The room was too quiet.
Lucas sat cross-legged on the edge of his new bed, phone in hand, back resting against the cold stone headboard of Serathine's estate. The drapes were drawn, but slivers of late afternoon light slipped through, gilding the sharp lines of the architecture and catching faintly on the silk hem of the shirt someone else had chosen for him.
For the first time since his adoption, he was alone.
No maids. No tailors. No handlers or assistants or curious guests offering too-sweet smiles.
Just silence.
He exhaled slowly, pressing the edge of the phone to his temple, eyes half-closed. His head still ached from the fitting, the fittings before the fittings, and the endless reassurances that everything was "almost ready" for the Gala.
His Gala.
His coming-of-age ball had become a full-scale imperial event overnight. The invitations had gone out before he'd even seen the final guest list. He hadn't picked the venue. He hadn't asked for a debut.
And most infuriatingly—he hadn't asked for Trevor Ariston Fitzgeralt.
The phone buzzed softly in his hand.
He pulled up the latest court news, scrolling past headlines and curated op-eds until he found the thing that had started clawing at the back of his mind like a splinter.
'House D'Argente's Heir to Debut at Baye: Rumors of Northern Interest Confirmed
Sources say Grand Duke Trevor Fitzgeralt has entered discussions with Lady Serathine regarding the future of her newly adopted ward. The Imperial Office has made no comment on the boy's lineage, though unofficial channels hint at high-born blood.'
Lucas stared at the words, jaw tight.
High-born blood.
'What is different in this life? Why would the Grand Duke of North be interested in me?'
He tossed the phone onto the bed beside him.
It bounced once on the duvet and landed face down, mercifully dark.
Lucas leaned forward, pressing his elbows to his knees, hands dragging through his hair until his fingers curled at the nape of his neck. His heart beat like it was trying to pace itself through something it hadn't yet named. Not fear. Not quite anger.
But close.
Trevor Ariston Fitzgeralt. The North's quiet mountain. The Grand Duke, whose estate covered more territory than half the southern provinces combined. A man known not for scandal or indulgence—but for never making a misstep.
He wasn't Christian. He wasn't a man who'd smile with his teeth and call it affection. He wasn't a man who bought his lovers and buried them in velvet.
He was worse.
Trevor Fitzgeralt was duty incarnate.
Even in his past life, Lucas had known that much.
He'd seen the headlines—rare interviews, blurry photographs, commentary segments whispered over estate dinners and noble gossip columns. Trevor had been a ghost in court: visible only when he chose to be, always unshakably poised, always armed with sharp words and sharper silences.
In his last life, the Grand Duke had married a noblewoman from the western isles—one of those rare love matches that the court had whispered about for months. Not a political maneuver, not a bloodline merger. Love. That was the word they'd used. Over and over. And then she died. Quickly. Quietly. Some illness no one could name. The mourning period was brief. Respectful. He never remarried.
Lucas remembered seeing the photo once. Trevor, dressed in black, standing alone at the funeral. No tears. No eulogy. Just the sea of nobles keeping their distance. And him—stone-faced. Like he'd already buried something long before that day.
Even then, Trevor hadn't looked cruel. Just cold. Still.
Still, it struck him now—how impossible it felt, that a man like Fitzgeralt, made of snow and silence, had once looked at someone with affection instead of strategy.
He scrolled again through the carefully curated articles in front of him, all of them vague and outdated. The closest thing to clarity was Serathine herself—and even she had gone quiet the moment Lucas asked.
"Be patient," she'd told him, with that glint in her eye that meant she already knew too much.
"Wait until the Gala. He'll be there."
Lucas had wanted to press her. To demand the truth behind the rumors, the angle, the politics he was undoubtedly tangled in.
But she had placed a hand on his shoulder—brief, firm, not unkind—and said, "You'll understand when you meet him."
That had been two days ago.
Now all Lucas had were headlines and questions. About Trevor. About the Emperor. About the Empire that had pretended not to know he existed for nearly eighteen years and was now preparing to debut him like a well-wrapped gift.
He let the phone slip from his fingers onto the pillow beside him.
Then he let himself fall onto his side, rolling until he lay flat on his back, staring up at the carved ceiling overhead.
The silks itched. The silence pressed. His bones hurt in ways they should not at his age, but they always did when he stopped moving.
Tomorrow he had a medical appointment.
Serathine had insisted. Quietly, but with no room to argue.
"We need to know how much damage you've done to your cycle," she'd said. "The suppressants bought you time, but they weren't made for you."
And Lucas, who didn't want anyone touching him, who still flinched when people used the word awakening, had only nodded.
Because he already knew.
The injections had come with side effects. Shaking hands. Nausea. The bone-deep exhaustion that rolled over him every time his emotions surged too sharply.
He'd taken them anyway.
Because they kept him hidden. Because they gave him time.
Because it was the catalyst of his past life, the infertility and the suffering because of it.
The doctors had always told him everything was normal.
That there were no blockages. No scarring. No hormonal anomalies.
Every test, every scan, every sterile whisper behind the exam curtain—normal.
And yet... no conception. No cycle. No answer.
And no child.
He remembered sitting in the medical chair while the physician smiled gently and said, "Sometimes stress can delay things. Sometimes nature simply takes longer to balance."
He remembered how Velloran's eyes had darkened at those words.
How afterward, he'd stopped blaming chance and started blaming Lucas.
Now, in this new life, lying beneath high-thread-count sheets in a palace too grand for his skin, he stared up at the carved ceiling and wondered if the damage had followed him.
If not from biology, then from belief.
Tomorrow they'd test him again.
Serathine had arranged it quietly—discreet team, non-invasive scan, full hormone panel.
"You're not broken," she had said, back turned, as if she didn't need to see his face to know what he feared. "You took them for less than a year."
Her voice was calm. Low. Not the kind that demanded belief—but the kind that made it hard to argue.
"We just need suppressants tuned to your body. Not bootleg trash filtered through three black-market dealers. We'll fix your dosage. You'll have your heat when you're ready."
Lucas hadn't answered.
Not because he didn't believe her. But because some part of him—raw and knotted deep in his chest—wanted to.
That was the dangerous part.
He hadn't been allowed to want things in years. Not in the old life. Not after the first failed cycle. Not after the second. Not after Velloran stopped asking and started watching.
He still remembered the smell of those old suppressants. Chemical. Bitter. Laced with something sharp and wrong. The side effects hadn't scared him—hope had. Hope that they'd work. Hope that they'd make him forget what being an omega was supposed to mean. Hope that he could postpone awakening forever.
But Serathine hadn't reacted the way others had. She hadn't shamed him or asked why he'd taken them.
She'd simply said:
"You'll have your heat when you're ready."
As if it belonged to him.
As if the decision didn't belong to a contract or a title or a powerful hand closing around his throat.
As if it didn't have to be used to prove something.
Lucas shifted on the bed, finally letting his eyes close.
The room was still too warm.
But for the first time in days, he didn't feel like he was suffocating in it.