"Good call. Online it’s easy to scream AI manipulation. This is raw footage. They can examine it."
We enter our module building, but the moment the door shuts behind us, I hear a strange sound.
The panel where we usually scan our cards lights up red, the diodes pulsing softly.
"Fuck, what is that?" Salt says, spinning around.
We both rush to the panel.
I try my card first, then Salt tries his.
Both cards produce a dull, empty sound.
For a few numb seconds, we both stare at the display pulsing with red light, almost hypnotized by it.
"Wow," Salt whispers. "They locked us out?"
Then he turns toward me and lets out an uneasy laugh.
"Damn, what a ride. They’re not playing nice anymore."
"Apparently," I reply calmly, which clearly surprises him. "It’s official, I guess. I’m now the main troublemaker."
His eyes shift over my face. "Eliano… what does this mean for us?"
There’s a subtle, fearful tone to his words. This is the first time I’ve heard him sound like that. But it only plays on my alpha protective senses, firing them up.
"It means that I need to make a phone call," I say firmly, feeling my jaw muscles twitch. "Now."
Salt suddenly places a hand on my forearm.
"Wait. There’s something I need to repeat…" He trails off, and I see a hint of color creep into his cheek.
I raise an eyebrow.
"Back in the hall… you handled that really well. You’re not even twenty-one yet, and you’re the strongest alpha here, with quite a fierce character and the nature of a true protector, not only mine but also others’. I don’t want you to downplay it, like you did in the dining room; no humbleness needed, these are facts."
I stay silent. What am I supposed to say? Objectively, the situations here are brutal, but I have spent hours locked in a cage by Anzo, had my face smashed in fights, and been shocked and whipped on top of that. My threshold for theunbearableis, by necessity, lower than most people on this island.
But this isn’t something I can be proud of. It was forced into me, a self-preserving instinct that kept me alive, gave me purpose, and drove me to keep fighting when grief and helplessness should have broken me. I had to learn to pull myself together, picking myself up after stress and pain, while other kids went to parties, dates, and lived a well-deserved teenage life.
Can I really feel satisfied that life hardened me? It wasnevermy choice.
And then he says it.
"You know… this might sound insulting, but people say the mafia gets things done and doesn’t play around. You’ve got that tough Italian mobster vibe in you, whether you want it or not."
His words hit me hard, and I turn my head aside. Mobster? I don’t take it as a compliment.
It feels more like a stigma, a burden, a curse, even though I wish I were relaxed enough to hear it that way. I simply can’t make my life’s tragedy into a badge to wear.
Salt steps even closer to me. His slim hand lightly brushes the raised veins on my forearm, his finger tracing one that is probably the thickest.
"You are so… unmistakably alpha, you know?" he says in a strange tone, almost breathless, like he can’t quite believe his own words or the way they come out, erotic and… submissive. "It just can’t be denied."
Then he lifts his eyes to me, and there is something… beta in them. As if his deeper nature relaxed in my presence.
A low rumble slips from my throat.
