Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Italian Mafia, Russian Mafia, Yakuza, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Ilya Rozanov, Omega Shane Hollander, Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Mates, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Rut, arranged mating, Mafia AU, Older Ilya Rozanov, Younger Shane Hollander/Older Ilya Rozanov, Younger Shane Hollander, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Soft Ilya Rozanov, Top Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Protective Ilya Rozanov, mob boss yuna Hollander, Mpreg | Male Pregnancy, Emotional Intimacy, Caretaking, Possessive Behavior, Domestic, Slow Burn, Anxious Shane Hollander, Touch-Starved Ilya Rozanov, Emotionally repressed men learning to love, Domestic Fluff, Mutual Pining, lots of sex eventually - Freeform, Heat Sex, Idiots in Love, Bodyguard Ilya Rozanov, Scenting, Nesting, Hurt/Comfort, Praise, Praise Kink, Size Difference, Protective Shane Hollander, Found Family, Dysfunctional Family, Gunshot Wounds, Jealous Shane Hollander, Sleepy Cuddles, Sleepy Kisses, Lots of kissing, Happy Ending, acts of service, Soft Dom Ilya Rozanov, Sub Shane Hollander, Autistic Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, shanebug, Rope Bondage, rope bunny shane hollander, Eventual Smut, Like a pornographic amount of smut, Shane Hollander Walks Ilya Rozanov Like A Dog

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-08 Updated: 2026-09-18 Words: 93,203 Chapters: 55/?

A political agreement

Summary

Shane Hollander agrees to an arranged marriage because refusing could start a war. He expected a transactional relationship, minimal emotional involvement, and maybe some occasional awkward small talk.

Instead he gets a six-foot-three stupidly attractive Russian alpha who is apparently determined to follow Shane around campus like an overprotective guard dog.

meanwhile Ilya Rozanov was fully prepared for a spoiled, haughty omega.

But Shane was earnest, stole his clothes, cried over his gunshot wound, and called him mine in front of his father.

Now Ilya’s a little obsessed.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

A SPECIAL ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR MY BETA READER jebeno22.
They are the best and I am forever greatful to them for their help🫡

The first thing Shane noticed was that his mother’s guards were standing differently. Further apart, straighter. Like something important was happening.

His stomach dropped immediately.

The Hollander estate was usually quiet at this hour, all polished wood and soft lantern light reflecting gold against the dark evening windows, but the guards weren’t relaxed, and that changed the whole shape of the room.

One of them bowed slightly as Shane approached the office doors. “Your mother is waiting.”

Not asking, waiting.

Shane adjusted the strap of his bag higher onto his shoulder automatically and tried not to catastrophize during the six seconds it took him to cross the hallway. 
He failed completely.

By the time he slid the office doors open, his pulse was already too fast.

The room smelled faintly of incense and tea. Yuna sat behind her desk exactly as composed as always, dark silk draped elegantly around her shoulders while papers spread neatly before her in organized stacks.

His father sat beside the window.

That made Shane stop short immediately. Because that, more than anything, let Shane know this was serious.

His father wasn’t supposed to be here.

David didn’t belong in rooms like this. He belonged in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, laughing softly when something burned. He belonged in the garden, dirt under his nails. He belonged with Shane.

Not here.

He and his dad never attended meetings. Not official ones. And judging by the tension in his shoulders, he didn’t want to be here now either.

Oh god.

“Sit,” Yuna said calmly.

Shane obeyed automatically, moving slowly across the room, a cold pressure gathering beneath his ribs.

No one spoke for a moment. Yuna simply studied him across the desk with the same smooth, impossible calm she used during negotiations. Shane hated when she looked at him like that, it made him feel less like her son and more like an heir. Finally, she said, “There’s been another escalation with the Italians.”

Shane’s stomach tightened further. Not because he understood the politics fully—Yuna intentionally shielded him from most operational details—but because he knew what escalation meant. It meant bodies. Retaliation.

“We’ve approached the Bratva in regards to an alliance,” she continued.

Shane blinked once. Okay. Not ideal, but manageable. Political alliances happened constantly. Then Yuna said, “They’ve agreed under the request of marriage.”

The room went very quiet.

Shane stared at her. “Oh.”

It wasn’t panic yet. Because his brain hadn’t caught up enough for panic. Across the room, David looked openly unhappy now, his mouth pulled tight in a way Shane almost never saw. Yuna, however, kept watching him. “I refused.”

Something in Shane loosened, but then she said, “But circumstances have changed.”

And there it was, the dread that filled him was cold and immediate.

Shane looked down at his hands, folded too carefully in his lap, and noticed his fingers had started trembling. He tucked them tighter together. “Who?”

His voice sounded strange even to his own ears. Too calm. “The younger son.”

Younger son. Not heir. That meant someone dangerous. Useful. Expendable enough to bargain with. It also ment Shane got to stay home imstead of going to his husband estat.

Shane swallowed hard. “What’s his name?”

“Ilya Rozanov.”

So Russian. A probably large, probably terrifying, heavily armed Russian. Wonderful.

“And he’s agreed to this?”

Yuna was quiet for half a second too long and Shane’s stomach dropped further. “He did not object.”

Which was not the same thing. At all. It made something twiste beneath Shane’s ribs.

This wasn’t a proposal, this was two families sliding pieces across a board and calling it marriage.

Across the room, David finally spoke. “You don’t have to say yes immediately.”

Yuna gave him a steadying look. “The negotiations require urgency.”

David’s jaw tightened. “And he’s our son.”

A heavy silence filled the room

Shane stared at the floor because somehow that hurt worse than the prospect of an arrangement, the divide between his parents had always lived quietly beneath the surface of these conversations.
His mother had always been able to look at him and see the shape of what came next, the name, the estate, the obligation.

His father still looked at him like he was just Shane.

Usually Shane appreciated the distance his mother maintained. Tonight it made him feel frighteningly alone.

“What happens if I refuse?” he asked quietly. And when no one immediately answered Shane knew.

War, Shane thought silently. Between the factions, people would die. Maybe people he loved.

He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, Yuna was still watching him carefully. Not cold, exactly. Worried, maybe, in her own terrifyingly controlled way.

“You would not be unsafe with him,” she said quietly.

The reassurance startled Shane enough that he finally looked up properly. Yuna almost never offered emotional reassurances during business discussions, which meant she’d anticipated this fear specifically.

That realization made his throat tighten unexpectedly. “What’s he like?”

David exhaled softly through his nose like he’d been waiting for Shane to ask that instead. “There are rumors,” he admitted.

“Good rumors?” Shane asked weakly.

David grimaced. “Mixed.”

Fantastic.

Yuna folded her hands neatly atop the desk. “He’s disciplined. Effective. Intelligent.”

Those were not comforting adjectives. “And?”

There was a pause, then, unexpectedly, “He has a reputation for loyalty.”

Shane frowned slightly, loyalty was not the trait he expected Yuna to emphasize first.

“He also has a reputation for violence,” she added calmly.

Yup. There we go. That was more like it.

Shane leaned back slowly in his chair, heart beating painfully hard now as he felt the shape of his life change without his permission.

Marriage... To a stranger. A dangerous stranger. A dangerous alpha.

His pulse stuttered unpleasantly because underneath all the political implications sat one deeply humiliating reality Shane had spent years carefully avoiding thinking about too much: Someone was eventually going to expect things from him.

Physical things, Emotional things, Claiming and Bonding… things. His skin suddenly felt too tight. 

he looked up at his mother now, really looking at her. At the woman who had never denied him anything. Who had built a world around him where he could be soft, where he could be safe, even when everything else about her life was not.

She did not want to ask him. He could see that now. Clear as anything. Which ment this was important.
Shane knew he would say yes, had to, but first—

“I need…” Shane swallowed hard. “I need a minute.”

Yuna nodded immediately. His father already standing before Shane had fully risen from the chair. His father caught his shoulder gently on the way out. His palm warm and grounding. “You’ll be okay,” David said softly.

Shane wished he believed that.

Chapter 2

Shane made it exactly halfway down the hallway before someone caught up to him.

“Hey.”

Hayden’s voice.

Relief hit Shane so fast his knees nearly gave out. He turned to find Hayden jogging toward him in his training clothes, dark hair damp with sweat, his face changing the second he got a good look at Shane.

“What happened?” Hayden asked. “Your mom’s guards look like somebody died.”

“Not yet,” Shane muttered.

Hayden’s expression changed instantly. “Shane.”

That tone almost did it. Shane scrubbed both hands hard down his face and kept walking toward the back gardens, because suddenly the walls of the estate felt too close. Hayden fell into step beside him without asking anything else right away. He always knew when to wait.

The night air hit cool against Shane’s skin once they stepped outside. Lanterns glowed softly along the stone paths while water trickled quietly through the koi ponds nearby. For a second neither of them spoke. Then Shane said flatly, “My mother arranged a marriage.”

Hayden stopped walking.

“What?”

“She says it’s to prevent a war.”

“What?”

“With the Bratva.”

“What?”

Shane shot him an exhausted look. “Your conversational skills are incredible tonight.”

Hayden looked genuinely horrified now. “Shane.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Hayden ran both hands through his hair aggressively. “Marriage? Like actual marriage?”

“Yes, Hayden, generally that’s what that word means.”

“Don’t get sarcastic with me right now.”

“I literally don’t know what else to do.”

That slipped out more honestly than Shane intended.

Hayden’s face softened immediately.

“Oh.”

Shane looked away first. The koi pond rippled quietly beneath the lantern light, and Shane stared at it because looking at Hayden felt too close to admitting this was real. Married. To a Russian alpha he’d never met. The thought kept snagging somewhere painful in his chest.

“Who is he?” Hayden asked more carefully this time.

“Ilya Rozanov.”

Hayden went very still, which was not encouraging.

Shane narrowed his eyes immediately. “You know who that is.”

“That depends.”

“Hayden.”

His friend grimaced. “I might know a few rumors.”

Apparently everyone knows rumors except me. He thought. Shane crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “Okay. Tell me.”

Hayden hesitated long enough to make Shane’s stomach hurt.

“That bad?”

“No,” Hayden said quickly. “Not bad exactly. Just… he’s got a reputation.”

Wonderful.

“What kind of reputation?”

Hayden exhaled slowly through his nose. “That he’s ruthless. And violent. Enforcement work mostly. People call him the Bratva’s guard dog sometimes.”

Shane stared at him. “Oh, good. That’s exactly the catchy little nickname you want associated with your future husband.”

“Shane—”

“No seriously, that’s incredibly comforting.”

Hayden ignored the panic-induced sarcasm. “He’s also apparently smart as hell. Strategic. Loyal to his people.”

“That sounds suspiciously like what my mother said.”

“Yuna respects competence.”

“Yes, which is often terrifying.”

A reluctant huff of laughter escaped Hayden before his expression turned serious again.

Shane immediately regretted asking. “What else.”

Hayden looked uncomfortable now in a way Shane deeply disliked.

“Just… that he likes attention.”

Shane blinked. “What does that mean?”

Hayden sighed. “I’ve he's very popular with women.”

Shane brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose “fuck.”

Hayden winced slightly. “To be fair, most of the stories are probably exaggerated.”

“oh well that fixes everything then.”

Shane sat abruptly on the edge of the stone bench beside the pond and pressed both hands over his face. This was humiliating. Not just the marriage. The implications of the marriage. Because now his brain, traitorous and apparently determined to ruin him, started filling in the blanks. The fact that eventually he would have to navigate physical intimacy with a large Russian alpha who apparently collected women recreationally.

Fantastic.

… fuck this was an actual nightmare.

“Hey.” Hayden sat carefully beside him. “You don’t know him yet.”

“He doesn’t know me either,” Shane muttered from behind his hands. The words came out quieter than intended.

Hayden looked over immediately. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Shane dropped his hands slowly, staring down at the koi pond instead. “What if he’s disappointed?”

“Disappointed by what?”

Shane made a vague, frustrated gesture at himself.

Everything.

The omega thing. The fact that Shane had barely been exposed to the mob side of the family business at all. He was practically a civilian compared to people like Ilya. Shane went to school. He studied. Organized his schedule six weeks in advance and drank ginger ale when stressed. He’d never even seen a dead body before.

And then there were the other things too.

The way too much eye contact made his skin itch. The routines. The constant feeling that everyone else had been handed instructions for being a person that Shane somehow never received.

Most people eventually realized he was strange in ways they couldn’t quite explain.

Hayden understood anyway. “Then he’d be an idiot,” he said simply.

Shane laughed weakly under his breath. “You’re contractually obligated to say that.”

“No, I’m contractually obligated to stop bullets. This is extra.”

That actually pulled a real laugh out of Shane. Small, but real. Hayden smiled faintly at the sound before nudging Shane’s shoulder with his own.

“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “I don’t think Yuna would hand you to someone unsafe.”

Shane knew that too. Intellectually. But safe wasn’t the same as happy. And for some reason, that was the part that hurt.

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

Instagram post

This fanart is what inspired this whole fic for me, please show the artist some love on instagram,

Ilya got summoned to his father’s estate on a weekday.

That alone told him it was political.

His father did not send requests for things like family dinners. He requested attendance. Usually only when something needed handling.

By the time Ilya’s car rolled through the estate gates, he already knew his evening had been sacrificed.

Snow drifted lightly across the long driveway while armed guards watched the car approach through the iron fencing. The Rozanov estate rose out of the dark pines ahead, bleak and expensive, with the kind of age that made every room feel guilty of something. Probably murder.

This was technically still home, despite the fact that Ilya hadn’t lived there since he was sixteen. Not that it had felt like home by then. That feeling had disappeared with his mother.

He killed the engine and sat there for a second staring through the windshield. Then sighed once, resigning himself to whatever the evening brought before he got out.

The guards nodded respectfully as he passed, though there was no warmth in it. There was never warmth here. Respect in this house had always been measured in usefulness.

Inside, the estate smelled faintly of cigar smoke and polished wood. Voices drifted distantly somewhere deeper in the house while staff moved quietly through the halls, making themselves small in the practiced way people did around his father.

One of the household guards intercepted him near the staircase.

“Your father is waiting in the study.” Of course he was.

Ilya loosened the cuffs of his gloves as he walked, already exhausted at the mere thought of a conversation with his father.

The study doors stood partially open when he approached. His brother’s voice carried faintly from inside.

“…still think he would’ve made more sense.”

Their father answered in Russian, calm and dismissive. “He is not high enough in the ranks.”

Ah.
Marriage negotiations. Fantastic.

When Ilya stepped into the room both men immediately looked up.

His brother lounged in one of the leather chairs near the fireplace, expensive whiskey already in hand. Older by six years, not as broad through the shoulders, but colder around the mouth.

Their father stood near the windows overlooking the snow-covered grounds.

No one greeted him. They only looked him over, the way men did when deciding how a weapon had held up after use. “You took long enough.”

“I came directly from work.”

His father grunted once like that information held no meaning whatsoever, even though it had been him who sent Ilya on the hit job.

Ilya shrugged out of his coat slowly. “What are we negotiating?”

“The Yakuza alliance.”

The Japanese, then.

Ilya leaned back slightly against the edge of the desk. “That explains the cheerful atmosphere.”

His brother snorted quietly into his drink but their father ignored both of them.

“The Italians are becoming impatient,” he said. “The alliance requires reinforcement beyond financial agreements.”

Marriage again, then. Ilya suppressed another sigh. “Who’s getting sacrificed?”

His father’s pale eyes settled on him directly. “You are.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Ilya wasn’t shocked. Not really. It felt more like having something confirmed that he had already known the second he walked in. Alexei only looked relieved it wasn’t him.

Ilya nodded once slowly. “Okay.”That seemed to surprise them slightly.

His father narrowed his eyes. “You object less than expected.”

Ilya shrugged one shoulder. “Would it matter if I did?”

“No.”

“Then there’s no reason to waste your time, sir.”

A flicker of approval crossed his father’s face at the practicality, and Ilya hated that more than he cared to admit, felt the old disgust move through him, quiet and familiar.

Useful. Always useful.

“The omega is Yuna Hollander’s son,” Alexei said casually. “Only child.”

How interesting.

Ilya knew of Yuna Hollander, obviously. Everyone did. Yuna Hollander had the sort of reputation that made even arrogant men choose their words carefully.

Still, he hadn’t known she had a family. The fact that she had managed to keep them hidden until now was impressive. More than impressive, really. Men like his father liked to pretend power meant being seen, feared, obeyed, but keeping something precious out of sight took a different kind of discipline.

Only child, though. That explained why the arrangement had been negotiated through Ilya instead of Alexei.

As the second son, Ilya would be the one leaving the Rozanov estate to live with Shane, not the other way around. If Alexei had been the one marrying the Hollander omega, Shane would have been brought to Russia instead. Alpha heirs outranked almost everyone.

And since Shane was Yuna Hollander’s only child and heir, the alliance had obviously been negotiated very carefully around that fact.

Ilya found he could not bring himself to care much about the technicalities. If marrying the Hollander omega meant he was finally getting out of this fucking place, the paperwork could call it whatever it wanted.

“What’s his name?”

“Shane.”

Alexei reached across the desk and slid a photograph toward him almost absentmindedly.

Ilya picked it up and frowned, not dramatically, but enough that his brother noticed immediately.

The photo had clearly been taken at some public event. Shane stood slightly turned away from the camera in dark formalwear, expression composed but visibly strained around the edges like he disliked being observed this closely.

The first problem was that Shane Hollander was stunningly beautiful.

Dark hair, deep brown eyes made nearly black by the low lighting, and a faint dusting of freckles the camera had caught despite the formal distance of the shot.

But that wasn’t what held Ilya’s attention.

It was his posture, the careful shoulders, the expression of someone who had learned exactly how much discomfort he was allowed to show in public. He looked unhappy.
For some reason that bothered him more than the beauty did

“He’s pretty enough,” Alexei said dismissively.

Ilya kept staring at the photo. There was something almost painfully controlled about the omega in it. Like every movement had been considered beforehand.

“You said he’s Yuna Hollander’s son?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

His father stepped closer then, voice turning colder. “The arrangement exists for political stability. Nothing else.”

Meaning: do your duty, produce heirs, and remain faithful and useful to the Bratva.

Ilya resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“I understand how arranged marriages work.”

“Do you?” his father asked mildly. “Your previous behavior suggests otherwise.”

His jaw tightened slightly.

Alexei spoke before the silence stretched too long. “From what we’ve gathered, the omega is healthy, breedable, quiet. Educated. Though apparently he’s difficult socially.”

Ilya looked up immediately.

“How?”

A shrug. “Doesn’t attend many events. Doesn’t speak much publicly. Strange habits.”

Their father dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “As long as he breeds properly, his personality is irrelevant.”

Something cold flickered briefly through Ilya’s chest. Not anger exactly. Closer to disgust.

His eyes dropped back toward the photograph. Shane still looked deeply uncomfortable being perceived. And suddenly, inexplicably, Ilya wondered if the omega knew about this yet. Wondered if he was frightened.

The thought lingered unpleasantly.

Eventually the meeting ended the way all meetings with his father did: without affection or softness.

Without anyone asking whether Ilya himself was happy about any of this.

Just the expectation that Ilya would do as told

——

Back in his own apartment later that night, Ilya loosened his tie and dropped heavily onto the couch.

The photograph still sat in his coat pocket.

After a long moment, he pulled it back out again. The omega staring back at him from glossy paper with that same tense composed expression.

The line of him Careful and contained.

He was beautiful in a way that almost felt incidental compared to everything else.

Ilya leaned his head back slowly against the couch, Then looked down at the photo one more time.

“He looks miserable,” he muttered quietly to himself.

He tried not to examine the quieter truth underneath it too closely—that part of him felt relieved by it. Because if Shane Hollander was unhappy about this too, then maybe Ilya wasn’t the only person in this arrangement who felt more like a bargaining chip than a person.

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

Some fan art that I love!

Not my art not my art not my art!
But I love it so much. Show some love to the artist on insta
Instagram post

The Russians arrived three days before the wedding.

Shane knew because by breakfast, the estate no longer sounded like itself.

By breakfast there were unfamiliar guards posted near the outer gates, large men speaking low Russian into earpieces while black SUVs rolled steadily through the compound like they belonged there already.

They didn’t.

And Shane hated it immediately.

The Hollander estate had always been quiet in a way Shane understood. Controlled, predictable, familiar down to the hour, the sounds of the house stayed consistent enough that he rarely noticed them anymore.

Now there were different voices in the halls, different footsteps outside the windows, different scents cutting through the incense and polished wood. Too many strangers.

Shane stood frozen near the kitchen doorway clutching his coffee while one of the Russian guards walked past speaking sharply into a radio. The man was enormous.

Shane’s stomach tightened.

“They’re not staying in the main house,” David said quickly from behind him, catching the look on Shane’s face before Shane could hide it. “The guest compound near the east gardens.”

“That’s not helping as much as you think it is.”

His father winced sympathetically.

The truth was, Shane understood why this was happening. Large mafia alliances didn’t exactly travel casually.

But Knowing why they were there did not make Shane less anxious about the whole thing. Especially because now the wedding felt real, he can’t pretend is theoretical anymore. It’s real.

So real that armed Russians were drinking espresso in his mother’s garden.

Hayden found him an hour later sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom reorganizing one of his desk drawers for the third time.

“You’re alphabetizing highlighters,” Hayden observed carefully.

“I’m aware.”

“That’s usually a level four stress behavior.”

Shane slammed the drawer shut harder than intended. “There are Russians everywhere.”

“Technically there were already Russians everywhere. Just not here specifically.”

“That’s not comforting.”

Hayden stepped fully into the room now carrying the garment bag containing Shane’s wedding outfit over one shoulder. The sight of it made Shane feel slightly nauseous. “Oh god.”

“Yep.”

“I hate that bag.”

“You’re going to hate it more when you’re wearing what’s inside it.”

“Thank you, Hayden. Your support means everything to me.”

Hayden snorted softly and set the garment bag carefully across the bed before studying Shane more seriously. “You okay?”

“No.”Shane leaned back against the edge of the bed with a frustrated exhale and rubbed both hands over his face.

The last three days had been a blur of security meetings, family discussions, tailoring appointments, all increasingly horrifying reminders that in seventy-two hours he was going to legally belong to a man he had never met.

A dangerous man.

A dangerous alpha.

His pulse stuttered unpleasantly at the thought, his body reacting before he could talk it down.

“Have you seen him yet?” Hayden asked.

Shane immediately looked alarmed. “No.”

The answer came out so quickly Hayden actually laughed. “Relax. I was just asking.”

“No one told me he was already here.”

“He’s not. Their security team arrived first.”

Shane exhaled shakily through his nose.

Okay.
Good.  
Not good.
Worse somehow, actually. Maybe.

Because anticipation left too much room for imagination and Shane’s imagination had become actively hostile over the past week.

Every rumor Hayden had mentioned kept replaying at the worst possible moments: Bratva’s guard dog, violent, ladies’ man, six foot three.
Shane wanted to crawl into the koi pond and live there permanently.

“You’re spiraling again,” Hayden observed.

“I think that’s reasonable under the circumstances.”

“Probably.”

Shane stared miserably at the garment bag on his bed. Then quieter: “What if he hates me?”

Hayden’s expression softened immediately. “Shane—”

“No, seriously.” He crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “What if he gets here and realizes I’m weird?”

“You’re not weird.”

“I alphabetized highlighters because there are Russians in the garden.”

“That’s honestly kind of endearing.”

“To you. You’ve known me since we were twelve.”

Hayden sat beside him on the bed with a quiet sigh.

“Listen to me.” His voice went steady, which meant Shane must have looked worse than he thought. “If this guy is half as smart as people say he is, he’ll figure out pretty quickly that you’re an amazing guy worth knowing.”

Shane looked unconvinced.

Hayden nudged his shoulder lightly. “And if he doesn’t, I can always kill him.”

That startled a laugh out of Shane before he could stop it. “Very reassuring.”

“I try.”

Unfortunately laughter faded quickly, Because downstairs, through the open bedroom windows, Shane could hear unfamiliar voices speaking Russian somewhere across the estate grounds.

The sound reached him even here, ruining the little bit of safety his room usually gave him.

Soon, he thought. Too soon.

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

Hayden in a beta
And Mr. Hollander is an beta
Shane’s mom is also a beta .

Shane changed outfits four times before Hayden finally threatened to physically remove clothing options from the room.

“You realize,” Hayden said dryly from where he leaned against the closet door, “that no one else can actually tell the difference between these.”

“They’re different shades.”

“They’re all black.”

“One is charcoal.”

Hayden stared at him.

Shane stared back defensively while adjusting the cuffs of his shirt for what was probably the fiftieth time.

The meeting was in less than an hour.

Not the wedding.

Just dinner.

Just the first official meeting between families before the ceremony tomorrow.

Which somehow felt worse. Because the wedding itself would at least have structure. Expectations. Rules. Shane knew how to survive formal events by turning himself into something composed and polished enough to get through them. But non of those events had ever been his.

This?

This was too unpredictable, there were too many place’s where he wouldn’t know what to do with his hands, his face, his voice.

His skin itched just thinking about it.

“You’re wearing a hole in those cuffs,” Hayden observed.

Shane immediately dropped his hands. Then started adjusting the collar instead.

Hayden sighed heavily. “You need to stop reading internet forums about Russian mobsters.”

“I wasn’t reading forums.”

“You watched three documentaries.”

“One documentary.”

“And two interrogation videos.”

Shane frowned slightly. “That sounds worse when you say it out loud.”

“Because it is worse out loud.”

Shane turned away toward the mirror again before Hayden could see the spike of nerves that sentence caused.

The formal clothes felt too tight today. Not physically, exactly. He was just too aware of them on himself.

Every seam against his skin suddenly felt impossible to ignore.

The expensive black dress shirt that was just the tiniest bit sheer. The fitted trousers. The earrings, the watch, the shoes, The cufflinks his father insisted matched the family colors properly.

All of it made Shane feel less like a person and more like something someone had set out carefully for inspection.

His stomach twisted.

Behind him, Hayden’s expression softened almost immediately.

“Hey.”

Shane kept staring at his own reflection.

Dark hair carefully styled.
Posture controlled.
Expression neutral enough to pass.

He looked calm.

He didn’t feel calm though. “What if he hates me?” Shane asked quietly.

Hayden was silent for a second.

“Why would he hate you?”

Shane gestured vaguely at himself in the mirror.

Everything.

The male omega thing.
The anxiety.
The routines.

And underneath all of that sat another humiliation Shane could barely think about directly:

What if Ilya expected someone experienced?
Someone smooth, seductive, easy.

Not Shane, who got overwhelmed at grocery stores and hated his food touching.

Hayden understood anyway. Because of course he did.

His face gentled in a way that made Shane immediately regret speaking out loud.

“You know,” Hayden said carefully, “I don’t actually think this guy’s reputation is entirely what people make it out to be.”

Shane narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You said he was the Bratva’s guard dog.”

“I said people call him that.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I also said he’s loyal.”

Shane did not like how much that word mattered. Loyal. Yuna had emphasized that too. It felt strangely intimate compared to the rest of the rumors.

Before Shane could overthink it further, a knock sounded lightly against the bedroom door.

David stepped inside carrying a tray. Immediately, Shane’s shoulders loosened slightly on instinct.

His father smiled warmly. “You skipped lunch.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“Yes, which is why I brought food before you pass out dramatically in front of the Russians.”

Shane looked faintly offended. “I would not pass out dramatically.”

“You absolutely would.”

Hayden nodded immediately. “Like a Victorian woman.”

“Both of you are awful.”

Still, Shane took the plate automatically when David handed it over.

The food had been separated carefully into sections. Nothing touching. Something tight in Shane’s chest eased slightly at the sight.

His father noticed everything too.

“Thank you,” Shane muttered quietly.

David squeezed the back of his neck gently. “You don’t have to impress anyone tonight.”

That felt unfortunately impossible.

Because downstairs somewhere in the guest compound sat the man Shane was apparently going to spend the rest of his life with.

A man who, according to rumor, was dangerous, violent, experienced, deceptively charming, and apparently determined to be every kind of problem Shane was least equipped to handle. Meanwhile Shane currently felt one unexpected loud noise away from psychological collapse.

As if summoned by the thought, Hayden glanced toward the window before looking back at Shane.

“Oh.”

Shane immediately tensed. “What.”

“I think they just arrived.”

Every muscle in Shane’s body locked instantly.

From somewhere outside, muffled through the windows, came the low sound of car doors shutting across the estate grounds.

Then unfamiliar Russian voices.

And suddenly Shane’s pulse started climbing so hard he could feel it in his throat.

Hayden looked back at him carefully. “You okay?”

“No,” Shane answered honestly.

Then after a beat:

“Do I look okay?”

David and Hayden exchanged a look.

Which was not encouraging at all.

Chapter End Notes

I made it home, thanks for the well wishes.

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

I wrote most of this fic out on vacation guys.
It’s why the updates are fast for now

I’m glad you guys like it

I picture Ilya here to look like he does in episode 2 in Russia during the Olympics with his hair slicked back

Chapter Notes

Some fan art I found and loved!
Not my art not my art not my art!

Show the artists some love on insta
Instagram post

By the time Shane made it downstairs, he had convinced himself he was calm.

This lasted approximately four seconds.

The main hall had been rearranged for the evening, warm light sliding over polished wood while staff moved through the crowd with trays Shane was too nauseous to even look at properly.

There were too many people, too much noise, too many unfamiliar scents mixing together beneath expensive cologne and cigarette smoke; all of it pressed in at once. It seemed the Russians were not big on scent patches.

As in non of them wore any.

Shane tightened his grip on his sleeves before he realized he’d moved.

Beside him, Hayden lowered his voice. “Breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“Ya but you’re doing it like you’re being hunted for sport.”

“That feels emotionally accurate right now.”

A laugh almost escaped Hayden before movement near the entrance doors drew attention across the room.

The Romanov’s had arrived.

Shane felt his stomach drop instantly.

Several men entered first, large and heavily armed beneath tailored dark coats, speaking quietly in Russian while security repositioned almost invisibly around the room.

And then—

Oh. Wow.

That had to be him.

Shane recognized the alpha immediately without needing an introduction.

Tall was an understatement.

The alpha moved through the room with the kind of controlled confidence that made everyone else unconsciously shift around him. Broad shoulders beneath a black suit tailored close enough to emphasize the big athletic build underneath, blond curls brushed back neatly from his face, sharp cheekbones, striking blue eyes—

Jesus Christ.

The guy looked like an honest to god supermodel. Shane’s brain, unhelpfully, stopped working for a horrifying second.

Because Hayden had failed to mention the Russian was devastatingly attractive.

Traitor.

As if sensing the attention, Ilya looked up.

Their eyes met across the room and Shane forgot literally every prepared thought in his head.

The alpha went still, not enough that most people would have noticed, but Shane who was staring, did.

Those blue eyes sharpened instantly on his face with a focus intense enough to make heat crawl abruptly up Shane’s throat.

Too much eye contact.

Way too much eye contact.

Shane immediately looked away, breaking contact first. His pulse was behaving irresponsibly now, thank god for his scent patches. “Oh no,” Hayden murmured beside him.

“What.”

“He’s staring.”

Shane made the mistake of glancing back. 

Hayden was right. Ilya was absolutely staring.

Not rudely or arrogantly. On no, it was much worse than that: the alpha was watching him attentively. Like Shane was suddenly the only thing in the room interesting enough to look at. The realization sent a fresh wave of nerves through him.

Meanwhile across the room, Ilya was having problems of his own.

Because the photograph had not prepared him. At all.

The omega was even more beautiful in person, dark formalwear fitted neatly over a body held too carefully still, warm lantern light catching on glossed lips and lowered lashes.

But again, that wasn’t the part that caught Ilya hardest. It was the nervousness.

Now that he saw Shane moving in real time, it became obvious how tightly controlled every motion was.  It was in his posture, the tension at his shoulders, the way his fingers adjusted briefly at his cuffs before stilling themselves again.

Overwhelmed, Ilya realized immediately. And trying very hard not to show it. Something instinctive in him softened at the sight. He had expected curiosity, maybe possession, maybe the usual blunt pull of want. Instead, the first clear thought he had was: Don’t overwhelm him.

The thought arrived so naturally it startled him slightly. Beside him, Alexei followed his gaze and smirked faintly. “Pretty.”

Ilya ignored him.

Across the room, Shane had accepted a glass of champagne he clearly did not want solely to avoid standing empty-handed, his fingers tightening slightly around the stem whenever someone unfamiliar moved too close.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Then Shane looked back up again by accident, and their eyes met a second time. This time, Ilya let himself smile. Only slightly. Carefully.

The omega blinked in visible surprise.

Then, unexpectedly, smiled back.

It barely lasted a second before nerves swallowed it again, but it hit Ilya harder than expected anyway. Warm, genuine, shy enough to feel strangely precious and gone almost immediately.

Ilya found himself wanting to see it again.

“Well,” Alexei murmured beside him. “Looks like this’ll be easy.”

Ilya took a slow sip of vodka without looking away from Shane.

“Shut up.”

Chapter 7

Chapter Summary

I didn’t expect this fic to get the attention it has, thanks for reading, hope you like it

Shane spent the next twenty minutes pretending very hard not to notice Ilya watching him from across the room.

Unfortunately, once Shane became aware of something, he became extremely aware of it.

So now, every time he glanced up, the alpha was already watching.

Not in the aggressive, appraising way Shane had expected from someone with Ilya’s reputation. This was worse somehow: interested? attentive maybe, like Ilya was quietly trying to figure him out.

It made Shane feel hyperaware of literally everything his body was doing. The way he stood, where he looked, what expression he was making, whether his hands looked awkward around the champagne glass.

He hated being perceived this intensely.

And yet, every time he looked away, part of him immediately wanted to look back.

Across the room, Yuna was deep in conversation with the older Rozanov while David handled the more socially tolerable task of entertaining Alexei, who seemed charming in the specific dangerous way rich men often were.

Meanwhile Hayden had vanished somewhere behind Shane’s shoulder in silent bodyguard solidarity.

Coward.

Then Ilya Rozanov started walking toward him.

Oh god.

Shane’s spine locked instantly.

The alpha crossed the room slowly enough not to feel threatening, but his size still made people shift unconsciously aside for him. Up close, his attractiveness became less an observation and more a personal attack.

He was tall, broad, warm blond curls combed loosely back from his face, with a sharply cut jaw and a mouth prettier than seemed fair,  
and his eyes—

Jesus Christ.

The blue of them should have been illegal somehow, suddenly Shane became abruptly aware that he was staring.

Then abruptly aware that Ilya had stopped directly in front of him. Not too close. That registered immediately too.

Ilya left careful space between them instead of crowding into it automatically like most dominant alphas did.

The realization startled Shane enough that he finally looked up fully.

“Hi,” Ilya said.

The deep Russian accent did genuinely terrible things to Shane’s nervous system.

He swallowed once before answering. “Hi.”

Brilliant conversation skills so far, Shane. You’re killing it.

Up close, Ilya seemed calmer than Shane expected. Not cold, exactly, just controlled, watching him closely enough that Shane got the strange impression he was being analyzed in real time.

“I’m Ilya,” he said after a second.

Shane blinked.

Then immediately wanted to die because he realized he had just been staring at him again.

“Yes,” he said quickly. “I know. Sorry, that sounded strange. I know who you are. Obviously. Because of the, um, marriage.”

Fantastic.

Excellent recovery.

A flicker of amusement appeared in Ilya’s eyes, but it wasn’t mocking. It was warmer than Shane knew what to do with.

“It would be concerning if you did not.”

That pulled a startled, amused huff out of Shane before he could stop it.

The alpha’s expression softened instantly at the sound.

And suddenly Shane realized something deeply alarming: Ilya wasn’t wearing scent patches. He smelled good, and worse, Shane could smell that he was pleased.

The realization made heat crawl abruptly up his neck, and he had to tamp down the humiliating little instinctive pull to purr at the pheromones.

—

Ilya noticed immediately that Shane’s shoulders loosened whenever the conversation stayed gentle.

So he kept it gentle.

“You hate parties,” Ilya observed quietly after a moment.

It wasn’t phrased like criticism. More like recognition, which was maybe why Shane felt unexpectedly understood for half a second instead of embarrassed.

Which was somehow worse.

Shane blinked again. “Is it that obvious?”

A small smile tugged briefly at Ilya’s mouth. “yes.”

“I don’t dislike all social events,” he defended weakly. “Just… most of them.”

“That is fair.”

The simplicity of the answer caught Shane off guard. There was no teasing in it, no judgment, no alpha posturing. Just understanding.

Someone passed too closely behind Shane then, brushing his shoulder accidentally on the way by.

Ilya shifted half a step, so smoothly Shane almost missed it, placing himself between Shane and the traffic of the room without ever stopping the conversation.

It didn’t feel possessive, which was the strange part. It was a protective maneuver, the way Hayden moved around him sometimes, or one of his mother’s men did when a room got too crowded.

The instinctive nature of it made Shane stare.

Ilya noticed. “What?”

“You move like a bodyguard.”

The second the words left Shane’s mouth, he regretted them.

Because Bratva guard dog.

Fantastic. What a thing to accidentally bring up.

But instead of looking offended, Ilya just huffed softly through his nose. “I am bodyguard sometimes.”

“Oh.”

Another pause. Then honesty escaped Shane before he could stop it. “That explains a lot actually.”

This time Ilya chuckled quietly. Low and amused.

The sound went through Shane in a way he was absolutely not prepared to examine. For all Shane knew, Ilya was just charming him, playing nice in front of the in-laws.

He had to remember this guy was dangerous. Very dangerous.

“You are nervous around me,” Ilya observed after a moment.

Straight to the point, apparently.

Shane considered lying, then remembered he was historically terrible at it.

“Yes.”

Ilya’s expression shifted in a way Shane couldn’t quite read. Whatever he’d expected to find in Shane, apparently this wasn’t it.

“Because I am Russian?” he asked.

The seriousness of the question startled Shane enough that he answered honestly before thinking.

“No. Because you’re very…” He gestured vaguely at all of Ilya. “You.”

For one long second, Ilya simply stared at him.

Then, unexpectedly, “That is worst explanation anyone ever gave me.”

Shane chuckled again despite himself.

And there it was once more, that soft, pleased look appeared briefly in Ilya’s eyes again, his scent warming like Shane’s laugh had pleased him.

The realization made Shane’s pulse skip strangely, but before he could overanalyze it further, dinner was announced from the adjoining room and the tension returned to his shoulders immediately.

Ilya noticed that too. The alpha dipped his head and lowered his voice slightly. “You okay?”

The quietness of the question startled Shane more than the question itself, because Ilya asked it like he would genuinely do something about it if Shane’s answer was no.

Shane looked at him for a second too long before nodding once slowly. “I think so.”

It wasn’t fully true, but for the first time all evening, it also wasn’t entirely false either.

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes

This was more a ritual and legal document kinda wedding, so there was no kiss, sorry guys.

I’m very nervous to post this chapter
I didn’t edit it as much as I usually do. but Í really wanted to post it, I’ll go back and fix anything later.
If anything looks weird it’d because I wrote this on no sleep, so sorry if some parts get repetitive.

The wedding passed in pieces, none of them quite connecting: incense thick in his throat, robes heavy against his skin, voices speaking over him in languages he only half understood.

By the end of it, Shane felt like someone had taken a cheese grater directly to his nervous system.

He remembered fragments more than any coherent sequence of events. His mother’s calm voice during the ceremony. The weight of formal cups against his palm. Russian spoken somewhere behind him. The heavy warmth of Ilya standing beside him the entire time.

They signed papers, performed rituals, and exchanged rings.

Shane remembered that part clearly.

Ilya’s hands were large, but surprisingly careful as he slid the band onto Shane’s finger, blue eyes fixed entirely on Shane’s face with an intensity that made his pulse stumble strangely.

It didn’t feel performative so much as focused, like the alpha was trying to figure him out still, and Shane’s throat had tightened before he could stop it.

Then afterward came the reception, which Shane survived primarily through dissociation and champagne.

Not enough champagne, unfortunately. Someone had cut him off eventually, probably Hayden.

The traitor.

By the time they finally escaped the main estate hours later, Shane felt exhausted on a molecular level.

The walk to the house was quiet.

Cold night air curled around them while lanterns glowed softly along the stone paths crossing the Hollander compound.

Somewhere behind them, the sounds of the reception still carried faintly through the gardens, music, laughter and distant voices muffled by distance and paper walls.

Beside him, Ilya loosened the collar of his dress shirt slightly with one hand.

The movement drew Shane’s attention immediately.

Without the crowded reception around them, the alpha seemed different in a way. He didn’t relax, exactly. Shane doubted men like Ilya ever did. But he seemed visibly relieved to have the audience behind them.

Shane understood that feeling.

He realized suddenly that this was the first moment they had truly been alone since the Bratva arrived.

The thought made his grip tighten around the keys.

“This is us,” Shane said abruptly as soon as the house came into view.

Ilya looked over, his expression thoughtful.
“Our house?”

“Yes.” Shane adjusted his grip nervously on the keys in his hand. “Well technically the property belongs to my mother, of course, but this section of the compound was renovated for us.”

Us.

The word felt strange and unfamiliar.

Shane unlocked the door quickly and stepped inside first.

Warm light flickered on automatically across polished wood floors and soft cream walls. Compared to the main estate, the house felt more private. Quieter. Modern in a way that actually reflected Shane’s taste instead of Yuna’s more traditional style.
Technically, it had been his house for years. Yuna had given him the space when he turned eighteen, though Shane had mostly used it as a studio because he slept better in his old room and moving out completely had always felt too final. Now he was grateful for that, at least. If he had to leave the main house tonight, at least it was for somewhere familiar.

And instantly, Shane relaxed slightly.

Home.

He could feel it happening physically, his shoulders loosening just enough to breathe easier now that the noise and people were gone.

Behind him, Ilya watched the omega’s whole body ease now that he was surrounded by familiar things.

“Sorry,” Shane said automatically while toeing off his shoes near the entrance. “The reception was probably horrible.”

Behind him Ilya smiled in amusement.

“I have attended worse.”

“That’s concerning.”

“Russian political dinners are very depressing.”

That startled an amused huff out of Shane, the sound catching Ilya’s attention again instantly. Every time Shane laughed, the alpha looked oddly pleased by it.

Shane tried not to think too hard about that.

Instead he stepped further inside and gestured vaguely around the house.

“I can show you where everything is.”

Ilya could have said no. He had memorized the layout from the security file two days ago, because walking blind into any residence was stupid. He did not need a tour.

But Shane’s breathing had steadied the second he started talking about something concrete instead of standing awkwardly in the entryway.

So Ilya nodded once.

“Okay.”

Shane led him first toward the kitchen.

And immediately Ilya started learning things.

The pantry shelves were organized with almost alarming precision, labels turned uniformly outward. Tea separated by type. Cooking ingredients arranged alphabetically. The refrigerator contained approximately twelve bottles of ginger ale.

“You really like this,” Ilya observed, glancing toward the fridge.

Shane looked faintly embarrassed. “It’s my little addiction.”

Interesting.

