“I have no interest in your mind,” Calia said bluntly, in lieu of apologising for Sandar’s behaviour. Then her expression tightened with a faint accusation. “Does my brother fall short of your exacting standards?”
Whoa. High society and their arrogant egos. That was practically a threat.
“Which one of your brothers?”
Calia didn’t bother answering, but her eyes fixed on Ehlian with a shade more coldness. She wasn’t here to play games. It seemed Ehlian had met his match, and there was no winning this if he wanted to earn her favour. So he scaled back the hostility in his voice. “Hayce told you everything?”
“He told me enough. But even without that, I’m not blind,” she said. “I know what he’s like when he’s trying to hide something that bothers him.”
“I think you overestimate my place in his life,” Ehlian pushed back. “And whatever you think Hayce feels about me.”
Calia tapped on the screen of her holowatch. After a few scrolls and taps, a single file projected in the air between them.
“Open it,” she said.
Ehlian tapped it.
A seemingly endless document streamed in the air. He swiped through one page after another. It was a detailed log: dates, events, almost marked by the minute. Everything Hayce had done in prison. In a few instances, even what he’d said. Their relationship was there in black and white too, documented in perfect chronological order up until the cruel breakup.
Sandar had been monitoring Hayce the entire time through the lenses of the prison guards.
Ehlian had already known that Sandar kept a close eye, but not to such a sickening extent. Of course, his eyes didn’t reach inside their cell, so those moments had mostly stayed private for Ehlian and Hayce.
Then something else caught his eye in the floating document. Beneath the detailed account of their breakup a guard had witnessed, there was a note about Ehlian crying quietly in the middle of the night in Aric’s cell. How would a guard have known that? That was impossible.
Frowning, he flicked the document backwards: a word-for-word conversation with Aric in the showers about admitting he was Hayce’s personal guard… then far too detailed exchanges the pack had had in the lounge… and then a private conversation about a deal Hayce had made:You’d be safe with Kraiton if you chose his pack, but my omega insists on taking you in. Aric’s omega will be released in two weeks. He’ll protect you.
Mouth falling slightly open, Ehlian’s shocked gaze met Calia’s through the translucent document.
“Larik was meant to replace you.” Calia said.
Ehlian scanned the lines over and over, his mind refusing to accept that Larik had been nothing but a spy. Fuck. He’d been fooled so easily. But more than anything, he felt deeply and cruelly betrayed.
“You never wondered why Sandar visited you?” Calia asked.
“I always thought he was just desperate,” he said, trying to drag his thoughts into order. “I still think that.”
“He was that too,” Calia agreed. “You weren’t the first he approached. At the beginning of Hayce’s imprisonment he was paranoid that Hayce might be gathering evidence against him. Of course, at the time I hadn’t pieced everything together yet, but I always knew Hayce wouldn’t have been capable of killingour father.” Calia’s tone faltered, as if recalling that painful period, before she continued. “Sandar got nowhere with those omegas. Just like with you, Hayce told them nothing, so Sandar stopped wasting time on them.”
“That’s why he sent his own spy?” Ehlian asked. “To make Larik earn Hayce’s trust?”
“Sandar recognised the pattern. Hayce always chose the most vulnerable omegas, the ones who needed protection and might never leave the prison alive. Sandar weaponised that instinct and sent the perfect bait. But Hayce stuck with you. He chose you over Larik.”
Ehlian’s chest tightened, all his repressed emotions threatening to break loose.
“The breakup meant to protect you and keep Sandar away, but Sandar never bought it,” Calia continued. “And even if my emotionally inept brother could see through the cracks and recognise that you were different from the rest of them, then I do not think I overestimate your place in Hayce’s life.”
Ehlian swallowed thickly, remembering how he had spent months gazing up at the sky, tracking the floating prison like some forbidden religion—still longing, still craving, still worried for Hayce.
Hayce couldn’t quite fool him either.
The confusing, loud noise in his mind slowly began to settle, brighter, more hopeful thoughts taking its place. “I think he tried to tell me this the other day.”
“You should’ve listened to him then.” she closed the projected document, her face in clear view. “So. What will you do?”
Ehlian wasn’t sure how much he could ask of her, but at the moment he didn’t really care. “Can you help me meet him?”
“I’ll send someone for you tomorrow,” she said, then pushed the gift bag slowly towards him. “My deal is not one-sided.”
