The back of Damian's neck had been itching for twenty minutes.
He told himself it was the heat. The room was warm, crowded, the air thick with competing scents — perfume and alcohol and the particular heaviness of too many dominant alphas in one enclosed space. The suppressor patch worked harder in conditions like these. That was normal. That was expected.
That was what he kept telling himself.
He adjusted his tray and moved toward the far end of the ballroom, putting distance between himself and the spot near the east wall where Victor Hale had been standing the last time he looked.
Don't look again.
He didn't look.
He offered drinks to a cluster of guests near the stage instead, keeping his movements efficient and his expression pleasantly blank. The way he'd learned to carry himself in rooms like this — present enough to do the job, forgettable enough that no one tried to make conversation.
It usually worked.
Tonight, the strategy had developed several significant holes.
One of them was currently standing near the balcony doors, talking to a pair of investors with the practiced ease of a man who had been trained since childhood to make obligation look like choice.
Damian didn't mean to look at Kendrick.
He just did.
And for one unguarded second before he pulled his gaze away, he noticed the way Kendrick held himself — shoulders set, jaw composed, every line of his posture performing exactly what the room expected.
He hates this, Damian thought.
Then immediately: That's not your business.
He turned back to the tray.
The itch at the back of his neck got worse.
Kendrick felt the moment Damian looked at him.
He couldn't have explained how. The room was full of people, full of noise and movement and the constant low pull of social obligation. Yet somehow that particular gaze found him through all of it — brief, almost accidental — and he felt it land.
He kept talking to the investors. Nodded at something about projected returns. Said whatever the moment required.
And found Damian in the crowd without appearing to search.
Near the stage. Tray in hand. Already looking away.
Good, Kendrick thought. Stay away.
Except the thought didn't carry the weight it should have. Because something about Damian's scent still lingered at the edge of his senses — faint, dulled by the suppressor, but present in a way that refused to be ignored. Like a sound pitched just below hearing. Like the feeling of being watched even when no one was looking.
It was getting stronger.
Kendrick didn't let that show. He never let anything show. But the awareness settled deeper into his instincts with every passing minute, and the instincts were starting to answer in ways he didn't have a framework for.
You belong to what we built.
His father's voice again.
Kendrick straightened and smiled at something one of the investors said.
He was very good at this.
He just wasn't sure why it felt harder tonight.
"Ladies and gentlemen."
The voice carried cleanly across the ballroom — Richard Walker, commanding a room the way he always had, like silence was simply what happened when he decided to speak.
Damian stopped near the edge of the crowd.
He didn't mean to watch. He'd worked enough of these events to know the pattern — speech, applause, announcement, more applause. None of it had anything to do with him.
But the room went quiet in that particular way, and he looked up anyway.
Kendrick had moved to the stage.
He stood beside his father with the stillness of someone who had been preparing for this specific moment for years. Not nervous. Not reluctant. Just — present. Performing presence so completely it was almost impossible to see what was underneath it.
Almost.
Richard Walker spoke about legacy. About two families and a shared vision and the kind of future that got built when the right names aligned.
Damian listened without meaning to.
Then Alehandra Peters stepped onto the stage, and the applause that followed said everything about what this room valued. She was flawless under the lights. The kind of flawless that was also a kind of armor.
Together they looked exactly like what they were supposed to be.
Good, Damian thought. That's exactly where he belongs.
He turned away.
And the back of his neck pulsed with heat.
"The engagement of Kendrick Walker—"
Kendrick heard his father's voice as if from a slight distance.
He was on stage. Alehandra was beside him, her hand warm where it rested on his arm, her smile perfect and practiced and not unkind. The cameras were flashing. The room was watching.
He did what he always did. He performed it well.
But his gaze moved through the crowd once — just once — without his permission.
Found the far side of the room.
Found the dark-haired figure who had turned away just before the announcement landed.
"—to Alehandra Peters."
The applause broke over the room like a wave.
Kendrick smiled.
It looked exactly right.
Damian set his empty tray on the service counter and pressed two fingers briefly to the back of his neck.
The patch was still there.
But the itch had turned into something closer to heat, spreading faintly along his collar, and that was — that was not good. That was the specific, unmistakable warning sign he had been trained by years of careful living to take seriously.
Replace it. Now.
He couldn't replace it here. The staff bathroom was across the building, three hallways away, and leaving the floor without checking in with the shift manager would get him flagged.
Ten minutes, he told himself. Hold it together for ten minutes.
"You look uncomfortable."
Damian went very still.
Victor Hale stood beside him.
He hadn't heard him approach. He hadn't felt him coming the way he usually felt alphas — the suppressor usually gave him enough buffer to track dominant presences before they got too close.
The fact that he hadn't noticed Victor until he was already there told him exactly how much the patch had degraded.
"I'm fine," Damian said.
"You keep touching your neck," Victor said pleasantly.
"Habit."
"Mm." Victor picked up a champagne glass from the counter beside them, unhurried, as if he'd simply stopped by for a drink and Damian happened to be nearby. "The announcement went well, I thought."
Damian said nothing.
"Walker and Peters." Victor turned the glass slowly in his hand. "Inevitable, really. Two families like that — it was always going to happen." He paused. "Did you watch?"
"Hard to miss."
"And what did you think?"
Damian looked at him then. "I think it's not my place to have an opinion about it."
Victor smiled. "Diplomatic."
"Practical."
"Those aren't always the same thing."
The heat at the back of Damian's neck pulsed again. Stronger this time. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Victor's eyes moved to him — not his face. Lower. To the collar of his uniform, to the line of his neck.
Damian felt it the moment Victor's expression changed.
It was small. A slight sharpening of attention. The way a person looked when something they suspected became something they knew.
"Interesting," Victor said softly.
Not to Damian.
To himself.
Damian stepped back.
"I need to get back to work—"
"Your suppressor is failing," Victor said.
Quiet. Conversational. Like a man commenting on the weather.
Damian's blood ran cold.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yes you do." Victor turned toward him fully now, the pleasant expression still in place, the eyes behind it doing something entirely different. "It's been working hard all evening. But heat and time — they're difficult on the adhesive." He tilted his head. "You should have replaced it an hour ago."
Damian's heart was hammering.
Don't run. Running confirms it.
"You have the wrong person," he said evenly.
"I don't think I do." Victor leaned slightly closer. Not threatening. Almost gentle. "I've been in rooms full of alphas my entire life. I know what a suppressor smells like when it starts to fail." His voice dropped. "And I know what it's covering."
The room felt very loud suddenly. The applause from the stage still echoing, guests turning back to their conversations, champagne flowing. All of it happening ten feet away and none of it close enough to matter.
Victor's next word was barely a murmur.
"Prime."
The world tilted.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
Victor straightened and picked up his champagne again, perfectly composed, as if he'd said nothing more remarkable than good evening.
"Don't panic," he said pleasantly. "Panic will only make it worse." His eyes swept the room once. "There are at least six dominant alphas within thirty feet of you right now." He looked back at Damian. "And your patch has about ten minutes left."
He smiled.
"I'd make them count."