The espresso machine alone probably cost more than some cars. Nearby, several books lay stacked neatly on the kitchen island, all visibly annotated with sticky notes and careful handwriting.

Nothing in the house felt staged, which Ilya hadn’t expected. Most wealthy homes he visited looked designed for display. This one looked lived in. Carefully. Warmly.

Shane kept talking quietly as they moved through the rooms, and the more comfortable he became, the more details slipped out naturally.

“This room gets too much sun in the afternoon, so I mostly use the back office. It’s quieter anyway.”

“I usually do yoga in here. The windows open all the way, and it gets good air.”

“This is the linen closet. Very exciting part of the tour. Towels, extra sheets, blankets. I wasn’t sure if you’d want your own set, but there are plenty. Everything’s labeled, obviously, so it should be easy to find.”

Ilya found himself listening less to the actual information and more to Shane himself.

The omega was tense in a different way now. Skittish, almost, though Ilya did not think it was on purpose.

Shane probably didn’t even realize what he was doing. The lowered gaze. The careful steps. The nervous little looks over his shoulder before he turned to show Ilya another room, as if checking whether Ilya was still following him. As if he were measuring the distance between them.

As if he might bolt if Ilya moved too quickly.

That was the problem.

Shane looked like something that might run.

And Ilya was a man who had been taught, very young, how to chase.

That was the ugly truth of it. Not romance. Not softness. Instinct, sharpened by years of violence until it knew how to answer uncertainty with control. His first reaction to anything precious had always been to secure it. To keep it close or lock it away. He’d stake a claim on it if necessary to make sure no one else could.

Shane was already promised to him, already married to him, already wearing Ilya’s ring on his finger like a quiet little claim the world had agreed to recognize.

But a ring was clean, legal, Civilized.

This was not.

This was Shane walking him through a house that smelled like omega and laundry detergent and home. This was Shane opening door after door, letting Ilya follow him through rooms full of his things, his routines, his private little habits. This was Shane’s scent clinging to the air while Ilya’s followed after it, settling over thresholds, furniture, stairs.

The omega was letting him scent the house.

Not on purpose.

Probably not even consciously.

But Ilya’s alpha did not care about intention. It only knew that Shane was leading him deeper into his space, glancing back with those nervous dark eyes while Ilya’s scent slowly threaded itself through everything that belonged to him.

The house. The room. The omega whose throat was still bare of his bite.

And Ilya’s instincts, old and ugly and entirely too alpha, wanted the chase.

Shane’s head dipped slightly as he walked ahead, exposing a narrow strip of skin at the back of his neck above the collar of his shirt. The sight hit with embarrassing force. Pretty omega. Vulnerable nape. Ilya’s crest on his finger.

Again, he told himself, he’s already promised to you.

But still, some brutal part of Ilya’s alpha nature did not care about paperwork, witnesses, or careful arrangements. It wanted something older than ink. It wanted Shane caught. It wanted Shane under him, pinned, breathless and overwhelmed until all that skittish tension finally broke into surrender.

It wanted teeth in the soft line of his neck. It wanted Shane panting, overwhelmed, pliant because there was nothing left to do but drown in the pleasure Ilya chose to give him.

No.

Ilya’s fingers flexed once at his sides.

He needed to stop that thought exactly where it was.

Shane was nervous because Shane was kind. That was all.
And Ilya had enough self-control not to mistake fear for invitation.

Because Shane was standing in front of him with careful hands and honest eyes, showing Ilya where the towels were kept like this was simply a house, and not the first clean thing anyone had ever handed him.

That was the part Ilya understood suddenly, with a clarity sharp enough to almost hurt.

Shane Hollander was not untouched by fear. He was not naïve exactly, but he was uncorrupted in a way Ilya had almost forgotten people could be. Genuine, earnest. Good in a way that made Ilya feel, absurdly, like he should have washed the blood out from under his nails before stepping over the threshold.

Ilya, who had done terrible things with his hands and would do them again if he had to, knew better than to put those hands on something precious just because instinct told him to.

So he kept his distance, let Shane walk ahead, and let the omega keep every inch of space he needed.

For now, the only thing Ilya allowed himself to do was follow.

Then Shane bumped lightly into a side table and flushed so beautifully Ilya had to make a private decision not to think about it.

So. He went red when embarrassed.

Ilya immediately decided that was dangerous information.

Upstairs, Shane stopped outside the master bedroom, fingers resting lightly against the doorframe.

The nervous edge of his scent reached Ilya even through the expensive patches, delicate but unmistakable.

Shane did not turn around, and Ilya was grateful for that, because his eyes had already found the back of his neck.

They traced the narrow strip of bare skin above his collar before Ilya made himself stay exactly where he was.

Careful, he thought.

He would be careful.

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

Shane pushed the bedroom door open a second later.

The room beyond was warm and dimly lit, soft light spilling across dark wood furniture and pale linen sheets turned neatly down across a bed that was way to big for one person.

Ilya’s gaze moved across the room automatically, then paused. Unlike the rest of the house, there were almost no traces of Shane in this room.

His suitcases had already been placed near the wardrobe, dark leather against the pale rug, looking more settled in the room than Shane did.

The room was tidy in the impersonal way expensive hotel suites often were, everything arranged carefully enough to feel untouched.

Shane hovered awkwardly near the doorway now, one hand tightening slightly around the edge of his suit jacket.

“So,” he said a little too quickly, “this is technically the master bedroom.”

Technically. Ilya looked at him properly then.

The omega visibly bracing for something, his reaction probably.

Before the alpha could fully process that thought, Shane stepped backward slightly into the hallway and gestured toward the opposite door instead.

“And uh, that’s me.”

Ah.

Ilya followed him quietly into the room across the hall while Shane kept talking too quickly, as if he could outrun his own anxiety if he explained fast enough.

“I just thought it might be more comfortable this way initially,” Shane said quickly while opening the guest room door. “Since we don’t really know each other yet and obviously privacy is important and—”

Ilya understood the shape of it before Shane finished speaking.

The closet door stood slightly open, revealing rows of Shane’s clothes already hanging inside. Books were stacked beside the bed, a phone charger plugged neatly into the wall, several storage boxes near the window still half unpacked.

Shane’s room.

Something quiet and unpleasant settled low in Ilya’s chest.

The omega was not rejected him. That would have been simpler.

No, Shane had prepared for him carefully, politely, like a person laying down boundaries before anyone could punish him for needing them.

Shane had built distance into the marriage before Ilya had even arrived. The separate rooms were not an insult. They were armor.

And Ilya disliked, intensely, that Shane had looked at him and decided armor would be necessary.

“He moved all his things in yesterday,” the Pike boy had mentioned that casually during the reception while half drunk on expensive whiskey.
At the time, Ilya hadn’t understood what that meant. But now he did.

Shane misread the silence immediately. “If you’d rather switch rooms, that’s completely fine,” he said quickly. “Or if you need more closet space there’s another storage room downstairs and—”

“No.”

The word came out firmer than intended. Shane stopped talking instantly.

Ilya exhaled slowly through his nose. Fuck. The omega looked genuinely nervous now, standing stiffly near the dresser like he expected rejection and was already preparing to absorb it politely.

Something about that twisted painfully beneath Ilya’s ribs.

“This is okay,” the alpha said more carefully.

Shane blinked once. “Oh.” He looked relieved.

Which somehow made Ilya feel worse instead of better.

Because Shane had clearly expected this arrangement to be preferable. Separate rooms, separate lives, the smallest possible version of a marriage.

“You thought I would not want share room with you,” Ilya said quietly.

It wasn’t an accusation. Just observation.

Shane’s expression shifted immediately into something wary and embarrassed all at once. “I just figured it would be easier.”

Easier.

The word sat strangely between them.

Easier for who, Ilya wondered. For Shane, maybe. For a version of Ilya that wanted a political spouse tucked neatly out of the way.

If Shane had been what Ilya expected—spoiled, arrogant, dripping with entitlement and family money—maybe he would have preferred this. Separate rooms. Separate lives. A pretty omega across the hall, available when duty required and otherwise conveniently absent.

But Shane was not cruel. That was the problem.

He was standing there with nervous hands and honest eyes, trying to make himself small enough not to inconvenience a man he had every right to fear.

But Ilya found he did not want distance at all.

He wanted Shane close.

Plus, after the bite, distance would become a problem whether Shane understood that yet or not. A newly claimed omega did not settle easily away from his alpha, especially in those first hours when the bond was still raw and the body had not settled around it yet. Shane would want him close. In the room. In his space. In his nest.

But even before the bite, distance was a tactical problem. A closed door was not privacy to Ilya; it was delay. A hallway was not space; it was time lost. Every wall between them was another second Ilya might lose if something went wrong.

But Shane did not need to hear that right now.

Not while he was standing there pale and stiff by the dresser, trying to look reasonable about the fact that he had prepared a room across the hall from his own husband.

Before either of them could say anything else, Shane cleared his throat abruptly and stepped backward toward the hallway again.

“I should probably shower,” he said quickly. “You can unpack or whatever you need.”

Ilya nodded once automatically.

Shane disappeared into the bathroom attached to the guest room, and a moment later the shower turned on.

Silence settled through the room.

Ilya stood there for a long moment.

Then slowly opened one of the dresser drawers.

The first drawer held neatly folded clothes organized by color. Another held sleep clothes and socks rolled uniformly together. Everything was precise, labeled and color-coded. Cute.

Ilya closed the drawer gently again before he looked at the room properly. The windows first. Then the door. The sightline from the bed to the hallway. The weak angle near the closet. The bathroom entrance, half visible from the dresser mirror if someone knew where to stand.

He removed the small camera from the inside pocket of his jacket and fixed it beneath the lower shelf of the bookcase, angling it with quick, practiced precision toward the door, the window, and the bed. 

The bathroom was spared because it had no windows or exterior access. No tactical need. For now.

The bed, though, was necessary. The bed was where Shane would be most vulnerable: asleep, unarmed, soft with exhaustion, too far from Ilya if someone managed to breach the room before he could cross the hall.

Ilya knew Shane would probably hate it if he found out.

He also knew he was going to do it anyway.

That was the ugly truth of him. He could be gentle. He could be patient. He could stand in the hallway and let Shane believe the space between them was entirely his to keep.

But he would not leave him unprotected. Not for politeness, not for comfort.

Not even for permission.

If Shane would not let him sleep close enough to guard him properly, then Ilya would watch over him from across the hall.

He had been handed something rare tonight. Something nervous and honest and good, something already wearing his ring while trying very hard not to need him. And Ilya had been many things in his life, very few of them clean, but he had never been careless with what was his.

So yes, he would let Shane have the room. He would let him have the closed door. He would even let him believe, after tonight, that distance meant privacy.

But safety was not negotiable.

And neither, Ilya was beginning to suspect, was Shane Hollander.

His gaze drifted toward the bathroom door.

Steam curled faintly beneath it now while water ran steadily inside.

And beneath the scent patches still clinging faintly throughout the room, Ilya caught something warmer. Omega, soft and nervous under the clean bite of blockers, faint enough to be accidental and intimate enough to be dangerous. His attention shifted toward the bathroom door before he could stop it, and for one second the only thing in the room was the sound of running water.

Then, before he could examine that too closely, he left Shane’s room as quietly as he had entered and crossed the hall to unpack in the room Shane had decided was his.

Chapter End Notes

I love Ilya snooping through Shane’s shit lol

Chapter 10

Chapter Summary

I’m not crazy about this chapter, but I’m excited for the next one.

Chapter Notes

Chapter 10

The shower ran long enough that Ilya finished unpacking completely before the water finally shut off. Not that he was paying attention.
Obviously.

He sat in the chair near the window, scrolling aimlessly through messages on his phone while trying very hard not to think about the fact that Shane was currently showering ten feet away. Shane Hollander. His husband.

A second later, the bathroom door opened. Ilya let one more second pass before lifting his gaze from his phone, as if he had not been waiting for exactly that sound.

Shane stepped out barefoot and warm from the shower, damp dark locs falling loosely around a flushed face while steam curled faintly behind him into the bedroom.

Soft blue pajamas hung low on narrow hips, expensive enough that Ilya recognized the brand immediately. The sleeves covered part of Shane’s hands, making him look younger somehow. domestic.

The sight landed low and dangerous in Ilya’s chest, close enough to possession that he had to be careful with it.

This was looking less like a political arrangement and more like someone’s husband wandering sleepily out of the shower. His husband.
The thought was unexpectedly satisfying.

Shane froze slightly when he noticed Ilya looking at him. “What,” he said defensively.

Ilya blinked once from the chair, the faintest trace of amusement threatening the corner of his mouth. “Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“Yes.”

Heat crawled visibly up Shane’s throat.

A small smile pulled briefly at Ilya’s mouth before he could stop it. “You dress like good boy.”

The omega frowned instantly. “They’re comfortable.”

Ilya’s smile widened slightly at the immediate pushback. “Hm.”

Shane looked a little like an angry kitten when annoyed, all defensive posture and narrowed dark eyes despite the soft pajamas and his trembling hands.

Cute.

Dangerously cute, actually.

The silence stretched long enough for Shane’s nerves to catch up with him, and once they did, he started talking.

“I, uh—” He cleared his throat awkwardly while rubbing one hand against the back of his neck. “I wanted to say something before this gets weird later.”

Ilya’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Later?”

Shane flushed harder immediately. “Not like that. I just mean in general.”

Ilya stayed quiet, waiting.

The longer Ilya waited, the more Shane seemed to lose faith in whatever he had been about to say. He folded his arms over his chest, fingers disappearing into the soft cuffs of his sleeves.

“You have a reputation,” he said finally.

Ilya leaned back in the chair, the ghost of his earlier amusement still at the corner of his mouth. “Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Good reputation?”

“No.”

That startled a laugh out of him before he could stop it.

Shane looked annoyed by the amusement immediately. “I’m serious.”

“I know.”

The omega hesitated briefly before continuing in one rushed breath, “I just think we should probably establish expectations now so no one gets upset later.”

Ilya watched him closely.

“What expectations?”

Shane looked everywhere except directly at him now.

“This marriage is political,” he said carefully. “I understand that. And I know you probably have a certain lifestyle already and I’m not…” He made a vague frustrated gesture. “I’m not expecting anything unrealistic from you.”

Ilya stopped smiling at that.

“Shane.”

Shane pushed forward before Ilya could interrupt, ignoring the stupid little jolt that went through him at the sound of his name in that accent.

“I just mean if you have someone or want outside relationships or whatever, I understand, I only ask for your discretion. We could just do the bite eventually for legal purposes and otherwise mostly stay out of each other’s way.”

The words seemed to take all the air with them.

Shane forced himself to look up, only to find Ilya was watching him in complete stillness, his expression stripped of every trace of amusement. Shane couldn’t tell if he had offended him or simply revealed too much, and the uncertainty made his stomach tighten.

Ilya looked at him for a very long second.

Then slowly leaned forward, elbows resting against his knees while his gaze stayed fixed entirely on Shane’s face.

“You think I marry into Hollander family,” he said carefully, “make alliance with Yakuza, and my first move is disrespecting their son?”

“I don’t know,” Shane said, pulse stumbling. “I just assumed—”

“Because of rumors.”

“…partly.”

Ilya exhaled softly through his nose.

Then, unexpectedly: “I have never been in a relationship, never wanted strangers in my space.”

Shane had expected agreement, maybe even amusement, but not that.

“But I thought you—”

“I know what people say.”

The alpha’s voice stayed calm. Too calm. “But hookups are easy. They leave. No complications.”

Something about the way he said it made Shane’s chest tighten, which was its own kind of problem.

Across from him, Ilya watched the realization move through Shane in real time, saw the brief flicker of want before Shane could bury it beneath caution again.
Then quieter: “I do not want open marriage, Shane.”

The directness of it sent heat crawling abruptly up Shane’s neck again. “Are you even interested in men?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

Shane looked down at his own hands, fingers tightening briefly around the soft blue sleeve.

“I’m not trying to insult you,” he said after a moment.

“I know.”

“I just…” His jaw worked once. “If this is going to be political, then fine. I can do political. But I’m not going to invest in something real with someone who is going to embarrass me for sport.”

Ilya’s gaze sharpened slightly. There it was.

Shane was drawing the line before anyone could drag him over it.

“I have no interest in humiliating you,” Ilya said.

Shane’s mouth tightened faintly. “That’s not the same thing.”

No, Ilya thought. It was not. “I have no interest in cheating on you either.”

“…Okay,” Shane said quietly.

Something tight shifted unexpectedly beneath Ilya’s ribs, sharp enough that for a moment he only looked at Shane in silence.

This was not jealousy. It was not even possessiveness, not really. Shane was talking about trust.

About the private kind of humiliation that came from offering someone a place inside you and realizing, too late, that they had never considered it sacred.

The thought settled somewhere far more intimate than Ilya expected.

“I am very loyal man,” he said simply. Maybe as a reassurance.

Shane closed his eyes at that, but he did not look comforted. Not the way Ilya had expected him to be.

“Right,” Shane said softly.

He was still not convinced but that was fine. Ilya could work with hesitation. He had built most of his life on patience and restraint, on knowing when to press, when to wait, and when stillness was more useful than force.

“I am not asking anything from you tonight,” Ilya continued carefully.

Shane glanced up at that.

“Or tomorrow. Or whenever.” The alpha held his gaze steadily now, blue eyes startlingly open in the warm bedroom light. “But I would like to know my husband eventually.”

Something deep in Shane’s chest pulled unexpectedly tight at the word husband.
It did not feel like ownership, not exactly. It felt softer than that. Wanted, maybe, and the realization frightened him slightly.

Chapter End Notes

Bite next chapter

Chapter 11

Chapter Notes

I have very solid plans for that hidden camera guys, just you wait

The silence after I would like to know my husband eventually stretched softly through the room, dense with things Shane didn’t quite know how to respond to yet.

He stayed near the bathroom doorway, fingers still hooked absently in the edge of one sleeve while his brain went back over Ilya’s response.

Exclusivity mattered in mafia marriages. Stability, optics, loyalty, the kind of old-world code powerful families still treated like law even when it suited them to break every other one.

That made sense.

Shane preferred things that made sense.

Because the alternative—that Ilya actually meant it—felt harder to believe than the possibility Shane was simply missing something. Some angle.

Still, Shane couldn’t quite dismiss what Ilya had said either. I have no interest in humiliating you.

He’d said it plainly, without the easy charm or performance of the last few days. Plus he’d looked at Shane with such direct, unwavering steadiness that Shane couldn’t help but believe him.

That was the problem.

Because Shane didn’t trust him, shouldn’t. But something about Ilya’s careful treatment of him the last three days had left Shane far more at ease than he probably should have been.

Across the room, Ilya watched him quietly for another moment before glancing toward the hallway and then back again.

“There is still one thing.”

Shane Immediately tensed again. “Oh.”

The alpha’s expression softened slightly at the reaction. “Not bad thing.”

Ilya’s gaze flicked over him once before he stood, slowly enough that it was obvious he was trying not to startle him.

Shane stayed perfectly still as Ilya crossed the room, every instinct suddenly aware of the size difference between them in the way prey animals probably noticed predators.

Shane followed the movement with wary, helpless attention, caught somewhere between attraction and the very old instinct to avoid things capable of pinning him down.

Not because Ilya was doing anything threatening.

If anything, the alpha was moving deliberately slowly, shoulders relaxed, hands visible, gaze steady in that same calm way he’d been using around Shane all evening.

Which honestly only made Shane more aware of how large he was.

Tall. Broad. Built in a way that made Shane suddenly very aware this man had almost definitely killed people before.

Some deeply instinctive part of Shane’s omega brain immediately went predator.

Another part, equally traitorous, went hot.

Because apparently Shane’s instincts handled attraction with all the self-preservation of a praying mantis. Great.

His pulse climbed stupidly fast as Ilya approached, deliberate and slow, though Shane still caught the alpha’s gaze flick briefly down the length of him before returning to his face.

Do you even like men?

Yes.

The memory flashed abruptly through Shane’s head from earlier that evening and his face went hot all over again.

God.

This was humiliating.

Because despite every rational instinct telling him to stay alert around the dangerous Russian alpha approaching him, Shane also had the deeply humiliating realization that his omega instincts seemed fully prepared to betray him for a man with nice shoulders and a Russian accent.

Annoying, honestly.

“I told you I expect nothing sexual from you,” Ilya said calmly. “I meant that.”

Shane studied him for a second.

He believed that. Or at least, he believed Ilya believed it right now.

That was different.

Still, Shane wasn’t naïve enough to assume one gentle conversation erased reality. Marriage was still marriage. They were still strangers. Attraction could disappear as quickly as it appeared once actual life settled around it.

So instead of letting himself spiral too far into whatever this dynamic was becoming, Shane nodded once and decided privately that caution was probably still the smartest option here.

For now, Shane would just have to watch, wait, and figure out what kind of man Ilya Rozanov actually was.

Ideally without making a complete emotional fool of himself in the process.

“But for families…” Ilya exhaled softly through his nose. “Bond must still be acknowledged tonight.”

The words settled heavily into the room, and Shane’s pulse immediately sped up.

Oh. Right. Of course. The bite.

His omega instincts stirred restlessly beneath his skin at the thought, nervousness tangling strangely with anticipation now, and Ilya noticed immediately.

The alpha moved slower after that before stopping entirely. He lifted one hand, slow and open, leaving the last few steps to Shane. “Come.”

The softness of the request hit Shane unexpectedly hard. It wasn’t a command but an invitation.

Shane obeyed immediately, and Ilya had to take a slow breath at how sharply that hit.

When Shane stepped close enough, Ilya reached up carefully and brushed his fingers against the side of his neck, near the scent patches covering the sensitive skin there. His thumb dragged once along the edge before he could stop himself.

“Can I smell you?”

Heat flashed abruptly through Shane’s entire body at the question. Because this alpha was about to put his mouth on Shane’s neck. And Shane should probably have been more alarmed by how badly he wanted that.

Physical touch usually sat somewhere between tolerable and overwhelming for him, something he managed carefully rather than enjoyed. Most people moved too fast, grabbed without warning, crowded into his space without noticing the way his body locked instinctively in response.

But since Ilya had arrived at the estate, he hadn’t once moved too fast or taken more space than Shane gave him.

Everything about the alpha felt deliberate. Calm. Like he was paying attention constantly to how Shane reacted and adjusting himself around it without being asked.

And maybe that should have unsettled Shane more than it did. Instead, despite the fact that they had only touched maybe three times before this, every careful touch seemed to melt directly through his nervous system.

Maybe it was the scent. Maybe it was the respect. Maybe it was simply the deeply unfair reality that Ilya Rozanov was the most attractive person Shane had ever seen in his life.

Whatever the reason, Shane wanted him closer. Wanted that warm mouth against his throat badly enough that his pulse was already racing.

Shane swallowed once and nodded.

Very gently, Ilya peeled the first scent patch away, then another.

Cool air brushed against Shane’s skin immediately afterward, leaving the exposed scent gland frighteningly sensitive.

The alpha hummed, a small pleased sound slipping out the second Shane’s real scent reached him properly.

Something in Ilya’s eyes sharpened, warm and dark and no longer entirely civilized.

Ilya said something soft in Russian Shane didn’t catch, his voice rough enough to send butterflies through Shane’s stomach.

Shane’s face burned instantly. Then, slowly enough Shane could have stopped him if he wanted, Ilya leaned in.

Warm breath brushed first against the side of his throat before the alpha finally scented him properly, nose dragging carefully along the exposed gland beneath Shane’s jaw.

The reaction was immediate. Shane gasped sharply, knees nearly buckling beneath him from the sheer intensity of it.

Oh.

Oh god.

Nobody had prepared him for this.

Ilya made a rough sound low in his throat at the reaction before catching Shane automatically by the waist to steady him.

“Easy,” he murmured softly.

The alpha smelled incredible this close. Warm cedar, smoke, and something overwhelmingly alpha wrapped around Shane so heavily his omega instincts immediately melted toward it.

Toward him.

Another slow inhale against Shane’s throat made heat crash violently through his stomach.

“Ilya—”

The alpha’s hands tightened slightly at the sound of his name.

“You want to stop?”

Shane understood then, with startling clarity, that Ilya was waiting for him. Not pretending to wait. Actually waiting. Even now, with Shane practically melting beneath his hands, the Russian was still asking.

Shane swallowed hard, then shook his head.

Blue eyes searched his face one last time before Ilya lowered his head and pressed a gentle kiss to the side of Shane’s throat. Only afterward did Shane feel the careful press of teeth against the sensitive gland beneath his jaw.

The bite came clean, sharp enough to break skin, and for a split second, that was all it was.

The pain had been expected. He had braced for it, even. But then it changed. Instead of fading, it turned into something else.

Something hot and electric spilled broke out from where Ilyas teeth were in his throat, racing down his spine and snapping through him faster than he could track. It was too fast, too much. His breath caught hard as it built instead of easing.

“Oh— fuck—”

Shane’s body reacted before his mind could catch up to it, back arching into the hold at his throat, a broken sound tearing out of him as the sensation spiked—sharp and overwhelming and good in a way that knocks the ground out from under him.

His vision washed white. Heat flooded downward instantly, pleasure so intense and instinctive Shane physically couldn’t process it fast enough before his release hit him all at once.

Somewhere distantly Shane realized with deep humiliation that he’d just cum untouched in his pants from nothing but the mating bite.

Then his knees buckled, and he had no time to catch himself before the room tilted strangely sideways.

“Woah whoa.” Ilya’s grip tightened instantly, pulling him back before he could fall, catching the full weight of him as Shane goes slack in his arms, breath stuttering, body loose in the aftermath.

For a second, Ilya just stood there, breathing hard, the reality of what had happened settling into him slower than it should have.

“yebat'..” he muttered, rough and disbelieving.

Then, softer, “Spokoyno, milaya. YA derzhu tebya.”
(Fuck) (Easy, sweet thing. I have you.)

Embarrassment tried to surface, but Shane was too far gone to hold on to it. Pleasure and exhaustion dragged at him from every direction, and a second later the dark took him completely.

The last thing Shane felt before passing out entirely was Ilya pressing one impossibly gentle kiss against the fresh mark at his throat.

When he woke briefly sometime later, it was only enough to register warmth.

Strong arms around him, a broad chest against his back, slow, steady breathing near his ear.

Safe, his instinct said.

Then sleep dragged him back under before he could think any further.

Behind him, still awake in the dark, Ilya held the omega carefully against his chest and stared quietly at the wall for a very long time.

Because Shane Hollander had collapsed boneless into his arms after offering himself willingly to belong to Ilya.

And now the omega slept curled instinctively against him soundly and something deep in Ilya’s chest settled painfully around the realization.

Mine, his instincts whispered, and Ilya knew he would do everything in his power to keep it that way.

Chapter End Notes

I love this fanart so much, once again not my art, show the artist some love if you can

Instagram post

Next chapter Shane wakes up next to a hot shirtless Russian

Chapter 12

Chapter Summary

Let’s all take a second to remember what Ilyas massive titties look like.

Chapter Notes

Thanks for all the slutty emojis in the last comment section

Shane felt warm. Not just warm—comfortable. Heavy with sleep, buried deep enough in it that for a few slow seconds he didn’t register anything strange about the weight against him, or the arm around his waist, or the hand spread low against his stomach beneath the hem of his shirt, resting directly against his skin.

The mattress beneath him was soft, the expensive linen cool against his skin while the scent of pine, snow-sharp mountain air, and warm male skin settled heavily on the blankets beneath him.

The moment Shane realized what he was smelling, his eyes flew open, only to find himself staring directly at bare male chest.

Ilya’s bare chest.

Shane went completely still as memory slammed into him so fast his stomach flipped. The wedding. The conversation afterward. Offering Ilya the bite bond. And then—oh god—the part where he’d apparently gotten so overstimulated from being bitten that he’d cum in his pants and passed out in the alpha’s arms.

Heat climbed violently up his neck.

Oh my god.

He could genuinely feel his ears going red.

Slowly, already horrified, Shane lifted his head from where it had apparently spent the night tucked against Ilya Rozanov’s shoulder.

Morning light filtered dimly through the curtains, catching on pale skin and messy blond hair that had fallen loose overnight. It looked softer than it had yesterday, the curls bent in strange directions from sleep. He was still asleep

Without the sharpness of tailored suits and cold amusement, Ilya looked younger like this. Less dangerous. Still unfairly attractive, unfortunately.

Shane’s gaze flicked downward before he could stop himself.

Bare skin. Broad chest. Lean muscle disappearing beneath rumpled sheets, and a gold crucifix necklace resting against his sternum.

And then with dawning horror Shane realized that one of his own arms was thrown across Ilya’s waist, one of his legs tangled with the alpha’s beneath the blankets.

And the hand resting under his shirt—ohmygod—that hand was touching bare skin.

Shane’s entire body locked up with embarrassment.

Jesus Christ.

He shut his eyes for one terrible second.

This was not supposed to happen.

He’d genuinely expected Ilya to leave after last night. To maybe at most sleep somewhere else in the house. To take the out he’d offered. Bite the bond into place, keep things politically convenient and live separate lives.
Shane had practically handed him permission to continue whatever playboy lifestyle men like Ilya Rozanov apparently lived.

Instead, the man had climbed into Shane’s bed and stayed there.

Worse—Shane had apparently clung to him all night like a body pillow.

His stomach twisted violently with embarrassment and something he was trying very hard to will away at the moment.

Carefully, trying not to make it obvious he was actively dying inside from embarrassment, Shane shifted backward.

The arm around his waist tightened immediately.

It wasn’t forceful, just reflexive. Possessive in the sleepy, unconscious way someone reached for warmth before they were even properly awake.

Shane sucked in a breath when a thumb moved lazily against his side beneath the fabric of his shirt, tracing one slow stroke against the skin of his hip.

Every nerve in his body lit up an he forgot to breathe for a second.

He pulled back just enough to look up and found bright blue eyes already watching him.

Ilya still looked half asleep, his expression heavy and a little unfocused in that rough way people looked seconds after waking, his blond curls a mess against Shane’s pillow. He was only wearing boxer briefs, broad shoulders framed in tangled blankets, his scent thick across the bed beneath Shane’s own.

Pine resin, cold ozone, and skin warmed by sleep, mixed with Shane’s softer scent of tea and rain until the entire bed smelled shared.

That, somehow, was harder to process at than Ilya’s hand under his shirt.

“Good morning,” Ilya said quietly. His voice came out rough with sleep, accent thicker than yesterday.

He looked devastating.

Not polished the way he had yesterday surrounded by Bratva soldiers and expensive suits, but dreamy and softened by sleep in a way that felt strangely intimate. Bare except for his boxer briefs, hair messy, one massive arm still hooked around Shane’s waist like this was ordinary. Like Shane waking against him was ordinary.

Shane stared at him for half a second too long before awareness crashed back, and he jerked away hard enough to tangle himself in the blankets. “I—sorry, I didn’t know to—”

Ilya gave him a look of sleepy confusion. “Hollander you are having panic attack, what is problem.”

“I blacked out?” Shane said immediately, horrified, which absolutely had not been part of the plan.

Shane had googled mating bites beforehand, mostly out of self-preservation. Every article and forum thread had said roughly the same thing: some pain, a strong instinctive response, maybe dizziness if the bond took especially well. A few people had even described it as pleasant.

Not one person had mentioned the possibility of climaxing so hard you lost consciousness afterward. Which was fucked up because, in Shane’s opinion, that counted as medically significant information.

A small smile pulled at the corner of Ilya’s mouth.

“Yes,” he said. “Very dramatic. Like Victorian woman.”

Then he laughed quietly, low and rough with sleep, and Shane felt his entire face heat all over again.

The alpha was obviously teasing him, but it didn’t feel cruel. If anything, Ilya sounded warmly amused, like Shane collapsing dramatically into his arms yesterday had been ridiculous but somehow endearing too.

Which was honestly worse for Shane’s dignity.

Especially because Ilya looked indecently good laughing like that, sprawled shirtless across tangled sheets with sleep-heavy eyes and messy blond curls falling across his forehead.

And the scent coming off him—

God.

Contentment, maybe. Something warm and rich woven through the sharp pine smell Shane was quickly beginning to associate with him. Shane felt it somewhere he very much did not want to be feeling anything right now.

This was a problem.

A very serious problem, actually.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter Shane takes care of his problem in the shower

Chapter 13

Without looking at him, Shane muttered something about needing to get ready for school and practically fled.

He was out of the bed before his brain fully caught up to the movement, feet hitting the floor hard enough to sting as he made for the nearest exit only to realize halfway there that he was heading toward the attached bathroom because sometime after passing out, Ilya had apparently carried him into the master bedroom.

Escaping felt significantly more important than unpacking that emotionally, so Shane pivoted sharply toward the actual door leading into the hallway instead.

Behind him, he heard Ilya laugh again, low and rough with sleep, and somehow that only made the heat in Shane’s stomach worse.

He did not acknowledge it. Absolutely not.

The air in the hallway lacked the dense pine-and-snow scent clinging to the bedroom, and Shane exhaled quietly as he moved through it, rubbing a hand over his face while he tried to force his heartbeat back into something normal.

What the hell was wrong with him? Passing out and then getting worked up over what exactly? A sleepover? It had just been sleeping.

Still, he could practically feel the imprint of the him everywhere. The weight of that arm around his waist, the slow drag of a thumb against his skin, the scent still clinging to him all over. God.

Shane made it to the guest room and shut the door behind himself with a quiet click before finally letting himself breathe properly.

The guest room still felt like his, at least. Ilya had been in here last night, briefly, but his scent hadn’t settled into the room the way it had in the master bedroom. Here, there were only Shane’s half-unpacked boxes, his books stacked where he’d left them, his clothes organized neatly in the drawers, all of it familiar enough that his breathing eased by a fraction.

At least something in his life still made sense.

Moving quickly now, Shane pulled out fresh clothes for school and slipped into the attached bathroom. The second the door shut behind him he leaned both hands against the counter and stared at himself in the mirror.

His face was still red. “Oh my god,” he muttered.

He looked thoroughly slept with. Not actually, obviously, but still. His hair was sticking up on one side from sleeping against Ilya’s shoulder, and the fresh bite at his throat looked stark against his skin, unmistakable no matter how long he stared at it.

The longer he stared, the harder it became to pretend this was only humiliating. Away from the heavy warmth of Ilya’s bed, without the alpha’s scent clouding every thought and making everything feel soft-edged and unreal, the mark looked different. More permanent. More frightening.

It sat there on his throat like proof of a decision he had made too quickly and too deliberately all at once, a visible reminder that he had tied himself for life to a man he barely knew because the alternative had been bloodshed.

Some hot Russian mobster with unfair shoulders and a ridiculous sleep voice was one thing in theory; a stranger permanently rearranging the careful, private, scheduled life Shane had built for himself was something else entirely.

And there was still the faintest trace of alpha scent pressed into his skin, strong enough that he could smell it every time he breathed in.

Then his awareness dropped lower, and Shane went completely still. The pajamas were dry now, mostly, but the memory hit hard enough to turn his stomach over again. His fucking pants were still dirty.

Heat rushed violently back into his face, followed by the sharp, urgent need to get the fabric off his skin now.

Shane immediately started stripping his clothes off, he needed a shower now.

Shane was a private person by nature, careful with scent even before presenting as an omega had made the entire household weird about it. He wore scent patches constantly in public, and at home, kept his suppressants and routines organized down to exact times, never let his personal scent spread further than he could control.

Shane had already learned that Russian scent customs were different after panic-googling it the night their delegation arrived, but he still found the entire thing deeply unsettling, less from disapproval than from the sheer unfamiliarity of it.

Ilya smelled like alpha openly, comfortably, like he did not particularly care who knew what mood he was in or what he wanted.

And Shane absolutely could not walk into a university lecture smelling like sexy Russian alpha.

And the fact that his brain had phrased it exactly like that only confirmed that the alpha scent still clinging to his skin was a serious problem.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled to himself before he turned the shower on hotter.

Chapter 14

Shane thought he might actually die of embarrassment.

He was halfway across campus heading toward his second lecture of the day, and Ilya fucking Rozanov was following one step behind him like some enormous, terrifyingly attractive attack dog.

People noticed. Of course they noticed.

Shane could practically feel it happening every time they passed another group of students. Some looked curious or confused while others were obviously openly intimidated by the six-foot-three Russian alpha shadowing Shane through campus with the calm alertness of a man escorting a diplomat through enemy territory.

Which, apparently, was exactly what he thought he was doing.

Shane still felt blindsided by the entire thing. That morning he’d grabbed his bag, fully expecting to quietly leave for school by himself, only for Ilya to look up from his coffee and casually inform him that from now on he would be driving Shane to and from campus.

And attending classes with him.

Shane had nearly choked. “What do you mean you’re coming with me?”

Ilya had looked genuinely confused by the question. “I mean I go with you.”

Horrifying.

Even more horrifying had been the realization that his mother had apparently already arranged all of it behind his back.

Which was when Shane realized exactly what his mother had done, she hadn’t just married him off, no, she put a bodyguard in his bed.

Shane walked faster, clutching the strap of his bag tightly against his chest as he dipped his head, letting the brim of his cap hide more of his face.

Beside him, Ilya kept pace effortlessly without even appearing to hurry. It was deeply irritating, how calm he looked while everyone else instinctively noticed him. He didn’t posture or glare at people; he simply existed in a way that made crowds unconsciously part around him.

Another thing Shane had not expected was the scenting.

That had nearly caused a second nervous breakdown before eight in the morning.

Shane had been standing in front of the mirror in his room applying fresh scent patches when Ilya walked in behind him and frowned immediately. He didn’t look angry. If anything, he looked genuinely confused, which somehow made Shane feel even more ridiculous.

Then Shane had reached for a patch to place over the fresh claim mark at the side of his neck.

“Ah. No.”

Before Shane could react, Ilya had plucked the patch straight from his fingers and thrown it into the trash.

Shane had stared at him in horror. “Ilya—”

The alpha ignored him completely. Instead, he’d stepped closer and rubbed his wrists firmly over Shane’s existing scent patches one by one, pressing his own scent over them until Shane no longer smelled neutral.

He smelled claimed.

The realization had made heat flood violently into Shane’s face.

“Absolutely not,” Shane sputtered immediately, red enough to feel it burning in his ears. “People are going to notice—”

“They are supposed to notice,” Ilya replied calmly.

Shane looked ready to combust on the spot, but Ilya stayed infuriatingly unmoved.

“It is safer this way,” he’d said. “Your family has enemies. Mine also. People should know you are protected.”

Protected.

Because Shane had been marked in a language dangerous people understood.

The worst part was that the logic made enough sense that Shane couldn’t actually argue against it.

So now he was walking through campus carrying textbooks and smelling unmistakably like he’d been thoroughly claimed by a Russian alpha sometime before breakfast.

Fucking fantastic.

Chapter 15

Chapter Notes

Shane can’t tell he’s a lil jealous others are lookin at his man

The first few days settled over Shane with the slow, mortifying weight of a punishment he had technically agreed to. He was not in danger but every hour seemed determined to strip him of whatever dignity he had left.

Shane had spent years carefully curating a life where people left him alone. He kept his head down, kept his routines precise, kept his personal life aggressively private, and in return people rarely thought of him beyond a name on a roster. That suited him perfectly.

But now he had Ilya Rozanov following him everywhere, silent and broad-shouldered and impossible to mistake for anything other than what he was.

A guard dog.

Shane might have found that easier to resent if the fucker had not also been tall, handsome, and so deliciously scented that people turned to look before they seemed to realize they were doing it. Shane hated it.

“What exactly do you think is going to happen in my statistics lecture?” Shane hissed under his breath one afternoon as they crossed campus. “Am I going to get snipered between econometrics and group discussion?”

“Probably yes.”

Shane looked over at him slowly, searching his face for even the faintest sign that this was meant to be funny. There was none. Ilya kept walking beside him with infuriating composure, expression completely serious. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“In our line of work, котёнок,” Ilya said simply. “Paranoia is cultural.”

Shane made an exasperated noise and kept walking faster.

Unfortunately, walking faster did absolutely nothing when Ilya’s legs were approximately the length of small trees.

At first, the alpha had insisted on sitting inside Shane’s lectures, but that had only lasted 2 days.

Shane never asked him to stop. He simply endured it with his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on his notebook while the whispers moved around him, his heel tapping a precise, irritated rhythm against the floor.

But the next morning Ilya simply said, “I wait outside.”

Shane looked at him, suspicious.

Ilya only stood there, calm and immovable, as if this had always been the arrangement.

No teasing. No forcing Shane to explain what had bothered him. No making a spectacle out of his own consideration. Just adjustment.

Which somehow made it worse, or better, Shane genuinely couldn’t tell anymore. The problem, apparently, was that Ilya was not entirely horrible. He was careful, attentive, quietly decent in ways Shane had not prepared himself to defend against.

And, unfortunately, nice.

He made conversation when the silence stretched too long, asked questions without making them feel like interrogations, and teased Shane with a gentleness that never made him feel small.

Shane was awkward, because of course he was, but Ilya never made him feel awkward. He only smiled, filled in the gaps when Shane lost his way, and carried the conversation forward as if it were easy.

And somehow, it was.

Shane stayed careful. He was not stupid enough to forget what Ilya was just because he was handsome and patient and inconveniently good company. But there was very little to guard. Shane did not know anything important, and Ilya’s questions never touched the edges of family business anyway.

Nothing about alliances, shipments, names, or anything useful. only small, ordinary questions that should not have felt nearly as disarming as they did.

They started the first morning Ilya drove him to campus. Shane sat stiffly in the passenger seat and gave directions even though Ilya clearly already knew the way. Ilya let him anyway.

He did not interrupt. Did not point out the obvious. He only drove, calm and silent, until Shane’s shoulders had loosened by the smallest possible degree. Then he started asking little questions.

‘What time is your first class?’

‘Do you eat lunch on or off campus?’

‘What is your major?’

‘Why that major?’

Shane answered more than he meant to because Ilya’s eyes stayed on the road instead of on him, which made talking easier.

The scenting however remained an ongoing nightmare.

Every morning without fail, Ilya would scent him before leaving the house like it was part of getting dressed. Wrists dragged calmly over Shane’s scent patches, fingers briefly touching the back of his neck near the healing claim mark.

The first few times Shane had protested so aggressively he’d nearly worked himself into a stutter.

Now he mostly just stood there turning red while Ilya ignored his complaints.

“You smell too neutral,” Ilya had informed him once while buttoning his own cuffs afterward.

“Wow, it’s almost like that’s the whole point of scent patches.”

“Is bad point.”

Shane had stared at him in exhausted disbelief.

Chapter 16

Chapter Notes

Next chapter will be smaller but sooner and from Ilyas POV

Shane couldn’t sleep.

He tried for nearly an hour, lying flat on his back beneath the blankets while the nest settled around him. The room was dark, the sheets were clean, the temperature was exactly how he preferred it, and still his body refused to follow.

Eventually he gave up with a silent, irritated breath and slipped out of bed, pulling on socks before stepping into his slippers and heading downstairs for tea.

The kitchen light was on, and Shane stopped halfway down the hall.

