The Grand Ball in the Hall of Conquest of Castle Campbell was a declaration of power in the form of a party. Crystal chandeliers cast a golden light over polished marbles, the apex of the dream. For Ziggy, it was the perfect backdrop for all possibilities; he felt that everything was possible.
Upon entering the room that had been assigned for him to be with Mason, he spun in front of the mirror of their shared room. From the bedroom window, with a mix of irony and true fascination, Ziggy watched through the glass. His gaze was not on the gardens lit by torches. He imagined a future… on a white horse.
But for Mason… he had finally understood. "Reuniting with Can-Bey was the steepest fall his memory had ever known…"
The epiphany did not arrive like a lightning strike, but like a slow, cold leak that soaked into his bones. The touches, the unimaginable encounter caused by destiny, the ambiguous words of Can-Bey… He had always thought it would be a super-secret code to be deciphered, with outlandish answers and extraordinary calculations. And… in the end, it was only… common events. Coincidences.
The architecture of a meaning that had existed only within himself, good old pure chance, nothing more than that, a foolish thing.
The guilt — a silent and embarrassing guilt — now rested partly inside him. He had allowed himself to believe. He wove expectations with threads of hope and interpreted desire as interest. Furthermore, he felt like an idiot. Not a romantic idiot, but a naïve idiot, who confused the rules of the social game with a personal language.
Seeing Can-Bey there, at a distance, surrounded by his own… the Wilsons with their geometric arrogance, his value in that reality, was like watching a scene he had already rehearsed a thousand times in his mind, but which, in reality, sounded wrong, flat, without the emotional soundtrack he had attributed to it. It happened, and he could not believe it… in the very emptiness of what had occurred.
Mason was the naïve one who had read the wrong script and now found himself outside the plot.
At his side, Ziggy sighed, adjusting his collar.
"Feels like something out of a museum, right? Only you can actually wear it. It's different from our kind of luxury," or from the Williams' luxury, he remarked, speaking more to himself than to Mason.
Ziggy was right. The opulence of House Williams, of Benjamin, was a restrained kind of luxury. It was power dressed in elegant sobriety: rare woods, heavy drapes, classical art. A luxury that did not shout, but commanded respect, like a politician who conquers through measured speeches. It was a setting for strategies. And not theatrical luxury.
Like an anchor to mundane reality, Ziggy pulled Mason back with his enthusiasm.
Mason blinked, drawing away. The impeccable attire waiting for him was regarded as a heavy suit of armor…
In Beatrice Phillips' private chamber, green was not merely a color; it was an atmosphere. Shades of emerald, jade, and moss enveloped the room — from the silk-covered walls to the deep velvet of the armchairs. It was the historical color of House Phillips' ambition and, that night, it had also become the color of the rancor they would wear to the ball.
Beatrice remained standing, motionless, as an omega maid adjusted the bodice of her dark green gown, embroidered with silver threads that resembled a spiderweb caught in the light. In the mirror, her image reflected a glacial queen, perfect in restraint. Inside, however, fear was a persistent rat, gnawing at her insides.
Aster.
The name echoed like a ghost that had gained flesh and bone — and now threatened to unearth everything she had so carefully buried over the years.
Beside her, Clarice leaned over the vanity. Her dress, a paler and more fluid green, seemed made of solidified tears. Her eyes — once bright with the dream of becoming Lady Campbell — were now two murky lakes, where humiliation fermented until it turned into pure hatred.
"He didn't even look at me," Clarice whispered, her voice thin and sharp. "Callum. At the ceremony. His eyes were only searching for…"
She swallowed hard.
"…that bastard."
Beatrice did not turn around. But through the mirror, she met her daughter's gaze.
"Calling him 'that' grants him too much power, my dear. Use the name." The pause was deliberate. "Aster. A bastard. An omega. An accident masquerading as destiny."
The word omega came out, laden with contempt — and with something deeper. Fear.
A dominant omega.
A living contradiction. The failure was proof that her past interferences—her careful manipulations to prevent another child of Jared from threatening Oliver or Clarice—had failed. Worse still, Jared, with his moral weakness disguised as affection, was helping to create exactly what Beatrice had always feared.
