"There he is."

Kamal’s expression remained perfectly neutral, which meant he was absolutely satisfied with himself.

Mezos looked between them with the exhausted air of a man realizing he had accidentally walked into a reunion between two emotionally damaged disasters separated by reincarnation and war crimes.

Arik rubbed one hand over his face once, still smiling faintly beneath it all.

Then the smile faded into something quieter, more serious.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked.

Kamal’s gaze sharpened immediately.

"That is a dangerous question."

"Yes," Arik agreed. "I asked it intentionally."

The older alpha studied him carefully. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Arik held the look without flinching.

For a moment, the saloon fell silent except for the distant hum of ether through the diplomatic palace’s walls.

Finally, Kamal spoke.

"You have a country already."

"So did I last time."

"You have parents."

"I’m aware. Damian reminds me daily and Gabriel hourly."

"You have people trained for this era, this political structure, this court."

"Yes."

Kamal narrowed his eyes slightly. "Then why ask me?"

Arik leaned back against the table behind him, crossing his arms loosely.

"Because Noah is currently acting as my steward."

Mezos immediately looked sympathetic toward Kamal.

Kamal blinked once.

"That sounds unpleasant."

"It is," Arik said gravely. "He complains constantly. Sometimes artistically."

"I heard that," Noah’s voice announced from the doorway.

Everyone turned.

Noah stood there, holding two data tablets and the expression of a man who had walked in precisely in time to regret being alive.

Arik looked entirely unashamed.

"You were eavesdropping."

"You left Mezos outside looking emotionally compromised. Of course I was eavesdropping." Noah stepped inside, then looked toward Kamal properly. "You’re the terrifying steward."

Kamal stared at him.

"The title is not official."

"It should be."

Arik sighed softly. "See what I endure?"

"You threatened to replace me within hearing range."

"I am replacing you."

Noah looked offended. "After everything we’ve been through together?"

"You called me emotionally house-trained yesterday."

"You were cuddling a dangerous engineer before sunrise."

"That is unrelated to administrative structure."

Mezos physically turned away from the conversation, shoulders shaking once again, like Kamal, who watched all of this unfold with increasing suspicion.

Then something horrifying happened.

Very slightly, almost invisibly, the corner of his mouth moved.

Arik saw it instantly.

"So," he said smoothly, sensing weakness like a predator, "you’re smiling now."

"I am not."

"You absolutely are."

"I’m assessing dysfunction."

"That’s practically affection from you."

Kamal looked deeply insulted by this interpretation.

Noah, meanwhile, was staring between them with fascination.

"This is unbelievable," he muttered. "You really did survive death just to continue bullying the same man."

Arik pointed at him. "See? Complaining."

"You deserve complaints."

Kamal inhaled slowly through his nose.

The movement carried decades of exhausted patience.

"Your Highness," he said carefully to Arik, "are you actually asking me to return as your steward?"

Arik’s expression settled immediately.

"Yes."

The word landed heavily in the room.

Kamal went still again.

Arik continued before the older alpha could retreat behind practicality.

"You know how I work. You know how I think. You survived Nuria. You understand Felix better than anyone alive." His gaze held steady. "And selfishly, I would like at least one person near me who remembers enough to tell me when I’m repeating my own terrible habits."

"That would require constant supervision."

"I know."

Kamal studied him in silence for several long moments.

Then his eyes narrowed slightly.

"You delegate more in this life."

Arik blinked taken aback by the remark.

"That’s your response?"

"You delegated nothing before."

"I was busy."

"You were controlling."

"I remain controlling."

"Yes," Kamal agreed calmly. "But now you allow others to help before collapsing from exhaustion. Progress."

Noah made a choking noise somewhere beside the wall.

Arik looked betrayed. "You too?"

Kamal ignored that entirely.

Instead, he looked at Arik carefully again, the wariness still there beneath everything else.

"You understand what my presence would mean," he said quietly.

Arik nodded once.

