The champagne in Kendrick's hand had gone warm.
He hadn't touched it. Hadn't moved from the spot near the balcony doors in twenty minutes. Around him, the ballroom glittered the way expensive things always did — crystal chandeliers, pressed suits, laughter that cost money to produce. His engagement party. His name on every invitation, his face in every camera flash, his future being celebrated by people who had already decided what it looked like.
He set the glass on a passing tray without drinking.
"You're doing it again," Alehandra said beside him.
"Doing what?"
"The face."
Kendrick glanced at her. She stood exactly as she always did — composed, elegant, the deep red of her dress catching the light like something deliberately chosen. Because it was. Everything about Alehandra Peters was deliberate.
"I don't have a face," he said.
"You have several." She lifted her own glass. "That particular one means you're somewhere else."
He wasn't going to argue with that.
The room was full of people who mattered. Investors, political figures, old family names that still carried weight in boardrooms and back channels. They were all here because of what tonight represented. Not Kendrick. Not Alehandra. The merger of two legacies that had been negotiating this alliance for three years.
"The speeches start in an hour," Alehandra said.
"I know."
"Your father is watching you."
Kendrick didn't look. He didn't need to. He could feel it — the particular weight of Richard Walker's attention, the kind that had followed him since childhood. Measuring. Waiting for a misstep.
"Then I should give him something worth watching," Kendrick said, and finally smiled.
Alehandra's mouth curved slightly. "That's better."
It wasn't. But it was close enough.
He excused himself toward the balcony doors, needing sixty seconds of air that didn't smell like ambition and old money. The night outside was cool against his face. Below, the city moved the way it always did — indifferent, constant, unconcerned with engagement announcements and family legacies.
Kendrick braced his hands against the railing.
You don't belong to yourself. His father's voice. A lesson repeated so many times it had become something close to belief. You belong to what we built.
He had never argued.
Alphas like him didn't have the luxury of rebellion. They had responsibility instead — which was another word for the same cage, dressed better.
He turned to go back inside.
And stopped.
Something in the air shifted. Faint. Almost nothing.
His senses sharpened before his mind caught up. Not perfume. Not the sharp dominance of the alphas filling the room. Something underneath all of it — softer, warmer, out of place in a way he couldn't name.
Kendrick's pulse kicked once.
Omega.
He stepped back inside.
Damian Roberts had one rule for nights like this.
Don't get noticed.
It wasn't complicated. It didn't require talent. It only required staying small, staying quiet, and making sure his tray was always full enough to justify being wherever he was. Invisible people didn't get into trouble. Invisible people finished their shifts, collected their pay, and went home.
He had been invisible for years.
He was good at it.
The ballroom was the kind of place that made his skin itch — too bright, too loud, too saturated with alpha pheromones that pressed against the back of his throat like something physical. He kept his head slightly down as he moved between clusters of guests. Smiled when required. Disappeared the moment it wasn't.
Deliver drinks. Avoid attention. Get paid. Go home.
Simple.
He would have kept it simple, too, if he hadn't seen the name on the event sheet before his shift started.
Walker Corporation. Engagement Celebration.
His stomach had dropped then and hadn't quite recovered.
Walker. Old money. Alpha bloodline. The kind of family that didn't just own things — they decided who else got to. Damian had spent most of his adult life staying out of the orbit of families like that. One night's pay wasn't worth the risk.
But the rent didn't care about risk assessments. So here he was.
He touched the back of his neck briefly, just long enough to confirm the suppressor patch was still secure. It was. A stronger brand than he usually bought — half a week's wages, which still felt like highway robbery — but tonight required something reliable. Because Damian Roberts wasn't just an omega trying to stay invisible at a rich family's party.
He was a male omega.
And male omegas who got noticed at events like this didn't stay invisible for long.
He adjusted his grip on the tray and kept moving.
The room had a rhythm he'd learned to read within the first hour. Guests near the stage were angling for camera placement. The cluster near the bar were the ones who'd already made their deals and were now just drinking through the formalities. The woman in green near the east wall had been watching the exits since he arrived — old money with new enemies, probably.
Damian had always been good at reading rooms.
It was how he'd survived this long.
He turned to offer drinks to a group near one of the marble columns, and that was when something changed in the air. Subtle. Like pressure dropping before a storm, except it wasn't weather — it was scent. Alpha. Dominant. Moving closer through the crowd without hurrying.
His instincts prickled.
Ignore it.
He adjusted the tray. Kept his eyes down. Took a half-step to the left to put more bodies between himself and whatever direction that presence was coming from.
Then someone stepped directly into his path.
The tray tilted. A champagne flute slid toward the edge.
Damian's heart lurched — not here, please, not here — and then a hand closed around the glass. Steady. Certain. Like the person it belonged to had never once in their life dropped something they reached for.
Damian went still.
He already knew, before he looked up, that this was going to be a problem.
Dark eyes met his. Calm. Focused. The kind of gaze that didn't move when it found something worth looking at.
Kendrick Walker.
Damian recognized him from the guest list photo. Heir to the Walker Corporation. The reason for the party. The alpha whose engagement was being celebrated by three hundred people in the room behind him.
And he was looking at Damian like he hadn't expected to find anything interesting tonight.
Until now.
"I'm sorry," Damian said. Automatic. Controlled. He reached for the glass.
Kendrick didn't release it immediately.
The silence between them lasted exactly one second too long.
"Are you alright?" Kendrick asked. His voice was low, unhurried. Not the question of a man annoyed about his champagne.
"Fine," Damian said. "Thank you, sir."
He reached again for the glass.
This time Kendrick let him take it.
But he didn't step back. And Damian could feel it now — that alpha presence, closer than it had been a moment ago, pressing against his senses with quiet intensity. His suppressor was working. It was fine. Everything was fine.
Except Kendrick Walker was still looking at him.
"You work here," Kendrick said.
"Yes."
"Have you worked events like this before?"
Damian kept his expression neutral. This is not a conversation I am having. "A few."
"Then you know how long these things run."
"Usually until the hosts run out of things to announce."
Something shifted in Kendrick's expression. Not quite a smile. Something more like surprise — the brief unguarded kind, over before it fully formed.
"That's accurate," he said.
Damian dipped his head slightly and took a careful step to the side. "I should keep moving, sir."
Kendrick didn't stop him.
But as Damian turned away, he felt it — that focused attention still resting on his back, steady and unhurried, like a man who had just decided something without saying it out loud.
Damian kept walking. Kept his pace even. Did not look back.
But his pulse was climbing, and the suppressor patch suddenly felt very thin against the back of his neck.
Because Kendrick Walker had just looked at him the way powerful men looked at things they intended to understand.
And powerful men who decided to understand something rarely stopped until they did.