There was movement inside, quiet and contained: a plate set down softly, a drawer closing. Beneath the familiar smells of polished wood and clean counters was pine and cold air, heavier than it usually was at this hour.

Ilya.

He didn’t realize he’d walked closer until he was peeking into the kitchen.

Ilya stood at the counter in dress pants and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled to his forearms, eating from a plate like he had remembered food only because his body had become too inconvenient to ignore.

His tie was gone. The top button of his shirt was undone. His blond hair had been pushed back badly with one hand, leaving it loose in a way that made him look less polished than usual.  
Tired, Shane realized.

Ilya looked up the moment Shane stepped into view. Of course he did. Shane had never met anyone so alert in his life.

“Sorry,” Ilya said, already reaching for the plate. “Did I wake you? I put away. Turn off light.”

“No, no,” Shane said quickly, stepping farther into the kitchen before Ilya could put away what was clearly his dinner. “You didn’t. Please finish. It’s fine. It’s your kitchen too.”

Ilya paused with one hand still on the plate, watching him for a second.

Then he lowered his hand and took another bite, and Shane tried not to look too relieved.

Still, he found himself lingering in the doorway, watching Ilya eat with the blank efficiency of someone completing a task rather than enjoying a meal. There was something oddly solitary about it. Ilya, standing in a dimly lit kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed, eating alone because no one had been there to eat with. he looked resigned to it..

Shane’s fingers tightened around the sleeve of his shirt.

“I was coming down for tea,” he said quietly. “I didn’t expect you to be up.”

“I just got back.”

“Oh.”

Shane moved farther into the kitchen, ignoring the way Ilya’s eyes followed him as he crossed to the electric kettle. It should have made him nervous, maybe. Instead it felt like being tracked by something large and alert that had already decided not to hurt him.

Which was not a helpful thought at midnight.

He filled the kettle and set it on its base, then reached for a mug from the cabinet. His hand stopped halfway.

“Do you want tea?”

Ilya’s expression shifted, briefly enough that Shane missed the shape of it.

Then the alpha nodded once, smaller than expected.

“Yes,” he said, softer now. “Thank you.”

Shane grabbed two mugs.

The tea drawer was less of a drawer and more of a controlled botanical incident. He pulled it open to reveal rows of glass jars filled with loose leaves, dried flowers, roots, herbs, and blends he’d labeled carefully in black ink. Several mixtures David had once called “witch tea” and then immediately regretted when Shane spent ten minutes explaining the difference between herbal medicine and witchcraft.

Ilya leaned in just enough to look, his blond brow lifting faintly. “You keep forest in drawer.”

Shane glanced back at him. “It’s tea.”

“This is not tea. This is evidence.”

Despite himself, Shane’s mouth twitched. “Evidence of what?”

“Small crimes.”

“Against who?”

“Plants.”

Shane let out a quiet laugh before he could stop it.

Something in Ilya’s scent softened, subtle but unmistakably warmer, and Shane had the horrible impression that Ilya liked the sound of him laughing.

“They’re dried herbs,” Shane said, turning back to the drawer before his face could do something embarrassing. “The plants were already dead when I got them.”

“Convenient defense.”

Shane glanced over his shoulder.

Ilya’s mouth was still curved faintly, but his attention had shifted to Shane again, less teasing now and more openly curious. “You like tea very much?”

The question was simple enough that it shouldn’t have made Shane pause, but it did.

“Yes,” he said after a moment, reaching for the chamomile. “And it helps. A little.”

“With sleep?”

“With everything, depending on the tea.”

Ilya leaned one hip against the counter, watching while Shane sorted through the jars with practiced fingers. “Ah so this is medicine cabinet.”

“It’s a tea drawer.”

“It has tiny spoon.”

Shane glanced at the brass measuring spoon clipped neatly to the side. “They’re cute.”

The answer seemed to catch Ilya more than it should have. His smile did not turn sharp or teasing the way Shane expected. It only warmed, quietly and unmistakably along with his scent, as if he liked knowing that Shane, who organized his life with near-clinical precision and treated vulnerability like a punishable offense, had still made room for something as unserious as a tiny spoon because he found it cute.

Shane felt heat climb into his face.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I like tiny spoon.”

“You do not care about the spoon.”

“No,” Ilya agreed, still looking at him. “Not spoon.”

Shane narrowed his eyes. “Are you teasing me?”

“A little,” Ilya admitted, his voice warmer now. “I like when you scold me.”

Shane stared at him. “That is an incredibly concerning thing to say.”

Ilya shrugged, casual enough that it might have passed for nothing if his eyes hadn’t moved over Shane once before returning to his face. “I like what I like.”

That did, unfortunately, make Shane’s face do something embarrassing.

Shane turned back to the drawer quickly, which was safer than continuing to look at him. The jars clinked softly as he pulled down chamomile first, then ginger after a moment’s consideration. He measured the leaves with more care than necessary, aware of the alpha still watching him from the counter.

The kettle began to hum softly between them.

For a while, neither of them said anything. Ilya stayed at the counter finishing his food while Shane measured leaves into the infuser, the kitchen quiet around them except for the low sound of water heating and the faint clink of glass jars being returned to their places.

When Shane finally glanced over again, Ilya was of course still watching him.

Shane had started noticing that Ilya did this sometimes.

He would simply look at him, quiet and unhurried, without pretending he had been caught doing anything else. If Shane looked back, Ilya did not glance away or soften it into a joke. He only held his gaze, calm and steady, like he was taking Shane in properly. Shane had no idea what he was thinking when he did that.
Unfortunately, he was starting to wonder.

“What?” Shane asked, softer this time.

Ilya shook his head once. “Nothing.”

Shane did not believe him, but he also did not ask again. The kettle clicked off. He poured the water carefully, steam curling between them, fragrant with chamomile and ginger. When he slid one mug across the counter, Ilya accepted it with both hands, not drinking right away.

He looked down into it for a second too long before saying quietly, “Thank you.”

Shane shrugged like that hadn’t affected him at all. “You looked like you needed something that wasn’t whatever that was.” He glanced at the sandwich.

“Chicken.”

“Allegedly.”

Ilya’s mouth curved slightly.

The kitchen felt warmer suddenly, and Shane decided, for his own sanity, that the kettle was responsible.

Shane wrapped both hands around his mug once the tea had steeped long enough, letting the heat settle into his palms. “Okay, well. I’m going back up.”

Ilya looked up from his own mug and gave a small nod.

Shane lingered with his mug for no defensible reason. The tea was hot, yes, but not so hot that he needed to stand there like kitchen furniture while Ilya finished eating.

For some reason, walking away felt harder than it should have.

Shane cleared his throat and turned toward the doorway. “Good night, Ilya.”

He could have left it at good night. He did not, because some deeply inconvenient part of him wanted to hear his own name in Ilya’s voice again.

There was a brief pause, then small enough that Shane might have missed it if he hadn’t been listening for it with embarrassing focus. “Good night, Shane.”

Shane turned away before his face could warm too obviously, but it was too late. The heat had already started crawling up his neck.

He carried the tea upstairs carefully, both hands wrapped around the mug, and tried very hard not to think about the way his name sounded in Ilya’s voice when the house was dark and no one else was awake to hear it.

Chapter 17

Ilya came back late enough that the compound had gone quiet, though places like this never truly slept. There were guards outside, cameras tucked into corners, security moving in soft rotations throughout the night.
But the private homes had settled into darkness already, and the kitchen light felt too bright when Ilya turned it on.

He should have eaten earlier, he knew that. He also knew he had ignored hunger for long enough that his body had started making the decision inconvenient.
which was how he ended up standing alone at the counter after midnight in dress pants and a half-unbuttoned shirt, eating a cold chicken salad sandwich from a plate with all the enthusiasm of a man completing paperwork.

It was fine. He was used to it.

Then he smelled omega, soft and sleep-warm, familiar already in a way that did something irritatingly possessive beneath his ribs.

Ilya looked up before Shane appeared in the doorway.

The omega stopped when he realized he’d been caught looking in. He was dressed for sleep, in another set of matching pajamas, but this pair had shorts instead of the longer pants he’d worn before. It wasn’t scandalous by any means or deliberately tempting. Just soft sleep clothes, socks, slippers, dark hair mussed from bed.

And thighs.

Christ.

the shorts that were perfectly decent by any reasonable standard, but they still somehow gave Ilya more trouble than anyone naked in his bed ever had.

Ilya had noticed Shane was athletic, obviously. He had eyes. But the shorts revealed what the tailored clothes kept more politely hidden: strong legs, thick thighs, warm skin disappearing beneath the soft hem like Shane had no idea he had just walked into the kitchen looking like something designed specifically to test Ilya’s discipline.

The omega blinked at him, still half caught in the doorway.

Ilya reached for his plate automatically. “Sorry. Did I wake you? I put away. Turn off light.”

“No, no,” Shane said quickly, stepping farther inside. “You didn’t. Please finish. It’s fine. It’s your kitchen too.”

That stopped Ilya more effectively than it should have. Your kitchen too. A small, stupid phrase. Nothing worth reacting to.

Still, he kept his hand on the plate for a second too long before letting it go.

Shane noticed, of course. The omega noticed more than people gave him credit for, even when he pretended not to. He looked relieved when Ilya took another bite, which was strange enough that Ilya nearly took another bite of his food just to see it again.

“I was just coming down for tea,” Shane said quietly. “I didn’t expect you to be up.”

“I just got back.”

“Oh.”

Shane moved around the house like someone who knew every inch of it by touch, still careful and contained, but more at ease than he was in the rest of the compound.
Ilya let himself watch because Shane had never told him to stop before, and because there was no sense in denying himself the sight of what was already his.

The omega filled the kettle, set it on its base, then reached up for a mug.

The hem of his sweater lifted just slightly, revealing a narrow strip of skin at the small of his back, smooth and warm beneath the soft spill of fabric, there and gone in the same second.

Ilya went very still.

Shane glanced over his shoulder at exactly the wrong moment, not fully turned toward him, just enough for Ilya to catch the line of his profile, the nervous flush lingering high on his pretty freckled cheeks, dark eyes meeting his from beneath sleep-mussed hair.

It should not have been nearly as devastating as it was.

But then Shane looked at him like that. A little shy. A little uncertain. Still earnest enough to ask, “Do you want tea?”

Ilya had been wanted before, desired by people who knew exactly what they were offering. He had seen them arrange themselves carefully beneath dim lights, had watched pretty mouths and lowered lashes and all the practiced little invitations people used when they wanted his attention.

But this was different.

This was Shane looking at him with sleepy sincerity and asking if he wanted something warm before bed, like it was normal. Like Ilya was not a man with blood on his hands and a gun under his jacket.

Something tightened low in Ilya’s body, almost painful in its possessiveness.

It was not only want, though there was plenty of that. It was something worse, something softer: the knowledge that this earnest, private little omega was now his, and still somehow sweet enough to offer him comfort despite being scared of him.

“Yes,” he said, after a pause he hoped was not as obvious as it felt. “Thank you.”

Shane grabbed a second mug without comment and crossed to the drawer beside the kettle.

The drawer, apparently, contained a forest.

Ilya leaned in just enough to see better, partly because it was genuinely interesting and partly because he needed something to look at that was not Shane’s legs.

Ilya glanced over the rows of glass jars and careful labels, then back at Shane’s focused expression, and decided almost immediately that he wanted to tease him a little.

Not cruelly, just enough to see if Shane’s mouth would twitch before he tried to hide it.

But Shane laughed, quietly and briefly, like the sound had escaped before he could decide whether to allow it.

Ilya felt it hit him directly in the chest.

His scent warmed before he could control it, satisfaction slipping out in a way that would have embarrassed him if he were less distracted by the fact that Shane had laughed because of him.

Interesting. Dangerous.

The omega turned back to the drawer quickly, but Ilya had already seen the heat starting in his face.

“They’re dried herbs,” Shane said. “The plants were already dead when I got them.”

“Convenient defense.”

Shane looked over his shoulder again, eyes narrowed, and Ilya found himself smiling before he meant to.

The jars were large, each one filled to a different level, some nearly untouched and others low enough to make it clear Shane had been working through them for months.

Ilya looked at it. Then at Shane.

“You like tea very much?”

“Yes,” Shane said after a moment. “And it helps. A little.”

He teased Shane lightly about the drawer that looked more like a medicine cabinet than anything meant for tea, until Shane glanced down at the small brass measuring spoon clipped neatly inside it.

“They’re cute,” Shane said, immediate and defensive, like cuteness had medical relevance and he was prepared to argue the point.

That caught Ilya more than it should have.

That small, impossible softness tucked beneath all the precision.

Ilya stared at him for half a second too long.

Shane Hollander organized his life like a man preparing for disaster, locked himself behind routines and careful manners, looked at indulgence like it might require a signed waiver and three business days of processing time. But he had a tiny spoon in his tea drawer because he found it cute.

Something in Ilya softened so abruptly it almost surprised him.

“What?” Shane asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I like tiny spoon.”

Shane must have noticed something in his expression, because his eyes narrowed slightly.

“Are you teasing me?”

“A little,” Ilya admitted.

It came out warmer than he meant it to. Softer, maybe, because Shane was standing in their kitchen at midnight in pjs defending a tiny spoon.

The omega stared at him like he was trying to decide whether to be offended.

Ilya let his gaze move over him once, slow enough to be clear but not sharp enough to frighten.

“I like what I like.”

Shane’s face changed beautifully.

Not much. Just a flush, a tightening around his mouth, that sharp little look of indignation he used whenever he did not know what to do with Ilyas attention.

Ilya liked that too. Probably too much.

The kettle hummed between them while Shane measured the tea with careful hands. He chose chamomile first, then paused, looked at Ilya for half a second, and added ginger too. Ilya watched the small adjustment and understood, with an uncomfortable warmth beneath his ribs, that Shane had chosen the second jar because of him.

No one had made him tea in years, not since his mother was still alive.

Ilya accepted the mug when Shane slid it across the counter, holding it with both hands because he did not immediately trust himself to do anything else.

“Thank you,” he said.

Shane shrugged, pretending badly that the gratitude had not affected him. “You looked like you needed something that wasn’t whatever that was.”

“Chicken.”

“Allegedly.”

Ilya smiled into the steam.

The kitchen felt warmer than it had before Shane entered it.

After a while, Shane wrapped both hands around his own mug and said, “Okay, well. I’m going back up.”

Ilya nodded.

He watched Shane linger anyway.

The omega stood there with his tea, looking very determined to leave and making no move to do it. Ilya kept his face neutral, but inside him something quiet and pleased stretched lazily awake.

Shane wanted something. Ilya could tell by the pause before he left, by the way he held his mug like an excuse to remain standing there a little longer. He had been sleeping in the guest room since their first night here, and Ilya had not challenged it. The choice had to be Shane’s, even if the omega looked less settled every morning he woke alone.

“Good night, Ilya,” Shane said finally.

And Ilya heard it clearly. The tiny pause before his name. The way Shane held himself still afterward like he was waiting for something he didn’t want to have asked for.

So Ilya gave it to him.

“Good night, Shane.”

The omega turned away quickly, but not quickly enough.

Ilya saw the flush climb the back of his neck.

He stayed in the kitchen long after Shane disappeared upstairs, one hand curled around the mug Shane had made for him, smiling faintly into the dark like an idiot.

Eventually, Ilya pulled out his phone.

The compound cameras were one thing. Yuna’s security, exterior angles, hallways, gates, men moving through the dark in quiet rotations. Ilya had access to those too, but they were not what he opened.

He opened the house feed he had installed the night after moving in.

Their house.

The upstairs hallway appeared first, dim and empty for a moment before Shane came into view with both hands wrapped around his mug. He moved quietly, shoulders drawn in slightly against the nighttime chill. At his bedroom door, he paused long enough to glance back down the hall, not toward the camera exactly, but close enough that Ilya’s thumb stilled against the side of the phone.

Then Shane slipped inside.

Ilya switched feeds.

The bedroom camera caught him clearly. Shane crossed to the bed, sat carefully on the edge of it, and drank his tea in slow, measured sips like the routine itself was something he could use to convince his body to settle. The mug steamed faintly between his hands while he stared down into the tea as if it had personally promised him sleep and failed to deliver.

Ilya watched him without moving.

There was nothing useful in it. No threat outside the windows, no movement in the hall, no reason to keep his eyes on the screen except that Shane had left the kitchen and Ilya had wanted to see him a little longer.

After a while, Shane set the mug on the nightstand and climbed beneath the blankets. He shifted once, then again, unable to find the right position at first. Eventually he turned onto his side facing the door, one hand tucked beneath the pillow, the tension in his shoulders easing by degrees as the tea and exhaustion finally caught up with him.

Ilya stayed there until Shane’s breathing changed and sleep took him properly.

Only then did Ilya lock the phone and set it facedown beside his own cooling mug, the kitchen quiet around him and Shane’s laughter still sitting somewhere warm beneath his ribs.

Later, alone in his own bed, Ilya wrapped a hand around himself and let the memory of Shane in those soft little shorts ruin what remained of his restraint.

Chapter 18

Shane wrote the list on Wednesday.

Not because he was losing control of the situation.

No, that sounded dramatic.

He was simply introducing structure into an unpredictable domestic environment, which was completely different and much more reasonable.

Admittedly, most of the unpredictability came from Ilya Rozanov existing in his house like a hot Bond villain someone had accidentally made domestic, but Shane was choosing not to focus on that.

Mostly.

The idea for the list came after Ilya appeared silently behind him in the kitchen for the third time that week and nearly made Shane pour hot tea directly onto his own hand. The alpha moved too quietly for someone that large. It felt physically unfair, like watching a refrigerator learn stealth.

So Shane sat at the kitchen island after class, opened his notebook to a clean page, and began to write very carefully.

He did not know if he would actually show any of it to Ilya. For now, writing it down was less about making demands and more about taking inventory of his own discomfort, sorting through each strange new thing until it became something with edges, something he could name.

He had made it to rule seven when Ilya walked in.

Shane heard him this time because Ilya had apparently decided to be merciful, tapping his knuckles twice against the doorframe before entering.

“What is this?” Ilya asked.

“Nothing.”

Which was stupid, because the notebook was open directly in front of him.

Ilya came closer, slow enough not to crowd him, and leaned one hand on the edge of the island. Shane tried to cover the page with his forearm, but Ilya had already started reading.

“No scenting without warning,” he read aloud.

Shane’s face went hot immediately, because seeing the rule written down had been one thing. Hearing Ilya say it out loud was significantly worse.

“That one is self-explanatory.”

Ilya did not argue. He only glanced at the line again, as if committing it to memory. “No standing too close,” Ilya read next.

Shane shifted in his seat. “That one has exceptions.”

Ilya looked down at him.

“For safety,” Shane added, because the silence made him feel like he had to be precise. “I understand that part. But not all the time.”

“I am bodyguard,” Ilya said. “Distance defeats purpose.”

“I know that.” Shane’s fingers tightened slightly around the paper. “But no one is going to believe someone with a face like yours is my bodyguard.”

Ilya looked up.

Shane, who had realized the implication a second too late, kept his eyes fixed stubbornly on the paper while heat climbed up his neck.

Ilya let the silence sit for one deeply unfair second.

Then he looked back down at the list, amusement tucked carefully into the corner of his mouth. “No threatening classmates?”

“That one does not have exceptions.”

Ilya was quiet for a second. “Some classmates may need warning.”

“Not from you.”

“Small warning.”

Shane looked up at him, earnest despite the heat still sitting in his face. “Ilya.”

Shane looked at him.

Ilya looked back.

“No threatening classmates,” Shane repeated carefully.

Ilya kept reading. “No answering questions on my behalf.” Shane sighed.

“Yes.”

“Is good rule.”

Shane glanced up suspiciously.

Ilya looked genuinely serious now, which somehow made Shane feel stranger than if he’d mocked it.

Shane had expected some push back on that one, at least a little. Ilya came from a traditional Bratva family, the kind where an alpha answering for his omega would probably be considered normal, even respectful. Instead, Ilya only looked at the page like the boundary made perfect sense.

Then the alpha’s gaze dropped again. “No touching me without warning.”

Shane’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the notebook. “That one is important.”

Ilya’s expression did not shift, but something in his attention sharpened. “Okay.”

Shane blinked, thrown by the lack of argument. “Just okay?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t need me to explain it?”

“No.”

For a moment, Ilya went very still.

It was subtle enough that Shane might have missed it if he hadn’t already been watching him too closely. The slight narrowing of his eyes. The way his jaw set, not at Shane, but at something behind the words.

As if the surprise itself had bothered him.

As if, for one brief second, Ilya was wondering what kind of alpha had taught Shane to expect an argument over something this simple.

Then whatever he found in that thought made his expression go cold enough that Shane’s stomach tightened.

Ilya looked back down at the page.

“Is your rule,” he said quietly. “There is nothing to explain.”

Shane stared at him for a second longer than he meant to.

Then he looked back down at the notebook, his face hot for reasons he couldn’t sort quickly enough to name.

Ilya reached across the island then, not for Shane, but for the pen.

Shane’s hand tightened around it. “What are you doing?”

“Adding rule.”

“This is my list.”

Ilya looked at him. “List for what is expected between us, no?”

Shane held the pen a moment longer before handing it over.

Ilya wrote slowly, his handwriting sharper than Shane expected, controlled and angular. When he finished, he turned the notebook back around.

1. You tell me when you are uncomfortable.

Shane looked at it for a moment.

Then frowned. “Is this a rule for me?”

“Is rule for us.”

The answer landed too quietly for how simple it was.

Shane looked up.

Ilya was watching him, not teasing now. His expression had gone still in that focused way Shane had started recognizing, the one that made Shane feel as if the alpha had found the real issue without asking him to point at it.

“I cannot know everything,” Ilya said. “I notice much. But not all.”

Shane swallowed once. “I’m not always good at saying it.”

“I know.”

The words should have felt like an accusation, but they didn’t. They felt like something Ilya had observed and accepted.

Shane looked back down at the list because eye contact had suddenly become too difficult.

“I still don’t always know what to say,” Shane admitted, quieter than he meant to.

Ilya looked at him for a moment, then reached for the pen again. “Then we make it simple.”

Shane watched him write beneath the first rule.

Green. Yellow. Red.

He stared at the words. “Traffic lights?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“Checking in.” Ilya set the pen down but kept his hand near the notebook. “Green means okay. Yellow means slow down, or ask. Red means stop.”

Shane looked back at the page.

It was simple enough that something in him loosened. No long explanation, no having to find the exact right words while already overwhelmed, no trying to separate embarrassment from discomfort quickly enough for another person to understand before the moment got worse. 

Just a color.

“That would be easier,” he said after a moment.

Ilya’s gaze stayed on him. “Yes.”

“For touch?” Shane asked.

“For touch. Scent. Crowds. Questions. Anything.”

Shane’s fingers shifted against the edge of the notebook.

“And if I say red?”

“I stop.”

The answer came immediately.

Shane swallowed once. “Even if you don’t understand why?”

“Yes.”

That settled somewhere deep enough that Shane had to look away for a second.

“And yellow?”

“I slow down,” Ilya said. “Ask what you need.”

Shane looked at the three words again, written in Ilya’s sharp, controlled handwriting beneath his own neater list.

Green. Yellow. Red.

A system. A simple one. Something he could use before his body locked up and his brain went too loud to sort through.

Shane nodded, mostly to himself. It helped to see it written down. Rules were easier when they had shape, and this one felt like something he might actually be able to use.

“Okay,” Shane said quietly.

Ilya nodded once, like that was enough.

For some reason, the lack of pressure made Shane want to say more, though he did not know what exactly. Thank you felt too exposed.

So he only reached for the pen and drew a careful line beneath the colors, making them part of the list. Then, after a brief pause, he added in smaller writing:

Traffic light system.

Ilya watched him write it.

Shane kept his eyes on the page. “That one is for us then.”

“Yes,” Ilya said softly. “For us.”

Chapter 19

Chapter Summary

Does this count as a fight?

This chap is split in two, so is smol, sorry

Chapter Notes

I added a couple more paragraphs to chapter 3 for anybody who has been following along for a while, if your just starting this fic than your fine.
It doesn’t change much so you don’t need to reread it if you don’t want to

By the end of the first week, Ilya had learned Shane’s schedule with a level of seriousness that left Shane mildly impressed and deeply annoyed.

The first time Shane realized this was not casual attention came after a small change in his Monday schedule.

“I have to leave early tomorrow,” Shane said, not looking up from his planner.

Ilya glanced over from his phone. “How early?”

“Six fifteen.”

The alpha’s attention settled on him more fully.

Shane felt it and kept looking down. “But It’s fine. I already asked Hayden.”

A pause.

“For what?”

“To take me.”

Ilya glanced down at his phone. “Cancel this.”

Shane blinked. “Cancel Hayden?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t mind.”

“I mind.”

That caught Shane off guard.

Ilya said it calmly, like the answer was obvious. “I take you.”

Shane knew Ilya got back late. He probably didn’t want to be up that early. “Hayden used to take me before, you know. He really wouldn’t mind.”

“I do not care if he minds.”

Shane looked up then.

Ilya’s expression stayed calm, but there was something firmer beneath it now, something that made the air between them feel suddenly smaller.

“You are not Pike’s responsibility,” Ilya said. “You are mine.”

Shane’s fingers stilled on the edge of the planner.

Oh. Right.

Shane looked back down at the neat little boxes on the page and tried to ignore the small, stupid drop in his stomach.

Shane understood perfectly what his role was in the arrangement.

He was a gift to the Bratva, Yuna Hollander’s heir, placed under the possession of Grigori Rozanov’s second son in exchange for an alliance, with one condition attached: Shane’s safety was to be guaranteed.

Shane knew why.

It was the same reason Shane had been given to Ilya instead of the Rozanov heir: because the Italians were probably closer to finding him than anyone wanted to say, and his mother had decided Shane needed a guard dog more than a politically elegant husband.

If something happened to Shane, his mother’s line ended with him. It was succession, bloodline, leverage; all the ugly practical words people used when talking about a political asset.

Because that’s what he was.

Shane’s safety wasn’t sentimental; it was structural.

If Shane became vulnerable, the treaty became vulnerable with him, and if the treaty broke, a lot of people would die. Ilya’s job was to prevent that before it happened, to keep the fragile gate their families had built around war from cracking open around Shane’s body.

The car rides, the scenting, the constant presence at his shoulder; none of it was random. It was maintenance. Protection. Obligation.

So of course Ilya would take him at six fifteen in the morning.

Of course he would.

Shane was his responsibility.

For a moment, there was nothing inside him but the blank, quiet pressure of that realization.

Then he nodded, because he could not think of anything else to do.

“Okay.”

Ilya watched him for another second, his expression unreadable, then picked up his phone again.

Shane turned back to his planner and pretended he had not suddenly lost track of what he’d been writing.

Chapter End Notes

Ilya gets jealous when Shane says Hayden can take him.

Shane totally misreads the possessive husband energy as duty, but he accepts it right away because he knows the alliance is serious.

Ilya thinks Shane went quiet because he clocked the possessiveness and hated it.

Chapter 20

Chapter Summary

I had to map out the plot so I wouldn’t confuse myself on the timeline.
I thought this would be a quick fic cuz the plot was clear in my head. 🥲 y’all this shits gunna easily be like 80+ chapters. So Buckle up and lock in bitches because it looks like we’re gonna be here a while
But at least the plot is finished and mapped.

Chapter Notes

Last chapter was Friday
This chapter is saterday and next chapter is Sunday.

They were in the kitchen after dinner, which was quickly becoming a place they both ended up without discussion.

Shane liked the kitchen. Not because he loved cooking, exactly, though he could cook well enough when the mood took him. He liked it because the kitchen made sense. Everything had a place because Shane had given it one. The mugs lived in the cabinet nearest the kettle. Tea stayed in the drawer. Cutting boards were stacked by size. Plates, bowls, glasses, spices, all of it arranged according to a logic Shane never had to explain because the kitchen belonged to him in a way the rest of the house still didn’t quite.

Maybe that was an omega thing. Territory. Order. A room that held his scent more naturally because he spent so much time in it.

If it was, Ilya seemed to understand that too.

He was always careful in the kitchen. Not timid, never that, but respectful. He put things back exactly where he found them. He asked before moving anything from one cabinet or another. He no longer leaned directly behind Shane, and he didn’t get close unless he said his name or knocked first so as not to startle Shane, and even then he waited for Shane’s shoulders to loosen before coming closer.

It should have been annoying, how quickly the alpha had learned him. Should have.

Lately, Ilya had started bringing his laptop to the island after dinner. Sometimes he worked across from Shane in silence, answering emails or reading documents in Russian while Shane finished homework. Sometimes he drank coffee he absolutely should not have been drinking that late and watched Shane reorganize his notes with the faint, private amusement of someone witnessing a ritual he had no intention of interrupting.

And sometimes he simply looked at him.

Like last tonight.

That night, Shane had been working through a problem set for nearly fifteen minutes when he realized Ilya had stopped pretending to look at his laptop.

The alpha sat across from him with his chin resting against his palm, blue eyes fixed quietly on Shane’s face.

Just looking.

Shane let it continue because, unfortunately, Ilya’s presence helped.

The alpha’s scent settled through the kitchen without overwhelming it, pine and cold air tucked beneath something warmer from dinner and coffee. It made the room feel fuller. Not crowded. Just occupied in a way Shane’s instincts liked more than he was willing to admit.

Shane glanced up, then went back to what he was writing. “Why do you keep looking at me?”

Ilya did not answer immediately.

The quiet stretched comfortably enough that Shane kept writing, assuming, maybe, that the question had been too strange to dignify.

Then Ilya said, “You wear glasses.”

“Ya, sometimes” Shane said, not looking up. “For reading or homework.”

A low sound of acknowledgement moved through Ilya’s chest.

Shane’s pen continued steadily across the page as another minute passed.

Then, as if answering the question properly this time, Ilya said, “I like to watch you.”

His pen didn’t stop, but one eyebrow twitched faintly.

“Oh?” Shane said, still writing. “How non-serial-killerly of you.”

They didn’t usually name things like this directly. It seemed to change the shape of the room whenever they did, made the air feel warmer, more dangerous. But Shane had asked first, which apparently meant Ilya decided he was allowed to ask something back.

“Why do you let me?”

Shane glanced up then, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Ilya wasn’t teasing now. Not really. He was still relaxed across the island, chin resting against his palm, but his eyes had gone quieter in a way that made the question feel far too specific.

Shane looked back down as heat crept up his face.

He felt bad, abruptly and stupidly, because Ilya had answered him and Shane could not seem to make himself do the same. Not with words. Not when the answer involved too many things he wasn’t ready to pull apart yet.

Because the truth was, he liked it.

He liked the alpha’s attention on him.

The realization sat hot and embarrassing beneath his ribs, too honest to look at directly, so Shane only managed a small shrug.

For a second, he wondered if that was too little because Ilya didn’t say anything else.

Then he glanced up and found Ilya smiling at him, faint and warm and entirely too pleased with what Shane had not said.

Apparently, it had been enough.

Chapter 21

Chapter Summary

Next chap is Monday

The first time Shane realized Ilya could read his body before Shane found words for it, he did not know what to do with the relief.

He was putting leftovers away when Ilya stepped around him to reach the sink. Shane moved at the same time, intending to slip past him toward the fridge, and for one brief second their paths crossed too closely.

Ilya’s hand lifted automatically.

Not grabbing. Not even touching. Just moving toward Shane’s waist with the casual intention of guiding him aside.

Shane froze.

It happened before he could stop it, his body locking around the sudden, electric awareness of Ilya’s hand hovering near his waist. Heat prickled over the skin there before contact ever came, sharp enough to steal his breath and pull his shoulders tight.

Ilya stopped.

The change was instant. His hand drew back before it ever made contact, the movement so quick and controlled it almost felt practiced.

Shane stood there with one hand still around the glass container, feeling ridiculous and too visible.

Ilya stepped back enough to give him room. “Sorry.”

That was the part Shane never knew what to do with.

Ilya never made him feel strange for it. Never pulled a face, never let offense sour his scent, never acted like Shane’s body reacting before his brain could explain itself was some personal insult to alpha pride. He only corrected course, as if the flinch itself had been answer enough.

Just sorry. No argument. No wounded ego. No hand landing where Shane had already silently said no.

Relief and loss moved through him so sharply it almost embarrassed him.

“It’s fine,” Shane said too quickly.

He looked away first, opening the fridge even though he’d momentarily forgotten what he was putting inside it. Cold air brushed his face, giving him something neutral to focus on while his pulse settled back down.

Ilya had turned back toward the coffee he was making, quiet in the warm kitchen light, not watching Shane like he had done something wrong.

That somehow made Shane feel worse.

His grip tightened around the glass container. He should have left it there. Should have put the food away, shut the fridge, and pretended this had not happened.

Instead, irritated by the heat still sitting under his skin, he said, “It’s not that I don’t like being touched.”

The words came out before he could stop them and Shane regretted them immediately. That was probably more confusing, not less.

Shane set the container on the wrong shelf, noticed immediately, and moved it to the correct one with more force than necessary.

Ilya did not move closer. He only turned slightly to face him, hands resting loosely against the edge of the counter, visible and still. Even that, Shane realized with a strange, uncomfortable twist in his stomach, was probably deliberate.

“Okay,” Ilya said. That was it, and when Shane finally closed the fridge, Ilya was still waiting, patient as ever.

Shane’s fingers tightened around the handle. “I just mean…” He lost the rest of it before he could decide what he was actually trying to say.

“Shane.” Ilya said.

Shane looked at him.

“Is fine.” The alpha’s voice stayed low, easy, almost warm with amusement, like Shane had not just turned one aborted touch into a negotiation with himself. “You do not have to explain.”

Shane’s throat tightened. “I don’t?”

“No.” Ilya’s mouth moved faintly. “I understand.”

“Understand what exactly?” He hated that it sounded like he was bracing for the answer.

Ilya looked at him for a moment, then gave one small shrug, as if the answer was obvious and not worth making heavy. “I make you nervous.”

The words were so plain Shane had no idea what to do with them.

“I didn’t say that.”

“No,” Ilya agreed, unbothered. “You did not have to.”

There was no offense in it. No wounded alpha pride. If anything, Ilya sounded almost fond, as if Shane freezing under his hand was not a rejection so much as a fact to be handled properly next time.

And for some reason that made Shane’s throat tighten.

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” he said, because apparently that was the defensive sentence his brain had chosen.

And it was true. He wasn’t.

He knew what he probably should have been by now. Easier. Softer. More willing. A better omega, whatever that meant in the brutal little arithmetic of arranged marriages and bite bonds and old families that liked pretending bodies were just another clause in a contract.

It had been nearly a month, and aside from the first night, the only touch between them had been the careful scent markings before school, Ilya’s wrists brushing over Shane’s patches while Shane stood there pretending not to notice how badly some humiliating part of him liked it.

Maybe that was unfair, but Shane could not stop himself from waiting for the inevitable shift, the moment Ilya’s patience thinned and Shane’s rules and routines stopped being interesting enough to tolerate.

Ilya’s expression changed then, barely, but Shane saw it.

The easy amusement did not vanish. It only sharpened at the edges, turning into something quieter and more dangerous, though not at Shane.

“You are not difficult, Shane.”

Shane’s fingers tightened around the fridge handle.

“You have rules,” Ilya continued. “I can follow rules.”

The simplicity of it unsettled him. “You make it sound simple,” Shane muttered.

Ilya’s eyes stayed on him. “This is simple.”

His brows pinched. “Is it?”

Ilya looked at him like the answer required no effort at all and shrugged slightly. “Is simple for me.”

Shane looked away first because he hated how badly he wanted to believe that. Ilya said that now, but again, eventually he would get tired. People always did.

Not immediately, maybe not even for a while, but eventually Shane’s exactness stopped being amusing. Eventually the moment would come where patience turned into effort and effort turned into resentment.

He opened the fridge again and moved the leftovers half an inch to the left because apparently that was the only thing his brain could safely care about right now.

Behind him, Ilya picked up his coffee, letting the silence settle for a moment before Shane finally moved to pass him; this time, before he could slip by, Ilya said his name quietly enough to stop him.

“Shane.”

Shane paused.

Only then did Ilya reach past him for the sink, slow and clear, his hand never touching Shane’s waist.

It should not have mattered, but it did, and Shane looked away because some part of him believed Ilya and in some ways that was worse than doubting him.

His pulse jumped when Ilya said, softer now, “You do not have to worry,” and then the alpha’s mouth curved, just barely. “I am very good at instructions.”

The laugh caught Shane by surprise, quiet and unwilling, and he hated that Ilya looked pleased by it.

People usually noticed Shane’s discomfort after it had become inconvenient for them. Ilya had noticed before Shane even managed to say no.

That was not romantic, exactly. Shane was not losing his mind enough to call it romantic.

But his nervous system registered it anyway, filed it somewhere dangerous and quiet under the growing list of things Ilya did that made him harder to keep at a distance.

Chapter 22

Chapter Summary

I hope you guys aren’t getting bored of the fluff… you should enjoy it while it lasts

Cuz you only got about two more chapters of it before we hit plot again.

Chapter Notes

Maybe it started because of the list.

Before, Shane had been too nervous around Ilya to notice much beyond the obvious: his size, his scent, his looks, the fact that he followed Shane everywhere with the calm intensity of a well trained dog. Shane had been too busy trying to survive the arrangement to pay attention to the smaller things.

But the list helped.

once the rules existed outside his own head, written down in black ink and left in a kitchen drawer like some DIY peace treaty, Shane found himself noticing how carefully Ilya followed them.

so thoroughly in fact that before he knew it, his guard had started lowering by degrees beneath the steady weight of it.

Every respected rule became a small point in Ilya’s favor, each adjustment and quiet correction adding to a private tally Shane had not meant to start keeping. The list gave Shane something measurable, which was probably why everything else had become so easy to notice now.

Ilya respected every boundary on the list without complaint. that wasn’t the problem, the problem was that Ilya kept doing things outside it too: remembering things, noticing things, adjusting before Shane had to ask. Small gestures that made something omega and instinctive in him sit up and pay attention. tapping at the inside of his mind as if to say, look. Look at that. Did you see that? I like that.

The omega part of him noticed steadiness and protection and quiet patience like offerings left for his consideration, each one quiet proof that Ilya knew how to care for what was his.

Maybe Ilya had always been doing those things and Shane had simply been too tense to notice. Maybe the list had only given Shane permission to start looking.

And now his brain would not stop noticing, or tapping.

Shane did not think anything of it until the next morning, when he came downstairs late at six twelve after another bad stretch of sleep and found Ilya waiting by the front door fully dressed. Shoes on. Coat folded over one arm. Shane’s bag in one hand, travel mug in the other, car keys already looped over one finger.

Shane stopped halfway down the stairs as Ilya looked up, and for a brief moment he could only stare at him before his eyes found the clock.

Six twelve.

He had woken up late. He had moved too slowly. Spent too long standing in the bathroom trying to make his face look less exhausted, which had not worked, and by the time he came downstairs he had already been bracing himself for the small, sour panic of falling behind.

Except there was nothing left to gather.

The bag was packed. The mug was full. The keys were in hand.

Ilya had put himself by the door with every missing piece of Shane’s morning in his hands, and now somehow, impossibly, Shane was not late anymore.

Something tapped once against the inside of his ribs.

That was the first time it happened, it’s surprised him so much that Shane went still from it, one hand tightening around the banister.

His routine was not complicated, but it was his, and after the past couple weeks he had become embarrassingly protective of anything that still belonged to him. His planner. His tea. The order of his mornings. The narrow strip of time between waking and leaving where no one touched him, questioned him, or made him explain himself.

And Ilya had not taken it apart.

He had simply noticed where Shane was about to lose hold of it and stepped in before it could fall.

Tap.

Shane hated that his body seemed to have an opinion about that.

Ilya covered a yawn with the back of one hand, his expression otherwise unreadable. “Good morning.”

Shane blinked at him. “Good morning”

The words settled in the same quiet place of certainty as everything else Ilya had done that morning, but this time they felt worse somehow, lower and warmer, and far more difficult to ignore.

Alpha is dependable, some humiliating, ancient part of him seemed to observe, with a soft, traitorous little pulse of approval.

“Let’s go.” Ilya handed him the travel mug and opened the door.

“Okay,” he said, because apparently that was all he could reply. Shane accepted it automatically, following Ilya out the house then looked down and realized it was tea. Not coffee. Tea. Ginger tea.

He frowned at the mug instead of looking at Ilya as they walked out to the car.

Something in his chest did an annoying little thump again.

Tap.

Shane took a cautious sip. It was warm and slightly too sharp, but good. Good enough that he took another before he realized Ilya was watching him from the corner of his eye.

“Is good?”

“Hm?” Shane blinked, then looked down at the mug again. “Oh. Uh, Yeah. It’s good.”

Ilya’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to look pleased.

“The ratio is off,” Shane added earnestly after another careful sip, “but it’s good.”

The chuckle was small, but Shane noticed it anyway. He noticed the scent too, the quiet bloom of amusement beneath Ilya’s usual cold-pine edge, and something in him eased before he could stop it.

That was another thing.

Ilya teased him sometimes, but he never made Shane feel like the joke was him. He did not press on sore spots once he found them, did not laugh when Shane got overwhelmed, did not poke at the strange little habits Shane knew people noticed even when they pretended not to. The teasing stayed around the edges, warm and deliberate, always leaving Shane somewhere to stand.

It was an unexpected relief.

“You will show me how you like it,” Ilya said, opening the passenger door for him. “Next time.”

tap.

Shane looked up and found Ilya smiling at him, and for a second his thoughts went oddly quiet.

Oh.

Not the small, contained smile he usually gave when Shane said something he found quietly amusing.

This was Ilya looking almost boyish for once, warm and too pleased with himself, with just enough cockiness beneath it to make Shane understand, with sudden and deeply inconvenient clarity, how Ilya Rozanov had gotten his reputation as a ladies’ man. He did not want to understand it. But Unfortunately, his body had received the information anyway.

Because, yes.

Obviously.

Anyone on the receiving end of that smile would probably short circuit as shane was doing now.

For one solid second, he stood there with the travel mug held uselessly between both hands, looking at Ilya like his brain had briefly shut down and left the rest of him unattended.

Then he realized he was staring at his husband, who was still standing there patiently holding the car door open for him.

Shane looked down at the mug quickly. “Okay,” he said, because anything more complicated seemed unlikely to survive the trip from his brain to his mouth.

Ilya’s smile deepened slightly, and Shane got into the car before his face could get any worse.

Ilya closed Shane’s door, got in on the driver’s side, and set the bag exactly where Shane always put it before turning on the passenger seat warmer and starting the engine.

Shane stared straight ahead with both hands wrapped around his tea and tried not to assign meaning to it. Tea, bag, door, seat warmer. Individually, they were nothing. Together, unfortunately, they were beginning to look like a pattern.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

It was probably just manners. Old-fashioned manners, maybe, the kind that sat too close to courtship if Shane looked at them for more than three seconds. So he looked out the window instead.

