Damian sent the address at four fifty-three in the afternoon.
A coffee shop six blocks from the bookshop. Not his usual one — he had two, rotated deliberately, and this was the one he used when he needed to think rather than hide. Corner table. Clear sightlines to both the door and the street window. The kind of place that was busy enough to be anonymous and small enough that a man like Kendrick Walker would stand out the moment he walked in.
That was intentional.
If Kendrick came, Damian would see him coming.
If Kendrick brought anyone, he'd see that too.
He was on his second coffee when the door opened at five seventeen and Kendrick walked in alone. No driver waiting inside. No second figure behind him. He scanned the room once, found Damian in the corner, and crossed to the table without stopping at the counter.
He sat down across from him.
"You came alone," Damian said.
"You asked me to."
"I didn't ask you anything. I sent an address."
"The address was the ask." Kendrick settled back in the chair with the easy stillness of someone who had learned to be comfortable in any room. "You chose somewhere public. Somewhere you knew the layout of. Somewhere I'd be visible the moment I arrived." He looked at Damian evenly. "That was a set of conditions. I met them."
Damian wrapped both hands around his mug.
"Most people wouldn't have noticed that."
"I'm not most people."
"No," Damian agreed. "That's the problem."
The coffee shop moved around them — the hiss of the machine behind the counter, two students at the table near the window, a woman on a phone call by the door. Normal. Ordinary. The kind of afternoon that had no interest in either of them.
Kendrick hadn't looked away from him since he sat down.
"You responded to my message," Kendrick said.
"I know I did."
"Why?"
Damian considered the question. He'd been considering it since he sent the two words that morning, through the rest of his bookshop shift, through the walk home, through the hour he'd spent sitting on his couch staring at the ceiling before he sent the address.
"Because you were right," he said finally. "About Victor. About what happens when he moves." He set the mug down. "I've been here before. Not with Victor specifically, but with the situation. Someone finds out what I am and I run before it becomes a problem." He paused. "I've run six times in four years. I'm tired."
Kendrick said nothing. Just listened.
That alone was unusual enough to notice.
"The last time I ran," Damian continued, "I had three days. Packed one bag, left everything else, took a train to a city I'd never been to and started over." He looked at the table. "Before that, two weeks. Before that, a month." He looked up. "Every time the window gets shorter. Because whoever is looking gets better at it, and I don't have more resources than I did four years ago. I have less."
"What started it?" Kendrick asked. "Four years ago."
The question sat between them.
Damian had not planned to answer it. He had planned to have a functional conversation about Victor and timelines and whatever Kendrick was actually offering, and to keep everything else behind the wall where it belonged.
But Kendrick had come alone. Had met every condition without being asked to explain himself. Was sitting across from him in a coffee shop that cost nothing and offered no advantage, just — present. Waiting.
Damian exhaled.
"My family," he said.
Kendrick's expression didn't change. But something in his attention sharpened.
"I didn't know what I was until I was nineteen," Damian said. "Prime omegas present late sometimes — the designation hides itself. By the time it was clear, I'd been living as a standard omega for two years. I had a job. An apartment. A life that was small but mine." He turned the mug in his hands. "My parents found out before I'd told anyone. I don't know how. A doctor, maybe. Someone who talked." He stopped. "They contacted an alpha family. Old money. The kind of family that collects things." His voice was flat. Practiced. The tone of someone who had told this story to themselves so many times it had worn smooth. "They didn't tell me. They made an arrangement. I found out when someone showed up at my door with paperwork that already had my signature forged on it."
The coffee shop continued around them, indifferent.
"I left that night," Damian said. "I left everything that night."
Kendrick was quiet for a moment.
"How old were you?"
"Twenty-one."
Another silence.
"Did they know you found out?" Kendrick asked.
"Yes." Damian looked at him. "My mother called me three days later. She explained that it was the practical choice. That a prime omega living independently was dangerous — for me, she said. That this family would provide stability and security." His jaw tightened slightly. "She used the word provide four times in that conversation. She never used the word ask."
Kendrick said nothing.
There was nothing to say to that, and the fact that he understood it rather than reaching for reassurance made something in Damian's chest loosen fractionally.