Kamal Veyr had not simply been Goliath’s steward.

He had been the shadow beside the throne for over a century.

If he appeared beside Arik publicly, certain old survivors would start looking very closely at the Crown Prince of Agaron.

"I know," Arik said.

"And yet you still ask."

"Yes."

Silence stretched again.

Then Kamal exhaled softly, long and tired and ancient.

"I will assist temporarily," he said at last with the solemn tone of a man making a terrible life decision. "Until I determine whether this is fate, madness, or a highly elaborate ether-induced psychological collapse."

Arik grinned immediately.

Noah groaned. "Oh, that’s the exact same expression he makes before disasters."

"Excellent," Arik said warmly. "You already sound like family again."

Kamal closed his eyes briefly.

"God help me," he muttered.

"No," Arik said lightly. "Historically they avoided us too."

—

Liam had not intended to become absorbed.

Unfortunately, Arik had weaponized engineering against him.

Three separate projection tablets now hovered above the low table near the suite windows, each one displaying ether-grid schematics detailed enough to qualify as emotional manipulation. One focused on pre-collapse Nurian relay architecture. Another showed modern Agaron stabilization systems. The third...

The third was criminal.

Liam narrowed his eyes at the rotating model suspended in blue ether light.

"Oh, you arrogant bastard," he muttered under his breath.

Because someone, Arik, had apparently accessed restricted imperial records and sent him an early prototype of an adaptive ether conversion chamber that looked disturbingly similar to principles Liam himself used in the Vanguard.

Not identical, but better in some areas and worse in others.

Which offended him personally.

He sat cross-legged on the sofa now in loose, dark clothes, one sleeve rolled halfway up while he scribbled furious notes across a transparent drafting screen balanced against his knee.

The suite had been quiet hours ago.

Staff entered carefully with food, tea, and anything Liam might ask for, all carrying the same wary respect of people who had already learned that the engineer attached to the Crown Prince of Agaron became dangerous when interrupted mid-calculation.

Liam barely noticed any of them.

His hair had fallen into his eyes again hours ago.

One cup of coffee sat forgotten beside him.

Another had died heroically sometime earlier beneath a pile of annotated relay sketches.

The heat was gone, fully, and with his mind clear again, Liam realized something deeply unfortunate: Arik understood him terrifyingly well already.

Not emotionally.

That was still a disaster.

But intellectually?

The alpha had somehow figured out that the fastest way to keep Liam inside the diplomatic palace willingly was to provide him with enough forbidden engineering material to make leaving feel inconvenient.

It was manipulative.

Effective. And, frankly, deeply attractive.

Liam hated that.

A soft pulse sounded from the suite entrance.

Liam waved one hand distractedly toward the access panel without looking up.

"Unless the building is actively collapsing, I’m busy."

The door opened anyway.

Liam prepared an irritated response automatically, but the words stopped before forming.

Arik stood there.

Dark imperial coat. Gold threading is faint beneath the modern tailoring. Hair was slightly more disordered now compared to this morning, like someone had spent hours in meetings resisting homicide through diplomacy alone.

Which, honestly, was probably accurate.

And behind him stood another man.

Liam straightened slowly.

It was a handsome older man with dark golden skin, blue eyes, and black hair elegantly streaked with white near the temples.

Older, perhaps somewhere in his fifties physically, though something about the way he carried himself made age feel irrelevant beside him.

The stranger’s gaze swept across the suite once, assessing exits, ether lines, staff routes, and Liam himself.

Liam narrowed his eyes immediately.

The man looked like he organized assassinations alphabetically.

Arik noticed the expression and looked deeply amused by it.

"That," he said while removing his gloves slowly, "is exactly the face Noah made."

"I’m right," Liam replied at once.

"Entirely."

The older man sighed softly beneath his breath, as if already exhausted by both of them.

Arik stepped farther into the suite.

"Liam," he said lightly, "this is Kamal Veyr."