Chapter End Notes

In the next chapter Shane develops a crush on his husband

Chapter 23

Chapter Notes

Over the next few weeks, the tapping got worse, though Shane had to admit the lack of sleep was probably making him less equipped to ignore it.

It was not only the list anymore, or the careful ways Ilya kept proving he had understood it. It was the conversations too.

Shane had not realized how much he was still editing himself around Ilya until something slipped out before he could turn it into a more polite, socially acceptable version. The first few times it happened, he braced for the usual response.

For offense, or confusion, or that faint pause people gave when they were deciding whether Shane had meant to be rude. But Ilya only looked amused, sometimes he laughed under his breath. Sometimes his mouth barely moved, but his eyes warmed in a way Shane had started to recognize despite his best efforts.

It made Shane careless.

Not completely. He was still reserved with Ilya in ways he wasn’t with Hayden, still careful enough to hear himself choosing words before saying them. But the leash on his thoughts stopped being quite so tight.

And every time Shane braced for offense, Ilya only looked at him like he liked the shape of Shane’s thoughts, even when they came out sharp or too literal or less carefully softened than they should have been.

It happened in small moments at first.

Shane was about to reach for the door handle when Ilya made a low correction sound under his breath and pulled it open for him instead.

“Ah-ah.”

Shane stopped with his hand halfway raised, eyebrows lifting in surprise. Not offended, exactly. Just caught off guard.

“Am I not allowed to open doors now?”

Ilya leaned one hand against the open door, expression perfectly serious. “No. You are my husband. I open door. Is rule.”

Shane was fairly positive that had not been on the list in their kitchen.

“That is not a rule,” he said.

“Is my rule.”

Tap.

Shane stepped out carefully, taking his bag when Ilya handed it over. “I think you are confusing husband with something else.”

“No.”

“Chauffeur, maybe.”

“No.”

“Extremely overqualified door attendant.”

Ilya’s mouth moved slightly. “Bodyguard.”

Shane sighed, because unfortunately that one was harder to argue with.

“Okay,” he said. “You are unfortunately bodyguard-adjacent.”

A small smile appeared. “Husband-adjacent also.”

Shane adjusted the strap of his bag over his shoulder and looked away before his face could do anything unfortunate.

Another time, as they crossed the drive, Shane glanced at the bag Ilya had already taken from him.

“You don’t have to carry my bag all the time,” Shane said as they crossed the drive. “It’s okay.”

Ilya glanced at him, almost confused by the objection. “Is no problem.”

“I can carry it.”

“I know.” Ilya shifted the strap higher on his shoulder, utterly unbothered. “But why would you carry things котенок, when I am here?”

Tap.

Shane forgot, for one deeply inconvenient second, how to answer.

That was not flirtation. Probably.

It was just polite... ya polite.

He noticed another one halfway across campus.

At first, he thought Ilya was only keeping pace beside him. Then a group of students came too quickly around the corner, laughing too loudly and not looking where they were going, and Ilya shifted.

Not much.

Just a step.

Enough that his shoulder came between Shane and the approaching group before Shane had even decided whether to move out of the way.

The students adjusted around him without seeming to realize they had done it.

Shane looked up.

Ilya was still facing forward, expression calm, as if nothing had happened.

A few minutes later, he did it again near the curb, guiding their path so subtly that Shane almost missed it. Ilya stayed on the outside edge of the sidewalk, between Shane and the road, between Shane and open space, between Shane and anything moving too fast toward him.

He did not announce it.

He did not look down to see if Shane had noticed.

He simply placed himself there, broad and quiet and immovable, and something omega in Shane lifted its head at the shape of it, understood the gesture before his rational mind could flatten it.

Alpha protects. Alpha watches. Alpha stands between Shane and anything that came too close.

It was protection without question, leadership without noise.

Tap.

The next tap was smaller.

So small Shane almost missed it.

They were at the campus café, and Shane had paused near the pickup counter because the barista had asked which non-dairy milk he wanted, which should have been simple except the menu had changed and the oat milk brand was different now, which meant he needed exactly three more seconds to decide whether that mattered.

Apparently, three seconds was too many for the guy waiting behind him.

The man shifted.

Barely.

Not even a full sigh. Just the beginning of one, a faint impatient breath through his nose while his weight moved from one foot to the other.

Shane felt it anyway, his shoulders tightening with the old, automatic instinct to make himself smaller.

Then Ilya looked at him.

Not Shane.

The man.

It was not dramatic. Ilya didn’t move closer, didn’t say anything, didn’t even change expression much. His gaze simply settled, cold and flat and unmistakably aware.

The man straightened immediately, mouth closing as his eyes dropped to his phone like it had become the most important thing in the room.

Shane stared at the menu for another second, then said, “Almond milk, please.”

The barista nodded quickly.

Ilya’s attention returned to Shane as if nothing had happened.

Shane took his drink a minute later, fingers warm around the cup, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that Ilya had just silently bullied someone into being patient with him.

Which should not have been hot.

Unfortunately, Shane’s omega instincts had apparently stopped consulting him on these matters.

Tap.

The observation sat strangely in his chest. It was not warmth exactly. Not yet. It was just awareness, quiet and persistent, another point added to a list Shane had not meant to start making.

One by one, the small taps grew into something closer to knocking, steady and insistent in a place Shane could no longer ignore.

Which was a problem.

Because Shane had spent most of his life learning how much of himself to hold back, and Ilya, apparently, kept making that feel unnecessary.

So Shane loosened by degrees.

Not all at once. He was not stupid. But enough that the silences between them changed, enough that his answers began arriving before he could overthink them.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter is in ilyas pov

Chapter 24

Chapter Summary

I wrote most of this fan fiction while I was on vacation a few weeks ago, since then I have rewritten some chapters.
this is just one of the chapters that I like the original so much that I’m gonna post it even though it pretty much says the same thing that the last chapter said, I do apologize,
I couldn’t decide on which post I hope you guys don’t hate me for posting both and I hope it doesn’t confuse anything

I don’t consider this the next chapter, so the next time I update will definitely be in Ilyas POV

Chapter Notes

Shane lay in bed that night thinking over the last few weeks.

It was not constant, exactly. Shane could still function. He went to class, came home  and continued existing under the extremely inconvenient condition of being married to a man who noticed everything.

But the feeling kept returning at odd moments, small and insistent.

Usually after Shane said something too honest.

The first few times, he did not realize he had done it until the words were already out of his mouth. That was the problem with relaxing. It made him careless. He would answer Ilya directly instead of pausing long enough to arrange the response into something softer and more socially acceptable, and then there would be a brief, horrifying second where Shane waited for the offense to arrive.

It never did.

Sometimes he laughed under his breath, low and warm and private, as if Shane had done something unexpectedly charming instead of bluntly pointing out that the tea ratio was wrong or that Ilyas method for laundry was horrifying.

That should have made it worse.

Somehow, it did not.

Shane had not been quiet around Ilya, exactly, but he had been careful. Reserved. There was a difference. He answered what he was asked, made necessary comments, and kept most of his real thoughts tucked behind his teeth where they could not cause problems. It was easier that way. Safer. Most people said they liked honesty until they were given too much of it in the wrong tone.

Hayden did not mind. Hayden had known him for long enough that Shane no longer had to translate himself every time he opened his mouth.

Ilya was different.

Ilya was new. Ilya was older, sharper around the edges, and raised in a world where people noticed weaknesses because weaknesses were things to use. Shane had no reason to assume bluntness would be received as anything other than rude, strange, or inconvenient.

Except Ilya kept proving otherwise.

He did not take offense when Shane corrected him. He did not look impatient when Shane asked for clarification instead of guessing. He did not make Shane feel stupid for needing things said plainly. If anything, he seemed to prefer it when Shane stopped trying to polish himself into something smoother.

Trust seemed too large a word for what was happening. Too intimate. Too dramatic. They had only been married for a handful of weeks, and most of that marriage still existed inside rules, schedules, separate bedrooms, and carefully negotiated boundaries.

But Shane could not deny that something in him had begun to adjust.

Ilya noticed the shift too. Of course he did. Ilya noticed everything.

He never said anything about it, which Shane appreciated more than he wanted to admit. He only watched with that quiet, pleased look he sometimes got, as if Shane had handed him something without meaning to and Ilya had decided to keep it very carefully.

That should have made Shane retreat.

Sometimes it did.

Sometimes he would feel the conversation tilt too close to something vulnerable and immediately busy himself with his phone, his planner, his bag, anything that gave him somewhere else to put his attention. Ilya never chased him when he did that. He let Shane have the space, and somehow that made it harder not to come back.

“Fuck,” Shane whispered into his pillow. “You idiot.”

He meant himself.

Obviously he meant himself, because Ilya was asleep in another room, probably looking unfairly handsome and emotionally stable about all of this, while Shane lay facedown in bed having the world’s most humiliating realization that he was developing a crush on his own husband.

Chapter End Notes

Btw I have it tagged, but I don’t think I ever clarified that Ilya is about four to five years older than Shane in this fic.

Chapter 25

Chapter Notes

I just love Ilya watching Shane through hidden cameras

Ilya came home just after noon with a light headache still sitting unpleasantly behind his eyes.

He liked working for Yuna, more than he had expected to. She did not waste words, did not posture, and did not hand him tasks beneath his intelligence just to remind him who held authority in the house. Ilya had grown to respect that about her. She expected competence, and in return she gave him enough room to use it. Most days, the work suited him.

Today had been different.

Today had been mostly security detail revisions, which meant routes, schedules, guard rotations, blind spots, and the tedious work of making too many moving parts fit cleanly together. Necessary work, but tedious.

By the time he stepped through the front door, he was already reaching for the quiet shape of Shane in the house.

The weekend meant Shane had stayed home, and Ilya got to have him all to himself.

The feeds on his phone had shown Shane safe every time Ilya checked them, reassuring himself with each small glimpse that his omega was still where Ilya had left him: safe, hidden, and waiting at home. But a screen was a poor substitute for the real thing, and by noon his patience with distance had worn thin.

Ilya came home to a quiet house and followed Shane’s scent into the kitchen.

The kitchen was empty at first glance, until his gaze caught on the open pantry door.

Inside, movement came soft and concentrated: glass touching wood, paper sliding under careful fingers, something being adjusted with the kind of care most men saved for weapons.

Ilya leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and looked in.

Shane was sitting on the floor of the pantry with a roll of blank labels balanced carefully against his thigh, sleeves pushed up, and several glass jars arranged around him, expression intensely focused as he pulled things from the shelves.

Grains, pasta, flour, salt, sugar, oats. Everything had been pulled from the shelves and arranged in careful rows around him. Some jars had fresh labels. Others sat open while Shane transferred their contents, his focus so intent that he did not notice Ilya immediately.

Alphabetical, Ilya realized after a second.

Of course. How cute.

Shane looked up briefly, then back down again. “The kettle’s still hot if you want coffee,” Shane said.

“Thank you.”

“And the bakery box is in the oven if you want anything,” Shane said. “Just don’t use the small plate near the sink. It has lemon oil on it from earlier, and it’ll make everything taste wrong.”

Ilya stayed where he was, one shoulder against the doorframe.

Shane continued moving jars.

Ilya looked around the pantry, taking in the shelves, the jars, the labels, the careful arrangement of everything Shane had apparently spent his afternoon reorganizing.

It was precise. Thoughtful. Almost severe in its order, except there was something unmistakably Shane in it too, something particular and intimate in the way every item had been given its place.

For a moment, Shane kept moving as if Ilya was not there. Then his hands slowed.

Ilya watched the realization pass through him: the small pause, the brief lift of his eyes, the way his shoulders tightened before he could hide it.

Shane looked up at him“Did you need something?” he asked.

The tone was too sharp for the question.

Ilya lifted one brow. “Net.”
(No)

Shane looked back at the jars and turned one half an inch to the left. “Then can you go?”

Ilya blinked once.

“Or do you think I’m going to get sniped in the pantry?”

There it was again: sharpness where there should not have been any.

Ilya leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “This tone is for me?”

Shane’s mouth tightened. “What tone?”

“This one.” Ilya nodded toward him, not the shelves.

“I don’t have a tone.”

“You are showing teeth, kotenok.”

Shane turned another jar with unnecessary precision. “I’m organizing.”

“Shane,” Ilya said, keeping his voice low.  

Shane glanced at him despite himself.

Ilya kept his voice light, but not soft enough to let Shane slip away from the question. “You have to tell why you are uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable.”

“Is rule.” Ilya tipped his head toward the kitchen. “Written on little note in kitchen. Is law now. very official. You must tell me.” Ilya crouched near the doorway, still leaving enough space that Shane did not feel crowded.

Shane’s mouth almost tipped up. Almost.

Then he remembered Ilya was still looking at him and seeing too much, and the humor folded back into something defensive.

Shane looked back down at the jar in his hands. His fingers shifted around the glass, tightening slightly. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t know.”

Ilya’s brow lowered. “Know what?”

“That it’s weird.” Shane’s voice was quieter now, flatter in a way that made Ilya’s attention sharpen. “That’s why you’re standing there looking at it.”

“I am looking because I came home and found my husband inside pantry.”

“That explains why you’re here. It doesn’t explain the staring.”

“It is interesting.”

Shane gave him a small, disbelieving look. “Interesting is what people say when they mean weird.”

“No.”

“Ilya.”

“What is weird?”

“This.” Shane gestured once, too quick and stiff, at the shelves. “All of this.”

Ilya watched him for a moment, gaze moving over the pantry again before settling back on Shane.

“Ah,” Ilya said, understanding settling in his face. “You mean the nesting.”

“No, my—” He stopped, because his brain had caught violently on the words and refused to move past them. “My what?”

Ilya leaned one shoulder against the frame, watching him with that same calm, assessing patience that always made Shane feel seen in ways he had not agreed to. “The nesting.”

Shane stared at him.

Something hot and startled went through his chest. “I am not nesting.”

Ilya’s mouth twitched. “No?”

“No.” Shane’s face went hot. “I’m organizing, Those are different things.”

“For comfort.”

“For efficiency.” 

Ilya looked pointedly at the pantry shelves, then at the folded kitchen towels stacked by color near Shane’s hip, then toward the counter where Shane had left Ilya’s preferred mug beside the coffee maker.

“And comfort.”

Shane followed his gaze and immediately regretted it.

Ilya said, “Is normal, no? For omega. You move things until they feel right. Pantry. Kitchen. House.” His mouth curved faintly. “You do not even let me help with laundry.”

“That’s because you use too much soap and then they smell wrong.”

Ilya’s smile widened.

Shane realized what he had said one second too late. “Oh my god.”

“Mm.” Ilya looked far too pleased for someone who had just rearranged Shane’s entire self-concept.

Shane looked down at the jar in his lap, mortified.

He had never thought of it that way. Not really. The organizing had always been routine, control, preference, the need to make rooms settle properly around him so he could breathe inside them. If he needed things arranged a certain way, that was because disorder made his skin feel too tight. If the sheets smelled wrong, it was because they smelled wrong. If the pantry had been inefficient, then the pantry had been inefficient.

He had spent most of his life surrounded by betas. His mother was a beta. His father was a beta. Hayden was a beta. Everything Shane knew about omegas came from biology classes, awkward medical pamphlets, and late-night searches he had immediately deleted from his browser history. Before Ilya, the only alphas in his life had been his mother’s guards, and he had been too nervous around them to learn anything useful.

So no, he had not looked at the blankets, the laundry, the tea drawer, the pantry, and thought nest.

He had thought control, because control was familiar and explainable. But the word Nesting sat strangely under his skin now, too intimate and too omega, revealing something about him he had not realized was visible.

Quietly, without looking up, Shane asked, “You don’t think it’s weird?”

Ilya did not answer immediately.

When he did, his voice was low and certain. “No.”

Shane’s fingers tightened.

Ilya leaned one shoulder against the pantry frame, watching him with open amusement now.“Is cute.”

Shane’s face burned and he rolled his eyes. “It is not cute.”

“Is very cute.” Ilya said simply.

“Ilya.”

“And hot.”

Shane’s head snapped up. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”

The alpha looked entirely unrepentant.

“Is like whole house is nest.”

Shane’s brain stopped working.

Ilya’s gaze stayed on him, warm and steady, with just enough dark amusement beneath it to make Shane’s pulse stumble.

“You put yourself everywhere,” Ilya said, gaze moving over the shelves. “Then I come home, and I get to be here. In your nest.”

Shane’s face went hotter. “That’s not what it is.”

“No?”

“No.”

Ilya’s eyes flicked over the pantry, then back to Shane. “Feels like this.”

Shane looked down again because apparently there was no safe direction to look anymore.

“is hot also,” Ilya added, like this was obvious. “Because you are bossy when I put things in wrong place. I like this.”

Shane stared at him.

Then, because there was absolutely no dignified response to that, he shook his head then looked back down and turned the jar of lentils until the label faced perfectly forward.

“You’re very strange,” he muttered failing miserably to fight a smile.

Ilya smiled, slow and quiet, like Shane had handed him something better than agreement.

Shane looked back down at the jars and did not tell him to go again.

Ilya understood permission when he was given it.

He stayed near the doorway while Shane worked, quite, watching the careful order take shape around them until the pantry looked exactly the way Shane needed it to.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter Ilya asks shane something

Chapter 26

Chapter Summary

I’m nervous about this chapter
Hope you like

Chapter Notes

Ilya asked on a Saturday.

Shane was doing homework at the kitchen island, because the dining room felt too formal and his office felt too isolated and the kitchen had somehow become the least objectionable place to exist near Ilya without making it obvious that he was choosing to exist near Ilya. His laptop was open, one notebook beside it, pen moving steadily through a line of calculations while Ilya leaned against the opposite counter with coffee in hand, reading something on his phone.

For a while, the kitchen stayed comfortably quiet.

Then Ilya said, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

Shane stopped writing, the question taking a second to settle properly before he looked up.  “Like… go out somewhere?”

Ilya glanced at him over the rim of his mug. “No.”

“Oh.”

“I cook for you.”

The sentence landed much too heavily for how casually he said it.

Shane stared at him.

Because cooking for an omega was not just cooking. Not always. Not in their circles. In most old families, especially ones that still cared about formal courtship rituals, preparing food was one of the oldest gestures of care an alpha could offer. Not as serious as nesting gifts. Not as intimate as scenting. But still deliberate. Still recognizable.

And Ilya knew that.

Shane could tell he knew that by the way he kept his expression calm and gave Shane room to decide whether they were going to acknowledge it.

Shane swallowed once. “You.. want to cook for me?”

Ilya shrugged, but the movement was too lazy to be entirely innocent. “I was going to cook for myself. I can make enough for two.”

Right.

Of course.

Perfectly practical.

Absolutely not a courting gesture if neither of them said the words out loud.

They looked at each other across the kitchen island for a moment, and something charged passed quietly between them, warm and unspoken. Ilya’s gaze stayed steady on Shane’s face. Not pushing. Not teasing yet. Just waiting.

Shane looked down first, because someone had to preserve the structural integrity of the evening.

“Okay,” he said, and forced his pen to move again.

Across the kitchen, Ilya’s mouth curved faintly before he hid it against his coffee.

He made dinner that night with the same controlled efficiency he brought to everything else.

Shane tried to keep doing homework, but it became increasingly difficult to focus while Ilya moved around the kitchen rolling up his sleeves, washing vegetables, cutting chicken into precise even pieces. He did not ask Shane what he liked more than once. He simply looked in the pantry, checked the fridge, and somehow figured out enough from the available ingredients to avoid everything Shane disliked.

When the plate was finally set in front of him, the food was separated.

Not dramatically but enough.

Rice on one side. Chicken beside it. Vegetables arranged in their own neat section, not touching anything they were not supposed to touch.

Shane stared down at the plate.

Ilya sat across from him as if he had not just done something unbearably specific.

“You don’t have to do that,” Shane said quietly.

“Do what?”

Shane glanced at the plate, then back up at him.

Ilya looked back innocently, or at least with what Shane assumed was supposed to be innocence.

Shane narrowed his eyes. “You know what.”

“You do not like when it touches.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to arrange it like I’m five.”

“I arrange like you are husband with strong opinions.”

Shane’s mouth pressed tight to stop a smile. “That might be worse.”

“I disagree.”

Of course he did.

They ate at the island instead of the table. It should have felt strange, sharing dinner for the first time like this, but somehow it didn’t. Maybe because the kitchen was warm. Maybe because Ilya did not make a performance out of it. Maybe because he ate beside Shane without watching him too obviously, letting the silence stretch and soften between them until it stopped feeling like something Shane had to fill.

Eventually, Shane glanced over.

Ilya’s profile was half-lit by the overhead lamp, sharp and tired-looking in a way Shane had started to notice more often after long days working with Yuna.

“Do you like working for my mother?” Shane asked.

Ilya’s hand paused briefly around his glass, not long enough to be dramatic, but long enough for Shane to realize how the question sounded.

“I don’t mean details,” he added quickly, looking down at his plate. “I don’t want to know details.”

“I know.”

“I just mean…like” Shane shifted his fork half an inch to the left, then stopped because that was not helping anything. “Are you safe?”

Ilya looked at him then.

Shane could feel it, the full weight of that attention settling over him, calm and unreadable.

“What?”

“Are you safe?” Shane repeated, quieter this time. “When you work for her.”

For a moment, Ilya said nothing.

He had been told Shane was sheltered. Everyone had told him that in one way or another, some with affection and some with the faint contempt men like them used for softness they did not know how to value. But Ilya had not understood the full shape of it until he spoke with Yuna herself and realized how much she had kept from her son.

Not because Shane was stupid.

Because Shane was good.

Soft in a way this world usually corrected. Kind in a way that should not have survived a house like this intact. He knew enough to understand what he had been used for. He knew enough to agree to it. But he did not want the details of blood and debts and bodies, and Ilya could not quite blame Yuna for letting him keep that distance as long as she could.

Ilya’s mouth curved faintly, more defense than amusement. “Are you worried about me котенок?”

Shane’s face did something small and embarrassed. “A little.”

The answer was too earnest for the tease to survive.

Ilya looked down at his glass, the small, earnest answer settling somewhere warm and unexpected in his chest before he cleared his throat. “Your mother is fair.”

Shane glanced up. “Fair?”

“She says what she wants. She expects competence.” Ilya turned the glass once against the table. “This is good.”

“Is it hard?”

“Different.”

“Different bad?”

“No.” Ilya’s mouth moved faintly. “Just different.”

Shane watched him for a moment, too carefully for someone who usually tried not to look like he was studying people.

“Different from working for your father?”

Ilya’s fingers stilled around the glass.

It was not a dramatic thing. He did not flinch. His expression did not change in any obvious way. But something in him went quiet so quickly that Shane noticed it before he understood what he had noticed.

Shane waited.

Ilya looked down at his plate. “Yuna is easier to respect.”

The answer sat between them, neat and closed.

Usually, Shane would have let it stay there. He did not like pushing at things he did not understand. He especially did not like pushing at people, because people reacted badly when pressed in the wrong place.

But Ilya had deflected.

And Shane, unfortunately, had noticed.

“So he’s difficult to respect?” Shane asked, more quietly.

Ilya’s eyes lifted to him.

For one second, neither of them moved.

Then Ilya said, “Yellow.”

Shane froze. The word seemed to remove every other sound from the kitchen. The quiet hum of the refrigerator, the faint clink of settling dishes, even the small scrape of Shane’s own pulse in his ears.

Yellow.

They had not used the system before.

Ilya had suggested it weeks ago with the same matter-of-fact calm he used for everything practical and uncomfortable, as if giving Shane colors to say when words failed him was no different from teaching him where the extra batteries were kept.

Green was fine.

Yellow meant slow down.

Red meant stop.

Shane had agreed to it because it had seemed useful in theory, then had proceeded to never use it because Ilya had not given him a reason too yet, and the thought of saying a color out loud during a vulnerable moment felt horrifying.

But Ilya had used it.

Ilya, who usually endured discomfort like it was a matter of personal discipline. Ilya, who made jokes out of tension before it could become anything too visible. Ilya, who had looked across the table and said yellow because something in the conversation had come too close.

Shane stared at him.

Ilya’s jaw shifted once. “Sorry.”

“No,” Shane said quickly, then stopped because quick sounded wrong. He looked down at his plate, gathered himself, and tried again. “No. That’s okay.”

Ilya did not look entirely convinced.

Shane’s fingers tightened around his fork. His first instinct was to explain that he had not meant to push. His second was to apologize again. His third was to ask whether yellow meant he should change the subject now or simply stop asking follow-up questions, but that seemed too clinical, even for him.

So he did the only useful thing he could think of.

He looked at the rice on his plate and asked, “Did you put lemon in this?”

Ilya blinked.

“A little.”

“It’s good.”

“I know.”

Shane glanced up, giving him a flat look despite the heat still sitting beneath his skin. “You’re supposed to say thank you.”

Slowly, his mouth curved. “Thank you.”

“You sound insincere.”

“I am very sincere.”

“You sound suspiciously smug.”

“I am sincere and smug. Is difficult balance.”

Shane huffed softly, and the tightness in the kitchen eased by half an inch.

Ilya looked down at his plate, still smiling faintly, but there was something quieter beneath it now. Something Shane did not know what to do with except leave it untouched.

For a moment, they ate in silence.

Then Ilya said, without looking at him, “I would like not to bring my father into this house.”

Shane’s fork paused.

The words were calm. Simple. Not quite an explanation, but more than Shane had expected to be given.

He looked at Ilya’s profile, at the careful line of his mouth and the tension he had tried to tuck away before Shane could see it.

“Okay,” Shane said.

Ilya glanced at him.

Shane meant it. He hoped that was obvious. He did not always know how to make things obvious, but he meant it.

“That’s fine,” Shane added, because sometimes the plainest version was the safest one. “I can do that.”

Ilya’s eyes stayed on him for another moment.

Then something in his expression softened, almost too small to catch.

“Thank you,” he said.

This time, he sounded sincere.

Shane looked back down at his plate before the warmth in his chest could become something visibly embarrassing. “The chicken is good too.”

“I know.”

“You are very bad at receiving compliments.”

“I am receiving.”

“You’re arguing.”

“I am agreeing.”

“You are doing it badly.”

Ilya laughed under his breath, low and warm, and Shane hated how much he liked being the cause of it.

The conversation did not go further into Ilya’s family after that.

Shane could feel the boundary there, quiet but firm, and he understood exactly what he was supposed to do with it. He left it alone.

He only filed the answer away with the rest of the things he was beginning to learn about Ilya Rozanov.

When they finished eating, Shane reached automatically for both plates.

Ilya caught his wrist before he could take them.

The touch was not sudden enough to startle him. Just an open palm against the inside of his wrist, warm and careful, stopping him without holding him still.

“Is fine,” Ilya said. “You can do next time.”

Shane looked at him. “Next time?”

Ilya’s thumb moved once, barely there, against the inside of his wrist before letting go.

“If dinner was acceptable.”

It sounded casual only because Ilya had made it that way, careful enough to leave Shane room to accept without admitting too much, while still watching to see if yellow had made him pull away.

Shane glanced down at the place Ilya had touched him, then back at Ilya’s face.

“It was acceptable,” he said flushing lightly.

Ilya smiled like he knew exactly how much that meant.

“Good.”

Shane looked away before his face could betray him any further and reached for his notebook again, but the numbers on the page had become significantly harder to care about.

Across the island, Ilya drank the last of his water and watched him with quiet satisfaction.

Neither of them called it courting.

Which, Shane thought, was probably why he could let himself want it to happen again.

Chapter End Notes

I wonder if anyone has caught all the bread crumbs I’ve been leaving, did anyone notice our boys have not been sleeping well?

Chapter 27

Chapter Summary

It begins 😬😈

By the time Ilya drove him back to the main estate that afternoon, Shane had a headache blooming behind one eye and the exhausted, overstimulated feeling of someone who had spent an entire day being perceived against his will despite nothing particularly dramatic happening.

The car ride was quiet, at least.

Ilya did not fill the silence, which Shane appreciated. He simply drove with one hand resting loose on the wheel, his attention divided in that attentive way of his between the road, the mirrors, the cars behind them, and Shane himself. More than usual.

Shane knew why.

He had started pulling away, and Ilya was too observant not to notice.

Since the appointment with Dr. Mori a few days ago Shane had become quieter around him. Less likely to linger in the kitchen, less likely to sit near him on the couch, less likely to let their shoulders brush in passing without immediately shifting away. And Shane was stressing because Ilya had been good.

That was the problem.

If Ilya had been careless, Shane would have known what to do with him. He could have filed him away as unsafe, kept his distance, and trusted the clean simplicity of no. But Ilya was careful. Ilya was patient. Ilya kept noticing the right things and stopping before Shane had to ask, and that left Shane with the much harder task of deciding whether someone could actually be that good to him, or whether it only looked that way because it was still new.

He did not know Ilya.

Not really.

He knew what Ilya had shown him. He knew the rumors. He knew the shape of the man standing in front of him, but not the years beneath it. Not enough to trust the steadiness completely. Not enough to hand over something fragile and hope it would not be dropped.

Because if Shane gave himself over to this, into Ilya, into the quiet protection and attention and all the other terrible things he had secretly wanted for years, and then found out it was temporary, or conditional, or not as safe as it seemed—

He did not think he would survive it.

the panic had started when Shane had felt pressure gathering behind his eyes, sharp and familiar enough to make him go still in the middle of brushing his teeth. It had only been the beginning of one. A warning, maybe. Not even a full headache yet.

But it was enough.

It scared him so badly that he found himself standing in the bathroom with both hands braced against the counter, trying to breathe through the sudden terror that his body was about to betray him all over again.

For a moment, he had been sixteen again, folded over in bed with the curtains drawn, trying not to make noise as he sobbed because the pain felt too humiliating to give sound to.

Before suppressants, his heats had been bad. Not inconvenient. Bad.

Migraines severe enough to make him vomit. Fevers that climbed past what was safe. Cramping so intense he’d been sore for days after.

That was why he had gone on such strong suppressants so young. Why he had clung to them so fiercely.

Shane had made the appointment immediately.

After that, things had unraveled with clinical, humiliating efficiency.

‘“So what does that mean?”

Dr. Mori had glanced down at her chart. “It means I’m changing your medication before this becomes a health issue.”

“I like my medication.”

“I know.”

“It works.”

“It worked,” she corrected gently.

Shane had stared at her.

Then, too quickly, “But I still won’t get heats, right?”

The silence after that was brief.
Professional and devastating.

His stomach had sunk before she even answered.

“No,” Shane said.

“Shane.”

“No.” ‘

His suppressants were not failing, exactly, they were still working. Just not enough.

Shane had always been more reactive than most omegas, and the bond had only made that worse. His body was apparently particularly receptive to Ilya, too eager to respond to the alpha’s pheromones, and the medication was suddenly fighting more than it had ever been prescribed to handle. It was trying to keep Shane regulated while the bond kept pulling him toward Ilya, and somewhere between the two, Shane’s body had started slipping out from under him.

Shane leaned his temple against the window and closed his eyes for three red lights in a row, pretending the warm leather smell of the car and the faint thread of Ilya’s scent still clinging to him were not making his body want to sink bonelessly into the seat.

Apparently, he had been experiencing a whole collection of symptoms because he had not let the bond settle.

Increased sensitivity. Heightened scent response. Intensified Nesting behaviors. Worsening Sleep disruption.

Each phrase had landed like a small, clinical betrayal. It’s why he’s been so anxious, why he’d been nesting the house, why he couldn’t get any sleep.
He felt stupid because it seemed so obvious now.

Dr. Mori had said his heat could come at any point within the next six months. The new medication would blunt the worst of it, but only if Shane let the bond do part of the work. Meaning only if his alpha was close enough to help regulate him through it.

So it was Ilya, or pain.

Ilya, or suffering through the worst of what his body could do to him alone.

And that scared Shane.
Fucking terrified him actually.

Not because Ilya had done anything wrong.

That would have been easier, in a terrible way.

Again Ilya had been good with him. Patient. Understanding. Better than Shane had expected and, sometimes, better than Shane knew what to do with.

But Ilya being good so far did not erase the facts of the situation.

Shane had only known him for two months. Ilya was a famously dangerous and brutal man. Shane had been sheltered from the mafia world his entire life, then suddenly married and bonded to someone at the center of it.

He was being asked to trust a man he didn’t know with his body, his safety, his future, and his biology before time had proven that trust was safe.

And now Shane could not keep progressing slowly at his own pace.

His body had put pressure on the timeline.

The realization sat cold and heavy in him, familiar in the worst way. Another choice narrowed down by biology, by politics, by family, by everyone else’s arrangements made around his life before he had time to understand what they would cost him.

More agency taken from him.

Again.

It was ridiculous that it made him want to cry.

Shane kept his eyes closed anyway, one hand curled too tightly around the strap of his bag, and tried to pretend he did not notice when Ilya glanced at him again.

When they reached the estate, the gates opened before the car had fully stopped. Guards moved with quiet efficiency around the entrance, familiar faces in dark clothes, their attention shifting briefly toward the car before returning to the perimeter.

Ilya got out first and came around to open Shane’s door, as always.

Shane stepped out slowly, as the alpha grabbed his bag for him.

The main house looked exactly the same as it always did. Clean lines. Dark wood. The scent of cedar, incense, and rain-damp stone met him the second he stepped beneath the covered entryway, familiar enough that something in his chest loosened by a fraction.

Home.

The word came automatically, then faltered.

Shane did not know what that meant anymore. Whether home was this house, where he had grown up, or the one he shared with Ilya now. Whether it was possible to belong to two places at once, or whether one of them had to stop being his eventually.

Then he saw Hayden.

Hayden had been gone since the wedding, sent with one of Yuna’s teams to oversee the Russian side of the alliance settlement and whatever had been exchanged between the families after Shane was married off.

Hayden was waiting near the inner hall with his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, shoulders relaxed until he got a good look at Shane’s face.

Then his expression sharpened immediately.

Hayden’s name had barely left Shane’s mouth before they were both closing the distance.

The hug was automatic.

It had always been automatic with Hayden. Easy in a way most touch had never been for Shane, familiar enough that he did not have to think about where to put his hands or how long to hold on before it became strange.

As a kid, when he got overwhelmed or overstimulated, Hayden had been one of the only people Shane could stand being held by. Shane would tuck his face against Hayden’s neck, close his eyes, and let Hayden squeeze him until the world felt less sharp around the edges.

Part of it was that Hayden was a beta. He did not carry the heavy, demanding scent of an alpha or omega. Most of the time, he just smelled like clean laundry, warm skin, and the faint wooden edge of the training rooms.

It was neutral, safe, and so familiar Shane held and melted into him before he could stop it.

Chapter 28

Chapter Notes

I think sometime in the far future Ilyas gunna fuck Shane nasty style in his childhood bedroom because of what happened in this chapter.

“I missed you,” Shane said quietly. 

It came out smaller than he meant it to.

Hayden’s arms tightened around him once, solid and familiar and warm in a way that made something behind Shane’s ribs ache with sudden, exhausted relief.

“Hey, buddy,” Hayden murmured against the side of his head. “I missed you too.”

His voice was soft, even as his eyes stayed hard over Shane’s shoulder. Hayden was looking at Ilya Rozanov like he had found a loaded gun left unattended in a nursery.

Then Hayden asked, very quietly, “Are you okay?”His eyes not leaving Ilya.

Shane’s arms tightened once around Hayden before he made himself let go. “I’m fine.”

Hayden pulled back just far enough to look at him properly, his expression making it very clear he did not believe that for even a second.

Shane gave him a wry smile. “I’m good, really.”

Hayden looked him over with the blunt concern of someone who had known him too long to bother being polite about it. “You look like you tried to sleep in a washing machine,”

“Wow. That was so nice Hayden. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Shane couldn’t quite stop the small laugh that slipped out of him. It felt good, almost painfully so, to hear Hayden in person again.

Shane felt it before he saw it, a low shift in the air that made some newly bonded part of him pay attention.

When Shane turned, Ilya’s expression was calm. But his eyes were sharp and moved from Hayden’s hand, still resting lightly against Shane’s sleeve, to Hayden’s face.

Hayden’s look was just as hard.

Shane became suddenly, horribly aware that he was standing between the two of them like the world’s least willing diplomatic incident.

“Ilya,” he said, mostly to break the silence before it became something worse. Ilya’s gaze shifted to him.

“This is Hayden Pike.”

Ilya’s mouth pressed into a thin line, not angry exactly, but displeased in a way Shane could feel beneath his skin.

“I know who he is,” Ilya said.

Hayden’s mouth moved faintly. “We’ve met.”

The tone between them made it very clear politeness was not going to carry anyone through this, so Shane did not bother finishing the introduction.

“I’m going to catch up with Hayden for a bit,” Shane said quickly, tightening his grip on the strap of his bag. “So, I’ll see you at the house later.”

Ilya’s gaze shifted back to him, for a moment, he said nothing then softly, “Here?”

Shane blinked. “What?”

“You stay on estate?”

The question made Hayden’s expression sharpen, but Shane understood the shape of it by now. Ilya was not asking where Shane was going like he wanted an opinion on the matter so much as confirming how much danger stood between him and getting there.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “We’re just going to my old room.”

Ilya considered that for a second, his eyes moving briefly to Hayden before settling back on Shane. He looked like he disliked every part of it except the part where Shane would still be behind estate walls, but after a moment, he nodded.

One of his mother’s men appeared at the end of the hall then, inclining his head respectfully toward Ilya before glancing in the direction of Yuna’s office.

Apparently, since Shane had come home early, his mother had decided to collect early too.

The arrangement had become clear enough over the last two months. If Shane left the compound, Ilya went with him. No discussion, no exception. But inside the estate, Shane was apparently considered safe enough to be left unsupervised while Ilya disappeared to do whatever work his mother had assigned him.

All he knew was that every day, Ilya left for a few hours.

There was no logical reason for his stomach to tighten every time Ilya walked away.

Unfortunately, Shane’s body had developed a recent and deeply inconvenient disregard for logic.

The estate was safe. Safer than almost anywhere else Shane could possibly be. It crawled with security, with people who had known him since he was a child, people who would have put themselves between him and danger because he was heir and, for reasons Shane had never fully understood, because some of them actually liked him.

Ilya held Hayden’s gaze for one more beat before looking back at Shane. “I will not be long,” he said. “When you finish, come to garden. We will walk home together.”

Stupidly something in Shane’s chest loosened a fraction.

“Yeah,” he said, too fast. “Okay.”

Hayden’s eyes flicked toward him.
Shane ignored him with great effort.

Ilya gave one short nod, one last assessing look at Hayden, then turned and walked toward Yuna’s office, his steps silent against the polished floor despite his size.

Chapter End Notes

Btw Shane thinks maybe Hayden and Ilya just had a bad first meeting at the wedding or something and that’s why they’re both so upset to see each other again.

And Ilya spends the next half hour convincing himself that putting secret security cameras in Shane’s childhood bedroom is probably a step too far.

Instead he’s just gunna re watch his recordings of Shane doing morning yoga later to hold him over like a normal person.

Chapter 29

Chapter Summary

Surprise! Sorry for edging you in the last chapter with the idea of crazy jealous Ilya, hopefully a double chapter makes up for it??

Shane watched him go for exactly two seconds too long.

Unfortunately, Hayden noticed that too. The second Ilya disappeared around the corner, Hayden turned fully toward him. “So,”

“No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But I can feel you thinking things.”

Hayden’s mouth twitched, but then his expression sobered again. “Why do you look like that?”

“How was Russia?”

“Shane.”

Shane pressed his lips together, then immediately grabbed Hayden by the sleeve and dragged him down the hall toward his old room before anyone else could witness the conversation.

Hayden went without resistance, because he was family, more or less.

He had been there for years, through school events and threat drills and the awful period when Shane’s body had first decided to become a medical nightmare with opinions.

Hayden had stood outside his bedroom door when Shane was sixteen and feverish and mortified and furious at anyone who had tried to help him. He’d brought ginger ale without being asked, had even sat on the hallway floor for four hours once because Shane had not wanted anyone inside the room but also had not wanted to be alone.

Hayden was safe. He’d earned that.

Ilya had not had time to earn that.
Not fully.

But he’s trying, some soft, terrible part of him thought.

“I thought you were still with my mother’s team,” Shane said, partly because he was stalling having to talk about Ilya right now, but mostly because he had missed Hayden and was surprised to see him here so soon.

Hayden shook his head, though his smile stayed light. “Got back this morning.”

“This morning?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And you didn’t text me?”

“I did.”

Shane blinked.

Hayden’s eyebrow lifted.

Shane pulled out his phone, checked it, and immediately found three unread messages from Hayden buried beneath two appointment reminders, a pharmacy notification, and a text from his mother that simply said Dinner. Main house. 6:30.

“Oh,” Shane said.

Hayden gave him a look. “Yeah.”

“Sorry. I had a headache. How was your flight?”

Shane tried to say it like it was nothing, but Hayden stopped walking altogether and set a hand on his shoulder. “You’re getting headaches again?”

Shane could not quite look at him. He started lightly pinching the tips of his fingers and shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“Shane.”

Shane sighed“Come on,” he mumbled, tugging Hayden the rest of the way down the hall.

His old room was exactly how he had left it, though it felt stranger now than it had before the wedding. His books were still lined neatly on the shelves. The desk still held the small ceramic dish where he used to drop his keys. The bed was made, the blankets folded smooth, everything familiar and private and untouched.

It should have made him feel better.

Mostly it made him aware of how much his life had shifted in less than a handful of weeks.

Hayden shut the door behind them and Shane dropped his bag beside the bed before he immediately started pacing.

“It’s been a lot,” he said.

Hayden leaned back against the door. “The marriage, the bodyguard situation, or the fact that your mate looks at me like he’s trying to decide where to bury my body?”

Shane stopped pacing long enough to point at him. “Don’t use that word, please.”

“Isn’t he?”

“Legally.”

“That is arguably the most binding version of mate.”

“Can we please stop using the word mate?”

Hayden studied him for a second, all humor fading quietly from his face. “Has he hurt you?”

The question landed differently than the teasing had. Shane’s irritation dropped out from under him so fast it left him feeling oddly exposed.

“No,” he said immediately.

Too immediately, maybe, because Hayden’s gaze sharpened.

Shane exhaled and looked away. “No. He hasn’t hurt me.”

“Scared you?”

Shane thought about Ilya standing in his room that first morning, calmly taking the scent patch Shane had meant to put over the bite. Thought about Ilya in the kitchen on late nights and Ilya in the car watching the mirrors with a gun under his jacket and his calm blue eyes missing nothing.

Then he thought about Ilya teasing him. Ilya stepping back before Shane had to ask. Ilya not making him explain.

Ilya saying, we will walk home together, like it was not a threat but a fact.

And not just about walking Shane home.

Shane rubbed both hands over his face “Not the way you mean.”

Hayden didn’t answer right away.

Shane looked down at his hands and started picking lightly at the edge of one fingernail, not enough to hurt, just enough to give the nerves somewhere to go. “Do you know anything?”

Hayden’s expression shifted.

Not dramatically. Hayden was too trained for that. But Shane knew him too well not to see the pause.

“About Rozanov?”

Shane nodded once.