"So I learned to run," Damian said. "And I got good at it. And every time someone got close to finding out what I was, I moved on before they could do anything about it." He leaned back. "Until the night I took a catering shift at an engagement party because the rent was due and my instincts told me the suppressor would hold."
Kendrick almost smiled. Almost.
"It held for most of the night," he said.
"It held for most of the night," Damian agreed.
They looked at each other across the small table.
"You want to know what I'm actually offering," Kendrick said.
"Yes."
"Victor is planning to bring the information to two families on Friday. The Chens and the Ashworths. Both have adult unmated alphas. Both have enough resources to conduct a search and enough interest in a prime omega to make that search their first priority." His voice was even. "If he reaches them before I reach him, the situation moves faster than either of us can manage."
"And if you reach him first?"
"Then he has a reason to stay quiet that outweighs his curiosity."
"What reason?"
Kendrick looked at him steadily. "Victor and I have been in opposition on three major deals in the last two years. He's won one. I've won two. He won't move against me directly — the cost is too high. But this—" He paused. "This is the kind of leverage he's been looking for. Not against Walker Corporation. Against me."
Damian understood that immediately. "He thinks exposing you will hurt you."
"Exposing the fact that the Walker heir's instincts reacted to a prime omega the night of his own engagement announcement?" Kendrick raised an eyebrow slightly. "Yes. He thinks that will hurt me."
"Will it?"
A beat of silence.
"Professionally, yes," Kendrick said. "Personally—" He stopped.
Damian watched him decide something.
"Personally," Kendrick said carefully, "I find I'm less concerned about that than I expected to be."
The words landed quietly.
Damian looked at the table.
The pull between them was present the way it had been in the corridor — not aggressive, not overwhelming, just there. A current running beneath the conversation, beneath the practical problem of Victor and timelines and alpha families with resources. Beneath all of it, something simpler and more dangerous.
"I need you to understand something," Damian said.
"Tell me."
"I'm not—" He stopped. Tried again. "Whatever your instincts are telling you about me. Whatever the biology is doing." He met Kendrick's eyes. "I'm a person. Not a designation. Not a prize. Not something that gets arranged." His voice was quiet but steady. "If I agree to whatever this is, it's because I'm choosing to. Not because of what I am. Not because of what you are. Because I decided."
Kendrick held his gaze without flinching.
"I know," he said.
"Do you?"
"Yes." No hesitation. "I came to a bookshop this morning because I needed to see you were alright. Not because of instinct. Because—" He stopped. A rare thing, Damian was beginning to understand. Kendrick Walker running out of the precise word. "Because I wanted to."
The coffee shop felt very quiet suddenly.
"That's not less complicated," Damian said.
"No," Kendrick agreed. "It isn't."
Outside, the afternoon light had gone golden, the city shifting into evening. Through the window, people moved past on the pavement — unhurried, ordinary, belonging entirely to a Tuesday that had nothing to do with prime omegas or alpha heirs or the specific, dangerous thing happening in the corner table of a small coffee shop six blocks from a bookshop.
Damian looked at the card still in his jacket pocket.
Then at the man across the table.
"Friday," he said.
"Friday."
"That's four days."
"Yes."
"And you think you can stop Victor in four days."
"I think," Kendrick said, "that I can make it not worth his while to move forward. But I need you not to disappear in the meantime."
Damian looked at him for a long moment.
Everything he'd built — the careful distances, the rotated coffee shops, the apartments without decoration — had been designed for exactly this situation. To allow him to leave. To ensure that leaving was always possible.
He thought about his mother's voice. The practical choice.
He thought about the train he'd taken at twenty-one with one bag and nowhere to go.
He thought about I needed to see that you were alright said plainly in a bookshop by a man who had no reason to mean it and had meant it anyway.
"I won't disappear," Damian said.
Something shifted in Kendrick's expression. Small. Controlled. But real.
"Thank you," he said.
It was such a simple thing to say.
Damian looked away before the simplicity of it could do more damage.
"Don't thank me yet," he said. "We still have four days."
Kendrick nodded once.
But the shift in the air between them had already happened.
And both of them knew that I won't disappear was the most significant thing either of them had said since a man caught a falling glass and looked up, and found something he hadn't been looking for.