The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

Liam looked at the chair as if it had been placed there specifically to punish him.

It was absurd. He knew that. There were no straps. No Canmore physician standing over him with false patience, waiting to write another elegant lie in a report that would follow him for years.

It was only a chair.

A scanner.

A physician who had called his old records toilet paper and meant it.

And Arik.

Arik stepped closer and placed one hand on Liam’s shoulder, the warmth of his palm bleeding through the thick, expensive material of Liam’s shirt.

"I will be here," Arik said calmly. "I would comfort you better, but you need to avoid contact with anyone who might influence the readings."

Liam said nothing.

His hands had fisted at his sides.

He had hidden it well until now, even from the bond, and that realization moved through Arik with a slow, unpleasant bite. Liam had stood in front of him, argued, mocked Marin, and inspected the scanner like a criminal engineer, and all the while this old fear had been folded inside him with such precision that even the bond had only carried irritation.

Arik did not like that.

No.

That was too mild.

Something in him hated it with a quiet, imperial violence. Yet another reason to hate Felix and the Canmore family.

Liam’s red eyes stayed fixed on the chair. "This is ridiculous."

Marin, to his credit, did not soften his voice. "Yes."

Liam’s gaze snapped to him

Marin looked unimpressed. "It is ridiculous that a grown man with your mind is afraid of a passive scanner because a collection of fraudulent physicians and one or more Canmore-trained incompetents taught your body to expect pain from medicine. That does not make the fear fake. It makes the people responsible worse."

The room went still.

Liam stared at him.

Arik’s hand remained on his shoulder for one breath longer, then he removed it slowly, because the scan needed clean readings and because Liam had to decide to sit with nothing holding him there.

Liam’s shoulder looked colder without his touch.

Marin tapped the scanner’s base with one finger. "There won’t be any induction or use of ether. You say stop, and I stop."

Liam swallowed once.

It was small.

Arik saw it, and his breathing changed. Marin’s eyes flickered to him in warning.

"And if I do not say stop?" Liam asked.

"Then I continue only while your body agrees with you," Marin said. "If the readings show distress before you admit it, I stop anyway."

Liam let a breath out and sat on the chair. "I understand why everyone respects you."

Marin smirked and started the scanning.

The machine hummed.

That was all.

Liam waited for the first bite of heat beneath his skin, the first wrong pressure at the inside of his wrist, the familiar, nauseating crawl of ether being pushed where it should not go. He waited for his body to lock, for his breath to shorten, for pain to arrive so quickly that the room would become narrow around it.

Nothing happened.

The scanner’s thin ribs glowed with a quiet blue-white light. A crescent-shaped arm passed several inches above his wrist, slow and smooth, not touching him, not pressing ether into him, not asking his body to prove anything. The light moved over his skin like a reflection from water.

Liam stared at it.

Marin watched the tablet.

Arik watched Liam.

Mezos stood near the door with the composed silence of a man who understood that moving now would be foolish.

The scanner passed over Liam’s wrist, then his forearm.

Still nothing.

Liam’s fingers, which had been curled tightly against the arms of the chair, loosened by one degree.

Then another.

His expression did not change, because apparently Liam had decided his face would be the last fortress to fall, but Arik felt the shift in the bond anyway. Sharp, defensive suspicion, as if the absence of pain was itself a trap.

Liam looked at Marin. "Did it start?"

Marin did not look up. "Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

Liam’s eyes narrowed. "Do not lie to me."

"I do not lie to patients during diagnostics. It damages the data."

"You are saying it started?"

"It has been running for two minutes."

Liam looked at the scanner again.

The crescent arm moved toward the inside of his elbow. The light deepened, spread, and recorded something invisible, and still his body did not scream.

His mouth parted slightly before he caught himself.

Arik saw it.

Marin saw it too but had the decency, or perhaps the professional cunning, not to point it out immediately.

Liam swallowed. "I feel nothing."

"Good," Marin said.

"That is not how these scans feel."

Marin’s pale eyes lifted then.

The room went still in a way that had nothing to do with the scanner.

"How many times," Marin asked, very quietly, "were you told that what happened to you was a scan?"

Liam’s jaw tightened at once.

Arik’s hand curled against his own knee, using all his training to keep his pheromones and ether under control.

The scanner gave a soft calibration pulse, gentle enough that it might have been a distant breeze.

Liam looked away first. "Several."

Marin’s face went flat. Professionally blank, which Arik was beginning to understand meant Marin had found something he intended to bury under evidence before letting anyone near it.

"This," Marin said, tapping the tablet without taking his eyes off Liam, "is a scan."

Liam said nothing.

"This reads. It does not punish your body for refusing to behave according to a physician’s expectations. If you feel nothing, that means the equipment is doing its job."

Liam’s throat moved.

The bond went so quiet that Arik almost reached for him.

He did not.

He had promised.

Liam looked back at the machine, and for the first time since sitting down, the old fear on his face started to fade.

"It was always painful," Liam said.

Marin’s voice remained level. "Then it was not always scanning."

Arik’s control tightened so sharply the scanner’s secondary light flickered.

Liam’s eyes cut to him immediately. "Arik."

"I know."

"Do the breathing thing."

"I am breathing."

"The normal breathing thing."

Marin glanced at the scanner. "Preferably before you intimidate my equipment."

Arik inhaled slowly. Exhaled.

The air settled again.

Liam stared at him for half a second longer, then looked away with faint color rising at the tips of his ears. "You are making my diagnostics dramatic."

"I apologize."

"No, you do not."

"No," Arik admitted.

Marin made a small approving sound. "Honesty. Progress in every corner."

"Do not become pleased," Liam muttered.

"I am a physician. Small victories sustain me."

The scanner moved to Liam’s other arm.

Again, nothing.

Only the faint sound of the machine working, the low murmur of data forming across the tablet, and the absurd comfort of sitting in a chair while an old omega physician drank terrible tea and insulted medical corruption with religious dedication.

Liam leaned back by a fraction.

The motion was so small most people would have missed it.

Arik did not.

He felt the bond shift with it, not trust exactly, but the first exhausted surrender of a body realizing it did not have to brace against an old enemy.

Marin’s eyes flicked to Arik for one brief second.

A warning.

Not now.

Arik understood and remained where he was, his control keeping him in place, but his mind was already planning how to burn George and Canmore down more quickly.