"He stole what was mine," Clarice insisted, gripping a silver comb until her knuckles turned white. "Not just Callum. He stole my place. My narrative. He turned me into the tragic joke of this tournament.
He stole my story, but he will not survive my ending, Mother."
That was when Beatrice made an almost imperceptible gesture, dismissing the maid with a cold wave of her hand. The sound of the door closing sealed the chamber in a thick silence.
She stepped closer to her daughter and placed her firm hands on her shoulders. In the mirror, two versions of the same green aligned: the mother—a sculpture of strategic ice; the daughter—a storm about to break.
"Then we steal it back," Beatrice said, her voice low, precise, leaving no room for hysteria. "Not with lamentations. With surgery."
Clarice lifted her gaze, hungry for direction.
"We will act separately, but as a single body," Beatrice continued. "You wound the reputation. I cut the source."
She leaned in slightly, as if confiding something precious.
"We will allow the 'truth' to circulate. The entire truth—sufficient and necessary. The idea that Aster did not encounter Callum by chance. That he followed him. That he infiltrated. That he engineered a dirty move to reach what he wanted."
Beatrice's lips curved into something close to a smile.
"That he used the Kadmans as a bridge. That he knew exactly where Callum would be with Adam. That Reese Davis was used… as part of a plan. That the driver was not deceived—but spied upon."
She straightened.
"We don't need to invent anything. We only need to make the story impossible to ignore."
Clarice released a long breath, then nodded.
"Show the world that they are not good," Beatrice concluded. "That behind the rhetoric of destiny and love, there is calculation. Ambition. Lies."
She touched her daughter's chin, forcing her to lift her face.
"And when doubt takes hold… power does the rest."
The Hall of Conquest stands at the height of its splendor. The great suspended screens (the only technological concession) are strategically positioned, ensuring that no gesture, no glance, no nuance of power is lost on the more than two thousand guests. The orchestra, on a marble mezzanine, waits for the signal. As the Campbells are the hosts, the honor of opening the ball belongs to them.
But the Phillips, as the allied family and witnesses of weight. Mallet Campbell stepped forward to the center of the hall.
The signal, a single blast of horns, ancestral and clear, cuts through the murmur of the Hall of Conquest. The orchestra, composed of more than one hundred musicians, raises their instruments. It is not a chord that begins, but a deliberate, heavy silence, filled only by the expectation of thousands.
But in a calculated gesture that provokes a collective whisper, he does not extend his hand to his own daughter-in-law, Sarah. Instead, his steady gaze and outstretched arm seek… Robert Phillips.
The two titans, the greatest alphas of an era, meet at the center. And they danced. Not a dance between men; a dance of pacts, like a military march. Their movements were precise forceful, a demonstration that their power is so intertwined they can lead even this ceremony, lightly defying convention. A clear signal to all: the Phillips–Campbell alliance, though strained, remains the backbone of an era. The screens capture every micro expression—the absolute sovereignty of a great friendship.
And a choreography of power began, with the entrance of the Pillars:
From opposite ends of the hall, two processions advance. On one side, Mallet Campbell, with Sarah (his daughter-in-law) on his right arm and Callum on his left. On the other, Robert Phillips, with Jared (his son and heir) on his right arm and Beatrice on his left.
They meet at the exact center, beneath the main chandelier. The patriarchs greet one another. It is a living tableau of power.
To everyone's surprise, the calling of the Seeds began:
Mallet and Robert, in a synchronized gesture, turn not toward their counterparts, but toward the sides of the hall. It is the signal.
Aster emerged from the shadow of a column, no longer a secret, but a claimed presence. Callum detaches himself from his grandfather and, before everyone, extends his hand to him. Aster accepts. The first pair of the new generation forms beside Mallet.
On the Phillips side, Clarice and Oliver step forward. Oliver offers his arm to his sister, in a gesture of solid (and public) fraternal unity. They position themselves beside Robert, Jared, and Beatrice.