Hayden exhaled through his nose and leaned back against the door again, arms folding loosely over his chest. “Some.”

“Bad some?”

“Complicated some.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“No,” Hayden said. “Sorry.”

Shane’s fingers tightened together.

Hayden noticed and, to his credit, did not make a thing of it. He only softened his voice slightly, the way he used to when Shane was sixteen and feverish and furious and needed information without everyone acting like information itself might break him.

“I didn’t work directly with them much,” Hayden said. “Language barrier, mostly. And they keep their own people close. But I saw enough to understand why Yuna arranged the treaty the way she did.”

Shane looked up.

Hayden’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “If Alexei had been the one they sent, if you’d had to go there instead…” He stopped, choosing his words carefully. “I would not have liked that.”

A cold, unpleasant feeling moved through Shane’s stomach. “Because of the family?”

“Because of the environment,” Hayden said. “The head of house is an asshole. The brother too, from what I could tell. Cold. Old-world. The kind of men who look at omegas like furniture with a pulse.”

Shane’s face went still.

Hayden saw that too. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “That was too much.”

“No.” Shane swallowed. “It’s fine.”

“It isn’t.”

“No,” Shane agreed after a second. “But I asked.”

Hayden nodded once, accepting that.
Shane forced himself to breathe evenly. “Did you hear bad things about Ilya?”

Hayden was quiet again.
Shane hated that.

“No,” Hayden said finally. “Not exactly.”

“Hayden.”

“I never got the sense people thought he was incompetent, or disloyal” Hayden said. “Not the kind of man to be cruel for fun, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s a pretty low bar.”

“Yeah,” Hayden said. “It is.”

Shane looked away.

“No one sounded comfortable talking about him,” Hayden said. “That’s different from bad, but it’s definitely not nothing.  It was strange, honestly. Someone would say his name and the whole room would shift.”

Shane’s eyes flicked back to him.

Hayden seemed to be searching for the right shape of the answer. “Respect, definitely. Real respect. These kind of men don’t fake that sort of thing, but also…” He paused. “Fear. I think.”

Shane’s throat tightened.

“Of him?”

Hayden nodded slowly. “Yeah. Of him.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Outside the room, the estate continued around them, muffled voices passing somewhere down the hall, distant footsteps, the familiar hum of a house built to survive enemies.

Shane stared at the floor and tried to fit that beside the pieces of Ilya he had collected: the man who refused to let him carry his own bags, who waited outside lecture halls without complaint, who pulled back before Shane ever had to say no.

Hayden’s voice softened. “I’m not telling you this to scare you.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Liar.”

Shane gave him a weak look.

Hayden pushed off the door and came closer, stopping just far enough away not to crowd him. “I’m saying be careful. If he’s anything like his family, be careful. And if he isn’t…”

His mouth twisted slightly. “Then be careful anyway, because men like that don’t become feared by accident.”

Shane looked down at his hands again. He hated that Hayden was right. He hated more that part of him still wanted to defend Ilya.

“He’s been good,” Shane said quietly.

Hayden’s expression softened, but not enough to become careless. “I know.”

“You don’t know.”

“No,” Hayden said. “But I know you. And you wouldn’t be this upset if he’d been awful.”

That landed too close.

Shane closed his eyes.

Hayden sighed, quieter now. “I’m glad he’s been good, I am.” He said. “I just don’t want you building the whole picture out of the good parts because they’re the only parts he’s shown you.”

Shane opened his eyes again.

His voice came out smaller than he wanted. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Shane made a frustrated sound and dropped back onto the bed, grabbing a pillow to pull against his chest. The motion seemed to take the last of his energy with it.

Hayden crossed over and sat beside him, close enough that the mattress dipped but not close enough to touch.

That was one of the things Shane appreciated most about him. Hayden always knew when to stop teasing. When to sit near him without making Shane do anything with it.

“You’re exhausted,” Hayden said quietly.

Shane stared at the ceiling.

“You’re swaying when you stand still.”

“I’m fine.”

“You almost walked into the doorframe coming in here.”

“Someone must have moved the doorframe a few inches since I was here last.”

“Shane.”

The softness in Hayden’s voice made Shane’s throat tighten, and he had to close his eyes for a second because that was worse than the teasing. Hayden knew exactly where to aim kindness so Shane couldn’t pretend he hadn’t been hit.

“I can’t sleep,” Shane admitted to quiet.

Hayden nodded beside him, waiting.

Shane kept staring at the ceiling. “Not much, anyway.”

“Because of him?”

“No,” Shane said too quickly, then grimaced. “I mean, yes. Technically. But not because he’s doing anything.”

Hayden stayed quiet.

Shane shut his eyes. “He’s in another room,” he said finally, each word dragged out with maximum reluctance. “That’s apparently the issue.”

For once, Hayden did not make a joke.

“What did Dr. Mori say?”

Shane rubbed a hand over his face. “That the bond and his pheromones are messing with my meds. Making them less effective. She’s switching me to something else.”

“So the headaches will go away?”

“Yeah.” Shane nodded, a little too quickly. “I’ll be fine. I get the new prescription at the end of the week, and it should help the symptoms. Then I’ll be good again.”

It was not the entire truth, but it was enough of it to stand on.

He just had to make it until the medication changed. Then the headaches would ease, the symptoms would dull, and even emit they didn’t go away completely at least he would have room to think again. Time back. Space back. Enough control to decide what he wanted from Ilya without his body making every answer feel urgent.

Hayden looked at him for a long moment.

Shane could tell he knew there was more.
He could also tell Hayden had decided not to press.

“Okay,” Hayden said quietly.

Shane’s grip tightened around the pillow.

He appreciated that more than he could say. “Thanks Hayd.”

Shane lay there for a while longer, listening to Hayden tell him about Russia and the distant sounds of the estate, trying not to think about Ilya somewhere down the hall with his mother, doing work Shane did not want to imagine.

Trying not to think about the fact that, even here, in his old room with Hayden beside him and every guard in the compound between him and danger, some restless part of him still knew Ilya had left.

And was waiting for him to come back.

Chapter 30

Chapter Notes

Shane had assumed in the beginning, very reasonably in his opinion, that sleeping separately would be the one simple part of this entire arrangement. He had his room. Ilya had his. There were doors. There were walls. There was an entire hallway between them, which Shane had thought would be more than enough distance to let him keep what remained of his sanity.

Unfortunately, his instincts had apparently missed the memo.

The first night, Shane went through his routine exactly the way he always did. Shower. Pajamas. Teeth. Skin care. Suppressants lined up on the counter in their proper order. Phone plugged in. Alarm set. A book opened on his chest even though he could barely read three sentences before his eyes started skipping back over the same paragraph.

Everything was normal.

Or it should have been.

Instead, Shane lay awake in the dark with every nerve in his body unhelpfully, hyper aware of the fact that Ilya was down the hall.

Not in the room.

Not in his bed.

And not close enough.

Which was insane. Obviously. Shane had known the man for less than 3 months. He did not need a Russian mobster in his nest to fall asleep like some kind of emotionally compromised Victorian widow. he had slept perfectly fine before before Ilya Rozanov showed up, and would do so again.

His body, apparently, disagreed.

It wasn’t even desire, exactly. That would have been humiliating, but at least familiar enough to shove into a box labeled unacceptable and delt with at a later date.

This was worse. Quieter. More pathetic. A low, restless anxiety beneath his skin that kept dragging his attention toward the hallway, toward the faint trace of pine and cold air lingering at the edges of the house.

His bonded alpha was in another room.

His bonded alpha was not with him.

His bonded alpha was not close enough to touch if something happened.

Shane hated every single thought so much he considered smothering himself with a pillow.
He ignored it anyway.

By morning, he had slept maybe forty minutes total and hated everyone involved in making this arrangement. The second night was worse.

By then Shane was exhausted enough to feel strange around the edges, but apparently not exhausted enough to override the miserable tug beneath his ribs. He made it until three in the morning before he found himself standing barefoot in the hallway outside Ilya’s bedroom, staring at the closed door like it had personally ruined his life.

For a long moment, Shane just stood there. Then his brain caught up.

What the fuck are you doing?

The thought landed hard enough to make him go cold with Shame.

He was standing outside Ilya’s door in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep alone. Because some humiliating, newly awakened part of him wanted to crawl into the alpha’s bed and press his face into that stupid pine-snow scent until his body finally shut up.

Absolutely not.

That was how people got the wrong idea. That was how arrangements became messy and expectations became unclear and Shane ended up having to explain something he could barely stand admitting to himself.

This was ridiculous

He turned around and went back to his room.

By morning, he was so tired he genuinely thought he might cry if anyone tried to talk to him.

Ilya noticed, of course.

Because apparently that was another thing Shane had married into: an enormous criminal with the observational skills of a surveillance state.

He didn’t say anything at breakfast. He didn’t mention it when Shane nearly put his phone in the refrigerator or when he stared at the same sock for a full thirty seconds before remembering he was supposed to put it on. He only watched him in that quiet, steady way that made Shane feel uncomfortably visible.

It wasn’t until later, when Ilya was driving him home from campus, that he finally spoke.

The car was quiet except for the low hum of the engine and the soft tick of the turn signal. Shane sat in the passenger seat with his backpack clutched against his chest, watching buildings pass through the window while trying very hard not to fall asleep sitting upright.

Ilya kept his eyes on the road. “I meant what I said,” he said quietly.

Shane’s fingers tightened around the strap of his bag. He did not look over. “About what?”

“That I will not take advantage of you.”

Something in Shane’s chest pulled tight. And he immediately closed his eyes. Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck

Ilya changed lanes with one hand on the wheel, calm and controlled as ever. “If your body needs something from me, you can take it. Scent. Sleep. Comfort. It does not have to mean more than that.”

Shane stared harder out the window. Humiliation and shame burning hot beneath his skin.

His reflection looked pale and exhausted in the glass, the brim of his cap shadowing his eyes, his mouth pressed into a thin line like that could somehow hold him together.

“I will not misunderstand,” Ilya added, softer this time. “And I will not make you ask twice.”

Shane’s throat worked.

For one terrible second, he wanted to say something. Maybe argue. Maybe snap that he didn’t need anything from him, actually, and Ilya could stop being so calm and reasonable about Shane’s humiliating biological failure to sleep alone.

But the words didn’t come.

Shane only clutched his backpack tighter against his chest and kept staring out the window, pretending the blur of traffic lights was interesting enough to deserve his full attention.

Chapter End Notes

The next two chapters, Shane cracks

Chapter 31

Chapter Notes

I was going to wait a week and post the whole monster chapter, but one, I don’t want to keep y’all waiting too much, and two. It’s a pain in the ass to edit one long chapter.

So even though the next chapter that I wrote is supposed to be the events of one entire day, I’m gonna have to break it up into 4 chapters, I’m sorry if that ruins the reading pace for some of you. I hope it doesn’t.

By Tuesday, Shane had stopped measuring the week in days and started measuring it in hours awake.

every hour of consciousness now became something to survive, one hour at a time, and the hours kept coming.

Long, ugly hours spent lying rigid beneath the blankets, bone-tired and still unable to sleep while his mind grew thinner and meaner with every minute that passed.

The new prescription had been delayed.

Of course it had.

The pharmacy had said something about the order needing approval, then something about stock, then something about transferring it from another location.

Shane had listened to the woman on the phone explain this in the bright, apologetic voice of someone who had no idea she was describing the slow collapse of his remaining sanity, and had simply said, “Okay,” while staring at his bedroom wall, because there had not been anything else to say.

It would be ready Saturday. two days.

Two days was not a long time, theoretically. Shane knew that. Two days was a reasonable delay for a medication adjustment that was not, strictly speaking, an emergency.

It only felt like one because Shane was avoiding the one person his body had apparently decided could help.

By Thursday morning, the headache behind Shane’s eyes had become constant.

He laid in bed, staring at the ceiling.
As the sun rose while the pressure bloomed slowly in the old familiar place. It was not unbearable yet, but Shane knew better than to trust that. The last one had started small too.

That was what scared him.

The last migraine Shane had was at nineteen, and the pain had bloomed so fast and so hard that he had not even had time to call or text anyone before his body gave out. One moment he had been upright, trying to convince himself it was manageable; the next he had been on the floor, every muscle locked tight with pain, his skull feeling like it was expanding from the inside until there was no room left for thought, only pressure.

He could not move. He could not speak. He could only shake against the tile and gasp around the pain, eyes wide and unfocused, trapped inside a body that had stopped obeying him. That had been the worst part, somehow. Not the pain itself, though the pain had been monstrous, but the helplessness of lying there alone while his body became something rigid and terrified beneath him.

Hayden had only found him as quickly as he did because Shane had mentioned a small headache earlier that day and then failed to answer his phone.

Hayden had sprinted to his room after the third ring because Shane always answered his phone. Always.

Afterward, Shane had to be sedated for two days.

So when the pressure behind his eyes pulsed again, slow and familiar, Shane sobbed.

Only twice.

Then he pressed both palms hard into his eyes and forced himself to breathe, because crying would only make it worse, and worse was exactly what he was trying not to remember.

Today was the last day of finals before break.

That was the only thing Shane let himself hold onto.

Two exams, then home. If the pressure behind his eyes kept building, he still had the vials in his bathroom drawer, the emergency doses Dr. Mori had given him back when the migraines had been bad enough that waiting for a hospital to admit him was its own kind of risk.

One injection in the thigh, and fifteen hours disappeared. Sometimes more.

Shane hated them. Hated the heavy, hollow sleep afterward, hated waking up with his mouth dry and his body feeling strange and slow, but he hated the alternative more.

He just had to make it through today.

Two tests. Then home.

Then the shot, if he needed it.

He did not think about Friday. He did not think about the fact that the new medication would not fix everything, only dull the edges enough to make the symptoms manageable.

Manageable was enough.

It had to be.

If Shane could dull the symptoms, he could endure them. And if he could endure them, then maybe he could keep this one thing—this last small piece of his body, his timing, his choice—from being taken before he was ready.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter the boys fight.

Chapter 32

Chapter Summary

Jesus fucking Christ.

Figuring out how to map and write “the fight.” was so fucking hard that, had it not been for the fact that so many of you have started reading and enjoying this fanfic, I honest to God for a second contemplated dropping this fic for a few months

It took me 5 days but I finally fucking figured it out. Thank god and whatever 14 year-old Etsy witch that cast a spell for me to get through this so they could finally get another update

Also??
I’m not predicting chapter numbers anymore because apparently I’m constantly underestimating how many words I need to get the plot I want across. 😂. But we’re still in the same day as the last chapter and they DO fight within the next 2 chapters I promise

Chapter Notes

Just realized how thoroughly I’ve been milking that touch starved Ilya Rozanov tag.

By the time Shane finished his first exam, every part of him felt wrong.

He made it through only by refusing to look at anything except the page directly in front of him. Not the clock, not the other students, not the fluorescent lights humming overhead as if they had been designed specifically to find the tender place behind his left eye and press.

For ninety minutes, he held himself together by forcing his pencil to move, arranging numbers and writing answers in neat, controlled lines while the pressure in his skull built slowly behind his temple, patient and threatening.

By the time he turned the exam in, the pressure had spread toward his temple, and his hand ached from gripping the pencil too tightly.

Outside the classroom, every sound seemed sharpened at the edges. The hallway was too bright and too crowded, full of bodies shifting around him, conversations overlapping, shoes squeaking against the polished floor, and someone’s cologne cutting too sweet and chemical through the air.

Shane saw Ilya before he saw anything else, standing exactly where Shane’s body had expected him to be, waiting near the edge of the path with his hands loose in his pockets, expression unreadable, attention fixed entirely on Shane. The sight settled something in him.

Then irritated him for settling.

Shane looked away first and walked past him.
Ilya fell into step behind him without a word, silent and intimidating and impossible to mistake for anything other than the guard dog he was.

Students spilled out of classrooms into a campus already overcrowded by the alumni event Shane had forgotten to account for. There were visitors everywhere: parents, former students, people in pressed coats and cheerful name tags who did not know where they were going and seemed determined to stop in the middle of every walkway to figure it out.

All of it pressed in at once until staying upright felt like something Shane had to do on purpose.

He had finished the exam.

That was the important part. Now he just had to get across campus and survive one more test, then he could go home, lock himself in his room, and let the emergency meds drag him into the kind of sleep his body had been refusing him all week.

Shane pulled the brim of his cap lower and kept moving.

Behind him, Ilya moved with the same quiet patience he had carried all morning.

Since the conversation in the car a few days ago, Ilya had been more careful than before, which was impressive because Ilya’s usual level of careful already bordered on deranged.

He had not mentioned the fact that Shane had stopped in the hallway outside his room again the night before, standing there for nearly a full two minutes before turning around.

But Shane knew he knew.

And he knew Ilya knew he knew.

Shane just hoped he could make it home and drug himself into sleep before Ilya stopped watching and started asking.

He did not want to explain why he had gone to Ilya’s door.

He did not want to explain why he had stood there so long with his hand lifted and his chest tight and his body aching with the humiliating certainty that it knew exactly what it wanted.

He did not want to explain why he had left.

Or why leaving had felt worse.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry if the chap is short and rough

Ive added some pics of fanart in the earlier chapters, not fanart of this fic, just fanart that I saw and liked and felt either inspired by or like it fit the vibe of what I wanted to write in that chapter

Chapter 33

Chapter Notes

Logically Shane understood why Ilya was staying closer today.

There were too many unfamiliar bodies on campus, too many visitors crowding the paths, too many people who did not know how to move through Shane’s carefully measured routes without ruining them. Ilya adjusting the distance between them was obvious. Practical. Exactly the kind of security measure Shane should have expected.

It still made his skin feel too tight.

Every time Ilya came close enough to smell, Shane’s body answered with a violent, miserable pull that went straight through the headache behind his eye. The little taps were gone now. Whatever embarrassed, instinctive part of him had been asking for Ilya had stopped asking politely days ago.

Now it banged.

Ilya stepped closer as a group of alumni cut across the path in front of them, laughing too loudly, one of them wearing so much cologne Shane tasted it at the back of his tongue.

Shane’s shoulder nearly brushed Ilya’s chest.

The scent hit him hard.

Pine. Snow. Alpha.

The bond answered with a sharp, painful pull that went straight through his headache, and Shane winced before he could stop himself.

Ilya noticed immediately.

Of course he did.

“Hollander,” he said, low enough that it barely carried beneath the campus noise.

Shane kept walking. “I’m fine.”

The lie failed immediately, caught in the pinch around his eyes and the small, pained scrunch of his nose before he could control it.

“You are not.”

Shane opened his mouth to answer, but someone stepped too close on his other side, moving without looking as they tried to cut around a group blocking the path.

Ilya shifted instantly.

It was barely anything. One step. One clean adjustment that put his body between Shane and the stranger before contact could happen.

The person clipped Ilya’s shoulder instead.

Ilya absorbed it without moving much, but the jostle was enough to knock him forward half an inch, just enough for Shane’s shoulder to brush against his chest.

Barely a touch.

It still went through him with ruthless precision, dragging straight through the pressure in his skull before vanishing as quickly as it came. Shane gasped before he could stop himself and stepped away too fast, one hand lifting to press hard over his eyes as if he could shove the pain back into place.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

It came out like an accusation, low and jagged and meaner than he had meant to sound. “Can you just—back up? For one second, please?”

His voice shook on the last word.
He hated that more than anything.

Ilya’s expression did not change, but his eyes stayed fixed on Shane’s face. “You are not well,” he said.

“Yes!” Shane snapped. “Trust me, I’m aware. Can we drop it now?”

Shane noticed a second too late that people were looking.

Only a couple of students nearby, nothing dramatic, but the attention prickled across his skin, unpleasant and bright.

Ilya stepped in front of him, covering Shane from view. His expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened.

“Come,” he said.

He tipped his chin toward the narrow walkway between two buildings behind Shane, empty except for a recycling bin and a strip of shade where the sun did not quite reach.

Shane shook his head. “No.”

“Shane.”

“No,” Shane said harder this time, and turned as if he meant to cut past him instead.

He made it half a step before Ilya’s voice cut through the air behind him.

“Enough.”

It was only a little sharper than Ilya’s usual voice, raised just enough to cut through the noise behind them and land straight at the base of Shane’s spine.

Shane stopped before he meant to, every exhausted nerve in his body going hot with immediate, furious humiliation, because there had been no command in the words and somehow his body had prepared for one anyway.

Ilya took one deliberate step closer, not touching, just close enough that Shane had to either back into the shaded gap behind him or hold his ground against the full, immovable weight of the alpha in front of him. “Walk.”

He gave another small nod toward the shade.

The word itself was an order, but Ilya had stripped the alpha edge out of it completely, leaving only the direction behind. Ilya had made his point. He did not need to press harder.

Shane glared at him, incredulous with the ugly heat of having been handled without being touched. Ilya had not given him a command, not in any way Shane could accuse him of, and still Shane’s body had reacted, instantly alert like it was ready for one to be given.

For one second, he considered refusing again just to prove his own body was not that easy to steer. Just to make one thing, one stupid, insignificant thing, happen because he chose it and not because Ilya or his mother or his doctor or his own miserable biology had decided for him.

Then another laugh burst somewhere behind them, too loud and too close, and Shane felt himself break into a cold sweat as the sound drove straight through the pressure behind his eyes.

Ilya caught that too.

Whatever patience remained in his face hardened into decision.

“Come on,” he said again, quieter this time with a small nod toward the shade

Shane hated him for making it sound like an option. He hated himself more for doing what he was told.

Shane looked up at him, mouth set too hard and eyes bright with anger and the horrible shine of someone trying very hard not to break in public.

“Yes, Alpha,” Shane muttered, bitter and obedient in the ugliest way he could make it.

Then he turned and walked into the shade.

——

“Yes, Alpha,” Shane muttered, bitter enough to make it ugly.

It landed wrong. Harder, maybe, than Shane had meant it to. Ilya said nothing.

He looked at him instead, at the angry flush in his face, the pain pinched around his eyes, the stubborn set of his mouth. Angry was good. He could work with angry.

Angry still had teeth.

Ilya ran a hand through his hair then followed Shane into the narrow strip of shade.

It was not pleasant, hearing Shane call him alpha for the first time like that, sharp and resentful and meant to wound. But it was better than hearing it soft. Better than careful obedience. And a lowered gaze with a voice trained to make itself small.

He remembered his mother’s voice, quiet and careful in rooms where careful had never saved her.

‘Yes, Alpha.’

His father’s hand at the back of her neck.

His smile turning pleased only when the humiliation had been made public enough to satisfy him.

So no, Ilya would not do this here.

He would not argue with Shane in front of strangers. He would not correct him where people could watch. He would not let pain and pride turn Shane into something displayed for an audience.

His father might have liked an audience.

But Ilya did not.

Chapter End Notes

Ilyas dad liked to make Ilyas mom do small comands in front of people to show off and humiliate her, nothing sexual, but things like making her kneel or submit, or fetch things for him.
Young Ilya was obviously upset by this treatment of his beloved mother. So Ilya is very disgusted by men who abuse women./ omegas

Chapter 34

Chapter Summary

This argument was originally written during my vacation as like 10 lines exchanged between the two lol
I have added so much to my story since then because of the love you guys have given it
That honest to God this was me mapping out the argument with all the new information I had to add in because it’s just me and my notes app against the world

Anyway as usual I’m nervous to post this but I HOPE YA LIKE IT.

Chapter Notes

Ilya guided them deeper until they could not be seen from the path.

The space between the buildings was cooler, dimmer, sheltered from the main path by a stretch of brick wall and overgrown hedges that had been allowed to grow too high. The noise did not disappear, but it dulled there, turning into a blurred, distant thing Shane could almost ignore. Almost.

He made it as far as the stone garden bed before he had to sit down.

Not because he was going to fall, he wasn’t.
(Probably.)

But the pressure behind his brow had sharpened into something bright and mean, and the crowd beyond the hedges had been too much.

He sat, folded forward, and pressed the heel of one hand against his eye.

Ilya stopped in front of him and held the silence for one second too long. Shane could feel the weight of his attention anyway.

Ilya was looking at him.

Not in the way he sometimes did when they were alone, when his gaze lingered for no obvious reason except that he seemed to want to look at Shane and had decided not to be embarrassed about it.

This was different.

This was assessing. Quietly focused. The kind of look that made Shane feel like Ilya was seeing too much and putting the pieces together before Shane had agreed to hand them over.

Shane felt the question coming before Ilya asked it. “What are you not telling me?”

Shane closed his eyes.

There it was. The question he had spent all morning trying to outrun.

“Nothing.”

“Do not lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Shane laughed once, exhausted and humorless. “Glad we cleared that up.”

“Are you very sick?”

The question was so blunt it almost did not make sense at first.

Shane looked up.

Ilya stood a few feet away, broad-shouldered and still, his expression controlled, though there was an edge under it now.

Not anger, exactly. Not yet. Something closer to restrained alarm, sharpened by the fact that Shane wasn’t fooling anyone.

What Shane did not know was that Ilya had been building toward this question for days.

The change after Ilya had driven Shane to his doctors office had been immediate. Shane had come back quieter somehow, his usual sharp edges dulled by exhaustion. At first, Ilya had assumed the restlessness was the bond.

He felt it too, that constant pull beneath his skin, the instinctive need to keep Shane closer than Shane wanted to be kept.

But then the headaches started.  
Or perhaps they had already been there, and Shane had only stopped hiding them well.

Ilya noticed the way he pressed his fingers to his brow when he thought no one was looking. The way he paused before standing, as if movement had to be negotiated first. The way the older omega staff at the estate softened around him, bringing tea with lowered voices and touching the top of his head with gentle, pitying hands as they passed.

They did not look surprised. That was what stayed with Ilya. They looked sympathetic, like this wasn’t something out of the ordinary.

And then there had been Pike.

Nearly a week ago now, Ilya had been leaving Yuna’s office to collect Shane from the garden when Pike came in, newly returned and still carrying the careful tension of a man who had not yet decided what to do with everything he had learned.

The boy had bowed to Yuna first, respectful and automatic, then stepped close enough to lower his voice near her ear.

Ilya had already reached the door by the time Hayden lowered his voice, too far away to catch the question itself, but not far enough to miss Yuna’s quiet answer. “I thought he was stable now.”

Then Ilya closed the door behind him.

By the time Ilya had walked Shane home, the thought had settled cold and ugly in the back of his mind.

Something was wrong with his omega.

Something old enough that the house knew how to be gentle about it. And he had gathered just enough pieces to imagine the worse.

Shane’s brow puckered slightly. “What, like cancer or something?”he said tiredly. “Is that what you’re asking? Whether the Hollander family intentionally forgot to disclose a defect before handing me over?”

Ilya’s expression hardened.

Shane saw it and immediately hated himself for the way his stomach twisted at the sight.

The words had been ugly. He knew that. Mean in a way that had less to do with Ilya and more to do with the pain behind Shane’s eyes, the sleeplessness, the pharmacy delay, the awful creeping knowledge that his body had started turning Ilya into a need before Shane had been mentally prepared for it.

He didn’t apologize, even though the apology sat on his tongue.

Instead, he leaned forward and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, blocking out the dim walkway, the brick wall and Ilya’s face.

For a second, there was only darkness and pressure.

He was so tired.

So tired that even anger felt heavy now, dragging through him instead of burning clean. He wanted to be home. He wanted the vials in his bathroom drawer. He wanted two days to pass without having to live through the hours between now and then. He wanted Ilya to stop looking at him like he knew exactly where Shane was fraying.

He wanted to be alone.

He wanted Ilya closer.

“I asked you a question.”

He did not answer.

“Shane.”

His voice rose just slightly, not loud, not angry exactly, but harder than Shane had ever heard it directed at him.

Shane hated it instantly.

Hated the sound of his name like that. Hated that it made guilt flare hot beneath his ribs. Hated that Ilya looked worried and tired and furious in a way that had nothing to do with pride.

Hated that his stupid alpha pheromones were part of the reason Shane’s medicine was failing. Hated that Ilya was standing there, close enough to help, while Shane was too scared and too angry and too humiliated to take what his body wanted from him.

“I’m not doing this right now,” Shane said.

Ilya held his gaze, or tried to. Shane could feel the weight of his attention even with his palms still pressed against his eyes.

“Doing what?”

Shane dropped his hands and stared at the ground between his shoes. His mouth twisted before he could stop it.

“This.”

“What is this, Shane?”

Shane looked up then, because apparently he had not suffered enough. Ilya stood a few feet away, careful not to crowd him, his face controlled and his eyes fixed on Shane with that terrible, focused attention. The kind that made Shane feel seen down to the bone.

He hated that too.

The care. The accuracy. Hated that Ilya could look at him for half a second and know things Shane had not given him permission to know.

Most of all, he hated that some exhausted, traitorous part of him wanted to lean into it until he stopped having to hold himself upright by force. “You.”

The word came out too honest.

Ilya’s expression closed by degrees. Not cold. Guarded. “Me.”

Shane could see him choosing restraint, and even that felt like pressure. Another careful thing Ilya was doing correctly. Another reason Shane had nowhere clean to put the anger.

“Yes. You.” Shane’s voice shook despite his best effort.  “It’s just, a headache, okay? You don’t have to make a big deal out of everything you see.”

“You have been in pain all morning.”

“That is not the point.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t.” Shane’s head pulsed. “The point is that I can’t have a bad day without it becoming someone else’s business.”

“It became my business when you almost walked into traffic yesterday because you were too tired to look.”

Shane’s face burned. “I saw the car.”

“You did not.”

“Ilya.”

“You did not,” Ilya said again, and this time there was steel in it. “You were looking at the ground. Car was coming. I moved you.”

His jaw tightened once. “You want to be angry that I watch? Fine. Be angry. But do not ask me to pretend I did not need to.”

Shane looked away, his hand tightening around the strap of his bag. “How come everyone’s always only right in the exact way that means I get less of a say.”

Ilya’s expression tightened. “Do not make it vague. Tell me.”

Shane stood before he could think better of it.

The movement sent a bright streak of pain through his skull, but he ignored it because sitting made him feel too small, and he refused to have this conversation looking up at Ilya like some scolded thing.

“My mother married me to a literal twenty-four-hour babysitter,” Shane said, voice low, “and somehow I’m supposed to pretend that isn’t humiliating because everyone has decided it’s necessary.”

Ilya shrugged. “It is necessary.”

The words landed too hard and Shane’s throat tightened.

There it was again. That wall. That simple, immovable certainty everyone in his life seemed to reach for whenever Shane asked for something that belonged to him.

His time.

His privacy.

His space.

His body.

Necessary.

Shane laughed once, but there was no humor in it. He nodded faintly and looked away. “Right. Of course.”

His voice had gone soft and low, resignation settling over it like something long broken in.

Ilya’s expression shifted. “Shane.”

“No, it’s fine.” Shane rubbed the heel of his palm against one eye. “Being managed is for my own good. I know the speech.”

Ilya frowned “I do not think this.”

“But you agree with it, right?” Shane looked back at him. “That I should be watched at all times?”

Ilya hesitated long enough for Shane’s mouth to be pulled into a small, bitter smile.

“Do you know what it’s like?” Shane asked, voice low. “To have everyone decide your life around you and then act like you’re being ungrateful when you want a say? My mother. Your family. The guards. The doctors. You?”

“I did not decide this life for you Shane.”

“But you enforce it!” His voice rose on the last word, sharper than he meant it to.

The sound punished him immediately.

It went through his skull like a struck wire, bright and vicious behind his left eye, and Shane had to close his eyes before the courtyard tilted in some humiliating, visible way.

For one second, all he could do was breathe.

In. Out. Careful.

Yelling would make it worse. Moving too fast would make it worse. Existing, apparently, was already doing a fairly impressive job of making it worse.

He knew it was unfair almost as soon as he said it, only in the way true things became unfair when aimed at the wrong person.

Ilya had not chosen the shape of Shane’s life. He had not built the estate walls, or written the contracts, or decided which parts of the truth Shane could bear before someone else stepped in and softened them for him. He had not been the first person to look at Shane’s ignorance and call it bliss.

But he was the one standing there.

He was the one Shane could smell through the headache and the campus noise. The one who followed him from lecture halls to coffee lines to car doors. The one whose shadow had become part of Shane’s day before Shane had figured out whether he wanted it there.

Close enough to blame.

Close enough to need.

The thought made something ugly twist beneath his ribs.

“I’m property,” Shane said, the words coming out quieter now, but no less bitter. “I can’t go anywhere. I can’t do anything. I can’t even breathe without you hovering over me like I’m some omega slave waiting for an opportunity to escape.”

Shane knew the second it landed.

Not because Ilya moved, but because he didn’t.

Ilya’s expression stayed controlled in the way it always did when something dangerous moved through him. Only now the danger did not feel pointed outward. It sat behind his eyes, held carefully in place, strained and silent and far too close to anger.

Shane’s stomach tightened.

Good, some mean, exhausted part of him thought.

Then, almost immediately, he hated himself for it.

Ilya looked at him for a long second. “Property,” he repeated.

The word sounded worse in his mouth, not louder or crueler, just stripped of all the bitter momentum Shane had thrown it with, left bare between them as something ugly, small, and real.

Then he said, very quietly, “You are not, property.”

The headache pulsed hard behind Shane’s eye, and something mean opened in him.

Maybe it was pain. Maybe it was shame. Maybe it was the brutal little part of him that had been waiting years for someone close enough to punish for all of this.

He did not look away this time. He was too tired to soften his face, too tired to be fair, too tired to pretend the truth became less humiliating just because no one had ‘meant it that way.’

“Aren’t I?” he muttered.

The silence after that was immediate and heavy.

For the first time since Shane had known him, Ilya looked almost frightening.

Not in the obvious way.

There was no raised voice, no step forward, no sudden flare of alpha temper. His face went still instead. Too still. The air around him seemed to tighten until even the distant sound of students passing near the path felt muffled and far away.

Ilya looked away from him only briefly.

His gaze fixed on the brick wall beside them, jaw tight, mouth held in a flat line as if he had to put the anger somewhere before he looked back.

By the time he did, his expression had emptied into something careful and unreadable.

Like whatever Shane had hit was something Ilya had locked behind a door before answering. “I am not your owner Shane,” Ilya said.

The words should have stopped him.
They almost did.

For half a second, Shane saw him too clearly. Saw the man who moved back when Shane tightened. The man who asked before touching. The man who waited outside classrooms and learned tea ratios and never made Shane explain why surprise hands near his waist made his whole body lock.

Then the rest of it rose up anyway, because none of that changed the contracts.

None of it changed the ring or the bite on his throat or the armed men on campus or the fact that Shane’s life had been handed across a table and everyone had been too polite to call it what it was.

Kindness did not make a cage stop being a cage. It only made the bars harder to hate.

Shane swallowed. “No,” he said. “You’re just the man everyone gave me to.”

Ilya’s face did not move, but something about him went very still, and for one second Shane thought he might get angry.

Not because Ilya had ever been angry with him.
Shane had never even seen the alpha truly upset.  
Ilya did not get angry in the careless, cruel way other men with power got angry when they were embarrassed.

But there were certain things men like Ilya were allowed to be angry about: insults, public disrespect, the implication that they were no better than the people they hated.

Instead, Ilya only looked at him, his expression closing off in a way that made Shane’s throat tighten before he even spoke.

“You think this?” he asked softly.

The question was too simple. Too bare. It made the anger in him shift uncomfortably, losing its clean edge before he was ready to let go of it. He wanted Ilya to push back. Wanted something solid to throw himself against. Wanted anger, maybe, because anger would have made it easier to keep going.

But Ilya only stood there, quiet and controlled, with something like hurt moving under his restraint, and Shane hated that he could feel it.

So Shane reached for the only truth sharp enough to hold.

“I think,” Shane said carefully, “that omegas in families like ours don’t get married off as partners. They get gifted like pets.”

Shane held his gaze when he said it. “And I think you know that.”

This time when the words landed between them, Ilya did not look away.

His gaze stayed fixed on Shane, steady and unreadable, but something moved beneath it that hurt more than denial would have. It was not outrage. Not the clean, immediate rejection Shane had wanted badly enough to pretend he had not been waiting for it.

It was recognition, maybe. Understanding.

The quiet, terrible confirmation that Ilya knew exactly what kind of world had produced this marriage, and exactly what word men in rooms like that used when they thought omegas were not listening.

Shane looked away first.

His jaw tightened until it hurt.

Because if Ilya understood, then Shane had nowhere clean to put all of this. No single villain. No single argument. No version where Ilya was only the cage and Shane was only the thing trapped inside it.

Just the ugly shape of his life as it had been handed to him, polished until everyone could call it protection.

Ilya’s mouth pressed faintly into a line.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry, This is only the first half of the argument guys 🥲 and then after the argument we have to get to the end of the day for BED TIME and that’s still 10k words away.

I post longest chapter yet. Is apology because I will be gone for week and half so I can update my other three fics.

I have been neglecting them.

Chapter 35

Chapter Notes

It took Shane half a second to understand why the pain behind his eye came back sharp enough that he almost lifted a hand to his face before he caught himself. His fingers twitched against the strap of his bag instead, tightening there while he stood still and breathed carefully through the renewed ache.

It was because Ilya had pulled his scent back.

while Ilya had stood near him, while his scent filled the narrow space between the brick and the hedges his headache had started to ease by degrees but Shane had barely noticed it helping until the loss of it left the ache brighter.

Shane tried to swallow, but his throat felt wrong.

Because In the three and a half months he had spent within reach of Ilya Rozanov, the Russian had never done that.

Shane hated that the realization made his stomach twist. He did not want to need it. He did not want his body to care that the air around him had gone empty. He did not want the bond beneath his ribs to make the small, panicked reach toward something Ilya was no longer giving him.

But it did.

Ilya’s eyes stayed on him.

When he answered, his voice was very even. Very controlled. A little slower than usual, as if each word had to pass through something clenched before it was allowed out.

“Is this what you think I am?”

Shane’s throat tightened.

The question did not sound angry in the way Shane wanted it to.

Anger would have been easier. Shane could have hated anger cleanly. He could have made it about pride, about power, about one more alpha deciding Shane’s reluctance was only something to be managed.

But this was not that.

Ilya’s gaze moved over his face once. “You think I look at you,” he said quietly, “and see property?”

Shane did not answer.

Because for the first time since the argument started, he had the uneasy feeling that Ilya was hearing something Shane had not meant to say.

Or maybe something he had.

Something buried underneath the complaints about guards and schedules and being followed everywhere.

Something uglier.

The belief that because Ilya had been given enough authority over Shane’s life, eventually he would use it.

Ilya’s mouth tightened faintly. “You think that is what I want from you?” he said, and there was something ugly in his voice now. “You think I need permission from a contract to take from you?”

Shane’s stomach went cold.

That was the thing Shane had wanted dragged into the open, wasn’t it? The obscene shape beneath all the polished words. He had wanted Ilya to look at it. To understand that being handed over gently still meant being handed over.

But Ilya did understand.

Enough to make the ugliest part of it breathe between them, and that was what made Shane’s anger falter.

“I didn’t say that,” Shane said, his voice sounding thin even to himself.

Ilya’s head tilted a fraction. Not mockery. Not disbelief, exactly. Something worse because it was quiet. “No?”

Shane’s fingers tightened around the strap of his bag until the leather pressed a line into his palm.

The headache pulsed again, mean and bright, and for one second the world narrowed to Ilya’s face, the empty air, and the terrible absence of his scent. Shane wanted it back. Wanted to reach for it. Wanted to tell Ilya to stop standing so far away.

Instead he said nothing.

Ilya looked away first, only for a second.

His gaze cut to the brick wall beside them, jaw shifting once as if he had put his teeth together too hard. His hand flexed at his side, then stilled.

When he looked back, whatever had slipped through was gone.

“I do not ask for your bed,” Ilya said. “I do not ask you to lower your eyes or wear my collar and submit to me because paper says you belong to me.”

For one sharp second, Shane wanted to throw the words back at him.

Because paper still mattered. Paper had still moved Ilya into his house, put his ring on Shane’s finger, changed the way people looked at them when they entered a room together.

But Ilya did not give him the easy argument.

“I have taken nothing from you, Shane.” His mouth tightened.  “Nothing you did not give.”

Shane looked away before he meant to.

The sentence left no easy place for his anger to stand, and Ilya seemed to know it.

“Even when I know you want something from me,” he said, quieter now, which somehow made it worse.

The breath went out of Shane.

For one horrible second, he was standing in that hallway again, frozen outside Ilya’s door with his hand half-raised and nowhere to put the desperate want sitting in his chest.

Oh, fuck.

He knew exactly where this was going.

“Stop.”

“I did stop, Shane,” Ilya said. “Every time.”

Shane looked away before he could stop himself from making a face that would give him away.

That was the part he hated most. Not that Ilya had noticed. Not even that Ilya had left the choice untouched.

It was that secretly some part of Shane had wanted him to take it.

Wanted Ilya to be braver than him, or crueler, or simply easier to blame.

“I do not open the door when you stand outside in middle of the night,” Ilya said.

Shane’s face went hot so fast it almost hurt.

“I do not follow when you leave. I do not touch when you pull away.” His jaw tightened once, the first visible crack in him. “So do not tell me I steal choices from you when you are the one too afraid to reach for what you want.”

Shane’s eyes burned immediately.

“Fuck you,” Shane said.

It came out fast enough to cut him off, though Ilya had already finished. Too fast and sharp. A reflex with teeth, thrown into the space before the truth could settle any deeper.

Because Ilya had put words to the worst part, the part Shane could not even look at directly inside himself.

Shane was not scared of Ilya. He was scared of the fragile, humiliating hope that Ilya might mean all of this, and the worse possibility that one day he might stop.

For one second, Ilya only looked at him, the silence worse than if he had answered.

Shane turned his face away again, breathing hard through his nose. His skin felt too hot, his head too full. He hated that Ilya could be so careful with him and still leave him feeling exposed.

“You are angry because I see too much?” Ilya asked. “Because I stay too close? Fine. Be angry.” His jaw moved once, muscle jumping hard beneath the skin. “But do not stand there and tell me I make you property because I refuse to be careless with you.”

Shane had no answer for that.

The silence pressed in, ugly and close.

For a moment, Ilya only looked at him, and Shane thought the next thing would be worse. Another truth dragged out.

But Ilya’s gaze moved to Shane’s face. His shoulders. The hand he kept lifting toward his brow and forcing down again, like pretending not to hurt could make it less obvious.

Something in Ilya’s expression shifted, the anger giving way to a colder, more focused concern.

“You are in pain,” he said. “You do not eat. You do not sleep.”

Shane gave one small shake of his head, too quick to be convincing. “That is not—”

“Do not.”

Ilya held his gaze, controlled and furious and worried in a way Shane did not know how to survive from him. “I know what I am looking at, Shane. Do not lie to me about this.”

Shane could only stare at him.

The correction cut cleanly through the space between them, and Shane pressed his lips together.

There was no command in it. No push of alpha will. Nothing Ilya could be blamed for using. It was only no, quiet and absolute, and still Shane had to fight the instinctive drop of his head, the shameful little pull in his chest at being corrected by him.

