He moved through glass and chrome, past assistants who didn't glance up, didn't shift, didn't even acknowledge him. That unsettled him.
He was used to the micro-responses—Omegas lowering their eyes, Betas stiffening, Alphas bristling just enough to signal territory. Here? Nothing. Not even curiosity.
Clinical. Controlled. Like walking unseen through a vacuum.
Until the boardroom.
Twelve executives sat in silence, faces carved from suspicion. Director Voss, silver hair gleaming under the lights, didn't stand. Neither did anyone else.
"Mr. Virellian," he said, voice clipped as a scalpel. "We expected someone with more experience. Less… complication."
Riven didn't sit. He let his gaze sweep the room—not to dominate, but to measure. His silence pressed heavier than pheromones ever could. His stillness unsettled.
"I know what my name means," he said, calm, precise. "But it doesn't make me less capable. Or less loyal."
Their eyes stayed on him. Watching. Waiting. Predators circling, but not yet striking.
"You think I came here to sabotage Nexus?" His voice sharpened. "I came to make sure it thrives. With or without your permission."
Only then did he sit. The chair held his weight without a sound. His scent didn't flare, but the air shifted regardless—like the room itself exhaled and drew tighter around him.
A ripple. A recalibration.
"Let's begin," he said. Calm as a blade.
He hadn't even made it halfway through his first day when the challenge came.
The crisis room door slid open with a hiss, and Riven stepped inside like a scalpel—clean, precise, built to cut.
The space was engineered for disaster: matte black walls, low lighting, a central table pulsing with live data feeds. Screens bled red with alerts. The air was sterile, scrubbed scentless by Nexus's filtration grid.
Riven still wore inhibitors. Habit. Caution. He hadn't known the building erased pheromones anyway. But it didn't matter. His presence carried weight without scent. It was in his stillness, his focus—the way silence bent around him like gravity.
"Level Four breach," the head of cybersecurity said, voice tight, jaw twitching. "Codex patents. Biometric lineage data. Internal access. No external ping."
Codex. Bloodline tech. Untouchable. Sacred.
And someone was inside it.
Riven's pulse kicked. Cybersecurity wasn't his arena. He knew enough to survive boardroom posturing, but not this—this was deep protocol. His first day, and the backbone of Nexus had just been breached. Perfect.
The executives were watching him. All of them. Eyes sharp, hungry, waiting for proof he didn't belong.
A junior engineer whispered, "This is sabotage."
Another muttered, colder: "It's his family."
Riven didn't flinch. Of course, they'd point to Veltrix. To Rowen. His brother's shadow followed him everywhere.
But he wasn't here to defend bloodlines. He was here to lead.
What's the move? The question hammered through him. He'd studied breach protocols in the dead hours of the night. He didn't understand every line of code, but he understood survival.
And hesitation would kill him faster than sabotage.
He raised his head, voice steady, and gave his first order.
"Pull the logs," he said, voice low and clipped. "Trace the breach vector. I want timestamps, access points, and internal clearance overlays."
The room shifted. Not dramatically. But enough.
He didn't shout. He didn't posture. He just commanded. His words cut through the tension like steel.
From the corner, Eli watched him closely. And smiled. Not mockery. Not surprise. Satisfaction.
The Beta analyst hesitated, fingers hovering over his console. "Sir… scent trace protocols aren't enabled."
Riven turned, gaze steady. "I'm not asking for pheromone maps," he said. "I'm asking for code."
The analyst swallowed and nodded, fingers flying across the keys. The Pavilion feed sharpened on the central display.
The Eirené Pavilion was built for balance—a ballroom engineered to suppress instinct. No scent. No heat. No tension. Just diplomacy.
Nexus had installed its latest suppression tech there: a neutralizer grid calibrated to dampen pheromonal spikes and keep emotional equilibrium intact.
Then the feed glitched. Just a flicker. A pulse. Then red alerts bloomed across the screen like blood in water.
Scent surge detected. Neutralizer protocol reversed. Inhibitor access: locked.
Inside the Pavilion, the mist had changed. The system—designed to suppress heat—was hacked. Now it was amplifying it.
Omegas faltered first. One collapsed against a marble column, breath ragged, scent blooming uncontrolled. Another clutched her abdomen, eyes wide with panic. The neutralizer had stripped away their inhibitors, leaving them raw and exposed.
Alphas reacted instantly. Tension rippled through the crowd—territorial, reactive, primal. Voices rose. A glass shattered. Security scrambled, but the biometric locks on emergency sprays had failed.
Back in the Nexus Control Room, the air buzzed with quiet urgency.
Data streamed across the central table—access logs, clearance IDs, timestamps. A pattern began to form.
Someone had used a dormant executive clearance to bypass the biometric firewall. Someone who hadn't logged in for over a year.
"Elian clearance," said the legal chief, voice tight, knuckles whitening against the console. "That's… obsolete. No one's used it in ages."
He stared at the screen, disbelief etched across his face. No one recognized the clearance—or who had triggered it.
The room went still. Riven didn't flinch. Didn't blink. His body was still as stone.
Only his eyes moved—cold, sharp, calculating, as if the pattern meant more to him than he would say.