Arik’s eyes changed the moment Marin spoke his mate’s full name.

It did not move much on his face. He had been trained too well for that, raised by Damian Lyon and Gabriel Lyon, both of whom could make a court confess treason with a pause and a pleasant question. But Marin had known Arik since he was two minutes old and already being a menace with gold eyes.

Marin sighed. "You are already doing it."

"Doing what?"

"Preparing to be difficult."

"I am listening."

"No," Marin said, dragging the first file open with one elegant flick of his fingers. "You are listening like a crown prince, a soldier, and a newly bonded alpha all decided to stand in the same body and disagree on who gets to panic first."

Arik stared at him.

Marin smiled thinly. "Fortunately for both of us, I have survived your father."

"That is not the same thing."

"No. Your Damian becomes quieter when he wants to murder someone. You become polite. It is much more irritating."

Arik leaned back by a fraction. "The report."

"What report?" Marin asked.

The question landed too flatly.

Arik’s face went still.

Marin turned the tablet so Arik could see what hovered above it. There were files, yes. Enough to create the impression of a medical history if one looked from a distance and had either no training or no honesty. Names, dates, institutional stamps, classification numbers, repeated phrases with slight variations, and the clean bureaucratic structure of documentation that wanted to be trusted.

Marin tapped the projection once.

"This," he said, "is not a report. This is toilet paper that learned legal formatting."

Arik looked at the hologram.

The first page flickered into focus.

Channel irregularity suspected.

Patient advised not to overexert ether flow.

Discipline therapy recommended.

Response instability likely due to underdeveloped circulation.

Review pending.

There was no measurable baseline attached, no scan reference, and no response chart.

No physician signature, only clinic seal.

Arik’s fingers curled slowly against the chair.

Marin saw it.

"If you break the furniture now," he said, "I may allow it."

Arik did not answer.

Marin skimmed to the next file and made a sound of disgust. "This one is worse. Impressive. I did not expect worse."

"What does it say?"

"It says a great deal. None of it means anything." Marin enlarged the page. "Look here. ’Patient demonstrates exaggerated distress response during guided ether induction.’ That is not a diagnosis. That is a physician annoyed that a child screamed when they hurt him."

The room cooled.

Not literally.

Arik’s ether did not spill. His control was too precise for that. But something in the air changed, subtle and vicious, creating an imperial stillness that caused the wards woven into the sitting room to hum once, quietly, as if deciding whether to awaken.

Marin’s eyes lifted. "No."

Arik looked at him.

"Not yet," Marin said. "Rage after data. It is more efficient." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Arik breathed once, and the air steadied.

Marin returned to the file, but his mouth had tightened. "There is no channel map. No resonance spectrum. No exposure history. No blood-ether binding panel. No pain threshold progression. No tissue response scan. No conversion delay index. No comparison before and after induction."

He flicked through three more files, faster now, expression turning flatter with every page.

"Repeated phrases. Different dates. Same conclusions. No evidence. Whoever wrote this either did not examine him properly or was told what conclusion to produce before the boy entered the room."

Arik’s voice was quiet. "Felix."

"Of course it was Felix," Marin said. "Every physician listed here was either attached to clinics funded through Canmore intermediaries or recommended by offices with Felix’s fingerprints all over the referral chain."

Arik’s eyes moved to him.

Marin smiled without humor. "No, I did not need two hours to find that. I needed seven minutes. The rest of the time I spent being offended."

Arik looked back at the reports.

On the hologram, Liam’s name appeared again and again. Younger dates. Older dates. Variations in title, location, evaluator. The language changed from cautious to dismissive to corrective as Liam aged, as if the older he became, the less his pain was considered evidence and the more it became behavior.

Discipline therapy recommended.

Patient resistant. Patient intellectually combative. Patient refuses repeat induction.

Patient warned of permanent limitations.

Arik read the lines twice.

Then a third time.

Marin watched him do it and did not interrupt.

Some anger was cleaner when allowed to become precise.

Finally, Arik said, "They trained him into silence."

Marin’s face did not soften.

"No," he said. "They tried. They failed. He became difficult instead."

Arik closed his eyes for one brief second.

The bond pulsed faintly beneath his skin, still distant, still Liam-shaped and irritated somewhere in the palace corridors. Alive. Coming closer. Not knowing that Arik was sitting over the shadow of his childhood reduced to clinical cowardice.

"He thinks his channels are damaged," Arik said.

"Yes."

"But there is no proof."

"There is no useful proof of anything. Not damage. Not a congenital defect. Not true intolerance. Not even the failure pattern they keep referring to."

Marin leaned forward and pulled up another page, the only one marked in red.

"This is the one that interests me."

Arik focused.

The file was shorter than the others, less polished and clearly older. A scanned page rather than a structured report, its edges uneven, the handwriting almost too neat.

Unusual resistance during direct ether engagement. Pain response immediate, not cumulative. Skin temperature rise disproportionate to exposure volume. No external burn. Possible internal conversion obstruction. Recommend full channel imaging before further induction.

The note ended there.

No follow-up attached.

No signature visible, only the initials of the physician.

Marin tapped the lower corner. "This physician, whoever they were, noticed something real."

Arik leaned closer. "Mezos would get the physician." He reached for the tablet and entered his encrypted key. The interface changing to a ping of Mezos’ badge number. "Well, he is already here with Liam." Arik said faintly amused.