The Visual Effect on the Screens:
The giant screens do not show faces. They show the panorama. The two families, dressed in their colors and insignias (the greens and silvers of the Phillips, the blues and golds of the Campbells), rotate in large, intertwined circles across the hall, like two galaxies in a tense and inevitable orbit. It is the perfect image of the ABO world: two colossal forces, united and rival, carrying within themselves all the seeds of the future, of conflict, and of scandal.
The music reached its climax and ended with a resonant chord. The two families, perfectly aligned, perform a synchronized bow and curtsy—first to one another, then to the audience.
The applause came as a deafening wave of sound.
At the exact moment the applause begins to subside, Mallet Campbell raises his hand slightly and declares, in a voice that needs no microphone:
— "Let the celebration… begin for everyone!"
The orchestra bursts into a vibrant, inclusive melody. The garden gates open fully, fountains begin to pour wine and scented water, and the guests flood the dance floor and salons, freed from hierarchical reverence, yet now intoxicated by the spectacle of power they have just witnessed.
Adam was impeccable. The deep red of the Kadman ceremonial uniform, edged with golden crests, made him a fixed point of authority in the hall. He did not need to move to be seen. The space bent around his presence.
Damián, by contrast, seemed to lower his gaze before fully stepping into view.
The colors of House Williams — black and white — shaped his silhouette with an almost archaic elegance. The wing-shaped jewels in white gold caught the light like fragments of memory: inheritance, escape, flight. Not submission. That mattered.
When they found each other again in the grand hall, the world appeared to retreat by two careful steps.
Adam drew Damián into his arms. The gesture was not possessive. It was necessary. His scent was unchanged. Familiar. Almost indecent in its intimacy.
"We're together," Adam said quietly.
Not a promise. A fact. Heavy with expectation.
Damián rested his forehead against Adam's shoulder for a second longer than protocol allowed.
"I liked that," he said.
Adam waited.
For an explanation about leaving the mansion.
For an apology that never came.
For something — anything — that would say *you were right*.
Nothing.
The absence of it all tightened something in his chest.
"You left me," Adam said at last. Not as an accusation. As a statement. One that made him sound harsher than he meant to be.
Damián looked up at him. Serious. Open only to the limit he allowed.
"I didn't leave *you*," he said. "This place is full of urgency and hunger. We don't need to become part of that." A pause. "I walked away from an unpleasant situation. That's all."
Adam clenched his jaw. It wasn't an apology. It was worse. It was clean.
"I should be angry," he murmured.
"You could be," Damián replied lightly. "But I'm not exactly hard to find. I'm beautiful, well-born, and inconveniently visible." Then, softer: "And we're together."
Their eyes held. Neither smiled.
Adam lifted his hand, his thumb tracing Damián's jaw with an almost ceremonial care.
"I don't forgive easily," he said. "You should know that."
"I do," Damián answered. "And I don't apologize for things I don't regret. We've already had this conversation. I'm not hiding anything from you."
The words nearly broke them apart.
Instead, something unfamiliar settled between them. Not peace. Not resolution. Something quieter.
Adam rested his forehead against Damián's.
"Then stay," he said. Not as an order. As a choice. "Stay without fixing anything."
The weight of it struck Damián harder than any kiss.
"That's the closest you'll get to an *I love you* tonight," Adam added.
Damián smiled without noticing it at first.
"So that's it?" he asked. "You love me even when I don't do things your way?"
Adam closed his eyes briefly.
"Especially then."
And there, in the middle of a hall devoted to lineage and power, the screens captured two images:
Red and white.
Gold and wings.
An alpha who does not forgive.
An omega who does not apologize.
And still, they chose each other.
Damián did not yet grasp the full weight of it, but something anchored itself in his chest. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if the long detour his life had become might finally be nearing its end.
His past stirred. He wanted to tell Adam about it, but the story felt unreal, like something that belonged to another man entirely. Someone unhinged. Someone who should be out there surviving, killing, running.
The thought slipped away.
It felt like the kind of night when two people should drink together. He had no idea how to do that. The idea tempted him, briefly. But returning to the familiar routine of destroying his life was no longer an option.
Still, to Adam, his omega remained a beautiful problem.
Desirable.
Unreadable.
And hiding far more than he revealed.