"You're not fine."
Seren looked up from his tea.
Juno was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, wearing the expression he reserved for situations where Seren was lying to his face and he'd decided to stop pretending otherwise.
"I told you—"
"You've been staring at that mug for twenty minutes without drinking from it." Juno pushed off the counter and sat across from him. "Your collar is up inside the apartment. It's not cold in here, Seren."
Seren's hand moved to his collar automatically.
He stopped it.
"I'm tired," he said. "That's all."
"Something happened last night."
"Juno—"
"I'm not asking you to tell me what." Juno's voice dropped. Quieter now. The version he used when he'd decided that pushing wasn't the right tool. "I'm just saying, I can see it. Whatever it is. And when you're ready to talk about it, I'm here."
Seren looked at the mug.
The tea had gone cold.
"I need new patches," he said. "The backup order doesn't come until Thursday."
A pause.
"How many do you have left?"
"One emergency one."
Juno was quiet for a second. Then he stood, went to his room, and came back with a small blister pack. He set it on the table between them without making it a thing.
"From the Hendricks job," he said. "I told you I'd never need them. Take it."
Seren looked at the pack.
At Juno.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't." Juno sat back down. "Just ... eat something. You look like you haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon."
"I haven't."
"Seren."
"I know."
He spent the day running from the thing he wasn't thinking about.
The rent first. He did the math three times, which was two times more than necessary, because the math hadn't changed and wasn't going to change, but doing it kept his hands busy and his brain on numbers instead of other things.
Then the job applications. Two follow-up emails. Professional, precise, not desperate despite being desperate. He sent them, closed the laptop, and made himself eat the toast Juno left on the counter.
He did not touch his collar.
He did not check the mirror again.
He was managing.
The problem with managing was that it required full concentration.
And at three in the afternoon, sitting on the couch with his phone, his concentration cracked.
He searched: claiming mark omega.
The first result was clinical. A medical database entry. He'd read versions of it before, he'd educated himself thoroughly on his own biology years ago, precisely so nothing could surprise him.
He read it again anyway.
A claiming mark, also referred to as a bond mark, is the result of an alpha bite administered during an omega's heat cycle. The mark is permanent and triggers a biological response in the omega specific to their alpha's pheromone profile. In unmated omegas, the mark may cause....
He closed the tab.
Sat very still.
The man had marked him during his heat.
Which meant the man was his alpha, biologically speaking, in a way that had nothing to do with his consent and everything to do with a failed patch and too many drinks and one night where his carefully constructed defenses had simply — stopped working.
A stranger.
He didn't know his name.
He didn't know his face well enough to describe him to anyone.
He knew a tattoo.
A black serpent coiled around a dagger on the inside of his wrist.
That was all he had.
His phone buzzed.
Juno, from the other room: stop researching whatever you're researching and come watch something with me
He stared at the message.
Then: how do you know I'm researching
because you get quiet in a specific way when you're on your phone doing something that stresses you out and I can hear it from here
Seren put the phone face-down on the cushion.
He pressed both hands flat against his thighs.
He breathed.
The mark was there. It wasn't going away. There was nothing he could do about it tonight, or tomorrow, or possibly ever. The man was gone and Seren didn't have a name or a face and there was rent due and no job lined up and his mother's prescription needed refilling by Wednesday.
He could not afford to spiral.
He picked up the phone.
Typed: give me five minutes
Then he went to the bathroom, applied the patch Juno had given him, fresh coverage, the good kind, the kind that actually worked, pulled his collar up, looked in the mirror exactly once, and walked back out.
"What are we watching," he said.
Juno looked at him. Read him. Said nothing about any of it.
"Something mindless," he said. "Sit down."
He woke to his phone alarm at seven the next morning.
Got up. Showered. Made tea. Went through the routine with the systematic focus of someone who understood that routine was the scaffolding holding everything else up.
He was refilling the kettle when the email arrived.
He nearly missed it.... it came in between a spam notification and an automated reminder from the medical supplier about his patch order. He almost swiped it away before the sender name registered.
Draxen Global Holdings — Careers
He set the kettle down.
Opened it.
Read it once.
Read it again.
Dear Mr. Valez, Following a review of your professional profile, we would like to invite you to interview for the position of Personal Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer....
He scrolled to the compensation package.
Stopped.
Read the number.
He read it three times because the first two times he thought he'd misread it.
He hadn't misread it.
That number, that single, impossible number, was triple anything he had ever earned. It was the rent and the medication and the debt and Mira's school fees and Kofi's final year, all of it, handled, with room to breathe for the first time since he was nineteen years old.
His hands were shaking slightly.
He put the phone face-down on the counter.
Picked it back up.
Put it down again.
"Juno," he called.
"What."
"Come here."
A pause. The sound of Juno rolling out of bed, muttering. He appeared in the kitchen doorway in his sleep shirt, hair sideways, deeply unimpressed at the hour.
"This better be important."
Seren picked up the phone and held the screen toward him.
Juno squinted.
Read it.
His eyes went to the salary figure.
He went very still.
"Seren," he said slowly.
"I know."
"That number—"
"I know."
"That's—"
"I know, Juno."
Juno looked at him. "You're going to that interview."
"I haven't decided—"
"You are going to that interview," Juno said, with the flat certainty of someone who had made the decision on his behalf and intended to enforce it. "Today. We're going to figure out what you're wearing. And you are going to walk into that building and you are going to get that job."
Seren looked at the email again.
At the name at the top of the letterhead.
Draxen Global Holdings.
Something about it snagged on a memory he couldn't quite reach. A name that felt half-familiar in a way he couldn't explain.
He pushed it away.
"Okay," he said.