice was a breathy, melodic tremor.
He looked up, pushing his crooked glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. His lips curved into a shy, hopeful arc, and he let his eyes shimmer with a liquid light that should have brought a stronger man to his knees.
Malcolm looked at his tablet, then shifted his gaze to Luca for exactly 0.8 seconds—just long enough to register a nuisance.
"Watch where you're going," Malcolm said. His voice was a cold, jagged shard of ice. It was a command.
Luca's smile faltered, but he held it, his heart hammering— from the sheer ego-bruising shock of being dismissed. "I'm really sorry, sir. I'm just... I'm a bit lost. The construction has moved the walkways. Could you tell me where the Chancellor's office is?"
Malcolm finally turned his full body toward him, his massive Alpha frame casting a shadow that swallowed Luca whole. He looked Luca up and down with a clinical, insulting slowness.
"How long have you been a student here?" Malcolm asked, his voice dripping with bored disdain.
"Three years," Luca replied, trying to sound earnest while his inner Enigma wanted to tear the man's throat out. "I'm a senior in the AI Ethics department."
Malcolm let out a short, harsh sound—a laugh that held no humor. "Three years on a campus this size and you're wandering around a construction zone like a blind kitten. Stop looking for unnecessary attention and leave."
Luca blinked, his "innocent" expression genuine for a moment because of the sheer audacity of the remark. "Pardon?"
"You heard me," Malcolm stepped closer, his scent—dark cedar and burnt ozone—crashing over Luca. "You're a commoner who supposedly spends his life in these halls, yet you don't understand your own school's layout. Whichever company that might hire you for an internship is already a mess. They clearly have no standards for basic spatial awareness."
Malcolm didn't wait for a rebuttal. He turned his back on the "Omega," dismissed him as if he were a piece of litter caught in the wind, and began walking toward the temporary administrative trailer where the Chancellor was waiting.
In the silence that followed, Luca stood frozen.
His fingers curled into white-knuckled fists. Deep inside his chest, the Enigma roared. His blood began to boil, and for a terrifying second, his internal pheromone dampeners nearly buckled. If he released even a fraction of his true scent—the scent of a Primal Enigma—the students in the nearby library would fall into seizures, and Malcolm Ford would be forced to his knees in agonizing, biological submission. The air around Luca began to shimmer with a localized, violent heat.
"Dahmer, stand down."
Kaelen's voice hissed through the earpiece, sharp and urgent.
"I'll kill him," Dahmer hissed back, his voice a low, vibrating snarl that didn't sound anything like "Luca." "I'll tear that expensive suit off his corpse. He's just an ordinary Alpha with a biological disorder that needs a fixing by someone like me."
"You'll do nothing but pick up those papers," Kaelen snapped. "You are an Omega, remember? Omegas don't release pheromones that cause neurological collapse. They cry. They act hurt. If you blow your cover now, Project Z dies, and I'll have to tell the board you were defeated by a billionaire's bad mood. Compose yourself. Now."
Dahmer took a long, shaky breath, forcing the predatory energy back into the dark corners of his soul. He forced his muscles to relax. He smoothed his sweater. He knelt, gathered the papers with trembling hands—this time from genuine rage—and stood up.
He began to walk in the same direction as Malcolm, keeping a respectful distance, his face resetting into that practiced, soft smile.
"That man's grumpiness could destroy his handsome face," Luca muttered under his breath, pitching his voice for the microphone. "He looks like he's swallowed a bag of rusty nails."
Kaelen's dry chuckle echoed in his ear. "Careful, Boss. If grumpiness destroyed faces, you'd have been a gargoyle years ago. You haven't smiled sincerely since the late nineties. At least he has the ability to express emotions; you're just naturally a joyless void."
"I am a joyless void with a mission," Luca countered, his eyes fixed on the back of Malcolm's broad shoulders. "He thinks I'm a 'commoner'? He's going to regret every word when he's begging me to stay in his office."
"That's the spirit," Kaelen said. "He's entering the trailer now. Follow him in. Be the hardworking, clumsy student who just wants to deliver his resume to the Chancellor. Make him see you again. Make him notice the extremely handsome, intelligent student you are."
Luca reached the door of the administrative trailer. He paused, checked his reflection in the dark glass, and adjusted his glasses so they were perfectly, adorably crooked.
"Time to go to work," he whispered.
He pulled the door open, the bell chiming softly, and stepped into the air-conditioned interior where Malcolm Ford was already dominating the room. He looked straight at the back of Malcolm's head, his smile widening into something that looked like sugar but tasted like a death warrant.