ADRIEN’S POV

Orion’s dark gaze sweeps over the room, completely dismissing the huddled billionaires as if they are nothing more than cheap, disposable furniture, until his eyes lock onto me.

Shit.

A slow, terrifyingly familiar smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. He walks straight over to where I stand, his heavy footsteps echoing clearly, completely ignoring Leon and Louise who are sitting less than ten feet away on the central sofa.

"Still looking incredibly pale, duckling," Orion murmurs, his voice vibrating through the quiet room. He reaches out, his large, calloused hand cupping the back of my neck—right over the spot where he had deliberately licked away my sweat during the fire—and squeezes gently in a dominant, possessive gesture. "Did the doctor say you’re permitted to keep breathing my air, or do I need to buy this entire hospital and fire him on the spot?"

What bullshit is he spewing now?

"Get your hands off me," I mutter under my breath, though my voice lacked any real, effective bite. My heart is doing that stupid, frantic, stuttering hammer against my ribs, and I hate myself for it. "I told you, I’m fine."

Alexis Dupain stepped out of the secondary examination room just then, clutching a small plastic inhaler to his pale lips. Niko’s amber eyes snapped to him instantly.

He drifts toward Alexis, his posture immediately shifting into a deeply territorial stance that made the nearby high school alumni shrink back visibly into their leather seats.

This fucker is just a lion in human skin, isn’t he?

The silence stretches on, agonizingly taut, broken only by the hum of the air conditioning. One of our former high school classmates, a girl named Chloe who used to follow Louise around like a mindless lapdog, cleared her throat nervously, trying to break the oppressive ice.

"L-Louise," Chloe stammers, her voice trembling violently as she forces a fragile smile. "Are you... is your family okay? The security at the estate was supposed to be completely foolproof..."

Louise doesn’t even turn her head to look at her. She just clutches her hospital blanket tighter around her shoulders, her jaw clenches so hard I think her porcelain teeth might actually shatter.

Leon looks up from his rattling teacup, his dull eyes flickering from Chloe to Orion, then finally lands on me. There is a desperate, ugly flash of resentment and hatred in Leon’s eyes, but he keeps his mouth tightly shut.

He knows far better than to provoke the monster standing right next to me. But for how long that will last, I don’t know.

Suddenly, the heavy glass double doors at the main entrance of the pavilion don’t just open—they slam back against the concrete walls with a violent, crashing echo that shattered the room’s fragile peace.

"Where is he?! Where the fuck is he?!"

Everyone in the lounge jumps, several people cry out in terror. A man barges into the sterile, quiet sanctuary of the waiting room.

It’s Peter.

I recognize him instantly. Peter had been my classmate in high school—a tall, heavily built, buff athlete who had married into a massive shipping fortune right after graduation. He went from rich to massively rich.

But the man standing before us now looks completely unhinged. His expensive tuxedo is shredded to pieces, his face is covered in a thick layer of black soot and dried, crusty blood from a head wound.

His chest is heaving violently, his eyes bloodshot and wide with a frantic, grief-driven rage.

"Peter?" Leon says, his voice weak and trembling as he pushes himself up slightly from the velvet sofa. "Peter, calm down, please, the doctors are still working—"

"Shut the fuck up, Leon!" Peter roars, his voice cracking with a desperation that shakes the room.

He doesn’t care about social etiquette anymore, and he clearly doesn’t care about the rules of the elite. Flecks of white spittle fly from his lips as he swings his wild gaze around the room until his bloodshot eyes land squarely on my face.

The blood instantly drains from my cheeks, leaving me cold. What bullshit is this now?

"You," Peter hisses, raising a shaking, soot-stained hand to point a thick finger directly at my chest. He takes three heavy steps forward, the polished linoleum floor echoing loudly under his heavy boots. "It’s because of you! You brought them here! You caused all of this!"

Excuse me?

"Peter, what the hell are you talking about?" I stammer, stepping back instinctively, my shoulders hitting the solid wall of Orion’s bare chest.

"My wife is dead!" Peter screams, tears cutting bright, clean tracks through the thick soot on his face, his voice filled with agony. He holds up a cracked, blood-smeared smartphone in his other hand, shaking it violently in the air like a weapon.

He’s going to brain me with that thing. Fuck.

"She’s dead! She was standing close to the parked cars when the bombs went off! They blew her to literal pieces! And I just got the text! I just got the message from them on her phone!"

The entire room holds its collective breath. Louise doesn’t gasp, instead, her eyes narrow into sharp slits as she stares at the phone.

"They said it was a warning!" Peter screams, his voice vibrating the glass panels of the pavilion. He is completely blind with a manic rage, stepping closer and closer, his massive, buff frame towering over the space.