Because some part of him knew he had turned the blade on the wrong person, and another part, smaller but no less real, hated that they were standing here fighting like this at all.

Ilya seemed to see that too.

Something moved across his face, quick and unreadable before he looked away, jaw tight, as if the sight of Shane had knocked something out of him he did not want to lose. Then he took half a step back.

The distance should have helped. But it didn’t.

“I am careful with you,” Ilya said, quieter now. “Always.”

Shane’s eyes dropped to the space Ilya had put between them.

“I know,” Shane said, the words barely making it past his throat.

For a moment, Ilya said nothing. He looked away first, jaw tight, because Shane’s lowered eyes did not feel like being understood. They felt like something Ilya had done to him.

Ilya exhaled through his nose, slow enough that it looked deliberate.

“I know you did not ask for this,” Ilya said looking at Shane again.

Shane’s throat worked once.

Ilya’s voice was still low. Still rough at the edges. But it no longer cut the same way.

“I know,” he said again, quieter. “And I have tried to make it so you do not feel trapped by our marriage.”

Shane’s grip tightened around the strap of his bag.

Trapped.

It sounded worse in Ilya’s voice than it had in Shane’s head.

“I can be patient.” Ilya said. “I can give you every choice I know how to give. But I cannot change what we are.” His jaw tightened once. “I cannot make you less Yuna Hollander’s son.”

Shane went still.

Yuna Hollander’s son.

Chapter End Notes

Before you get mad at me, read the next chapter.

Chapter 36

Yuna Hollander’s son.

He did not know why that was the moment it clicked.

Maybe because Ilya said it so plainly, maybe because there was no accusation in it, or comfort. Just fact.

For a second, Shane only stood there as the thought arrived, small and cold.

They knew about him.

Ilya was still speaking, but Shane only caught pieces of it now. Families. Expectations. Risk. Responsibility. Words that should have sounded familiar, should have slid into the same tired place as every other explanation he had ever been given about why his life required rules.

But they did not slide anywhere.

They caught.
One piece after another.
The changed routes.
The extra guards.
The alliance.

His mother’s mouth going flat whenever Shane asked whether all of this was really necessary.

The Italians had started a war, and the Hollanders and Rozanovs had answered with a treaty. Shane knew that. He knew the shape of it, at least. Knew the version they’d polished enough for him to hold.

But if the Italians had dug far enough to find the existence of Yuna Hollander’s omega son—

“I will not apologize for trying to keep you alive,” Ilya said.

Alive…

Oh.

Oh.

The reason the war started. The reason Ilya was always there.
The reason no one let him leave the estate alone.

The reason his mother had stopped arguing with him and started arranging him.

The reason Ilya watched crowds like something inside them might already be reaching for him.

Shane looked at the Russian, and the question came out so quietly it cut through whatever Ilya was still saying.

“They know about me?”

Ilya went still, and in the small pause before he answered, Shane saw the realization settle over him.

Ilya had not known how little Shane had been told. Or maybe he had known and had not understood what that meant until he watched the truth arrive on Shane’s face.

For one awful second, neither of them said anything.

Then Ilya answered. “Yes.”

Shane stared at him. Then he nodded once, small and automatic, like Ilya had told him something ordinary.

“Okay,” he said.

His voice sounded very far away.

Ilya’s brow drew together. “Shane?”

“No um,—” Shane lifted one hand, but even that felt strange, like his body was moving from somewhere else. “Sorry. I just, I need a minute.”

He sat back down before his legs could decide for him and for a second, he only stared at the ground.

The world had not changed around him. The brick was still there. The hedges. The strap of his bag pressed hard into his palm.

But something had opened underneath all of it.

Shane bent forward, elbows braced against his knees, and pressed both hands over his face. The pressure behind his eyes pulsed viciously under his palms, but he barely felt it through the colder thing spreading beneath his ribs.

They knew.

The Italians knew about him.

Not a theoretical heir hidden somewhere behind his mother’s name, not as a rumor buried under old records.

They knew.

And Ilya had been standing between Shane and that danger for months, one step behind him, outside the halls of the conpound, beside campus doors, in the quiet spaces Shane had mistaken for hovering.

Behind his hands, he heard Ilya take one careful step closer then stop.

“Shane,” he said again, softer this time.

Shane pressed his hands harder over his face until sparks moved behind his eyelids.

‘“People should know you are protected.”’

‘“I refused initially.”Yuna said, “But circumstances have changed.”’

‘Hayden looked genuinely horrified now. “Shane.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.”’

The words moved through him without order, each one catching on the next until Shane could hardly breathe around them.

Shane tried to breathe in, but it shook on the way down. For the first time all day, he wanted Ilya’s scent back so badly it almost scared him.

He hated that.

Not the fear by itself, or the humiliation, but the way both of them moved through him at once and rearranged every grievance he had been holding agenst Ilya until none of them fit cleanly in his hands anymore.

He had not been wrong to feel trapped. He knew that with a stubbornness that almost hurt. He had not imagined the guards, the rules, the watching, the way his life had narrowed around other people’s decisions until privacy felt like something he had to earn by behaving correctly.

But Ilya had not been wrong to stand there.

The guilt came first, hot and immediate, sinking low in his stomach until he felt almost sick with it.

Ilya had learned him in all the quiet, humiliatingly specific ways Shane had not noticed adding up.

He even knew the rules Shane had written down because he had read every one carefully, then added his own in that sharp, controlled handwriting.

You tell me when you are uncomfortable.

Shane had thought that was another kind of watching. Maybe it was.
But it was also listening.

And what did Shane know?

That Ilya drank coffee too late. That he used too much soap in the laundry. That he had a father Shane was not allowed to ask about.

He knew pieces, scraps, the small things that had slipped through because Shane had been near enough to catch them, while Ilya had made himself useful in nearly every corner of Shane’s life and asked for almost nothing back. And Shane had called it hovering.

The imbalance of it turned Shane’s stomach.

Ilya had stood outside classrooms so Shane could keep pretending he was only a student while he was being hunted, and Shane had resented him for it. Ilya had let Shane set rules, then followed every one of them, and Shane had still accused him of control because it was easier than admitting it.

That his body had begun to trust him.

That Shane liked him.

That Ilya might like him back.

and that wanting him did not make Shane less trapped or less angry about everything that had been taken from him.

He had been so furious about the way Ilya’s presence had rearranged his life, his schedule, his privacy, the thin and fragile shape of normal he had fought so hard to keep, that he had barely let himself look at what had been rearranged on the other side of the agreement.

Ilya had crossed an ocean.

He had left his country, his language, his place in the Bratva,  his family, his home, His own routines, and whatever life he’d had before Yuna Hollander handed over her omega son with conditions written in bloodless language and enough consequences to make refusal impossible. And shane had resented him for it.

had been standing here furious like a spoiled fucking brat because the man who had given up everything for him made his coffee line awkward.

The shame of it climbed up Shane’s throat so quickly he almost gagged. He bent further forward, elbows digging into his knees, his palms sealed over his eyes as if pressure alone could hold him together. It did not.

The headache pulsed back meanly beneath his hands, and now that his mind had started fitting the pieces together, he could not make it stop.

The awful part was that Shane understood exactly why he had mistaken it.

He had been discreetly guarded his whole life. That was part of the problem. The watching had been folded so neatly into the structure of his days that sometimes it looked less like control and more like architecture. Drivers. Schedules. Men at doors. Men outside rooms. Men who pretended not to be listening and always were.

Yuna had built protection around him so completely that Shane had stopped noticing where safety ended and confinement began.

He had been homeschooled for years because it was safer. Kept out of sports because it was safer. Watched because it was safer. Every request for space had been weighed against risk until privacy became something Shane had to bargain for, and Shane had bargained hard for college.

Campus was supposed to be his.

Not fully. Never fully. Shane had never been naïve enough to think Yuna Hollander would let her only child walk into the world without a shadow at his back. There had always been limits. There had always been people near enough to intervene if something went wrong. But it had still been something.

A thin slice of ordinary life. Classrooms where people knew his name from attendance sheets instead of contracts. Coffee lines. Library tables. Small, stupid freedoms other people treated like air.

Then Ilya had arrived.

Ilya, with his impossible competence and his cold Russian patience. Ilya, who could drive him, follow him, watch every doorway, read every room, and make Yuna look almost pleased in that quiet way she had when a piece on the board did exactly what she wanted.

Of course Shane had thought he understood.

Of course he had looked at Ilya and saw another answer his mother had chosen for him.

A husband who doubled as a bodyguard. A bond that doubled as a leash. The most dangerous, loyal, overqualified man Yuna could find, placed at Shane’s side under the polished language of marriage.

It had made a horrible kind of sense because it fit too easily into the old wound, the one Shane had lived with so long he had mistaken it for scar tissue.

His mother loved him.

His mother protected him.

His mother controlled him.

None of those truths canceled out the others, and Shane had spent most of his life being expected to understand that the first two made the third more acceptablel and Shane had been so tired, so overstimulated, so furious at his own body for needing Ilya, that when Ilya pressed too close, Shane had reached for the oldest explanation he had.

Yuna had found another way to watch him.

Another way to keep him safe.

Another way to make sure Shane’s life belonged to everyone except Shane.

But that was not all this was.

That was the part that made everything under his ribs go hot and ugly, even though some stubborn, miserable piece of him knew that was not fair either.

He had not been wrong to want privacy. He had not been wrong to hate being followed, watched, managed, handled. He had not been wrong to mourn the freedom he had barely gotten to taste before it was crowded by guards and routes and Ilya’s steady shadow at his back.

But the truth had been sitting in front of him for weeks, maybe months, and Shane had refused to look at it directly because looking at it would mean admitting that Ilya was not simply one more wall his mother had built around him.

Ilya was there because someone dangerous knew Shane existed.

Because someone had dug deep enough, desperate enough, looking for Yuna Hollander’s weakness, and found him. Not a rumor kept safely inside the estate, but a face, a name, an omega body that could be taken and hurt and used.

His breath caught hard enough to hurt.

He was so stupid.

Ilya had never been the cage.

If anything, He had climbed into it with Shane. Not to hold the door shut, not to make the walls smaller, but to stand between Shane and whatever had been waiting outside. Risking his life for Shane.

Ilya, who had been careful with the parts of Shane that even Shane did not know how to handle gently.

The organizing.

The touch.

The sleep.

The way Shane kept ending up outside his door in the middle of the night, furious and ashamed and wanting something he could not make himself ask for.

Ilya had seen all of it. And he had not used it against him.

Not once.

Shane swallowed hard, but his throat still felt too tight.

He had been so angry that Ilya was always there.

He had not stopped to think that maybe Ilya was always there because leaving Shane alone had become dangerous in a way no one had trusted Shane enough to say out loud.

He had not stopped to think what Ilya’s whole life had narrowed too, not because of his own station or his own politics.

But because of Shane.

Because Shane was Yuna Hollander’s only child.

Because Shane was the exposed piece on the board now.

Because Shane had wanted school, and air, and a thin little slice of ordinary life badly enough that everyone around him had quietly rearranged themselves to make the illusion possible.

Ilya most of all.

And Shane had called him a jailer.

The man whose presence was probably the only reason Shane was allowed outside of the estate at all.

The realization struck behind his ribs, hot and sudden, and his hands slid from his face to the edge of the stone bed before he realized he had moved. the stone feeling too high suddenly, too cold, his body balanced badly on the narrow ledge while the air refused to go all the way into his lungs.

He shifted without thinking, one foot scraping against the ground, then slid down from the garden bed until he was sitting on the pavement with his back pressed to the stone and his knees drawn up loosely in front of him.

It should have made breathing easier.

It did not.

The air came too fast now, shallow and useless, catching in his chest before it could become anything helpful. Shane tried to slow it down and only made it worse. His fingers curled against the stone, nails dragging over grit, and his bag slipped sideways from his shoulder to land against his hip with a dull, awkward thump.

“Shane.”

Ilya’s voice came from above him, low and careful.

Shane shook his head once, not because he knew what he was refusing, but because the thought of being seen like this made the panic sharpen. “I’m fine,” he tried to say, except the words came out broken and breathless enough to be useless.

Ilya did not answer right away.

For a second, Shane heard only the unsteady pull of his own breathing and the distant blur of the floor. Then the air changed.

Pine came first. Cold, clean pine, threaded with snow and thin mountain air, not poured over him all at once but eased carefully back into the space between them. Ilya’s scent returned by degrees, as controlled as the rest of him, close enough for Shane’s body to recognize without feeling trapped beneath it.

Shane’s breath hitched. And it felt like the oxygen was actually reaching his lungs now.

Then something warm touched his ankle.

He went still so abruptly his lungs seemed to forget what they were doing.

Ilya’s hand was there, broad and careful, wrapped lightly around the place above Shane’s shoe where his sock had slipped down. Not holding him in place. Not pulling. Just contact, low enough not to crowd him, steady enough that Shane could feel the shape of it through the panic. Ilya’s thumb moved once along the fine bone at the inside of his ankle, slow and deliberate, then again.

Shane stared at the ground between his knees.

The touch should have been too much. Maybe it would have been, if Ilya had put a hand on his shoulder or reached for his face or tried to gather him up like something breakable. But this was not that. This was a point of contact at the edge of him, a quiet place to put the fear when the rest of his body had forgotten how to be still.

Ilya had lowered himself to one knee in front of him.

The movement was slow enough that Shane could track it through the panic, one knee settling against the pavement, the other bent close enough that Ilya could stay balanced without crowding him. His scent came with him, pine and cold mountain air threading carefully back through the narrow space, not heavy enough to trap him, only present enough for Shane’s body to know where he was.

Ilya’s hand stayed where it was, warm around Shane’s ankle.

His thumb moved once over the skin above Shane’s sock.

“What is your color, Shane?”

For a second, Shane could only stare at him.

The words did not make sense at first. They entered the panic and found nothing useful to hold onto. Color. What color. His brain turned over the question with a slow, stupid effort, and somehow even that helped, because it was something small and clear to follow. Something with edges.

Green meant okay. Green meant yes.

Green meant do not stop.

Shane swallowed, and it barely made it past the guilt lodged hard in his throat. “Green.”

His voice came out thin. Shaky. Almost too small to count as an answer at all.

Ilya heard it anyway.

His hand settled more securely over Shane’s ankle, not tightening, just becoming more there. The contact sent a strange, immediate relief through him, so sharp and physical that Shane made a sound before he could stop himself. It was barely more than a broken whimper dragged through his uneven breathing, but it left him exposed anyway, because the touch felt good. So good it was almost humiliating. Like cold water over a burn, like pressure easing behind his eye, like some frantic part of his body had been waiting for permission to unclench.

It helped. It was not enough.

Ilya knew that too.

Shane could tell the moment he looked at him. Ilya’s face was no longer blank. The careful mask had loosened back into something Shane knew, something softer and focused and worried in a way that made his chest hurt. His mouth was pressed into a hard line, and his eyes kept moving over Shane’s face, his breathing, his hands, the too-fast rise and fall of his chest.

He wanted to do more.

Shane could see it in the stillness of him. In the way his free hand rested against his own thigh, fingers flexed once and then held there. Ilya knew what would help. Of course he did. He probably knew exactly how much scent, how much pressure, how much touch Shane’s body would take from him before the panic started to come apart.

But he did not reach.

Even now, with Shane half-shaking on the ground in front of him, Ilya would not take what Shane had not given. Shane had said yes to the hand on his ankle. So Ilya kept his hand on Shane’s ankle and made himself wait there, kneeling on the pavement, close enough to help and still refusing to cross the rest of the distance for him.

Something in Shane broke against that.

He couldn’t take it anymore.

Fuck it.

He moved before he could think himself out of it, a clumsy, desperate lurch forward that knocked his knee against Ilya’s. His hands caught at the front of Ilya’s jacket, fingers twisting hard into the fabric, and then his face was pressed into Ilya’s shoulder.

A small, broken whimper slipped out of him the second Ilya’s scent filled his lungs properly. Relief hit so fast it was almost painful, cutting through the worst of the ache behind his eyes and loosening the pressure locked around his chest.

He sucked in another breath immediately.

Then another.

Shane sank closer, burying his face against the side of Ilya’s neck as he dragged in one more shaking breath.

Pine. Snow. Ilya.

It felt like oxygen.

His chest loosened a fraction, and for the first time in several minutes, the breath actually made it all the way down.

Shane’s grip tightened helplessly in Ilya’s jacket.

For half a second, Ilya went completely still beneath him.

Shane felt it. Felt the hard line of Ilya’s body pause, felt the breath catch in his chest, felt both of Ilya’s hands lift and hover uselessly in the air because he still did not know how much Shane wanted from him.

The care of it made Shane’s throat close.

His grip tightened in Ilya’s jacket. “Green,” he gasped, too fast, too shaky. “Green.”

He heard how it sounded—small, wrecked, pleading—and he did not care.

He had barely finished the second green before Ilya was holding him.

One hand closed around Shane’s bicep, firm enough to hold him there, the other coming up to the back of his head, fingers spreading carefully through his hair, and then Ilya’s cheek touched the side of Shane’s head. He folded around him without crushing him, steady and warm and smelling like alpha, and it was so good Shane’s whole body shuddered.

Ilya murmured something softer in Russian, low enough that Shane did not catch the shape of it through the rush of blood in his ears.

Ilya’s hand moved over his hair, slow and repetitive, his thumb pressing lightly at the back of Shane’s skull in a rhythm that gave Shane’s breathing something to follow.

Shane clung to him and let himself have this.

Ilya did not tell him to stop. He did not tell him it was all right, or that he was safe, or any of the useless things people said when they wanted fear to become more convenient. He only held him on the ground between the brick wall and the overgrown hedges, one arm braced around him, his scent steady in the air, his mouth near Shane’s hair as he murmured quiet Russian words Shane did not understand and somehow understood anyway.

Little by little, Shane’s breathing began to change.

The first real breath hurt. It dragged through him unevenly, catching halfway down before it finally settled into his lungs. Ilya’s hand moved over his hair again, patient and certain, and Shane took another one because Ilya was there to take it with him. Then another. The panic loosened by inches, not leaving all at once, but backing away far enough for Shane to feel the pavement under his knees and the ache in his hands from how tightly he was gripping Ilya’s jacket.

He could have let go But he didn’t.

And Ilya didn’t ask him to.

Chapter 37

Chapter Summary

Forgot to mention: the reason Ilya pulled his scent back was because everything Shane said reminded him of what his father did to his mother. The anger wasn’t directed at Shane—it was directed at his father. Once he realized how angry he was getting, he pulled his scent in because he didn’t want Shane to smell it and think it was aimed at him.

Chapter Notes

You guys are so nice, I can’t thank you enough.

Also someone recommended my own fic to me on TikTok and I’ve been riding that high all week, still can’t believe how many of you like my fic. Thank you.

Beta read by jebeno22. 💛

For a while, Shane did not move.

He kept his eyes closed and his forehead pressed to Ilya’s shoulder, both hands still twisted in the front of Ilya’s jacket. At some point, Ilya had shifted them lower, no longer balanced on one knee but sitting on the pavement with one leg bent beside Shane and his back angled toward the stone garden bed. Maybe It should have felt strange, sitting on ground like this, half-folded into Ilya in the narrow space between the brick wall and the hedges, but Shane was too emptied out to be embarrassed by it yet.

The embarrassment would come later.

Everything would come later.

For now, there was only the dark behind his eyelids, the slow movement of Ilya’s hand over his hair, and the clean, cold press of his scent in Shane’s lungs. Pine. Snow. Mountain air. The words were not really words anymore, only something his body understood better than his mind did.

He breathed because Ilya’s scent filled his lungs.

He stayed still because moving would make the pain sharpen again.

The migraine had not gone away. It waited behind his brow, hot and mean, punishing every thought that tried to become too bright. Shane let his mind go blank around it. He did not think about the Italians. He did not think about his mother. He did not think about the word ‘alive’ or the way Ilya had looked at him when Shane asked if they knew.

He only counted the drag of Ilya’s fingers through his hair and tried not to be a body for a while.

Ilya let him.

His hand did not stop. His cheek rested lightly against the side of Shane’s head, and his attention, Shane could feel, remained fixed on the walkway beyond the shrubs. Even holding him like this, Ilya was still watching the mouth of the path. Still listening past Shane’s now even breathing, past the muffled campus noise, past the small place where Shane had come apart against him.

This time, Shane did not feel pinned beneath it.

He felt the opposite. Held out of reach. Like Ilya was watching so Shane did not have to, taking the path and the noise and the rest of the world into his keeping while Shane tried to remember how to breathe.

After a long time, Ilya spoke.

“I thought you knew.”

His voice was low, careful enough not to strike too hard against Shane’s head.

Shane’s fingers tightened once in his jacket.

Ilya’s hand moved over his hair again, slow and steady. “I did not keep this from you.”

Shane shook his head the tiniest bit against him.

“No,” he said.

His voice came out quiet, used-up. Too thin to carry much of anything, but Ilya heard him anyway because Ilya always heard him.

“I know.”

The guilt sat heavy in him, too heavy to lift properly. It pressed at his ribs and throat until words felt impossible, until all the normal ways people apologized seemed too small and too clumsy for what Shane had done.

Thought slipped out from under him.

Habit rose instead.

Something learned in quiet rooms and formal dinners and omega etiquette drilled soft enough that it could pretend not to be discipline. When words failed, there were still gestures. When emotion made a mess of everything, there was still the old shape of apology, the body making itself respectful where the mouth could not be trusted.

Shane loosened one hand from Ilya’s jacket.

His fingers trembled as he reached up and found Ilya’s wrist.

Ilya went still at once.

Not pulling away. Not helping. Only waiting.

Shane swallowed, then guided Ilya’s hand out of his hair and down, slowly, because his own fingers did not feel steady anymore. Ilya let him move it, but Shane could feel the tension gathering under his skin, the question in every line of him.

Shane placed Ilya’s palm at the back of his neck.

The touch sent a shiver down his spine.

He hated that too. Hated that it soothed something in him even now. Hated that his body recognized the weight of Ilya’s hand there and wanted to go quiet under it.

Ilya’s breath changed.

“Shane.”

But Shane was already drawing back enough to bow his head.

Not far. He could not manage far. His forehead nearly brushed Ilya’s collarbone, and his hands settled over Ilya’s wrist like he could keep the touch there by holding it in place. The angle bared the vulnerable line of his nape beneath Ilya’s palm, formal and unmistakable, and the shame of it burned hot through the numbness.

“I apologize, Alpha.”

It came out wrong.

Wobbly. Small. Too close to breaking.

Ilya’s whole body went rigid.

For half a second, the hand at Shane’s nape did not move.

Then Ilya said, “Stop.”

The word was quiet.

It still went through Shane sharply enough that his fingers clenched around Ilya’s wrist.

Ilya’s hand left his neck immediately. Not yanked away, not disgusted, but removed with such care that the absence hurt worse than it should have.

“No,” Ilya said, lower now. “Do not do this.”

Shane kept his head bowed because lifting it felt impossible.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and hated the way his voice shook. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Look at me.”

Shane’s eyes closed tighter.

Ilya was silent for one breath.

Then his hand returned, not to Shane’s nape this time, but to the side of his face. Warm palm, thumb at the edge of his jaw, the pressure quiet and unmistakable. An instruction shaped gently enough to still be a question.

“Shane,” he said, softer and rougher at once. “Look at me.”

Shane did, barely.

Ilya’s expression was tight with something that was not anger. His eyes moved over Shane’s face like he was trying to understand how to touch him without making this worse, and there was a strain in his mouth that made Shane feel sick all over again.

Shane swallowed.

The pressure behind his eyes pulsed once, mean and bright, and he had to blink carefully before the courtyard blurred too badly to hide.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

Ilya’s expression tightened.

Not anger. Not exactly.

Something worse, because Shane could see the refusal before Ilya gave it voice.

“I do not want this apology.”

Shane stared at him.

For a second, the words did not fit anywhere. He had put himself in the correct shape. Used the correct title. Given Ilya the formal apology he was owed, the kind that acknowledged the offense and the alpha above him and the fact that Shane had said things he could not take back.

But Ilya looked at him like Shane had handed him something sharp by the blade.

Shane’s fingers loosened around his wrist.

“Then what do you want?”

Ilya was quiet long enough that Shane could hear the soft scrape of leaves shifting somewhere beyond the hedge.

Then Ilya said, “I want you honest with me.”

The answer landed simply.

No punishment. No lecture. No demand that Shane make himself smaller until the apology felt large enough to cover what had happened.

Honesty.

Shane looked at him.

Ilya looked back, his hand still at the side of Shane’s face, his thumb resting lightly beneath his jaw. Not holding him in place. Not letting him disappear either.

The silence stretched.

Shane tried to find the right thing to say. Something clean. Something that would explain all of it without requiring either of them to stand in the ugly middle too long.

But he could come up with nothing. Only the truth, small and humiliating.

“I’m tired,” Shane said. His voice barely held.

Ilya’s face changed.

Not much. Only a small shift around his eyes, a settling in his mouth, but Shane felt it anyway—felt the way Ilya took the answer seriously because Shane had given it to him.

“Okay,” Ilya said.

The gentleness of it almost undid him.

Shane looked down, breathing carefully through his nose. “And my head hurts.”

“Since when?”

The question was quiet.

Still, Shane’s mouth closed around the answer before it could come out.

Since this morning.

Since yesterday.

Since the pharmacy delay. Since the first night without sleep. Since he had decided he could get through the day by sheer force and spite and whatever fragile scaffolding held him upright when sense failed. He could not say it. Not yet.

Shane’s silence was answer enough. Then his thumb moved once, barely there, against Shane’s jaw, and he let the question go.

“Maybe we should go home.”

Shane’s face must have done something stupid, because Ilya saw it immediately.

Of course he did.

“Tell me.”

Shane bit the inside of his lip.

He wanted to. That was the stupid part. The answer was small enough to say and still somehow humiliating after everything else, after all that anger about being managed and watched and moved around like something fragile. He didn’t deserve to ask for anything after that, but he could still feel the words sitting behind his teeth, childish and stubborn and impossible.

Ilya did not push.

Something in his face softened instead.

“You want to finish your test?”

Shane looked at him.

He must have looked as pathetic as he felt, because Ilya’s mouth tightened faintly, not with irritation, but with the effort of holding something back.

“If that is what you want,” Ilya said, “then this is what we do.”

Shane’s throat worked once. “Why?”

Ilya held his gaze.

“Because I am on your side, Shane,” he said quietly. “Not your family’s. Not mine.” Hhis fingers tucked a lock of hair behind Shane’s ear “Yours.”

For a moment, Ilya stayed there, making Shane look at him, making the words land.

Then his hand slipped away from Shane’s face and found his hands instead. He held them between both of his, careful around the tremor in Shane’s fingers, as if he could make the question easier by giving Shane somewhere to put the answer.

“Tell me, котенок,” Ilya said. “What do you want to do?”

For a second, Shane could not breathe around that.

Then he looked down at their hands, his voice coming out small. “I want to finish my last class.”

Ilya nodded once. “Okay.”

Chapter End Notes

Going on vacation tomorrow, you know what that means? It means mommas getting lots of free time to write about boys yearning soon.

Me thinks next chapter will have some Ilya pov. Xoxo

Chapter 38

Chapter Summary

Beta read by jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

😬

By the time Shane sat down for his last test, the worst of the headache had gone quiet.

Not gone. Shane knew better than to trust it that much. It still waited behind his brow, hot and mean, ready to punish the wrong movement or the wrong thought. But fifteen minutes with his face pressed into the side of Ilya’s neck had softened it enough that the lights no longer felt quite so sharp, and the low scrape of chairs around him no longer made his teeth ache.

He could do this.

Probably.

Shane set his pencil carefully beside the exam packet and tried not to think too hard about the fact that the only reason he could sit upright at all was because he still smelled faintly like Ilya’s skin.

———————-

“Прошу прощения?” he said, low and vicious.
(Excuse me?)

The voice on the other end of the call started talking faster, but Ilya did not let him finish.

“Когда?” he asked. 
(When?)

A hurried explanation followed, crowds, a service corridor, one of the campus buildings. Excuses.

Ilya stopped walking and pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose. The headache forming behind his own eyes had nothing to do with bonds or sleep.

“Найди его,” he said, voice gone very calm.
(Find him.)

“Найди его до того, как он покинет кампус.”
(Find him before he leaves campus.)

The man started apologizing but Ilya ended the call before he finished.

For a second, he stood in the hallway outside Shane’s classroom, phone still in his hand. The door remained closed. Inside, Shane was two hours into his final exam, with another thirty minutes left before the class ended.

Thirty minutes. Then Ilya was putting him in the car and taking him home.

Twenty minutes ago, one of their men near the student union had spotted a man with a camera tracking Shane through the courtyard. Ten minutes after that, the man had vanished into the crowd.

Ilya looked through the glass panel set into the classroom door. He could not see Shane from this angle. Good.

A uniformed campus security officer stood near the end of the corridor, pretending not to look at him, one of theirs.

Ilya lifted two fingers and the man immediately pushed away from the wall and crossed the hallway. “Sir.”

Ilya held out the keys. “Bring car around.” The guard took them without question.

Ilya’s gaze flicked once toward the classroom door. “Closest entrance,” he said. “I want him outside and inside vehicle in less than thirty seconds.”

The man nodded once. “Understood.”

Then he turned and headed down the corridor at a jog and Ilya watched him go before looking back at the classroom door.

Thirty more minutes.

Pulling Shane out now would only make him more visible. When the exam ended, the rush of people leaving class would be messy enough to cover the first few seconds in a sea of bodies, faces and scents.

Ilya could use that. He could fold Shane into the noise and get him to the car before anyone had a clean line on him.

Plus, Shane had asked for this.

Not much, in the end. Not safety. Not certainty. Just thirty more minutes with a pencil in his hand, pretending the world had not already found him.

Ilya looked back at the classroom door.

He could give him that, at least.

Chapter End Notes

yuna has men undercover on campus as extra security that Ilya knows about, some Russian some yakuza.

Chapter 39

Chapter Summary

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Shane made it through the last class by becoming very good at not thinking.

He did not know if he had done well, but by the end, he was not sure he cared. He had finished it.

That was the part he held onto while he handed the paper in, packed his bag with fingers that felt slightly detached from the rest of him, and followed the thinning line of students toward the door.

Ilya was there before Shane had fully stepped into the hallway, closer than Shane expected, close enough that he nearly stopped short.

“Come,” he said.

Shane looked at him then, the dull haze of the exam thinning just enough for unease to slip through.

Something was off.

But Ilya was already turning them away from the doorway, his hand settling briefly at Shane’s back, not pushing. Guiding.

“Stay close,” he said.

Shane swallowed once and nodded.

They moved through the building quietly, Shane keeping his eyes on the floor while Ilya set the pace.

The alumni event was still spilling people across the walkways, bodies gathered in little clusters beneath banners, voices bright and overlapping. The air smelled like coffee, perfume, and someone’s too-sweet pheromones. It all pressed against Shane at once, but differently now.

Duller.

Like the worst of him had already been wrung out behind the hedges and there was not enough left in him to react properly.

Ilya angled them away from the densest part of the crowd, not sharply enough to draw attention, only enough that Shane noticed the path change beneath their feet.

They were not taking the same route as this morning. One path over, then down along the side of the library instead of cutting straight through the central courtyard.

The car was waiting near the curb beyond the line of trees. Not where Ilya had left it that morning.

Yesterday, Shane might have bristled at it.
Today, he only watched Ilya look once toward the roofline of the student center and felt something cold shift in his stomach.

He tucked his hands into the sleeves of his hoodie and walked beside Ilya in silence, the brim of his cap low enough to soften the light.

His body felt strange and too light, as if the ground had become less trustworthy while he was away from Ilya inside taking the test. Every step felt deliberate. Every breath felt like something he had to remember to complete.

Shane felt it before he understood it, some small pull at the back of his attention, and his eyes found it before the thought had fully formed.

A man standing near one of the event signs with his camera lifted as if he were photographing the crowd. But as soon as Shane’s eyes met the lens, the man’s finger pressed down on the shutter and did not lift.

Ilya moved then, one hand coming to Shane’s back as his body slid between Shane and the camera in the same motion, firm enough to direct without shoving.

“Keep walking,” Ilya said.

Shane’s feet obeyed before the rest of him caught up.

He stumbled half a step, not because Ilya had pushed him, but because his brain had gone oddly blank around the sight of the camera. Ilya’s hand immediately steadied him.

Shane looked back.

He knew he shouldn’t. Ilya’s body was angled to block him, and they were close enough to the car now that Shane could have reached for the door.

He still looked.

The camera was still raised, still pointed at him.

Two people were already moving toward the photographer from opposite sides. One had a coffee cup in one hand and a tote bag over her shoulder. The other wore a campus sweatshirt, his head bent over his phone as if he were only another student cutting across the walkway, ordinary enough to belong there until they moved with too much purpose.

The woman’s hand closed around the camera as the man in the sweatshirt caught the photographer by the arm.

It happened so cleanly Shane barely understood it as violence. There was no shouting, no struggle anyone nearby seemed to notice.

The camera disappeared against the woman’s coat, and the photographer’s shoulder jerked once before the man beside him leaned in close enough to say something Shane was too far away to hear.

Then Ilya’s hand was at his back again.

Shane looked at him.

Ilya was not looking at Shane. His attention was past him on the two people who had the photographer now, before checking the space beyond them where anyone else might be watching.

“In the car, Shane.”

“Ilya—”

“Now.”

Shane got in.

The door shut beside him with a soft, heavy sound that cut the campus off all at once, the noise muffling behind the glass until the people outside blurred into movement and color.

Ilya moved around the front of the car, his attention sweeping over the street, the windshield, and the crowd behind Shane’s window before he opened the driver’s side door.

Outside, the place where the photographer had stood was empty.

Not empty, exactly. People still moved there. Visitors still passed the event sign. A student laughed into her phone, someone adjusted a backpack strap.

The campus continued around the missing man as if nothing had happened.

The man who had been taking photographs of him.

By the time Ilya got into the driver’s seat, Shane had gone cold all the way through.

Ilya shut the door, locked it, and started the car. He did not speak at first. He checked the mirrors, then the street, then his phone where it sat dark in the console. Only after he pulled away from the curb did his eyes flick to Shane.

“Shane.”

The sound of his name made something in Shane’s chest tighten.

Ilya looked back to the road. His hands were steady on the wheel, but his jaw was set hard enough that Shane could see the muscle ticking once near the hinge.

“Are you okay?”

Shane did not answer at first.

He was staring straight ahead through the windshield, his face gone very still in the washed afternoon light. For a moment, Ilya could not tell if Shane had heard him or if there was simply no part of him left that knew how to answer.

A small, empty huff left him, almost a laugh except there was no humor in it. Then he pressed his lips together and turned his head toward the window.

Ilya’s hand tightened once on the steering wheel.

He did not ask again.

Chapter 40

Chapter Summary

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

Shane did not say anything for the rest of the drive.

He sat in the passenger seat with his bag in his lap and both hands folded over it, staring through the windshield like the road might eventually become something that made sense if he looked at it long enough.

Ilya did not try to make him talk. He did not fill the silence.

He made two more calls in Russian instead, both short, both too calm, one hand steady on the wheel while his attention moved between the road, the mirrors, and Shane.

By the time they reached the estate, Shane felt emptied out in a way that had almost become calm.

Not calm.

Just distant, as if there was too much space between him and the rest of his body. By the time they passed through the gates, his throat felt tight enough to hurt.

He got out of the car before Ilya could come around for him.

“Shane,” Ilya said.

“I’m tired,” Shane replied.

It was not a lie. It was just too small of a word to hold the whole truth.

Ilya studied him for one long second then walked beside him into the property, past polished floors and quiet hallways and men who nodded respectfully as they passed.

The compound felt different tonight, though nothing had actually changed. The guards stood where guards had always stood, the gates still opened for them without anyone asking questions.

Black cars still waited along the drive with engines quiet and windows dark, and men Shane had known by name for years still speaking low into earpieces beneath the soft spill of lantern light, watching the tree line like something might come out of it.

This had always been his life.

He had simply been allowed to pretend it was softer than it was.

Tonight, the pretense did not hold.

The cameras tucked into discreet corners seemed to stand out now. The men stationed just far enough from doors to appear unobtrusive. The reinforced glass. The coded locks. The careful hush of a house built around keeping danger outside without ever admitting that danger existed.

He had grown up here. Had thought that meant he understood it.

Ilya walked beside him into their house, let the familiar quiet close around them, the warm lights, the wood floors, the faint scent of laundry detergent and tea and home, all of it waiting exactly where he had left it that morning, as if nothing had happened.

As if Shane had not spent the whole day realizing his life had never been as separate from his mother’s world as he had been allowed to believe.

He kept walking.

Behind him, the door shut with a soft click.

Shane did not turn around, but he could feel Ilya behind him, careful and silent near the entryway. Waiting, maybe, for Shane to look back or speak or give him some sign that he had not gone completely somewhere else inside himself.

Shane could not do that right now.

He went upstairs, and Ilya followed without a word. At Shane’s bedroom door, Ilya stopped, and Shane kept his hand on the knob for a moment longer than he needed to. Neither of them spoke. Ilya’s hand shifted at his side, fingers flexing once like he wanted to reach for him, like he wanted to touch Shane the way Shane had let him earlier between the buildings.

Shane looked down at the movement, then away.

“I need to leave for a little bit,” Ilya said quietly.

Shane’s stomach dropped before he could stop it.

He knew, distantly, that Ilya probably had to go because of what had happened on campus. There had been a man with a camera. There had been people in the crowd who were not students. There were things to handle now, things Shane did not want to picture too clearly.

Still, the only part of it his body seemed to understand was that Ilya was leaving.

Shane did not lift his eyes.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

Ilya was silent for a beat.

“Do you need anything before I go?” he asked. “Or something I bring when I come back?”

Shane shook his head once. He did not trust himself to say no out loud without making it sound like something else.

Ilya studied him for a moment, his face held too carefully to read, then nodded.

“I will be back soon,” he said.

Shane’s fingers tightened once around the doorknob.

“Okay.”

Ilya did not move closer. He only looked at him for another second, then stepped back enough to give Shane room to open the door.

Shane went into his room and closed the door.

For several seconds, he stood with his back against it, breathing through his nose, trying to keep the pressure behind his eyes from becoming bigger than his ability to think.

The room was quiet and familiar: his bed, his books on the shelf, his carefully folded clothes, the precise arrangement of objects he had built into a life that could be managed because every part of it had a place.

It used to be enough to help.

For a moment Shane stood in the doorway and stared at all of it, the ordinary evidence of the person he had been before the day started.

Then he moved.

He stripped off his hoodie, shoes, and socks mechanically, then opened his laptop with hands that did not feel entirely attached to him. The screen was too bright. He lowered the setting until the room dimmed around it, then logged into the student portal and stared at his schedule for next semester.

Six classes.

One lab.

Two waitlists.

A note beside one professor’s name reminding him to email about accommodations before the deadline.

Shane looked at the list for a long time.

Then he withdrew from all of them.

There were warnings. Confirmation windows. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘This action may affect your academic progress.’ Shane clicked through each one with a strange, precise calm, his face blank and his pulse barely registering in his own body. One by one, the classes disappeared from the page until there was nothing left for spring except an empty schedule and the small, brutal fact of it sitting in the center of the screen.

He closed the laptop.

The silence after that was worse.

Shane stood, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the shower without taking off his clothes. He stepped under the spray and stood there while the water hit him cold first, then warm.

He sat on the shower floor with his knees drawn up loosely in front of him and stared at the tile wall unmoving as the water soaked through fabric slowly, making everything heavy against his skin. By the time the water had soaked through him completely, and the last clear traces of Ilya’s scent had thinned from his skin.

He cried.

Silently at first, because silence was a habit and dignity was apparently one of the last stupid things he still had. But the grief rose anyway, sudden and humiliating and impossible to reason with.

He cried because a man had lifted his camera, and Shane had understood, finally, that anonymity was gone.

He cried because campus had been the one place where he had almost been able to pretend he was normal.

He cried because Ilya had been close all day, and Shane had hated him for it, and then Ilya had been right.

He cried because his mother had not been overreacting.

He cried because protection and control had started to look too much alike.

He cried because the danger had never been theoretical.

He cried because he did not want four guards or one husband or a perimeter of armed men moving through his life like shadows.

He cried because he wanted to be left alone and also, horribly, did not want Ilya to leave.

That was the part that frightened him most, because wanting Ilya close had nothing to do with fear anymore.

Chapter End Notes

It’s happening in the next chapter guys. 😴😴

Chapter 41

Chapter Summary

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

It’s rough, and it’s late, but it’s here, I’ll go back and fix anything I need to later,
Sorry if it’s a bit repetitive and disorienting, I wanted to try and do it like that cuz Shane is disoriented, and in shock, but again I’ll fix it later if I need to.

The water had gone cold before Shane finally turned it off.

For a while, he stayed where he was anyway, standing beneath the last weak drip from the showerhead with his forehead angled toward the tile and his clothes hanging heavy from his body, until eventually the discomfort became sharper than the numbness.

Shane peeled everything from his body, fingers clumsy with exhaustion, fighting briefly with the sleeves where they stuck around his wrists. 
He stepped out of everything and left the soaked clothes in a heap on the shower floor, because picking them up would require knowing what to do with them, and Shane did not have enough of himself left for that.

He stepped back into his room without drying off. Water kept dripping from his hair, sliding cold down his spine and gathering beneath his bare feet on the floor.

He should have cared.

Normally, he would not have been able to stand it, the wrong order of things pressing against the edges of his night routine. Any other night, leaving one piece undone would have made his whole body feel misaligned until he went back and fixed it.

Tonight, the discomfort felt distant. 
Like it belonged to his body, but his body was somewhere else.

So Shane left the rest unfinished and focused on the only sequence he could still manage: clothes, medicine, nest, sleep.

He was halfway to the dresser when something on the desk caught his eye.

Shane stopped.

For a second, he only stared at it, water dripping cold from his hair onto the back of his neck.

One of Ilya’s shirts sat folded neatly on the desk.

Ilya must have come in while Shane was still in the shower and left it there before he went, placed where Shane would see it, where he could take it or ignore it and never have to admit either choice out loud.

Something in Shane’s chest ached at the thought, because Ilya still did not know what was wrong with Shane exactly. He had only known his scent had helped before, and had given Shane a way to have it again without making him ask.

Shane’s throat tightened so suddenly that it almost hurt.

Then he crossed the rest of the room slowly and touched the edge of the fabric with his fingertips, careful with it in the same way he was careful with anything that felt too close to wanting.
The cotton was soft and worn, dark beneath his hand, and when he lifted it, Ilya’s scent rose from it at once.

Shane closed his eyes.

He held the shirt to his face for longer than he meant to, breathing through the ache in his chest until something in him loosened by a fraction.

Then he put it on.

After that, the rest was easier in a distant, mechanical way. Underwear. Clean pajama shorts. A towel dragged through his hair without much success.

Not enough to stop the damp ends from dripping against the back of Ilya’s shirt when he sat down on the edge of the bed. It fell too large over his shoulders, sleeves hanging past his wrists, the hem brushing low against his thighs.

