The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

"You are having terrible thoughts."

Arik looked at him.

Slowly.

With the kind of expression that had made trained diplomats remember urgent appointments in other countries.

Liam, medically compromised and chilled from suppressant reaction, wrapped in a blanket and sitting in Arik’s lap as if he had personally conquered the territory, looked back with hazy crimson eyes and the unmistakable satisfaction of a man who had discovered leverage.

"I am trying my best here," Arik said.

Liam hummed and did the most cruel thing possible and pressed onto Arik’s lap.

Arik stopped breathing.

The room stopped with him.

Liam looked up through his lashes, exhausted and pale and still visibly trembling at the edges, but his mouth had curved into something sharp enough to cut glass.

"Oh," Liam said softly. "That worked."

Arik’s hand closed around his waist.

Liam gave a small, satisfied hum that vibrated against Arik’s chest. He moved just enough to put pressure on the control that Arik was holding on to like a drowning man.

"You know," Liam began, his voice still a little rough from the suppressant but edged with a new, pure amusement, "for someone so concerned with my well-being, you’re holding on rather tightly."

Arik’s fingers flexed, a betrayal of his own. "I’m preventing you from falling."

"From your lap?" Liam tipped his head back, his movements slow and languid. "A tragic fate. I might have landed on the soft, expensive carpet. The horror."

The alpha in him, the part that was currently being throttled into submission, rumbled at the sarcasm. Arik managed to keep the sound inside his chest, but Liam felt the vibration. His smile widened, sharp and knowing. He was enjoying this. The man who had been shaking apart from the fear of his own biology, was now prodding the biggest, most dangerous alpha he ever met with a stick.

"It’s fascinating," Liam continued, his gaze dropping to where Arik’s hand was splayed across his back. "You lecture me about being compromised, about suppressants talking, but your entire body is currently having a very loud argument with your brain."

"There is no argument," Arik ground out. "You are being cruel." He sighed when Liam grinded even harder on him. "Continue like this and I will take advantage of your state in heat to ask you about the most embarrassing things."

Liam stopped.

Not entirely.

That would have been mercy, and Liam, apparently, had left mercy behind somewhere between the injection gun and discovering that Arik’s restraint could be prodded like a machine under stress.

But he stopped enough for Arik to feel the sudden, terrible stillness of him.

Then Liam slowly lifted his head.

His eyes were still hazy, pupils too wide, crimson softened at the edges by suppressants and exhaustion, but the intelligence behind them was awake enough to be absolutely catastrophic.

"You would not."

"I would."

"You would exploit my compromised state for information?"

"I would ask you who your first embarrassing love was, or what troubles you are hiding from your mother."

"Low," Liam said.

"You ground yourself against me."

"That was different."

"It was terrorism with eyelashes."

Liam’s mouth twitched before he could stop it.

Arik saw it and took the inch like a conqueror.

"I would ask what your first childish rebellion was. Whether you ever failed an exam and pretended the system was corrupt. Whether you cried the first time one of your prototypes worked."

Liam’s eyes narrowed at once. "I have never cried because of a machine." 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"That means yes."

"It means you are inventing slander."

"I would ask what name you gave the first device you built."

Liam went very still.

Arik’s smile sharpened.

"Oh."

"No."

"You named it."

"I was twelve."

"You named it."

"It was an experimental pressure regulator with a stability flaw."

"What was its name?"

"I hate you."

"What was its name, little star?"

Liam’s face did something complicated.

The flush that had started because of heat and provocation deepened into something far worse. Embarrassment. Actual embarrassment. The kind that Arik didn’t think Liam could show unless the world ended and everyone who saw it was killed first.

Arik forgot, for one blessed second, the weight in his lap, the scent under his skin, the biological emergency clawing at his self-control.

Because Liam Sienna Canmore, brilliant and vicious and half-frozen in his arms, had once been a child who named a flawed pressure regulator.

"Do not," Liam warned.

Arik leaned closer, mercilessly. "Tell me."

"No."

"I am very patient."

"You are not. You are currently surviving on restraint and poor choices."

"Both have carried my bloodline for centuries."

"That explains so much."

"Liam."

Liam glared at him.

Arik waited.

The room hummed faintly around them, wards steady, curtains still, the air warm and heavy with pheromones carefully stripped of hunger. Liam’s fingers had stopped their cruel movement against Arik’s shirt, but his body remained pressed close, as if surrendering the attack would have meant surrendering the comfort too.

Finally, Liam looked away.

"It was called Bastian."

Arik stared at him, and Liam could feel the damned grin forming on the alpha’s face.

He made the mistake of looking at Arik.

The grin was shining.

It changed his whole face, softening the sharp imperial lines without making him look any less dangerous, and Liam had the terrible impression that if Arik smiled like that in public, half the court would forget its own schemes and the other half would invent worse ones just to see it again.

Liam’s stomach did something stupid.

"No," he said at once.

Arik’s grin widened.

"I have not said anything."

"You are about to."

"I am enjoying Bastian."

"You are forbidden from enjoying Bastian."

"I admire him."

"He exploded."

"He had a dramatic end."

"He was a pressure regulator with a sealing flaw."

"And a name."

Liam hated him.

He hated him more because Arik’s amusement did not feel cruel. There was no edge of mockery meant to cut him down, no noble laziness turning a private childhood embarrassment into spectacle. Arik looked delighted, yes, but delighted in a way that held the absurdity gently.

As if Bastian mattered because Liam had once cared enough to name him.

As if even that ridiculous little piece of him was not something to be ashamed of.

The thought made Liam’s chest tighten.

Worse, Arik still looked like that.

Golden eyes bright, mouth curved, hair slightly disordered from Liam’s earlier grip, and his shirt wrinkled beneath Liam’s fingers, all that terrible alpha composure cracked just enough to reveal something warmer beneath.

Beautiful.

The word came without permission.

Liam blinked.

Arik’s grin softened. "What?"

Liam should have stopped there.

He did not.

Because the suppressant had dragged the walls in his mind just low enough, and exhaustion had made the gatekeepers lazy, and Arik was still sitting there with that unfair smile while smelling like warm stone and smoky caramel, his hands were careful on Liam’s body even after Liam had made it easier for him to lose control.

"It is annoying," Liam said.

Arik’s brow lifted. "Bastian?"

"You."

The grin shifted.

Liam felt the danger and kept talking anyway, because apparently survival had become optional.

"Why are you so perfect?" he muttered, glaring at the wrinkle in Arik’s shirt instead of his face.