Chapter 218: Chapter 218: Answers and the right omega
Lucas didn’t answer right away.
He chewed, slow and methodical, like he was tasting the thought instead of the food. The room around them was soft with morning light, filtered through curtains that moved slightly with the breeze. Steam curled from his cup. Silverware tapped gently against porcelain. Somewhere behind the silence, birdsong threaded through the open window like a lullaby meant for someone else.
Across from him, Trevor waited.
Not pressing. Just... waiting. Like he always did when the questions were heavier than they sounded.
Lucas’s fingers tightened just slightly around his fork.
The first months after he awakened, he had only wanted one thing: to survive. No ambitions. No vendettas. Just the bare mechanics of breath and sleep and staying quiet enough that nothing in this world would try to take him again.
Serathine made that possible. Steady hands. A new name. A locked door between him and the past.
Then came Trevor, all composed violence and dry affection, and with him... a different kind of safety. Not the kind that shielded, but the kind that watched him bleed and said, I’m not afraid of what you are.
And now, Trevor was asking. Again.
Lucas’s gaze didn’t rise. He pushed a piece of fruit across his plate with the side of his fork, watching it drag a streak through the syrup.
He had written it all down. Every truth he’d never spoken aloud, every shameful fragment of a life that had ended long before his body gave out. Words had spilled like rot. Too many. Too late.
When he handed Trevor the manuscript, his hands were steady. Not because he was at peace, but because that story no longer belonged to him. It belonged to the version of himself who died alone. Who was sold. Who begged.
Lucas didn’t want it back.
He didn’t want to read those words again or say those names aloud. He didn’t want to care.
Not about Christian. Not about Agatha. Not about the people who carved pieces out of him and called it love.
He just wanted the quiet.
This room. This chair. This ridiculous, impossible safety he had built from other people’s ruins. From Trevor’s stubbornness. From Serathine’s will.
So when he spoke, his voice was low. Controlled. Too soft to be cold, but far too sharp to be mistaken for gentle.
"I don’t want to see them again," he said.
A pause. The air didn’t shift, but something in Trevor did. Barely.
"I don’t want to read what I wrote. I don’t want to remember how it felt. I don’t want to look back and find that version of me still screaming."
He set his fork down.
"I gave it to you because I didn’t know what else to do with it. So if you want to hunt them... do it."
His eyes rose then, calm and steady in a way that belied the exhaustion underneath. Not the kind of sleep that could fix it, but the kind born of too many yesterdays clawing for a voice he no longer wanted to give them.
"I already chose," Lucas said softly. "I chose this."
And he meant now. The sunlight. The table between them. Trevor, sharp and flawed and still here.
Trevor watched him. A breath caught behind stillness, the kind that said more than words ever could. Then, his voice quieter than usual, stripped of his usual polish:
"Then I’ll handle it. Do you want updates?"
Lucas considered it for a beat, then gave a slow, lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes but came close.
"Hmmm..." He speared a piece of fruit from his plate with the ease of someone who hadn’t just buried an entire lifetime. "That would make for interesting breakfast gossip."
Trevor’s mouth curved faintly. "Blood and sabotage before toast. How decadent."
"Try not to stain the linens this time," Lucas muttered, flicking him a dry glance. "Windstone already looks like he’s one spill away from throwing himself out a window."
"Noted." Trevor raised his cup in mock solemnity, then set it down with a quieter weight. "You should still be aware of what’s happening. Just in case anyone decides to try something funny."
Lucas arched a brow but didn’t speak.
Trevor’s voice lowered slightly, the way it always did when the stakes turned sharp. "Caelan dealt with Misty. They used her as bait... for Odin."
A pause.
"Well, Caelan and your brothers," Trevor added, a touch more gently, watching Lucas now instead of the coffee.
Lucas hummed, leaning back in his chair. The motion was slow, thoughtful. His fingers curled loosely around the porcelain edge of his cup as he stared past the edge of the table, searching.
He tried to summon something, anything, at the mention of Misty. But the truth was, there was nothing left. No anger. No fear. Not even pity. Just a strange, pale void where the shape of her should’ve been. He hadn’t seen her in months. And whatever was left of that connection had long since calcified into silence.
"Did they get Odin?"
Trevor shook his head once. "Not yet. But they know exactly where he is now."
Lucas’s gaze flicked back to him, sharp.
"Misty has a chip implanted. She’s traceable."
A beat.
"Tell me."
Trevor set his cup down, voice even. "Odin plans to use her as a prostitute. To repay the money he lost on you."
Lucas didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But the temperature around him dropped, just slightly.
"He also plans to take Ophelia."
The silence was tight, stretched thin across a tension that ran deeper than nerves, deeper than old pain. Lucas didn’t look away. His features didn’t shift, but something behind his eyes darkened, old and cold and quiet as the space between stars.
"Let him try," Lucas said softly.
Trevor’s grin was slow... pleased, in that precise, razor-edged way that only he could manage without shifting a muscle. The kind of grin that had made nobles flinch and foreign dignitaries recheck their exit plans. But now, it was tempered with something else, something warmer, rarer. Admiration. Maybe even awe.
He leaned back, the chair creaking slightly under the shift of his weight. "You know," he said, voice low, "sometimes I worry that maybe I should’ve given you more time to decide who to marry."
Lucas said nothing.
"But then you say things like that," Trevor continued, gaze flicking over Lucas like he was memorizing the way he sat in morning light, like he’d never get tired of watching him look that calm and that dangerous at once, "and I remember I married the right omega."
Lucas smiled innocently in the morning light. "I’m not giving second chances to abusers."