Shane opened the drawer where his medicine was waiting and picked it up.

For a long moment, he only looked at it.

His hands were shaking now, not badly, but enough that he noticed the tremor when he uncapped the dose and pressed it against his thigh.

He held it there but his hand did not move.

The applicator stayed pressed against his skin, while Ilya’s scent surrounded him with every breath. Pine and snow and something steadier than Shane felt capable of being.

It helped.

It helped enough that the room no longer felt quite as sharp around the edges. Helped enough that he was still sitting upright. Helped enough that some part of him had stopped trying to claw its way out of his own skin.

Shane stared down at the medicine and tried to make his hand move, but the fear in him would not loosen its teeth.

The medicine would work. Shane knew that. It would pull him under, make the fear go distant, quiet his body whether his mind was ready or not.

Only his mind was not ready.

He did not want to be unconscious while he was still this afraid. Not with his schedule empty on the laptop, his clothes wet on the bathroom floor, and the whole shape of his life sitting wrong beneath his skin.

Not alone.

The medicine would make things stop for a while, maybe give him a few hours where he did not have to think about being Yuna Hollander’s heir, or about the ugly certainty that somewhere on the compound was the man who had pointed a camera at him, and someone was finding out exactly where those pictures had been meant to go. Probably his husband.

But he was still scared.

The medicine would only stop the panic from having anywhere to go because Shane would not be awake enough to hold it.

But being unconscious was not the same thing as being safe.

The thought arrived without warning, plain and cold.

Shane stared down at the injector against his thigh.

Ilya’s shirt helped, but it did not make the room feel safe by itself. It did not make the dark easier to trust. It did not make him want to disappear into sleep, not while his body still felt like it was in danger.

He wanted Ilya back home.

The thought should have embarrassed him. Maybe it would have on any other day, but tonight there was not enough left in him for pride. Pride required some belief that he could still arrange himself into something dignified, but Shane had spent all day losing pieces of himself.

In the courtyard. Between the buildings. In the car. In the shower, crying in wet clothes because the world had finally become too clear to misunderstand.

He did not know how long he sat there.

Long enough for the room to feel less like a room and more like something he had been left inside, until the front door opened downstairs and Shane came back to himself just enough to lift his head.

His attention caught on it immediately, tracking the low murmur of voices in the entryway, the muted rhythm of footsteps, the brief opening and closing of another door. The sound was softened by distance and the thick walls of the house, but Shane heard it anyway.

He stayed very still with the medicine pressed uselessly against his thigh, aware of Ilya in a way that seemed to move beneath thought. The shirt against his skin. The silence beyond his door. The narrow stretch of hallway between them. All of it felt suddenly charged with the same unbearable fact: Ilya was close enough to reach and still had not come to take anything from him.

Ilya was in his room.

Shane knew it before the heavier step in the hall had fully passed his door. The knowledge arrived before thought, quiet and complete, as if some exhausted part of him had been waiting for that exact sound and understood what it meant the moment it came.

Shane looked down at the medicine in his hand and thought of Ilya between the buildings.

The alpha had said he was on Shane’s side.

Not his family’s. Not the Rozanovs’.

His.

The words did not come back neatly. Nothing in Shane felt neat. They surfaced in pieces, tangled with the memory of Ilya’s hand at his ankle, Ilya’s voice asking for his color, Ilya’s arms around him when Shane had finally stopped pretending he could keep himself upright. He had been blunt from the beginning, sometimes too blunt, about danger and wanting and what he would not take from Shane.

But he had waited when Shane needed time.

Stopped when Shane needed space.

Careful even with the things Shane had not known how to offer.

Left a shirt on a desk making it possible for Shane to take what he needed without trapping him inside the admission of needing it; because Shane did not know how to ask for something without feeling selfish.

Maybe Shane could trust that.

Maybe he already did.

His throat tightened, and his grip on the medicine loosened.

He had understood something Shane had not been able to say, and still had not used that understanding against him. 
Had not made Shane feel punished for needing it.

Shane lowered the medicine from his thigh.

The movement felt small, almost absurdly small for how much effort it took. For a moment, he sat there with it loose in his hand, breathing through the pressure behind his eyes and the ache in his chest and the awful, simple truth of what he wanted.
After today, being known felt less like exposure and more like mercy.

He capped the dose carefully, set it back on the nightstand, and left his hand resting beside it for a second after he let go, concentrating on every breath.

Shane looked toward his bedroom door.

The want was there before the thought was.
That was what made him sit still for another second, staring at the dark line beneath the door while Ilya’s shirt hung warm around his shoulders and the medicine waited unused beside him.

Some part of Shane still wanted to argue. Some part of him still wanted to call it instinct, exhaustion, shock, anything smaller than trust.

But Ilya had taken the camera seriously. He had taken Shane seriously. He had put his hand on Shane’s waist and moved him toward the car like Shane’s life was something exact and precious and not negotiable.

And he had given Shane space without making the space feel like abandonment.

Shane was still cautious. He was still scared. None of that had gone away.

But his body was reaching for Ilya with a certainty his mind was too tired to keep disputing.

He wanted to feel safe again.

So he stood.

For a second, the room tilted faintly around him, not enough to make him fall, only enough to remind him that he had barely eaten and had cried until his body felt wrung out. He waited for the floor to steady beneath his feet, then crossed the room before he could sit down again and think his way out of it.

The hallway was dark and quiet, the house settled around him in the private hush that usually made him feel safe. Tonight, it only made him feel alone. Shane crossed the hall barefoot, Ilya’s shirt hanging loose around his body, his damp hair cooling against the back of his neck.

Ilya’s door was open.

Wide open.

Shane stopped at the sight of it, his chest giving one sharp, unsteady pull before the rest of him caught up.

It was obviously open on purpose, wide enough to remove every small obstacle Shane might have used as a reason to turn back: the knock, the handle, the terrible pause of standing there and waiting to be allowed in.

The door had been left the same way the shirt had been left: an offer of help placed within reach, with the hardest part already removed.

Shane clenched the front of his Ilya’s shirt.

For a moment, Shane just stood there in the hall, staring at the door, with nothing left between him and the choice except the choice itself.

So he stepped into the doorway.

The room was mostly dark, washed faintly silver by the moonlight coming through the open curtains, catching on the white of the sheets and the dark shape of Ilya beneath them. He was lying on his back with one arm above the blanket, awake and still, his face turned toward the ceiling like he had been listening to the quiet for a long time. Like he’d been waiting.

The thought landed quietly and then stayed.

Waiting.

Shane had known what the unsettled bond was doing to him because his own body had made it impossible not to know. The sleeplessness, the restlessness, the way his skin had seemed to listen for Ilya through walls. His condition had made all of it louder, harder to ignore, easier to mistake for something that belonged only to him.

But Ilya looked tired too.

He had looked tired for weeks, and Shane had let himself think it was Yuna, or security, or the endless work of living inside someone else’s house with another family’s war pressing in around them. He had never once stopped to wonder if Ilya had been lying awake on the other side of the hall too, held there by the same bond Shane kept starving because wanting him was still too terrifying to admit. Guilt moved through him slowly, settling heavy behind his ribs and his eyes stung.

Shane stopped in the doorway.

For a second, he could not make himself move.

Then Ilya turned his head.

Their eyes met, and for one suspended moment neither of them said anything.

Ilya’s gaze moved over him once, slow enough to understand and careful enough not to make Shane feel examined. It dropped briefly to the shirt hanging from Shane’s shoulders, then returned to his face with an understanding so immediate and careful that Shane felt something inside him give. He did not sit up. He did not ask what was wrong. He did not make Shane explain why he had come.

He only lifted the blanket.

The gesture should not have been enough to break him.

It was only a shift of Ilya’s hand, a quiet invitation in a dark room, but Shane understood it for what it was. Ilya was doing it again. Putting the choice within reach and making himself the one who waits, the one who could be refused, so Shane did not have to stand there trying to shape need into words. He had left the shirt. Left the door open. Lifted the blanket.

Every part of it was arranged so Shane could come closer without having to ask for something he had learned too long ago not to want out loud. Not because of shame. Shame would have been easier. This was older than that, quieter and harder to explain: the habit of making do, of wanting less, of teaching himself not to reach for things that would only become humiliating once someone noticed he wanted them.

And somehow Ilya had noticed anyway.

Only he had not made it humiliating.

Even now Ilya made room for him without making him explain why he needed it.

Shane crossed the room.

He should have hesitated longer. 
Some distant part of him knew that. This was the sort of choice he would usually take apart until there was nothing left of it but risk and consequence, but tonight he did not have the strength to turn comfort into a problem before he let himself have it.

The day had taken too much from him already, stripped too much down to the bone, and what was left was too simple to dress up as anything else.

He wanted not to be alone in the cage anymore.

He wanted someone on his side.

He wanted Ilya.

Shane climbed into the bed stiffly at first, awkward with exhaustion and the strange terror of being allowed to want something this badly. Ilya shifted just enough to make space for him, careful and quiet, and Shane folded himself against his side, pressing his forehead to Ilya’s shoulder.

The first breath hit him like mercy.

Mountain air. Snow. Ilya.

His breath caught so sharply it hurt. Ilya’s arm came around him carefully, as if even now he was leaving Shane room to change his mind. But when Shane made a small, broken sound against his shirt, Ilya’s arm tightened.

And then Shane started crying again.

It broke out of him with the first real breath he managed against Ilya’s shoulder, soft and quiet at first, then harder when Ilya’s other hand came up to cradle the back of his head. He tried to breathe through it, he really did, but he couldn’t.

His hands caught in the front of Ilya’s shirt, and he cried because the relief was too immediate to survive. Because his body had been right. Because Ilya was there, and Ilya had let him come close, because Shane had spent months waiting for the catch, for the compromise, for the moment comfort became something he had to earn.

But Ilya only held him.

“Shh,” he murmured, low against Shane’s hair. “I have you.”

Shane cried harder.

Ilya did not tell him not to. He did not tell him it was all right. He only held him through it, one hand moving slowly over his back, the other cradling the back of his head while Shane shook apart against him. His scent stayed steady in the room, clean and cold and wrapped around Shane so completely that the ache behind his eyes finally loosened its grip.

Little by little, the crying wore him out.

His breath hitched. Settled. Hitched again.

But Ilya kept touching him through all of it, slow and patient, as if there was nowhere else he needed to be and nothing else his hands had been made for.

Eventually Shane’s fingers loosened in his shirt.

His face stayed pressed to Ilya’s shoulder, damp and hot and hidden. He was too exhausted to move. Too hollowed out to be afraid of what this meant now.

Ilya’s hand moved once more over his hair.

Shane breathed in, and for the first time all day, nothing in him fought it.

A few minutes later, held close enough that nothing in him had to keep reaching, Shane fell asleep in the one place his body had been trying to get to all day.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter Ilya tortures a guy for taking pics of his omega, and everyone at the compound finds out why he was nicknamed the bratvas guard dog.

Chapter 42

Chapter Summary

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

Ilya woke before dawn to the weight of Shane still tucked against him.

For a long moment, he only lay there in the pale dark of his room, listening to the slow rhythm of Shane’s breathing against his chest.

The room was pale around the edges, morning light slipping through the curtains and thinning the shadows across the floor. Shane’s face was turned into the hollow beneath Ilya’s jaw, breath warm and slow against his skin. He’d shifted closer sometime in the night until he was half-curled over Ilya’s side, one hand caught loosely in the front of his shirt, one knee hooked over Ilya’s thigh as if even asleep his body was trying to close every inch of space between them.

His phone had been vibrating on and off for hours.

He should’ve been at the main estate by now. Yuna would be waiting on a report from last night, and Pike had already called twice, which meant there would be a third soon, along with several boring texts Ilya had no interest in reading. Men would be waiting for instructions. Reports would need answers and somewhere beneath the estate, the Italian operative was still sitting with his silence and whatever information could be taken from it.

But Ilya ignored all of it because right now Shane was soft and warm against him, smelling at ease for the first time in weeks.

Ilya reached carefully for his phone without shifting Shane off him and opened the thread with Yuna first.

‘Taking care of Shane.’

The reply came less than a minute later.

‘Understood.’

Ilya looked at the message for a moment before setting the phone aside again. Whatever else needed to be dealt with that morning could wait; they both understood Shane came first.

Ilya looked down at him carefully.

Shane’s hair was dry now, soft and uneven where he had slept on it, the ends mussed against Ilya’s arm. Ilya’s shirt hung too large around him, twisted slightly at one shoulder, and there was a faint crease between his brows even in sleep.

Ilya did not like that.

He lifted one hand slowly and touched the back of it to Shane’s forehead.

Not feverish. Exhausted, then.

Still, seventeen hours was a long time.

It should have comforted him, that Shane was catching up on sleep he clearly needed. But the longer Ilya lay there with Shane warm and heavy against him, the less comfort there was in it.

Shane had slept too long for Ilya to call it rest anymore.

Ilya’s jaw tightened. Shane was not fine. That much was clear. What was not clear was why no one had told Ilya how not fine he was. That bothered him more with every minute Shane did not wake.

Ilya had spent enough of his life watching men make the wrong things important. Still, for a long time, he had thought Shane had been spared the uglier shape of it because Yuna and David loved him, because the household watched him with genuine care, and everyone around Shane treated him like something treasured.

Ilya had mistaken that for freedom.

He knew better now.

Care had not made Shane free. Protection had not made him unafraid. Shane had been loved, hidden, guarded by people who would have torn the world apart before letting it touch him, and still, somehow, he had learned not to ask for anything.

Shane shifted faintly against him, seeking Ilya’s throat in sleep with a helpless little turn of his face, not waking, only pressing closer when Ilya’s arm tightened by instinct around his waist.

The movement was small, but Shane had come closer in his sleep like Ilya was safety itself, and Ilya had to breathe through the sudden, vicious urge to keep anything from ever touching him again.

Yesterday had taught him much.

He had collected piece by piece, and every piece had been uglier than the last. Shane in the courtyard, pale and furious and hurt. Shane between the buildings with his hands twisted in Ilya’s jacket like reaching for him was something he hated himself for needing. Shane in the car, so still and cold that even his silence had felt breakable.
Shane at Ilya’s door, wearing his shirt, eyes already wet, looking so exhausted and frightened that Ilya had wanted to cross the room and gather him up before Shane had to take another step.

Ilya had thought, once, that Shane was afraid of wanting– him but he understood now that it was not so simple.

Shane was afraid of wanting anything.

No, not afraid.

Trained out of it.

Worn down by years of being made into something others could hide away neatly. He did not reach, because reaching meant exposing the softest part of himself. It meant giving someone the chance to put a price on it.

Or course he had not known how to ask.

His fingers found the ends of Shane’s hair, and he began to touch them lightly, rubbing the soft strands between his thumb and forefinger. Shane did not stir at first. His breathing stayed deep and slow, body heavy with the kind of sleep that looked less like rest and more like surrender.

Ilya kept touching him anyway.

It settled something in him, being allowed this. The quiet weight of Shane against his side. The warmth of him beneath the blankets. The fact that Shane had come to him in the night and stayed, that even asleep his body had tucked itself closer instead of pulling away.

His scent was there too, faint but real beneath the old patches Shane must have showered in the night before. Tea. Rain. Something clean and warm beneath it, like fresh laundry left in the sun.

Ilya had only had the full scent of him once, the night he bit the bond into place with his face against Shane’s neck and his mouth on Shane’s skin. Since then, he had gotten pieces. Small traces through fabric, through patches, through the careful distance Shane kept between them.

Now Shane was pressed against him wearing his shirt, breathing against his throat, and the scent of him seeped through enough to make Ilya’s jaw tighten.

The animal part of him liked it too much.

Because Shane had chosen him.

Because Shane had chosen his scent, his room, his bed, his arms, and the part of Ilya that was not civilized wanted to make sure the world never forgot it.

Ilya let his fingers move slowly through the ends of Shane’s hair and made himself keep the touch gentle.

After a while, Shane began to wake.

It started with his breathing. A small change against Ilya’s skin. Then the faintest tightening of fingers in his shirt. His lashes shifted against his cheek, but he did not open his eyes right away. He did not move away either. He stayed where he was, face pressed into Ilya’s neck, body tucked close as if waking had not yet given him enough strength to remember he was supposed to be careful.

Ilya waited.

When Shane finally opened his eyes, he did not say anything.

Neither did Ilya.

For a while, there was only the quiet room, Shane’s breathing, and the slow movement of Ilya’s hand through his hair. Ilya stroked once over the back of Shane’s head, then down to the nape of his neck, feeling the way Shane shivered faintly and pressed closer instead of away.

He had slept seventeen hours.

He’d barely eaten this week. He needed food. Water. Medicine, maybe.

A doctor, if he did not improve by noon.

“I get you something,” Ilya said softly, beginning to shift.

But when Shane’s hand tightened in his shirt Ilya stopped immediately.

The grip was not strong. It did not need to be.

Shane’s eyes stayed half-lowered, his face turned against Ilya’s shoulder, but his fingers held on with tired, silent refusal.

Ilya looked at that hand for a second too long.

“I am not leaving,” Ilya said.

Shane’s grip did not loosen.

Ilya lowered his hand to Shane’s hair again and smoothed it back from his temple. “Only kitchen.”

Shane did not answer. His fingers stayed locked in Ilya’s shirt, as if even that small movement away from him was too much.

Something in Ilya’s chest went tight before the worry could smother it.

He tucked the blanket higher around Shane’s shoulder, slow and careful, covering the place where the shirt had slipped down his arm. “You need to eat, котёнок,” he murmured. “I’ll come back.”

Shane’s fingers flexed once in his shirt.

“I will come back,” Ilya said again, quieter. “You stay here. Warm. I am downstairs only.”

For a moment, Shane did not move.

Then, reluctantly, his hand opened.

It was not much, only the loosening of fingers from fabric. One small surrender to reason when every line of him still looked half-asleep and too stubborn. But Ilya felt the trust of it anyway, and had to sit still for one more second before he trusted himself to move.

Shane turned his face deeper into the pillow almost immediately, burrowing into the space Ilya left behind as if he could keep the warmth there by force.

Ilya looked at him and felt the ache in his chest sharpen.

Then he bent and pressed his mouth once to Shane’s hair lightly.

“I will be quick,” he said.

Shane did not answer, but his fingers curled once in the blanket.

Ilya eased himself from the bed slowly. The space between them opened by inches, and immediately Shane turned into it, curling deeper into the warmth Ilya left behind, one hand sliding beneath the pillow, his face turned into the place Ilya’s scent was strongest.

The sight hit Ilya harder than it should have.

He stood beside the bed for a moment, looking down at the omega swallowed by his blankets, wearing his shirt, tucked into his scent and still exhausted enough not to pretend he was fine.

Something in Ilya’s mind went possessive at the side of it.

Ilya had to forced himself to leave before he climbed back into bed and let the whole world burn without him.

Chapter End Notes

I underestimated the fucking word count again. My bad guys, we torment the guy in the basement next next chapter

Chapter 43

Chapter Summary

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

Ilya was still in the kitchen when he heard the stairs.

He stilled for half a second with one hand on the pan handle, listening.

The steps were slow. Bare feet against wood, then a pause near the bottom as if Shane had stopped to decide whether he had enough strength to keep going. Ilya did not turn immediately. He kept the heat low, moved the eggs once across the pan, and let Shane have the last few seconds of pretending he had not been noticed.

Then the soft drag of fabric reached the edge of the kitchen.

Ilya looked over.

Shane stood near the entrance wrapped in Ilya’s comforter, the whole thing gathered around his shoulders and clutched closed at his chest like he had pulled half the bed downstairs with him. His hair was sleep-mussed, his face pale and soft with exhaustion, and Ilya’s shirt was just visible beneath the blanket where it hung too large at his throat.

Ilya’s gaze moved over him, and something possessive in him settled, quiet and satisfied. Shane was covered in him: his shirt, his blanket, his scent, even Ilya’s mark on his neck was visible above the collar.

“Still tired?” he asked. “Go up. I bring food.”

Shane blinked at him once.

Then he came forward.

Slowly, as if every step required consideration. He crossed the kitchen without looking at anything for too long and stopped at the island, still holding the comforter around himself with one hand. He did not ask when the food would be ready. He did not ask what Ilya was making. He only climbed into the chair with slow, careful movements, folded one arm on the counter, and tucked his face into the crook of his elbow to wait.

Ilya looked at him for one second too long.

Then he turned back to the stove.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “You stay.”

Shane did not answer.

Ilya finished the eggs and toast without rushing. He set the plate down in front of him with a glass of water and a small bowl of fruit beside it, then rested his hand on the edge of the island.
Shane did not lift his head right away. He stayed folded over the counter, one hand still clenched in the comforter, breathing slowly against his arm.

“Eat,” Ilya said, quiet enough not to make it sound like an order.

After a few seconds, Shane unfolded himself.

Not all the way. Only enough to look at the plate.

Eggs, toast cut into neat strips, fruit separated so nothing was touching.

Shane looked at it for a long moment, then shifted the comforter tighter around himself and picked up a piece of toast with one hand.

Ilya did not comment.

He made his own plate, poured coffee he barely wanted, and sat beside Shane instead of across from him. Shane’s eyes stayed down. He took another bite, slow enough that Ilya had to make himself not tell him again. Though the impulse sat sharp behind his teeth, all instinct and worry, but Shane had eaten because he chose to. Ilya would not turn that choice into pressure if he could help it.

So Ilya reached out and set his hand carefully between Shane’s shoulders.

Shane went still beneath the touch.

Ilya waited, keeping his hand there but not moving it, giving Shane time to decide whether he could bear it.

After a moment, Shane took another bite.

Only then did Ilya let his palm move.

Ilya began to rub his back in slow, steady passes, careful at first, then a little firmer when Shane did not pull away. Shane took another bite after that. Then another. Not much, but more than before, enough that Ilya felt the tightness in his own chest ease slightly.

He ate with one hand and kept the other on Shane’s back.

Neither of them spoke.

Shane did not lean into it exactly, but after a minute his shoulders lowered by a fraction. He took another bite of egg. Then half a strip of toast. Then another, slower, while Ilya kept touching him like it was nothing, like he had all the time in the world to sit at a kitchen island and coax food into his half-asleep husband,,one careful bite at a time.

By the time Shane finished most of the plate, color had come back faintly beneath his skin.

Not much, but enough that Ilya could breathe a little easier.

When Shane finally finished, he set the fork down very carefully.

For a moment, Shane only sat there, then his fingers tightened in the comforter, pulling it closer around himself.

“I’m not sick,” he said quietly.

Ilya looked at him.

Shane was staring at the edge of his plate, mouth pressed together, his grip tightening once more in the comforter.

“Not exactly, anyway.”

Ilya did not move his hand from Shane’s back.

He only watched him, careful and silent, while Shane stared at the empty plate and began to explain.

Chapter End Notes

Is anybody still a little confused on Shane’s condition and how ilyas pheromones was affecting it? I can post a lil something explaining it clearly if Yall want,

Chapter 44

Chapter Summary

Was gunna wait to post this tomorrow buuuut
I’m on vacation, I’m in a good mood. I love you guys, and I actually love this chapter and the next, I have written out and completed the next chapter, which is the Ilya torture scene, but I will be holding on posting it til tomorrow night.

A big thank you to my beta reader, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

This is the same day as ch 43, but after Ilya and Shane have had their conversation and Shane has explained his condition in full to Ilya

Here is a link to a tumbler page I made for this fic explaining Shane's condition

Hayden knew something was wrong before the door opened.

The house was always quiet these days, guarded enough that Hayden barely noticed it anymore. That was just the estate now, he had learned the rhythm of it a long time ago.

This was not that.

What was new was the delay between his knock and the sound of movement on the other side, the soft drag of bare feet against the floor, the pause before the lock turned.

Shane opened the door.

For a second, Hayden forgot what he had come to say, because Shane looked wrecked.

He stood on the other side looking like he had slept for a year and woken up worse for it. His hair mussed, his face pale and quiet, and there was something about the blankness in his expression that made Hayden’s prepared greeting die before it got properly started.

“Hey, buddy,” Hayden said anyway, softer than he meant to. “How are you feeling?”

Shane looked at him.

For one second, Hayden thought Shane had not understood the question.

Then Shane said, “Did you know?”

Hayden went still.

Shane’s face did not change. That was the worst part. No anger. No accusation sharp enough for Hayden to defend himself against. Only that tired, empty look, like some part of him had already stepped back and was watching Hayden from very far away.

“That they knew about me,” Shane said. “That I’ve been a walking target for months. Did you know?”

Hayden’s throat tightened.

“Shane…”

Shane looked at him like the sound of his name had answered enough.

The door opened wider before he could find the rest of the sentence.

Ilya stood behind Shane, close enough that Hayden had the very sudden, very uncomfortable understanding that he had not been alone with Shane at all. He only stood at Shane’s back, broad and calm and watching Hayden with an expression that took in everything at once: Hayden’s face, his posture, the hour, the reason he was there.

Then his eyes narrowed faintly.

“Pike,” Ilya said.

It should have made Ilya sharper. Colder. Maybe it did, somewhere beneath the surface. But what Hayden saw next was not the blond alpha from last night.

This Ilya only looked down at Shane, and his voice changed so completely that Hayden might have laughed if the whole thing had not been so deeply unnerving. “I need to go for little while.”

Shane’s gaze shifted toward him, slow with exhaustion.

Ilya reached for the hem of his own sweater and pulled it over his head in one smooth motion. Hayden’s eyebrows went up before he could stop them.

Ilya did not even glance at him.

He held the sweater open in front of Shane and lifted two fingers, a small, silent gesture.

Shane raised his arms without hesitation,

That was the part that made Hayden’s stomach dip strangely, because Shane did not even pause.

Ilya stepped close and drew the sweater over Shane’s head and settled it carefully around his shoulders, tugging the fabric down until it covered him properly, careful enough that Hayden felt suddenly like he was intruding on something private.

The sweater swallowed him of course. Everything about Ilya was built larger than necessary, and Shane stood there inside the dark knit looking too tired to be embarrassed by it.

“I am not far,” Ilya said, low enough that the words seemed meant only for Shane. “On compound only.”

Shane looked up at him. “Are you going to see the guy from yesterday?”

Hayden’s eyes flicked to Ilya.

Ilya did not hesitate.

“Yes.”

Shane’s face didn’t change, but his fingers tightened once in the sleeves of the sweater.

Ilya saw and caught Shane’s wrists gently, rubbing his thumbs over the thin skin there before sliding his hands up to the sides of Shane’s neck drawing one knuckle lightly along the side of Shane’s throat. Scenting him, Hayden realized.

And Shane let him.

“But you do not worry,” Ilya said. “He is here. I am here. You text me, I come back. Yes?”

Shane’s gaze stayed lowered for a moment.

Then he nodded.

Ilya lifted a hand and smoothed Shane’s hair back from his forehead. The motion was brief, almost absent, except there was nothing absent about the way Shane’s shoulders loosened beneath it.

Hayden stared.

He couldn’t help it.

He could not seem to reconcile the two versions of Ilya Rozanov in his head: the man in the basement yesterday, calm as a priest giving instructions on how he wanted the room prepared for violence, and the man here, touching Shane’s hair like some picture-perfect alpha from a bonding clinic brochure.

Except he was.

That was the part Hayden couldn’t quite fit into his head.

Ilya gave him a sideways glance over Shane’s shoulder, and Hayden had the immediate, unpleasant sense that every thought had been visible on his face.

Ilya bent and pressed his mouth to Shane’s forehead. Shane let him.

Hayden looked away a second too late.

Ilya’s gaze cut sideways to him, sharp enough to make Hayden’s jaw lock.

Then Ilya looked back down at Shane and stroked his hair once more. “Do you want Pike to stay with you?”

Shane turned his eyes toward Hayden. The look was not angry, though Hayden almost wished it had been.

It was tired. Disappointed in a way Hayden had never seen directed at him before.

“No,” Shane said.

Hayden’s chest tightened.

Ilya’s expression did not change. “Okay,” he said.

He kissed Shane’s forehead one last time, lingered there for half a breath, then stepped back. Shane retreated into the house without another word, and Ilya pulled the door closed behind him with a soft click.

Then Ilya turned and started down the path, leaving Hayden to follow.

They were halfway to the main compound before Hayden found his voice. “You told him?”

Ilya did not look at him. “No.”

Hayden frowned. “Then what the hell was that?”

“He figured it out.”

Hayden’s jaw tightened. “You shouldn’t have told him.”

“Why? Because lying to him is easier for you?”

Hayden’s mouth went dry.

Ilya glanced at him then, and there was nothing soft left in his face now. “He is not stupid.”

“I didn’t say he was.”

“You did not have to.”

Hayden stopped walking for half a second, then forced himself to catch up. “That information was contained for a reason.”

Ilya’s lip curled.

Hayden hated how much that small expression managed to say.

“Unlike you, I do not need to keep him ignorant in order to keep him safe.”

Hayden’s temper sparked. “You think dumping that on him helps? You think making him aware of every threat, every detail, every ugly thing happening around him is better? That is not what’s best for Shane.”

Ilya stopped at the top of the stairs, one hand resting lightly on the banister, and turned his head enough to look at Hayden over his shoulder.

“Careful,” Ilya said.

Hayden’s jaw tightened. “You think I don’t care about him?”

“I think you care very much.”

Ok That was worse, somehow.

“He is my friend.”

“Yes.” Ilya turned fully then, his face calm in the way Hayden was beginning to understand meant nothing good. “And yet, your loyalty is still to Yuna.”

Hayden felt the words hit and hated him for being right.

“That is difference between me and you, Pike. You are Shane’s friend.” Ilya stepped close enough to make the air change between them. “I am his husband.”

His mouth tightened, not quite a smile. “My loyalty is to him.”

Hayden swallowed.

For a moment, he had no answer.

Then Ilya turned and continued down the hall, leaving Hayden to follow.

Which, after one hard breath, he did.

Chapter 45

Chapter Summary

A big thank you to my beta reader, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

This chapter contains non-graphic depictions of torture 🥰

Hayden had been in the lower rooms before.

Not often, and not by choice. But often enough to know the difference between an interrogation and whatever this was about to become.

The basement beneath the eastern wing did not look like a basement. That was part of what made it so off-putting. The floors were clean concrete. The lights were bright. The walls had been soundproofed and painted a soft, forgettable grey that made the whole room feel less like a place built for violence and more like a place built by people who had decided violence should be easy to clean up afterward.

Daniel was tied to a chair in the center of it.

He was older than Hayden expected. Early thirties, maybe. Dark hair plastered damply to his forehead, face gone grey around the mouth. There was a bruise high on one cheek where someone had hit him hard enough to make him stop pretending he was only a photographer.

The camera sat on a metal table near the wall.

Ilya looked at it first.

Not at Daniel.

That seemed to frighten Daniel more.

For a second, the man only stared at the doorway. Then his eyes landed properly on Ilya, and all the color that had been left in his face drained out at once.

“No,” he gasped. “No. Fuck, no.”

Ilya stepped into the room.

Daniel lurched back so violently the chair legs scraped against the floor. The whole thing tipped, hit concrete with a hard crack, and Daniel went with it. Still tied down, still trying to drag himself backward with one shoulder and one heel, like distance could save him now.

“What the fuck is that doing here?” Daniel’s voice broke around the words.

Ilya stopped beside the fallen chair and looked down at him.

Then he took a cigarette from the case in his pocket.

No rush. No visible temper. Only the small silver click of the lighter opening, the brief flare of flame, the first slow drag while Daniel panted on the floor at his feet.

Ilya exhaled smoke toward the ceiling and nodded once to the men standing near the wall.

They righted the chair without comment.

Daniel thrashed when they lifted him, panic making him ugly with it, but the men had him upright and locked in place again within seconds. One of them adjusted the restraint at his wrist. The other stepped back to his place by the wall.

Hayden stayed near the door.

Far enough to watch.

Not far enough to pretend he was not part of it.

Daniel’s eyes kept darting from Ilya to Hayden and back again. “Okay,” he said, breathless now, trying to gather himself around a different kind of fear. “Okay, listen. We heard about the alliance. I get it. Hollander money. Russian muscle. Fine. Whatever they’re paying you, I can get you double.”

Ilya stared at him.

Daniel swallowed.

“Triple,” he said quickly. “I know people. I can—”

“I am not paid to be here,” Ilya said.

Daniel’s mouth stayed open for half a second.

Ilya took another drag of the cigarette. “You do not know?”

Daniel’s eyes flicked toward Hayden.

Hayden said nothing.

Ilya smiled.

It was not a kind expression. It barely deserved to be called a smile at all.

“Shane Hollander is my husband.”

The room went very still.

Daniel understood quickly. Hayden saw the exact moment of it, the way his breathing shortened, the way his gaze dropped without meaning to, toward Ilya’s hand, the ring there, the careful violence in the quiet around him.

“No,” Daniel whispered.

“Yes,” Ilya said. “This is what I think also, when I see you with camera.”

Daniel licked his lips. “We didn’t know he was yours.”

Ilya’s smile widened by almost nothing.

Hayden felt his stomach tighten.

“Daniel,” Ilya said gently. “That is terrible answer.”

Daniel shook his head. “No, I mean— I mean, we were told he was Hollander’s kid. That’s all. We didn’t know—”

“That he was mated to me?”

Daniel flinched.

Ilya moved then, finally, crossing to the metal table where the camera sat. Beside it was a folder, thin and black. He opened it one-handed and drew out a single printed photograph.

Hayden could not see it clearly from where he stood.

He did not need to.

Ilya held it up between two fingers.

“You wanted picture,” he said. “Here. I bring you one.”

Daniel stared at it like it might bite him.

Ilya turned the photograph toward him.

“Do you see my omega?”

Daniel’s breathing turned shallow.

Ilya looked down at the image, and for the first time since entering the room, something moved beneath the surface of his face. Not softness. Not here. Something colder than that, and much more dangerous.

“Very pretty,” he said. “Very off limits.”

Daniel closed his eyes.

Ilya dropped the photograph back onto the table.

“Why were you taking pictures of my omega?”

“I told you,” Daniel said. “We didn’t know he was—”

Ilya looked at him for a moment, almost patiently.

Then made a small sound under his breath, almost disappointed.

The way he sighed made the rest of the sentence die in Daniel’s mouth.

“No,” Ilya continued. “I ask why. You answer who you thought he belonged to. Different question.”

Daniel’s throat worked.

“I don’t know anything.”

Ilya’s eyebrows lifted.

“That is also terrible answer.”

“I swear to God.”

“Do not bring God here,” Ilya said. “He will not enjoy it.”

One of the men by the wall moved.

Only then did Hayden notice the machine.

It had been covered by a cloth when they came in. The man pulled the cloth away, and Daniel made a sound so small and animal that Hayden looked at him before he could stop himself.

A commercial meat slicer sat on the metal cart.

Clean. Silver. Absurdly ordinary.

The kind of thing Hayden had seen in delis. Grocery stores. Places with numbered tickets and old women ordering ham by the pound.

Here, under the white basement lights, it looked obscene.

Daniel began to shake his head.

“No,” he said. “No, no, no. Fuck. Please. Please, I don’t—”

Ilya turned toward him with the cigarette still between his fingers. “You are already begging? We only brought out machine.”

Daniel’s breath hitched.

Hayden’s skin crawled.

The sight of the machine pulled Hayden back to the day before.

Ilya standing in this same room, cigarette between his fingers, looking at the empty metal table like he was deciding where a vase should go.

“Bring one down,” he had said.

Hayden had looked at him. “One what?”

Ilya’s gaze had moved to him then, pale and calm and almost bored.

“A slicer.”

For a second, Hayden had thought he had misunderstood him.

Then one of the Russians by the wall had smiled like he had not.

There were names people used for Ilya Rozanov. Names Hayden had heard in passing and filed away with the rest of the ugly things he had never planned to repeat in front of Shane.

Hayden had looked at him then, at the cigarette burning lazily between his fingers, at the quiet satisfaction in his face as if the room had finally been arranged correctly.

“Is that why they call you the Butcher?”

Ilya shrugged as he took a slow drag from the cigarette, smoke curling soft around his mouth.

“People call me lots of things.”

Ilya crouched in front of Daniel.

The movement was slow. Almost polite. He rested one forearm on his knee and looked into Daniel’s face like they were having a private conversation at a dinner table instead of in a room Daniel was never leaving whole.

“Tell me what you know,” Ilya said.

“I don’t know anything.”

Ilya sighed.

Then he stood.

Hayden did not look away fast enough.

The men moved Daniel’s chair closer to the cart. Daniel fought them wildly now, all the bargaining gone, his voice breaking into curses and prayers and half-formed offers of money no one in the room needed. One of the men bent, unlaced Daniel’s shoe, and pulled it off. The sock followed. Only then did Daniel understand the angle of the chair, the height of the cart.

Daniel saw where his foot was being positioned and began to struggle harder.

Ilya did not raise his voice once. He only gave quiet instructions in Russian, smoked his cigarette down to the filter, and waited until Daniel was secured again.

Then the machine turned on.

The sound was not loud.

That made it worse.

Daniel went white.

Ilya leaned close enough that Daniel could hear him over it. “Last chance before we begin properly. Who sent you?”

Daniel squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know.”

Ilya shook his head.

“That is not true, Daniel.”

The first scream made Hayden’s teeth clench.

He looked at the wall.

Just the wall.

Grey paint. Clean surface. A hairline crack near the corner of the ceiling.

Daniel sobbed hard enough to choke on it.

The machine turned off.

Silence rushed in after.

Ilya’s voice followed, light and almost bored. “Daniel, you are being very dramatic. We have barely started.”

Daniel made a wet, broken sound.

“I heard these things grow back,” Ilya said. “No? Maybe only lizards. I confuse sometimes.”

One of the men near the cart snorted before remembering himself.

Ilya looked over.

The room went silent again.

Then Ilya turned back to Daniel.

“Next time you lie, I do three passes,” he said. “Then we have bigger problem. I do not think they reattach slices in hospital here. They do not in Russia, but maybe American doctors are more optimistic.”

Daniel was crying openly now.

Hayden had seen men cry in rooms like this before. He had never liked it. He liked it less when Ilya watched without a flicker of satisfaction on his face, as if the tears were only a sound Daniel was making while delaying the work.

“Who sent you?” Ilya asked again.

Daniel broke on the third question.

Not completely. Not cleanly. He tried to give pieces first, names without structure, routes without dates, the kind of partial truth men gave when they still thought they could keep something useful for later. Ilya let him try. He asked calmly. Corrected him when he contradicted himself. Smoked another cigarette down to ash while Daniel sweated through his shirt and shook against the restraints.

Eventually, the pieces made a shape.

The Italians had not known everything.

That was the first useful thing.

They knew Shane existed. They knew he had been kept hidden. They knew the alliance had moved the Russians into the Hollander estate, but not what that meant until recently. They had a campus schedule, partial security notes, and two photographs before Daniel had been sent for more. Someone inside the university administration had been paid for access. Someone else had fed them class times.

Not Yuna’s estate.

Not yet.

Just campus.

Ilya’s face did not change as Daniel spoke.

That frightened Hayden more than anger would have.

When Daniel was finished, he sagged in the chair, panting, tears streaking clean lines down his dirty face.

“That’s all,” he whispered. “That’s all. Please. Please, just kill me.”

Ilya studied him for a moment.

Then he smiled again.

“Oh, Daniel.”

Daniel’s face crumpled.

Ilya turned and reached for the folder on the table. Not the thin black one with Shane’s photograph. Another one. Thicker. He opened it and flipped through the pages with the same detached attention he might have given a menu.

“You know, I looked into you.”

Daniel went still.

Hayden’s eyes moved to Ilya.

Ilya tapped ash into a tray. “Would you believe what I find?”

Daniel did not answer.

“No?” Ilya glanced up. “I find Jessica.”

Daniel’s breathing changed.

Ilya saw it, of course.

“A wife,” Ilya said. “Former wife, I think. Very lucky woman to survive marriage to you.”

Daniel began to shake his head again. “No. That’s not—”

“Fractured skull,” Ilya said, reading from the page. “Broken arm. Three cracked ribs. Many bruises. Hospital records are very detailed. I like this. Makes job easier.”

Hayden looked down.

He did not like Daniel. He did not care what happened to Daniel, not really.

But there was something deeply wrong about hearing Ilya say those words in that soft, conversational voice, as if he had found the exact place where cruelty could dress itself up as justice and enjoy the fit.

Daniel was crying harder now.

Ilya closed the folder.

“Do not cry like this,” he said. “It is ugly.”

Daniel sobbed.

Ilya crouched in front of him again.

“You were always going to die badly, Daniel. This is not new information. I only needed to know how far up your leg we go before truth comes out.” He tilted his head, considering him. “Not very far, as it happens. Disappointing.”

“Please,” Daniel whispered.

“No,” Ilya said.

The word was quiet.

Final.

“I will not let you die from this. Do not worry.” Ilya patted his cheek once, almost gently, and Daniel flinched like he had been struck. “I keep you alive. Very alive. Then we discuss Jessica.”

Hayden’s stomach turned.

Ilya stood and looked toward the men by the wall. “Patch him enough that he does not bleed out. Then bring him back.”

Daniel started begging again.

Ilya did not look at him.

He turned toward Hayden instead and walked for the door, calm as ever, cigarette smoke trailing behind him like a ghost of the room.

Hayden followed because there was nothing else to do.

In the hall outside, the air felt colder.

Cleaner.

For a few steps, neither of them spoke.

Then Hayden said, “Jesus Christ.”

Ilya glanced at him.

Hayden did not know what he expected to see there. Shame, maybe. Or pleasure. Some sign that the man who had held Shane like he was breakable and the man who had just stood in that room were difficult for Ilya himself to reconcile.

There was nothing.

Only a cool, practical irritation, as if Hayden had commented on the weather badly.

“What?” Ilya asked.

Hayden stared at him.

Ilya’s mouth curved, sharp and humorless.

“You are surprised, Pike?”

Hayden did not answer.

Ilya looked back toward the closed door.

“The man took pictures of my husband,” he said. “And before that, he put four women in hospital. I am very comfortable with my choices.”

Then he started walking again.

Hayden followed him down the hall, and for the first time in years, he wondered if maybe Yuna Hollander had not brought a wolf into the house.

Maybe she had only pointed one toward the door and hoped it would keep its teeth facing outward.

Chapter End Notes

What did we think?

Chapter 46

Chapter Summary

A big thank you to my beta reader, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

This chap accidentally got deleted and had to start from scraaaaaatch. I was big upset about it. That’s why I took so long, sorry 🥲

ALSO Hayden is not disturbed by what Ilya did, he’s disturbed that Ilya is so different when Shane’s not around that it’s almost like he has two personalities, one that’s a psychopath (but I gave him a moral code and he’s hot so it’s fine) and the other one that’s like a picture perfect alpha with Shane. Freaks him out a bit, especially since he feels protective of Shane too,

does he have a crush on Shane? Doesn’t every Hayden? Has Ilya clocked this already? From a mile away.
That’s why they don’t like each other 😂

Ilya reached the turn that would have taken him toward Yuna’s office and went the other way.

