Chapter 168: Chapter 168: Delronne

Adam Delronne was his own person.

That truth was like an anchor in him, because too many people in the Empire looked at him now and only saw the end of his story: the duke’s spouse, the marked mate, the elegant figure beside Maximilian Claymore, a beautiful omega wrapped in ducal colors and court security.

’The one filthy civilian standing between us and more power.’ Nobles’ thoughts became clearer after Max made an official announcement that he is not interested in taking other mates or concubines, as are the majority of the empire’s dominant alphas.

They did not see the beginning.

They did not see the years Adam had spent building a life with his own hands, earning his name not through lineage but through lungs and discipline, through nights that left his throat raw and his body aching, through the slow, brutal learning of how to command attention without ever pleading for it.

He had been a singer first.

Not a court pet. Not a decorative voice hired for fancy galas with no taste. A real singer – one with a record of sold-out halls and contracts negotiated with his own pen, a man who understood microphones and stage lights and the merciless arithmetic of ticket sales. In a modern empire where ether ran through city grids like blood, where communications towers gleamed with warded glass and concert venues were layered in acoustic spells and sound-engineering tech, Adam’s performances had been something between art and controlled combustion.

He could walk onto a stage and make ten thousand people fall silent with nothing but the first breath he drew into his lungs. He could hold a note so clean it felt like a blade, and when he let it go, the room would exhale like it had been waiting for permission.

That kind of power was intoxicating to watch.

It was also, in the wrong hands, a reason to cage him.

So Adam learned early that the Empire loved talent the way it loved everything else: conditionally.

As long as it could be packaged. As long as it could be explained away as harmless. As long as it didn’t smell like dominance and autonomy and an omega who did not bow.

He never told anyone what he was.

Not the tabloids that followed him when his career began to crest into something real. Not the executives who wanted him on their warded stages and ether-broadcast networks. Not the fans who threw flowers and screamed his name like it was a prayer. Not even the casual acquaintances in high society who treated him like an interesting accessory and assumed his beauty came with compliance.

He made himself unremarkable in the ways that mattered.

He kept his scent hidden until even sensitive alphas could only catch a vague clean warmth if they stood too close. He wore cologne as camouflage. He learned how to smile at invitations without accepting them. He built a reputation as ’professional,’ which in the Empire was often code for untouchable.

It worked.

Until it didn’t.

Because no matter how carefully you controlled the story people told about you, the Empire was full of men who believed they had the right to write the ending themselves.

When Adam first met Maximilian Thornwell, he hadn’t known the name was a mask.

He had only known that the man who walked into his office carried himself like someone who had never once asked permission to exist. He was dressed well but not ostentatiously, in a modern suit cut to move easily, with a subtle shimmer in the thread indicating that it was ward-woven – resistant to pheromones, minor spells, and the minor humiliations that society enjoyed inflicting on those it deemed inferior.

His hair was black, his eyes green, and his smile effortless.

And he was, this was what made Adam wary, immediately interested.

Not in Adam’s money.

Not in his brand.

Not in the company Adam had built on the side of his music to keep his finances clean and his contracts his own.

In Adam.

It wasn’t the kind of attention Adam was used to, the hungry gaze of an alpha who thought beauty was consent. It was sharper, quieter, the attention of a man who noticed Adam’s shoulders, how he breathed before speaking, and how his office wards were layered and maintained as if he didn’t trust locks to do their job.

Max sat across from him, glanced once at the portfolio on the table, and said, pleasantly, “You’re not the kind of person who likes being managed.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Is that a warning?”

Max’s grin widened. “No. It’s an observation. I respect it.”

Adam should have found that charming.

He found it dangerous.

Because respect was rare, and when it came from someone like Max – someone tied, even loosely, to House Claymore – it usually meant there was a hook hidden in it.

At that time, Maximilian Thornwell ran a company that did business with George Claymore’s enterprises. Logistics. Infrastructure. Ether-conduit procurement. Things the public never cared about until they failed. The kind of work that kept the Empire running while nobles attended galas and took credit for stability.

Adam knew the name Claymore, of course.

Everyone did.

House Claymore sat at the intersection of money and power, old enough to have its own mythos, wealthy enough to bend laws by ’supporting’ the right reforms. The old duke, George Claymore, had a reputation for being both efficient and unkind – one of those men whose polite smile never reached his eyes, because kindness was wasted on people who couldn’t help him.

Adam’s company had brushed against Claymore contracts before, carefully, like touching a live wire with gloved fingers.

Max’s company, however, lived in that circuit.

And Max – Thornwell then, Claymore later – had come to Adam with a proposal that was, on paper, entirely reasonable.

On paper.

They met in boardrooms with ether-glass walls and sound-dampening wards, in offices where the city skyline glowed with conduit lines that pulsed like constellations. They spoke the language Adam understood: risk, margins, timelines, and security. They argued. They laughed. Max treated Adam like an equal even when Adam tried to keep him at a distance.

It was almost… normal.

Then George Claymore took an interest.

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