Chapter 287: Chapter 287: Enough waiting

The winter sun hadn’t managed to warm the valley yet, and the air above the dam still tasted faintly of cold metal and river wind. Machinery hummed across the spillway, cranes moving with slow precision while workers shouted instructions to one another through radios and across scaffolding. It was the type of organized chaos in which Ethan Miller thrived: noisy, intense, and held together by engineering math, schedules, and sheer stubborn competence.

He stood near the temporary command station, tablet under one arm, hard hat secured, reflective jacket bright against the pale concrete around him. Below, water thundered. Above, the metal skeleton of the dam’s renovated section gleamed under a fragile strip of sunlight.

“Stability reading on Gate Three?” Ethan called over the wind.

“Within tolerance,” someone answered back. “Pressure is holding.”

’Good. One less thing to worry about.’

A foreman jogged toward him, boots thudding over reinforced steel plating. He was an older beta, dependable, the kind who didn’t waste Ethan’s time unless something actually mattered.

He stopped just short of him and lowered his voice.

“Engineer Miller.”

Ethan glanced up from his notes, immediately alert. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Leon.”

The name yanked his thoughts to a different track entirely.

Leon Stuart. One of the omega structural evaluators. A specialist and one of Ethan’s most reliable team members.

“What about him?” Ethan asked.

“He didn’t sign in this morning. No one’s heard from him since last night. We called his phone. No answer. Tried his husband as well. Nothing.”

The wind rattled scaffolding somewhere. Ethan went still.

“Has anyone gone to check his apartment?” he asked.

“No. We aren’t sure where he accommodated for the project, as he is freelancing.”

Ethan exhaled slowly, the sound whisked away by wind and machinery. For a heartbeat his mind did the thing it always did when something didn’t add up, and it started building worst-case scenarios. Injuries. Accidents on the way here. Fights. Illness. But he forced himself to think like a person first, not like a disaster response plan with a pulse.

“Omegas miss mornings sometimes,” he said, more to steady the foreman than himself. “Especially with this cold. If his cycle shifted, it could’ve hit hard. Or his husband could’ve needed him, and they’re just… managing a situation.”

The foreman nodded a little too quickly, grateful for an explanation that didn’t involve ambulances and structural collapses.

“He sent the last report at midnight,” Ethan went on, mind already sorting through timelines. “He was working from home, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.” Ethan adjusted his grip on the tablet, a habit when he was thinking. “We’ll give it a bit more time. If it’s sudden heat, the last thing he needs is half the site storming his door and turning it into gossip. His husband’s probably handling it. They’ll call when they can breathe again.”

He said it calmly, but he could feel something uneasy lingering beneath the reasonable logic. Leon wasn’t forgetful. Leon wasn’t careless. And Leon never vanished without at least firing off a one-line message. The silence felt like something had cut clean through an otherwise orderly life and left nothing behind.

He pushed that thought aside before it settled too deeply.

“Log it,” Ethan said instead. “Keep trying both numbers every couple of hours. If we still haven’t heard from him by the end of the shift, I’ll go check myself.”

“You?” the foreman asked, surprised.

“Yes. I’m not sending a stranger to knock on the door of a bonded omega who might be mid-crisis. And if it’s nothing, it’s better I look like a paranoid friend than we look like a site that didn’t care enough to check.”

The foreman’s tension eased, shoulders losing some of their rigid set. “Understood.”

He jogged back toward the team, already relaying Ethan’s instructions over the radio. Around them the dam kept living its loud, relentless life with metal clanging, engines roaring, and wind carving sharp breaths through the frame of the structure. Work demanded attention, and Ethan gave it because he had to. He called out orders, checked readings, and nodded through briefings.

But every time he glanced at his tablet, he half-expected a notification to pop up. A missed call. A hurried apology. Anything.

Nothing came.

And in the quiet seconds between tasks, he found himself thinking of Leon’s easy smile, the efficient way he handled stress, and the casual little jokes he slipped in when everyone else was drowning under deadlines. Leon wasn’t the kind of man who disappeared.

Ethan lifted his gaze to the mountains enclosing the valley, the winter air biting hard in his lungs.

“Alright, Leon,” he muttered under his breath. “If you don’t call by tonight, I’m coming to knock.

—

By the time the shift wound down, the valley had sunk into that bruised-blue hour between daylight and night. Floodlights flared to life along scaffolding and pathways, throwing long shadows across concrete and steel. Workers clocked out in clusters, voices low with fatigue, laughter here and there, the kind of weary noise that told Ethan the day, at least, hadn’t ended in catastrophe.

Just not the catastrophe he was worried about.

He closed the last report, signed off the final checklist, and tried Leon’s number one more time. Straight to voicemail. He didn’t bother leaving another message. The earlier ones already felt like they were echoing into a void.

He took a breath and forced himself not to jump ahead. Not yet. One step at a time.

The hotel was the logical step.

He stepped away from the main walkway, stood near one of the site vehicles where the wind cut a little less harshly, and called the hotel Leon had used when he first arrived at the project. The lobby line rang longer than his patience liked before someone finally answered.

“This is Miller, from the Palatine Dam rehabilitation project,” he said, voice professional. “I’m trying to reach one of your guests. Leon Stuart. Could you check if he’s still registered with you?”

There was typing. A pause. More typing.

“Yes, sir,” the receptionist finally replied. “Mr. Stuart is still checked in.”

Relief didn’t come. If anything, the tension tightened.

“Good,” Ethan said. “Could you transfer me to his room?”

“Of course, one moment please.”

A click. Then ringing.

He held the phone to his ear and stared out over the dark line of the river, listening to it.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

Four.

It kept going. No movement. No startled, sleep-heavy answer. No annoyed “Ethan, can this wait?”

Eventually the line cut out and dumped him back into silence.

“Could you try again?” Ethan asked the receptionist when she returned. “Please.”

They did.

It rang again.

Still nothing.

“Would you like me to leave a message for him, sir?” the receptionist asked carefully.

“No,” Ethan said after a heartbeat. “Thank you. That’s alright.”

He ended the call and stood there for a moment, staring at the phone in his hand as if it might suddenly produce a better answer than reality.

There were explanations. He listed them automatically in his head, because that was how he stayed sane. Maybe Leon was asleep, heavily sedated through a rough heat. Maybe he and his husband were working through something private. Maybe he dropped his phone somewhere stupid, and the room phone just wasn’t close enough to reach.

Maybe.

But the weight in Ethan’s chest didn’t believe in maybes tonight.

He tucked the phone into his pocket, rolled his shoulders once, and made up his mind.

“I’m going,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Enough guessing.”

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