"Can you override the clearance and restore the firewall?" Riven asked, eyes fixed on the monitor streaming chaos from the hotel ballroom.
The footage was brutal—Omegas collapsing, Alphas bristling, heat rising like a storm about to break. If they didn't act fast, this would spiral into something far worse.
The system engineer hesitated. "This is an old protocol. It's—"
"I'm not asking if it's hard," Riven cut in, voice calm but edged with steel. "I'm asking if it's possible."
The engineer froze. The protocol was a relic from archived training modules—no one knew how to override it.
Riven's gaze didn't waver. "I thought Nexus was ahead of the curve. Maybe I expected too much."
He said it to provoke. To push. Because he had no choice but to challenge them.
Silence stretched. Then—
"I can." The voice came from the corner. Eli—checkered button-up, sleeves rolled but collar stiff—was on his feet. He looked like he belonged in a library, not a crisis room, but his eyes were steady.
"Sit down, Eli," someone snapped. "This isn't your lane. What do you even know about—"
"Can you really?" Riven asked, cutting through the noise, gaze locked on him.
One of the executives scoffed. "Mr. Virellian, are you serious? You're putting this in the hands of—"
"Unless you've got something better than commentary," Riven said, gaze slicing toward the man, "I'm open to suggestions."
Silence landed like a blade.
No one spoke. Even the Alpha executives backed down, their posture folding under Riven's quiet pressure.
He hadn't released a single drop of pheromone. He didn't need to.
His presence alone was enough.
From the corner, Eli smirked—just a flicker. Of course. That was his Alpha.
Relief. Satisfaction. And pride.
"I guess there's nothing," Riven said, turning back to Eli. "Go ahead. Start."
Eli slid into his seat, hands blurring across the keys. His movements were fast, precise—like he was composing music only the machines could hear.
Riven stepped closer, drawn in by the quiet intensity of Eli's focus. He didn't understand the code. Not really. It was a storm of symbols and logic gates. But something in the way Eli moved—calm, confident, completely in control—made it impossible to look away.
The system stabilized.
Gasps broke the silence as the monitor blinked:
SYSTEM BREACH CONTAINED. FIREWALL UPGRADED.
The feed from the hotel ballroom steadied. Chaos ebbed. Medics were inside now. Security had regained control. The air was clearing, the panic fading.
All eyes turned to Eli. Even Riven couldn't hide the flicker of awe in his expression. He hadn't expected that. Not from the quiet Beta in the checkered shirt. Not from the boy who hadn't even raised his voice.
Then another alert lit the screen.
A news broadcast. Hotel management was holding Nexus Technologies accountable. The breach was public. The summit had been compromised.
Riven's jaw locked. Contained inside, exposed outside. The war had just shifted fronts.
Right on cue, Thayer walked in with two members of the legal team, their faces already tense from the headlines.
"I've heard about what happened." Thayer said.
"Prepare a statement," Riven said. "We go public in twenty minutes. Transparency is our leverage."
The legal chief blinked. "Sir, we haven't confirmed the breach origin. If we release this—"
"We control the narrative," Riven cut in, voice steady. "If we wait, we lose it."
Thayer's gaze flicked to Eli, still standing quietly beside Riven.
He didn't speak, but the weight in his eyes said it all:
Nyxen's gamble had paid off. Risky—but undeniable.
Director Voss stormed in—pale, rumpled, running on zero sleep.
"You're exposing us?" he asked, voice low.
Riven didn't look up from the data stream. "I'm protecting us."
"This could tank investor confidence."
"This could rebuild public trust."
Voss stared at him. No scent. No pheromonal spike. Just a man in a black suit, surrounded by red alerts and silence, making decisions faster than anyone else in the room.
"You're not using scent," he said quietly. "But you still feel like an Alpha."
Riven finally looked up, his gaze steady, then shifted—just slightly—to Eli.
Eli met his eyes. For a moment, the noise fell away. Something unspoken passed between them. Something grounding.
"Maybe," Riven said softly, "it's time we stop measuring leadership by biology."
Eli's lips curved, just barely. And for once, the tension in Riven's chest loosened.
But the system wasn't finished. A new flag surfaced—a timestamped access spike with no traceable origin. No clearance. No footprint. Just a ghost in the grid.
The protocol kicked in automatically: containment alert. Escalation to the Nexus board.
Riven stood at the center of it all, caught between silence and exposure.
Silence meant cover-up. Exposure meant vulnerability. But only truth meant trust.
The statement was drafted. The breach patched. The press release sent.
"We built this system to protect. But today, it reminded us that control without consent is just another kind of violence."
Riven stood alone in the crisis room, watching the final alert fade from the screen.
Only then did he see what the breach had really touched.
Scent Surge detection. The Syntheme Archive.
A classified neural-emotive mapping system that translated scent into emotional resonance profiles. It held:
Emotive Scent Maps: overlays predicting compatibility, loyalty, resistance.Anomaly Logs: records of those who defied bonding predictions.Psychological Vulnerability Indexes: metrics assessing stability, susceptibility, rebellion potential.
And someone had triggered it.
Not to steal. Not to destroy.
But to force the world to see what Nexus had buried.
"You're insane," Thayer said, breathless as he stepped onto the rooftop and found Nyxen at the edge, head tilted back, the wind brushing his face like a lover's touch.
Nyxen didn't move. Just closed his eyes and let the night hold him.
Thayer's chest ached with the contradiction—furious, but proud. He'd chosen Nyxen years ago, and the boy still made the impossible look effortless.
"You realize you put Nexus on a cliff today?" Thayer pressed. "What were you thinking—"
"Nothing happened," Nyxen said, turning with that maddening serenity.
"Nothing?" Thayer snapped. "You triggered a system-wide diagnostic loop. Crashed the firewall. Sent half the Omegas in that ballroom into heat. For what?"
"To see how he'd handle it."
Thayer froze. "You tested Riven?"
Nyxen's mouth curved, sly and satisfied. "And he didn't just pass. He was brilliant."
He stepped closer, eyes glinting. "Did you see Voss's face? That man's pride cracked like glass."
"You didn't just risk Nexus," Thayer muttered. "You risked everything we built."
Nyxen shrugged. "I care about him. More than they'll ever understand."
Thayer searched his face. "You mean Riven?"
Nyxen didn't answer. He only turned back to the skyline, wind tugging at his coat, eyes soft with something dangerously close to affection.
"Call the hotel," he said. "Tell them the upgrade was free. And reach out to our clients. Veltrix will spin this—we get ahead of it."
Thayer groaned. "You start the fire, you pay the price. This upgrade's going to cost you."
Nyxen smiled. "Worth it. He proved himself—in front of everyone. Those executives won't question him again."
Thayer shook his head, a low sigh slipping out. He stayed, though—because he always did. Loyalty, habit, or something softer he wouldn't admit.
"You're hopeless."
Nyxen glanced at him, eyes warm, lips curved. "I know."
And Thayer felt that familiar ache again—the ache of watching someone fall in love with a storm.