"You are absolutely about to offer me something terrible."

Nero looked at her for a moment.

Then he smiled.

The restaurant seemed to dim around him, though Sylvia knew it had not. The candles still burned in their small crystal holders. The city still glimmered beyond the window in layered gold and white. The servers still moved with careful grace between tables occupied by people too wealthy to raise their voices.

Hale stood near the entrance to the private section, turned slightly away, far enough that he could see Nero clearly and hear nothing.

That, Sylvia realized, had not been accidental.

Nero had chosen the table, the distance, and the moment when Hale, loyal and dangerous and too well-trained to intrude, would become a presence rather than a witness.

Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass.

"No," Nero said. "Not absolutely."

Sylvia stared at him. "That is not reassuring."

"It is accurate."

"That is worse."

He set the wing down at last, untouched now, beside the porcelain plate arranged with entirely too much care for something meant to be eaten with fingers. His hands rested loosely near the edge of the table, beautiful and still.

Sylvia had the sudden, absurd thought that he did not need to hold a weapon.

He was the weapon.

"What would you be willing to do," Nero asked softly, "to become a dominant omega?"

For a second, Sylvia heard nothing.

Not the restaurant. Not the music. Not the soft clink of cutlery. Not the distant murmur of people eating rare fish and discussing matters that suddenly seemed very far from her life.

Just the question.

What would you be willing to do to become a dominant omega?

Her first thought was Thomas.

His personality was careful even when he was tired. His quiet voice. His calm, honorable sadness. The way he carried restraint like a duty rather than a punishment.

Her second thought was biology.

Dominant alpha. Beta. Need. Stabilization. Heat. Rut. The brutal, invisible design of a world that dressed itself in elegance and still built certain traits only in a handful of people.

Her third thought was Sebastian.

And then the realization hit her so hard she almost forgot how to breathe.

Nero was not offering her a miracle.

He was looking for proof.

Sylvia stared at him, and suddenly every piece settled into place with a terrible, quiet click.

Dean’s warning. The secret carried in the restricted circles of Alamina, Palatine, and Saha. The word she had learned only recently and had not known what to do with.

Enigma.

Nero was an enigma.

Not merely powerful. Not merely rare. Not merely another royal anomaly hidden behind protocol and bloodline politics.

An enigma.

A person whose existence could turn biology from law into negotiation, the closest personification of a god.

Her mouth went dry.

"You want to test it," she said.

Nero did not blink.

Sylvia’s voice came out lower. "On me."

His silence was not denial.

The room tilted slightly, though she remained perfectly still in her chair.

"You want to know what happens," she continued, because once her mind had found the right answer, it would not stop. "What does it cost? What changes first? What breaks? What holds? Whether a beta body can survive being rewritten into a dominant omega."

Nero’s eyes remained on hers.

Purple, calm, merciless.

"And you want to know that before Sebastian."

The truth did not need him to say yes; it already sat between them, breathing.

Sylvia felt suddenly cold.

Not because he had threatened her. He had not. That was almost worse.

Nero had not leaned forward. He had not lowered his voice into menace. He had not dressed cruelty in romance or desperation. He had placed the question on the table with the same precision as a surgeon laying down a blade.

She thought, with strange clarity, that this was what people meant when they spoke of royal blood becoming monstrous.

Nero said, "Yes."

Sylvia closed her eyes for one second.

When she opened them again, he was still there, still beautiful, still composed, still looking like a death angel who had finally named the price of salvation.

"You’re asking me to become your test subject."

"Yes."

The answer was so clean it scraped.

Sylvia gave a short laugh, but there was no amusement in it. "God."

"No god is involved."

"That was not theological."

"I know."

She pressed her fingers to her temple, then dropped her hand before it could start trembling.

"What is the price?" she asked.

Nero’s expression shifted by less than a breath.

"I don’t know."

Sylvia looked at him.

For the first time since the conversation began, anger moved through the fear.

"You don’t know."

"No."

"What could happen?"

"I don’t know."

"Nero."

"I know the theory," he said, and his voice remained even, which somehow made it worse. "I know the biological and pheromonal framework. I know what should happen in staged progression. I know what I can control and what I cannot. I know what would be monitored, what would be reversible if caught early, and what would likely become irreversible after certain thresholds."

Sylvia’s stomach turned.

"But you don’t know."

"No," he said. "Not truly."

"And Sebastian?"

His jaw moved once, it was the first crack.

Sylvia understood then, with a horror that settled deeper than fear, that this was not about if.

It was about when.

Nero was not wondering whether he would one day cross that line for Sebastian.

He was preparing the ground so that when he did, everything would be ready and Sebastian wouldn’t have any chance to change his mind. If he had anything to choose from to begin with.

"Nero," she whispered.

He looked at her.

"You’re going to do it."

His silence was vast.

Sylvia leaned back slowly, as if distance could help. It did not.

"You’re going to change him."

"I am going to give him the option," Nero said, his voice calm, his smile still there.

"That is not the same thing."

"It will be if he says yes."

"And if he doesn’t?"