"They said the elite will burn until the rat acknowledges the truth! It’s you, Adrien! These bastards called Masamune want you! You refused to acknowledge the truth! That’s what they said! You hid behind the Vassilis like a coward, and now my wife is fucking dog food because you won’t just die like you’re supposed to!"

Panic, cold and sharp, seizes my throat, cutting off my air supply. The name ’Masamune’ hanging openly in the air feels like an absolute death sentence. I’m dead.

The eyes of every single former classmate in the room instantly shift to me—not with confusion, but with a sudden, horrifying dawning realization that I’m the target. I’m the parasite bringing bloody destruction into their perfect, protected world.

I’m not, you stupid fucks! They’re using me as a distraction!

"You pathetic, worthless piece of shit!" Peter roars, his face turning an ugly purple as he lunges forward, his large hands reaching out to wrap around my throat to crush it. "I’m going to kill you myself! I’ll give them exactly what they want!"

I flinch, pulling my head down into my shoulders, closing my eyes as I brace for the violent impact of a man twice my size.

I never feel it.

The shift in the room’s atmosphere doesn’t happen with a dramatic roar or a warning shout. It happens with the instantaneous speed of a heavy guillotine dropping through the air.

Orion doesn’t hesitate for a single microsecond. He doesn’t speak a word. He steps out from behind me, his massive 6’4 frame moving like a shadow cutting through light, intercepting the attack.

Before Peter’s large hands can even come within a foot of my face, Orion’s left hand shoots forward, clamping around Peter’s thick throat like a vice.

Peter’s forward momentum stops completely dead. His eyes widened in suffocating shock as his feet literally leave the polished floor, hoisted entirely into the air by Orion’s single-handed, vice-like grip.

"O-Orion—" Peter chokes out, his thick fingers clawing uselessly, desperately at Orion’s forearm.

Orion’s facial expression is entirely vacant. There is no anger in his dark eyes, no sudden rush of adrenaline, no visible malice. It is the detached face of a man crushing a small bug on his car windshield.

He brings his massive right hand up, placing it firmly against the crown of Peter’s head, while his left hand remains locked immovably beneath Peter’s jaw.

A cracking sound echoes across the room.

The sound is sickeningly loud in the silent pavilion. It sounds exactly like a heavy tree branch snapping cleanly off a tree in the dead of winter.

Peter’s entire body goes completely limp instantly. The frantic, manic rage in his bloodshot eyes vanishes in a fraction of a second, replaced by a dull, glassy emptiness as his head tilts at an impossible, grotesque angle against his broad shoulder.

Orion casually, effortlessly opens his hand.

Peter’s massive, heavy body hits the polished floor with a dull thud, sliding a few inches before coming to a complete stop right at my feet, his lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling.

For three agonizing seconds, nobody in the room breathed.

Oh fuck. He’s dead.

Then, a high-pitched, hysterical shriek tears out of Chloe’s throat. Several heiresses scramble backward over their leather chairs, tumbling onto the floor in a desperate, frantic attempt to get away from the fresh corpse.

He just lifted him off the ground and snapped his neck like a twig...I’m so dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m—

Leon falls back onto the velvet sofa, his face turning a completely translucent green, and he immediately begins vomiting directly into his own hands, his body shaking with terror.

I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead—

Louise, true to her nature, doesn’t scream, but her cold face turns incredibly pale as she stares at the body, her hands gripping the sofa cushion until her knuckles turn white.

Orion doesn’t even look down at the dead man lying at his feet. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pristine white handkerchief, and calmly begins wiping the clear burn ointment that rubbed off on his fingers during the execution.

He turns his head slowly, his dark, completely dead eyes sweeping over the horrified, hyperventilating crowd of high society elites.

"If anyone else in this room has a text message from the Masamune," Orion said, his deep voice terrifyingly soft, yet carrying perfectly over the wet sound of Leon’s continuous retching, "please. Share it with the class right now."

Nobody moves. Nobody dares to breathe. Our former classmates look at Orion as if he is the devil himself, completely paralyzed by the display of casual violence.

Oh god. This is the end for me.

Orion tosses the soiled handkerchief on Peter’s chest, then turns his gaze back to me, his dark smirk returning like a demon slipping effortlessly back into its favorite mask.

He reaches down, grabbing my wrist in a grip that is warm, bruising, and entirely unbreakable, and begins pulling me toward the glass exit doors.

No, I don’t want to go. No. No. No—

"Come along, duckling," Orion murmurs, his voice dripping with amusement as he leads me away from the body. "The ambience in here has completely gone to shit."