Hayden followed on instinct, confused for two steps before slowing to a stop when he realized Ilya was not heading toward her office at all. “Where are you going?”

Ilya did not slow down. “You talk to Yuna.”

“Are you serious?”

Ilya glanced over his shoulder.

Hayden pressed his lips together.

“Relay the information,” Ilya said, his voice calm like his mind was already elsewhere. “Give her names. I send details when I have them.”

“Rozanov—”

But Ilya kept walking.

Behind him, Hayden swore under his breath.

Ilya did not care.

————-

Ilya did not go inside right away.

He stood beneath the narrow overhang outside the house with a cigarette between his fingers and rain ticking softly against the stone beyond the porch. The night had gone cold, not Russia cold, but enough that the air cut cleanly through the thin cotton of his shirt and chilled the damp ends of his hair.

He should’ve cleaned up before coming back.

He knew this.

There’d been a sink downstairs, towels, a change of shirt, if he had wanted one badly enough to ask. But he hadn’t, because by the time he was finished the only thing he wanted was to get back to Shane.

That had been the whole shape of it.

Still, he couldn’t quite make himself go in yet.

It had been a very long time since he’d felt anything close to hesitation, not because of what he had done in the basement. There was no regret in that. Someone had come for Shane, so the alpha had handled it. End of story.

But whatever happened after that belonged to Ilya, and he would carry it without asking Shane to look at it.

He knew Shane did not like the gore of it, the blood and death and ugly business of what men like Ilya did when family matters turned violent. Shane understood it existed, but that didn’t mean Ilya needed to drag the worst of it across the threshold.

So that’s why he was standing outside their house instead of personally relaying everything they’d learned to Yuna.

Because Shane was here, and Ilya had been gone too long, and after hours spent with the living proof that the Italians had seen Shane clearly enough to calculate his value and make plans around him—the need to return to his omega had dragged Ilya back before he had even properly cleaned the evidence from his hands.

He’d thought Shane would be asleep by now.

He had thought the blankets and clothes would be enough to keep the omega settled enough to sleep for a few hours until Ilya came back.

Only, Shane had not slept.

Ilya could tell, not just from the faint shift of movement somewhere inside the house, but in the part of him that had spent the last month learning the shape of Shane’s restless footsteps through walls.

So he stayed beneath the overhang and smoked. Or tried to.

The cigarette burned low between his fingers. He had not taken more than two pulls from it. Mostly, he held it because it gave his hand something to do that was not reaching for the door and risk bringing this version of himself inside.

He could stand here a little longer, wait for Shane to go back to bed, let the house settle, let the omega sleep without opening the door to find Ilya standing there covered in another man’s blood.

He did not want to be far from him.

But he also did not want Shane to see him like this.

So, Ilya stayed where he was, just close enough to guard the door and far enough not to taint Shane with the blood on his hands.

For a while, he just watched the rain.

Then, because there was nothing else to do with the quiet, he thought of his conversation with Shane that Pike had interrupted.

Chapter End Notes

This chap was gunna be longer but it’s been a few days already and I’m still re writing the convo and I wanted you guys to at least have SOMETHING. sorry if it was rough, I’ll fix any awkward spacing and punctuation stuff later.

Next chap is a flash back to the conversation Shane was having with Ilya before Hayden came to get Ilya so he could torture the creep in the basement.

Chapter 47

Chapter Summary

IM BACK!! Im back, sorry about going awal for a bit, but im back now and GOOD NEWS!!!!

I HAVE AN AMAZING PERFECT WONDERFUL AND TALENTED BETA NOWWW!!!!!

So everyone please say thank you and give a warm welcome to jebeno22.

Without whom this chapter would have taken another two or three weeks probably. 😬🫪

Chapter Notes

This chapter is a flash back/continuation of the convo that was cut off by Hayden’s knocking in chapter 43, everything in italics is a flash back and everything not in italics is present time.

Ilya stayed where he was, just close enough to guard the door and far enough not to taint Shane with the blood on his hands.

For a while, he just watched the rain.

Then because there was nothing else to do with the quiet, he thought of his conversation with Shane that Pike had interrupted.

___________

Ilya watched him carefully.

For one terrible moment, the word ‘sick’ sat in the kitchen between them with all the weight it had been carrying in Ilya’s mind for weeks.

But any relief Ilya might have felt at Shane finally talking to him was dragged under by the words ‘not exactly.’

The omega's fingers tightened on Ilyas’ comforter around his shoulders he dragged his eyes to Ilyas' face.

Ilya nodded once, keeping the steady rhythm of his hand on Shane’s back, careful not to make the movement feel like a demand. “Then what is it?”

Shane’s mouth pressed together. 

For a moment, Ilya thought he might retreat into silence again. But then Shane looked down at the plate in front of him and continued.

“My heats were really bad when I was younger,” he said. “Like, medically dangerous bad. Migraines, fevers, vomiting, dehydration, severe cramping, then hormone crashes after it passed.” His voice stayed careful and flat, each symptom placed down like an item in a report. “So they put me on suppressants early.”

Ilya’s hand stopped moving.

When Shane’s eyes flicked toward it, then away again, Ilya made himself start once more. Slow and steady over the comforter on Shane’s back.

“You take medicine for this,” he said.

“Yes.”

“For years?”

“Yes.”

The answer was so simple it made something in Ilya’s chest go cold. Shane had a condition serious enough to require medication for years, and Ilya had not known. Ilya was supposed to be protecting him. 

He had slept down the hall from him, had eaten with him, had followed him through campus and learned the things he could and could not stand touching on a plate, the brands he preferred, what movies he liked, he even knew his fucking blood type.

And still, he had not known this.

“How early?”

Shane sighed and rubbed both hands over his face. “I don’t know exactly. Around eleven? Twelve? I was really young.”

Ilya stared at him, but this time he couldn’t seem to make his hand move again.

For a second, all he could see was the photograph he had noticed once in the main house of a younger Shane. He was standing stiffly beside David, expression already too careful for a child, and Ilya suddenly felt sick. Eleven? Twelve??

Suppressants were known to be hard on even an adult body, at least in Russia. Ilya didn’t know enough about the medicine here to judge the difference properly, but he couldn’t imagine it would have changed that much. Not enough to put a child on them and call it a solution.

Shane kept going, his fingers tightened around the comforter like he already knew what Ilya was thinking.

“They tried other things first, obviously,” Shane said. “It wasn’t like they just put me on the strongest medication immediately. But nothing worked”

His fingers worried the edge of the comforter.

“They said if one of my parents had been an alpha, it might’ve been easier. That sometimes a parent’s pheromones can help regulate this kind of thing when you’re young, at least enough so your body isn’t trying to do everything by itself. But they’re both betas…”

Ilya stayed quiet, but nodded.

“So they tried introducing me to alphas who might help,” Shane said. “Friends’ kids. Some of my mother’s men’s kids, people they already trusted.” His mouth tightened faintly. “Someone who could maybe double as a bodyguard eventually, if I could tolerate them enough.”

Ilya’s gaze sharpened slightly.

“But I couldn’t stand the smell of any of them,” Shane said. “Anyone who wasn’t beta made it worse. That’s how—”

“Pike,” Ilya said.

Shane glanced at him, then looked away again. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s how I met Hayden.”

The silence after that felt heavy in a way Ilya didn’t like as Shane drew the comforter closer around his shoulders. 

“By sixteen,” his eyes flicked toward Ilya before dropping again, unable to quite reach his face this time, “it was either stronger suppressants or a hysterectomy.”

Ilya’s free hand clenched against his knee. “Shane.”

But Shane didn’t stop explaining, like he wasn’t yet ready to hear whatever Ilya might have to say about that part.

“It was controlled, mostly,” he said.

What the fuck did “mostly” mean?? 

“The medication worked for years. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.” Shane sighed.

“But about a month ago my doctor told me that the medication isn’t strong enough anymore; it still works. But…” His mouth tightened, searching for the right shape of an explanation. “It’s being outpaced.”

“By what?”

For a second, he only looked down at his lap, brow drawing together like he was trying to make the word less humiliating before he said it.

Then, barely, “You.”

Ilya did not move.

The word landed with such clean precision that, for a second, there was nothing else, not the rain beginning softly against the windows, not the low hum of the refrigerator or the food cooling untouched between them.

Only Shane, pale and exhausted beneath Ilya’s hand, telling him that his body had become part of the problem.

“The doctor said my body is responding very strongly to the bond– to you.” He did his best to keep his voice even, though a faint embarrassed flush moved up his neck, “Not emotionally, or, not only emotionally, but biologically.”

Ilya said nothing.

He was not sure he trusted himself to.

“Before you, the medication worked because there wasn’t anything else interfering with it,” Shane said. “But the bond changed the conditions.”

His mouth tightened faintly. “My body has a new reference point now.”

Ilya’s jaw clenched once. “Me,” he said.

Shane nodded “Yes,” then he looked up, like he’d needed the word out of his mouth before he could bear seeing what it did to Ilya’s face.

The information moved through Ilya slowly, then, all at once, things began to click into place.

At first, it was only the practical shape of it. The medication, the migraines, the sleep, then he thought about the other things that had stood out to him, the nesting. The scent patches. 

Ilya’s gaze dropped briefly to the side of Shane’s throat.

Shane wore expensive patches. Not drugstore blockers, not the thin kind most omegas used when they wanted privacy in public. These were the kind made to hold through heat spikes, and stress, the kind that should’ve kept even a room full of alphas from knowing an omega was there.

But Ilya could pick up traces of Shane all the time. 

In the house, the car, after showers, through clean clothes and the fresh patches pressed carefully over scent points every day

Even now, wrapped in a comforter drenched in the alpha's scent and sitting beside him at the kitchen island, Shane’s scent of tea and rain-wet stone still reached him.

Soft, but there beneath the chemical bite of blockers that should’ve worked better than they did.

Then the second understanding came colder.

Ilya had heard of omegas like this, he’d never met one, but he’d heard of them.

Men talked about them in the back rooms of clubs, at family dinners after too much liquor and around tables where every terrible thing sounded ordinary because enough money had agreed to it. High-response omegas. Rare, they said. Valuable. A pretty word that never covered the way certain men’s eyes sharpened when they said it.

Stronger scent, stronger heats, stronger bonds.

Bodies that broke prettier and reacted more intensely to an alpha, too intensely. Men liked to make it sound like good fortune, but it wasn’t. 

It was a target painted beneath the skin.

Ilya looked at Shane sitting wrapped in his comforter at the kitchen island, pale and exhausted and humiliated by the mere act of explaining what his own body had been doing to him. Shane, who had been hidden so thoroughly that the entire criminal world had not known Yuna Hollander had a child at all.

No wonder.

No wonder she had buried him, no wonder the house had been built around him like a box lined in velvet and locks. Shane was not only Yuna Hollander’s son.

He was a secret powerful men would have wanted for reasons that had nothing to do with politics.

Shane’s brow pulled together. “What?”

Ilya realized too late that his expression must have changed. “Nothing.”

“That’s obviously not true.” The tiredness had not left Shane’s face, but there was something sharp beneath it now. Hurt maybe, or the old defensive edge of someone used to people deciding which truths he could survive.

Ilya looked at him for a long moment. Then, carefully, “I think, maybe I have heard of this.”

Shane’s fingers went still against the comforter. “Oh.”

“I do not mean—”

“I know what you meant.” Shane looked down at the plate again. “People are weird about it.”

Ilya said nothing for a moment.

He could smell the embarrassment and discomfort in Shane’s scent before his shoulders drew inward beneath the comforter.

“Shane,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you sooner.” Shane said.

“Nyet, do not be sorry.”

“I just didn’t know how to bring it up.” His face flushed again, lower this time, spreading beneath the exhausted pallor. “It’s not exactly casual dinner conversation.”

“No.”

“And then things kept happening, and you are very—” Shane stopped.

Ilya waited.

Shane looked irritated with himself now. “You.”

A small breath left Ilya, not quite a laugh. Shane's eyes dropped to his mouth and glared weakly. “Do not be amused.”

“I am trying.”

“You’re failing.”

“A little.” 

That earned him the smallest look. Not a smile. Not yet. But something less broken than what had been there before.

Ilya counted it as mercy. This was not the time to be amused by him, but Shane’s irritation always seemed to reach for something gentle in him.

Shane’s shoulders slumped after another second, the small thread of humor draining out of him almost as quickly as it had come. He looked suddenly younger with the comforter dragged around him, hair mussed from bed and face stripped bare by exhaustion.

“I’m sorry I avoided you, I thought…” He rubbed tiredly at one eye.  “I just knew things would change once you found out.” 

Ilya frowned slightly. 

Shane let out a quiet, humorless breath. “Which is a stupid thing to worry about, considering there are people trying to—”

“It is not stupid.”

Ilya cut him off before he could finish. He didn’t like hearing Shane reduce his own fear, and he liked even less where the sentence was going. If Shane said out loud what men might want from him besides death, Ilya might forget they still needed the Italian in the basement alive long enough to answer questions.

Shane shook his head. “I should’ve known when my dad didn’t object to the arrangement.” Then his brow pulled together as another memory of that day came back with uncomfortable clarity.

‘“My mother arranged a marriage.” Shane said flatly, 

Hayden stopped walking. “What?” Hayden looked genuinely horrified now. “Shane.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Hayden ran both hands through his hair aggressively.’

Shane’s fingers stilled against the comforter, his expression tightening with the answer he already seemed to know. “Did everyone know but me?”

Ilya held his gaze. “Yes.”

Shane’s gaze drifted back to the wall as he nodded.

“My mother does this thing,” Shane said, staring at the wall opposite him. “Where she gives me enough information to make a decision, but not enough to make it unbearable. Or maybe it’s not that calculated. I don’t know.” 

He exhaled and rubbed a tired hand over his face again. “Maybe I let her.” Shane drew the comforter tighter around himself. “That’s the worst part, I think.” Shane looked at him then, and there was something raw in his face now, something too exhausted to be polished into restraint anymore. “I know why she does it. I understand why. That’s the worst part. I always understand why.”

Ilya held his gaze.

Shane’s voice stayed quiet, but it had begun to shake at the edges. “There is always a reason. There is always a security issue, or some threat that makes everything necessary. And I know I should be grateful, because all of this was to keep me alive.”

“You are allowed to be angry.”

Shane looked away again. “Am I?”

“Yes.”

“At who?”

When Ilya couldn’t answer immediately, Shane’s mouth twisted faintly. “Exactly.”

The rain touched softly against the windows and somewhere deeper in the house, the heating clicked on. Then Shane said, “Even you don’t really belong to me.”

Ilya’s eyes moved to him, but Shane was staring at Ilya’s hands instead.

“You’re my husband,” he said carefully. “And my mate. And I know that means something to you, at least biologically or something. But at the end of the day, you work for her first.” His voice caught there a moment before he forced it steady again. “Everyone here belongs to her first, that’s just how it works.”

“No.”

Shane looked at him then, doubtful and too tired to soften it.

Ilya met the doubt without flinching. “No,” he said again, quieter. “This is not true.”

That seemed to take the edge off his certainty. Shane’s shoulders lowered by the smallest amount, his expression still guarded, but the certainty wasn’t quite as solid anymore.

“I work with your mother,” Ilya said. “I protect her interests because they are tied to yours. “I report threats,” he said. “Routes. Names. Weak points. Men who need to disappear. That is all.”

Shane frowned.

“I do not tell her when you come to my room,”

Shane’s lips parted faintly.

Ilya’s expression didnt soften. “I have never spoken to your mother of our marriage.” he said.

Shane just looked at him. Not confused. Surprised, maybe, by how badly he wanted to believe him.

“The things you tell me,” he said, leaning closer. “The things you share with me.”

Shane looked up slowly.

“Those belong to me, Shane. No one else.”

The room felt too small suddenly. Or Ilya was too close. Or Shane was too tired to hold up the last pieces of himself and pretend he did not understand what he was being handed.

His fingers tightened in the comforter.

Ilya’s gaze dropped to the movement, then returned to his face. “I have never belonged to Yuna Hollander.”

Shane’s eyes fell to Ilya’s mouth and it immediately caught the alpha’s attention.

He reached up unhurriedly, smoothing a loose strand of hair behind Shane’s ear before his fingers drifted along the line of his cheek. His hand settled at Shane’s jaw with gentle certainty and tilted his face back until Shane had no choice but to meet his gaze.

His voice a low murmur. “I belong to you, Shane." 

Before Shane could answer, three sharp knocks struck the front door, making him flinch beneath the comforter. 

Ilya turned toward the door at once. He knew before the second knock that it would be Pike.

Then the beta’s voice carried through the house.

“Shane?”

Ilya closed his eyes for half a breath.

Of course.

Shane did not move, he was still looking at Ilya, the words ‘I belong to you’ sitting between them like something alive.

Ilya wanted to touch him.

Instead, he waited.

The conversation was not over. They both knew it.

But Pike knocked again.

And this time, Shane glanced toward the door before looking back at Ilya.

They held each other’s gaze for another moment before Shane finally slipped out from beneath the comforter. He carried it to the couch, folded it with tired precision, and set it down before crossing the room to open the door.

__________

Shane opened the front door before Ilya had finished his cigarette.

Chapter End Notes

Next chap we see Shane react to Ilya covered in blood 🥰🩸

Chapter 48

Chapter Summary

HELLO. Sorry I MIA for a second there, this chapter kicked my literal ass for no reason. I’m back from vacation so I won’t be posting every day anymore. I’m so sorry. 🥲

At the most, I’ll try to update every few days but at the very least. I will update once a week.

Chapter Notes

A big thank you to my beta reader, jebeno22. 💛

When Shane opened the door, Ilya was standing at the edge of the porch light with rain-wet curls and a cigarette burning between two bloodstained fingers.

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.

Ilya watched Shane take him in, waiting for his eyes to find the blood. They went to the cigarette instead.

A faint line appeared between Shane’s brows. “You smoke.”

Of course that was the thing he noticed first.

Ilya let his gaze move over him. Shane was swallowed by the sweater Ilya had pulled over him earlier, the sleeves covering half his hands, the warmth of the house still clinging to his skin. He looked too soft to be standing outside right now. 

Ilya tilted his head a fraction. “Sometimes.”

Shane blinked once, slow with exhaustion. “That’s bad for you.”

The corner of Ilya’s mouth moved, though it never became a smile. He took another drag, eyes still on Shane. “You do not approve?”

Shane considered him, then lowered his gaze to the blood darkening Ilya’s cuff. “No.”

Ilya hummed then dropped the cigarette onto the wet stone, crushing it beneath his heel. Shane’s eyes followed the movement. There was blood on the leather of Ilya’s shoes too, thinned into narrow red streaks by the rain.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Shane’s gaze moved over him again, lingering on the blood darkening his cuff. “Are you sure?”

“Da.”

Shane’s mouth tightened slightly, his gaze settling on Ilya’s hands. “Show me.”

Ilya blinked. He had prepared himself for other questions: Whose blood? What did you do? Why did you come home like this?

Not whether any of it belonged to him. Ilya stared at him, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked whether he was hurt without really asking if he could still finish the job. 

When he didn’t answer fast enough, Shane stepped out onto the porch.

Ilya’s attention fell immediately to Shane’s bare feet against the cold stone and frowned. “—Hollander.”

“Show me,” Shane repeated, holding out his hand.

There was no uncertainty in it. Ilya let out a quiet breath and came up the remaining steps, moving fully beneath the overhang before Shane could follow him farther into the rain.

“You will get cold.” Ilya scolded weakly.

Shane ignored that and reached for his wrist, careful to keep his fingers on clean skin. They trembled once against Ilya’s skin.

Ilya held still for him, letting Shane position his hand however he needed.

Shane turned his hand palm-up beneath the porch light, then over again, checking each finger and knuckle before running his thumb carefully along the heel of Ilya’s palm. His hands were unsteady, but his touch wasn’t. The line between his brows deepened as he searched for anything the blood might be hiding.

There was nothing to find. Ilya could have told him again, but Shane needed proof more than reassurance, so he stayed quiet and let Shane check. 

The rain picked up then, whispering against the stone beyond the porch, catching the edge of the overhang and darkening the steps where the wind carried it too close. The warm light from the open doorway caught in the soft disorder of Shane’s hair, making him look even softer.

His fingers were trembling more noticeably now. A smear of blood marked the side of his thumb, but he didn’t recoil or try to wipe it away. He only turned Ilya’s other hand beneath the light and continued searching.

Ilya didn’t regret what he’d done to Daniel.

The man had taken Shane’s face and tried to turn it into currency, something that could be passed between men while they decided how best to use him. Whatever remained of Daniel when Ilya was finished would be more than he deserved.

What Ilya regretted was coming back before he’d made himself clean.

It had been stupid to rush home, he knows that.

But Shane had come to him willingly the night before, climbed into his bed and held on as though Ilya were the only solid thing left in existence. Then Ilya had been called away before he was ready to leave.

Apparently, one night of being the person Shane reached for when he was frightened had been enough to make Ilya greedy.

The thought of him waking alone had followed Ilya through every answer Daniel gave. By the end, Daniel had probably lost a few more slices than strictly necessary, simply because Ilya’s attention kept wandering back to his omega waiting at home, wrapped in Ilya’s sweater instead of Ilya.

he should’ve hanged.

Instead, he had come straight back wearing the proof that he was exactly the monster everyone had warned Shane he was.

Ilya had expected to feel Shane’s hands withdraw when he understood what he was touching.

They didn’t.

Shane ran his thumb across Ilya’s knuckles once more and frowned when he found nothing beneath the blood. There was no disgust in his face, only the same earnest concentration he gave anything he considered worth doing properly.

There was nothing absentminded about Shane’s care. Even the smallest kindness came from him with his full attention behind it.

Ilya had seen those hands straighten crooked labels and separate laundry into too many categories, watched them organize pens by color and leave the larger mug clean beside a coffee machine Shane had never once used. Now watched as they searched Ilya’s skin with that same careful attention.

The tenderness of it made his teeth ache.

when Shane finished checking both hands, Ilya closed his fingers gently around Shane’s own, slow enough to give him time to pull away. When he didn’t, Ilya turned his hands over carefully, studying the smooth skin and narrow fingers resting loosely in his hold.

The ease of it held him still for a moment, his thumbs passing slowly over the centers of Shane’s palm, quietly possessive of the softness there.

A faint scar ran along the side of one finger, pale and narrow enough that Ilya might have missed it if he had not been paying such close attention.

Ilya traced it once before turning Shane’s hands over.

His thumb swept slowly across the back of them, following the fine bones beneath the skin until it reached the wedding band and lingered there.

The ring caught softly beneath the porch light, still resting exactly where Ilya had placed it six months ago. He traced the edge once with his thumb, remembering how rigidly Shane had stood while he slid it into place.

There was no rigidity in him now.

Only Shane’s fingers resting loosely in his hold, warm and trusting beneath the slow pass of Ilya’s thumb.

Ilya lifted Shane’s hand and pressed his mouth to the silver band, the kiss slow and deliberate against the cool metal.

When he looked up, Shane’s expression had gone quiet, his eyes fixed entirely on Ilya’s face while the rain moved softly through the dark behind them.

Then, Shane’s fingers tightened around his and he pulled once, gently but with clear intent- drawing Ilya toward the open door behind him.

Ilya followed.

Chapter End Notes

Ilya felt the urge to bite Shane because he got cuteness aggression from Shanebug btw
ALSO! I deleted a chapter, but it was the Shane information chapter, and I linked it in the next chapter to the Tumblr page, I created just for this fic.

Here is a link to a tumbler page I made for this fic explaining Shane's condition

I only edited a small section of this chapter, but I’ll post the full original version on the Tumblr page I made for this fic here, so you can still read it if you’d like.

Chapter 49

Chapter Summary

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

Reading your guys’s comments feels like snorting Adderall

Sorry I’m so late but is big chapter

The moment he stepped inside, Shane’s scent closed around him, the familiar scent of wet stone, tea, and clean laundry hanging in the warm air stronger than usual. Much stronger.

When Shane released his hand and turned to shut the door, Ilya’s gaze followed the movement to the bare, freckled skin at the back of his neck.

Oh.

Shane wasn’t wearing his scent patches.

The realization made a shiver run all the way down Ilya's spine.

Once the door clicked shut, Shane turned and rested his back against it, his eyes moving over Ilya again now that he could see him properly. His attention traveling methodically from Ilya’s shirt to his hands, taking in every dark mark. Unfortunately, the warm light made the blood look worse.  

Ilya remained where he was, studying him with an attention that felt different without the patches between them. Shane’s scent was everywhere now, warm and uncovered, every shift in it impossible to ignore.

Worry lingered beneath the exhaustion, but so did relief, and so far nothing in Shane’s scent suggested fear of Ilya.

“You’re soaked,” Shane said.

Ilya glanced down at himself. Rainwater had darkened his shirt nearly to the skin, and diluted blood was beginning to gather in small pink drops on the floor beneath his cuffs.

“You need to shower or you’ll get sick.” The certainty in Shane’s voice left very little room for negotiation.

Ilya looked at him for another moment. “You are also wet.”

Color rose immediately beneath Shane’s freckles. “Because you were standing outside.”

Ilya’s mouth curved before he could stop it. The reaction was too quick and too pretty not to encourage, even if Shane’s narrowing eyes suggested he had already realized exactly why Ilya was smiling.

“Ah.” Ilya let his gaze move over him once, deliberately this time. “So this is my fault.”

“You were taking too long.” Shane pulled the damp sleeves farther over his hands, his mouth tightening as if Ilya were being deliberately difficult.

A quiet breath of amusement left Ilya. Shane’s expression didn’t change, though something in his scent softened at the sound.

“Upstairs,” Shane pushed away from the door and walked past him.

Ilya turned his head to watch Shane cross the entryway, the sweater shifting loosely around his thighs as he started toward the stairs. Shane climbed three more steps, then glanced back when Ilya didn’t follow.

There was no uncertainty in his face. No awkward awareness that he had just ordered a Bratva enforcer twice his size to take off his clothes and go upstairs.

Only faint impatience. “Are you coming?”

Ilya went.

Shane’s scent grew stronger as he followed him up the stairs, collecting warmly in the narrow space between them. Without the patches muting it, Ilya could trace every place Shane had passed through the house. It clung to the banister beneath his hand and lingered along the hallway, leading directly toward Ilya’s room.

That caught his attention.

Ilya slowed to a stop just inside the doorway. Shane had been in his room while he was gone, the neatly made bed alone confirmed it. 

Shane had climbed into his bed, found whatever comfort he had needed there, then straightened the sheets until they sat exactly the way his omega liked them.

Something warm and possessive settled through Ilya’s chest as he breathed it in again, taking in the way wet stone and tea had worked themselves into the room until it smelled less like his and more like theirs.

Then, Shane straightened ahead of him by Ilya's bathroom door and looked over at him again. His eyes paused briefly at the blood drying along Ilya’s collar before returning to his face.

“Shower,” he repeated.

“You are very authoritative tonight.”

“You’re dripping on the rug.”

Ilya looked down. Another red-tinged drop fell from his sleeve and disappeared into the dark weave. “You cannot afford new rug?” 

“Ilya.” There was a warning in it now, quiet and tired but Ilya still liked it far too much to fight the small smile it drew from him. 

He’d missed this. More importantly, each irritated answer kept Shane’s attention fixed on him and the tremor out of his hands.

Ilya found he had very little interest in behaving while it worked.

He held his hands up in exaggerated surrender, though the smile tugging at one corner of his mouth never quite disappeared. “Приношу извинения.” He muttered. (I apologize.)

Then, without the slightest hurry, he began unfastening the soaked cuff of his dress shirt at the wrist.

Shane’s gaze followed the movement automatically, lingering on the water still running over his skin before drifting lower as Ilya’s hands found the bottom of his shirt.

Ilya slowed his movements down and kept his eyes on Shane’s face as he opened the first button. Then the second.

The damp fabric peeled slowly away from his chest, clinging for a moment before falling free. Shane’s gaze settled first on the bear tattoo over Ilya’s left pectoral muscle, then traced lower over the hard lines of his chest and stomach.

The warmth blooming through Shane’s scent deepened almost immediately beneath the sharper edge of exhaustion. His pretty dark eyes stayed fixed on Ilya, tracking the slow, deliberate movement of his hands.

Shane’s face gave him almost nothing, but his scent had already betrayed him and pleasure swept low through Ilya’s stomach before he could contain it, drawing an answering warmth into his own scent.

He slipped the last button free and shrugged the soaked shirt from his shoulders, letting it slide slowly down his arms before it landed in a wet heap at his feet.

Only then did Shane seem to realize he’d been staring. His eyes lifted to Ilya’s face only to find the alpha was already looking back at him, one corner of his mouth tipped upward in a slow, knowing smile.

Color spread immediately beneath the freckles scattered across Shane’s cheeks and he turned away so abruptly it almost looked irritated.

“You can look,” Ilya said, unable to keep the amusement from his voice.

“Get in the shower.” The answer came quickly enough that Ilya almost laughed.

Shane gave him the same flat, unimpressed look he reserved for Ilya’s teasing. But the warmth lingering in his scent gave him away.

Then his gaze dropped despite himself as Ilya opened the first button of his pants.

The response was brief. Barely more than a flicker of attention over the skin exposed between his hips before Shane turned toward the bathroom and reached past him to switch on the light.

“Wash your hair too,” he said.

Ilya raised an eyebrow. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Don’t get blood on the towels.”

“How would you like me to accomplish this?”

“You don’t know how to shower?”

“I know how.” Ilya’s gaze moved over him slowly. “But you are very particular tonight. If you would like to come teach me, I promise to pay very close attention.” He smiled.

Shane flushed the prettiest color he’d seen yet, but he didn't say anything. He just stepped back from the doorway, leaving enough space for Ilya to pass. 

He took one measured step forward, close enough that Shane’s gaze dipped naturally to the bare skin in front of him before lifting again too late.

Shane didn’t move away immediately.

His uncovered scent gathered between them, rich enough now that Ilya could taste it at the back of his throat. His gaze fell once more to the bare gland beneath Shane’s jaw, where Ilya's claiming bite lay pretty against Shane’s skin.

Ilya wanted to ask why Shane had taken the patches off. More dangerously, he wanted to lower his head, drag his mouth over the bare gland and leave another mark in the soft skin of his neck. Instead, he took one measured step into the bathroom.

When he looked back, Shane was gathering the wet clothes Ilya had taken off, folding them inward so the blood wouldn’t touch anything else.

“You do not have to do that,” Ilya said.

“It’s fine.”

“Shane.”

His hands paused against the bundle for barely a second. He still didn’t look up, but his fingers tightened slightly in the wet fabric.

“I know.”

That held Ilya still. 

For weeks, Shane had found careful ways to keep distance between them.

Tonight, he gathered Ilya’s bloodied clothes against his chest without hesitation.

The change needed no explanation, Ilya knew what shane was offering. Shane didn’t look at him again, only reached for the pants in his hand and added them to the careful bundle against his chest. “I’ll put these downstairs.”

Then he turned and walked out.

The bedroom door remained open behind him.

Ilya watched the empty doorway until Shane’s footsteps disappeared down the hall.

Only then did he step beneath the water.

Every so often it ran faintly pink around his feet, more following as he tipped his head back and worked both hands through his curls, scrubbing carefully at anything the rain had failed to wash away.

It wasn’t much, most of the blood had been on his clothes anyway.

Still, Ilya cleaned himself thoroughly, unwilling to leave even the faintest trace of another man’s punishment on his skin. He wanted the room exactly as he’d found it—warm with Shane’s scent instead of someone else’s blood.

He didn’t linger beneath the spray. Shane might decide he felt well enough to sleep in his own room again after spending part of the evening in Ilya’s bed, and if he did, Ilya wanted time to make it easier for him. He could bring down a few properly scented blankets, maybe a pillow too, if Shane would take it.

The ones on his bed however, he intended to keep.

Shane’s nap still lingered warmly in the sheets, and Ilya wanted it around him when he slept.

He scrubbed until the water ran clear, then checked twice.

By the time he stepped out, steam had clouded the mirror and the warmth had worked the cold from his skin. He dried himself then tugged on a pair of well-worn pajama pants.

Even the towels carried a faint trace of Shane, not enough to suggest he’d used them– only enough for Ilya to know they’d been folded by his hands, though he would’ve been able to tell just by how neatly they were folded.

Ilya dragged one roughly over his curls and opened the bathroom door, then stopped with one hand still resting on the handle.

Shane was in his room.

Ilya had expected to find Shane downstairs, maybe. Instead, he sat on the edge of Ilya's bed, shoulders curved slightly and bare feet resting against the rug, hands clasped tightly between his knees.

His hair was still damp from what must have been a hurried shower, and he was no longer wearing Ilya’s clothes. He’d changed into one of his usual little pajama sets instead—the one with those fucking shorts that always seemed to melt Ilya’s brain.

And he was waiting for him.

The sight of his omega there again did something quiet and immediate to Ilya’s chest.

The bathroom light spilled across Shane from behind him, catching the hesitant curve of his shoulders and the soft flush of his cheeks. He looked up when the door opened and blinked once.

His gaze drifted over Ilya again, lingering for the briefest moment on his damp curls before traveling lower over the newly bared skin of his shoulders, chest, and forearms.

It looked almost involuntary, as though the unexpected sight had stolen his attention before he resumed his careful inspection, searching every newly exposed inch for injuries the blood and clothing might have been hiding.

Only when he found none did the tightness around his mouth ease. His gaze, however, remained where it was, lingering on Ilya’s body a moment longer than the inspection required, and Ilya found himself absurdly pleased by the quieter attention that had replaced Shane’s concern.

Then he noticed Shane’s hands.

The sleeves had been pulled over his fingers again, but it did little to hide the tremor moving through them where they were pressed together.

Ilya left the towel over the back of the chair and crossed the room.

Shane followed him with his eyes but didn’t move from the bed, his uncovered scent growing richer with every step Ilya took. Relief was still threaded through it, but the nervous anticipation in his gaze had sharpened now that there was nothing else left to occupy him.

Ilya stopped between his knees.

For a moment, he only looked down at him. Shane sat close enough that his breath warmed the center of Ilya’s chest, his head bent, lashes lowered and mouth pressed into a serious line. His dark eyes remained fixed somewhere near Ilya’s sternum rather than his face.

Ilya reached for one of his hands slowly, and Shane let him take it.

His fingers were cold, so Ilya drew them carefully from beneath the cuff and enclosed the narrow hand in his, passing his thumbs over Shane’s knuckles while the tremors continued against his palms.“Why are you shaking?”

Shane stared at their joined hands. “I think I’m scared.”

The answer opened something suddenly nervous beneath Ilya’s ribs. His grip remained loose, though every other part of him went very still as he searched Shane’s face for something his scent had failed to tell him downstairs. “Of me?” 

Shane’s expression changed at that. Only slightly, a small pull at the corner of his mouth, almost wounded, before he looked up. “No.”

The answer came too quickly to be reassurance offered out of kindness, Shane swallowed and tightened his fingers around Ilya’s.

“No,” he repeated quietly. “That’s the problem.”

Ilya said nothing.

“It’s not like I don’t know what you are.” Shane’s gaze moved carefully over his face, as though he were trying to find the exact shape of what he meant. “I’ve seen it a little, I think. Sometimes you get this look on your face, and it feels like I’m standing in front of a completely different person.”

Ilya knew exactly what he meant. It was usually the part of him people saw just before they learned to keep their distance.

“Tonight?” he asked.

Shane nodded once. “Before tonight too. I thought I would be horrified.” His thumb shifted restlessly against Ilya’s palm. “I think maybe I should be… but I’m not.”

Shane's mouth tightened again.“It’s fucked up, right?” He asked quietly.

“What is?”

The question came out level, though old fear had already begun to tighten beneath Ilya’s ribs. There were too many possible answers. That Shane had finally understood what kind of man he’d been given to. That their mating had only exchanged one cage for another. That he was looking at Ilya now and seeing what everyone else saw.

Shane’s fingers tightened around his wrist. “That smelling all that blood on you and knowing it probably came from the man who took my picture yesterday makes me feel safer.”

Something like hesitant hope tightened in Ilya's chest. “I would never hurt you.”

There was no regret in the words, no apology for the man he was. Only certainty about the one thing he would never do.

Shane looked down, a faint frown drawing between his brows as he gave a small shake of his head. “I know.”

His thumb moved once against the side of Ilya’s palm, tracing nothing, the answer was so quiet Ilya almost didn’t catch it.

“Even knowing everything else, I can’t make myself think of you as a bad person.” Shane looked up at him again. “Or maybe I just don’t care if you are.”

Ilya’s thumbs went still against his knuckles then.

“If hurting that man makes you a bad person, then I’m a bad person too.” Shane managed. “Because I’m glad you did it.”

For a moment, they only held each other’s gaze, Shane’s eyes as direct and painfully earnest as the confession had been.

Then Shane lifted his free hand. It hovered near Ilya’s face for the briefest second before settling against his cheek, tentative at first, as though Shane were still learning that he was allowed to reach for him. 

Ilya went perfectly still beneath the touch. When Shane didn’t pull away, his palm settled more firmly against the rough line of Ilya’s jaw, warm and certain enough that Ilya turned his face into it by the smallest degree.

“This is real, right?” Shane said.

Ilya turned his face into Shane’s hand slightly, his eyes asking the omega to say it. 

“You’re mine?”

Ilya took him in for a moment then moved before Shane could mistake the silence for hesitation, sinking down in one smooth motion. One knee found the rug beside Shane’s foot, then the other settled on the opposite side, his hands sliding behind Shane’s knees as he went. With slow, steady pressure, he drew Shane’s legs together until his bare feet rested side by side between Ilya’s knees.

Recognition flickered across Shane’s face a heartbeat later and his breath caught.

Ilya lifted his gaze from where he knelt, his expression heavy and strangely intent. There was no humiliation in it. No reluctance. Only a dark, almost relieved certainty as he leaned forward and rested his cheek against the tops of Shane’s knees, turning his head just enough to leave the vulnerable line of his nape exposed beneath the damp curls.

Shane went very still, his heart rate climbing and his breath turning shallow as a started heat gathered sharply in his scent.

“I’m yours, Shane.” His voice came out lower than he intended. “Если примешь меня — я твой,” he murmured, his breath warm against Shane’s bare knees. (If you accept me, I am yours.)

__________________________________

Shane didn’t need the words translated to understand what Ilya had offered him.

For six months, Ilya had given him every form of patience he possessed, he had waited while Shane tested every boundary and searched each kindness for its hidden cost. But there had never been one.

Shane slid his fingers into Ilya’s damp curls, smoothing them carefully back from his forehead.

He was done fighting. Not because he had stopped being afraid of what wanting could cost him, but because, for once, he wanted something enough to risk the cost.

He wanted Ilya. Not only the careful version of him, not only the man who cooked for Shane, carried his things and learned the shape of his silences.

All of him—the blood, the danger and the strange, absolute devotion that should have frightened him and instead made Shane feel safer than anything reasonable ever had.

His fingers tightened gently in Ilya’s hair. “Then you’re mine.”

Ilya’s breath left him against Shane’s knees.

“Don’t be late again,” Shane said quietly.

Ilya’s hands tightened behind Shane’s knees, though the pressure remained careful.

“I didn’t like it,” the confession so soft he felt Ilya’s reaction more than he saw it.

Ilya turned his head and pressed a slow kiss to the top of each knee. “Я обещаю.” (I promise.)

His mouth lingered there for another second before he lifted his gaze to Shane’s. “I will be good to you, Shane. I swear it.”

Shane nodded, his thumb passing once over Ilya’s temple. “I know.”

He considered that for a moment, then added, because he wanted Ilya to know it with certainty as well, “I’m yours.”

The corner of Ilya’s mouth lifted into the smallest smile as his thumb brushed slow strokes across the back of Shane’s knee, careful and almost absentminded, as though reassuring himself Shane was really there. Then he nodded and pressed another kiss to the top of one knee. “Do you want to sleep here, котёнок?”

Shane nodded, so Ilya rose slowly, his hands slipping from behind Shane’s knees as he stood, then crossed to pull back the covers. Shane moved farther onto the mattress, and Ilya switched off the light before climbing in beside him.

The bed had barely settled beneath his weight before Shane turned toward him.

He moved close without waiting to be asked, fitting himself against Ilya’s chest and tucking his face beneath the alpha’s chin. Ilya’s arms closed around him immediately, one broad hand spreading over his back while the other settled carefully at his nape. Shane’s body gradually relaxed against him, the trembling easing with each slow breath.

Ilya pressed his mouth to his omega's damp hair and held him while his breathing slowly softened into sleep.

By then, the room smelled only of them.

Chapter End Notes

HOLY SHIT. Oh my God guys we finally finished this arc, in the next chapter, there’s gonna be a small time skip and we’re going back to the fluff!!
Yay fluff!

The next few dozen chapters should be Ilya courting Shane, and then slowly getting closer. 🫣🤭🌶️

Chapter 50

Chapter Summary

It’s chapter 50 🫪 I’ve recently realized I’ve been blue balling the FUCK out of you guys sorry bout that

A round of applause for my beta reader please, jebeno22. 💛

Chapter Notes

When Ilya woke that morning, he eased himself carefully from Shane’s arms and tucked one of his old shirts against the omega’s chest before pulling the covers back into place. Shane curled around it without waking, his face settling into the worn fabric as though he recognized and sought Ilya’s scent, even in sleep.

Ilya brushed the hair back from Shane’s face for one last look at those freckles scattered across his cheeks before dressing quietly beside the bed.

It was time he spoke to Yuna.

He found her sitting behind her desk with a cup of tea cooling untouched beside one hand.

Her composure was immaculate as always. Her office, however, was not.

A chair had been overturned near the windows. Files covered the floor in uneven drifts, one of the shelves standing half empty, several books lying open where they’d struck the hardwood, a crystal paperweight shattered against the wall, tiny fragments still glittering beneath the morning light coming in through the window.

Yuna herself sat calmly. Only the tension in her jaw and the loose strands escaping her carefully pinned hair betrayed that the destruction hadn’t happened long ago.

Three photographs rested neatly in front of her despite everything else. Daniel appearing in two of them while the third showed the Italian estate on the other side of the city, its gates photographed through the windshield of an unmarked car.

Without looking up, she said, “So they know.”

Her gaze lingered on the image. 

That was the only reaction she gave, but Ilya saw the anger in the careful placement of her fingers against the desk. Shane’s existence had been kept out of the business for most of his life. His name appeared where it had to, his face almost nowhere. Even men who worked beneath Yuna had understood there were questions they weren’t permitted to ask.

Now someone had put a camera on him.

Someone had taken that hidden, protected part of her life and passed it into another family’s hands.

Or 

Someone had taken the son she had kept hidden and placed his face in another family’s hand.

“How many people have seen the photographs?” Yuna asked, her gaze never leaving the images spread across her desk.

“Daniel sent several samples before we took him.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “How many?”

Ilya gave a slight shake of his head. “I don’t know yet.”

Her jaw tightened but Ilya continued before she could respond. “Everyone they were sent to, we are finding.”

Yuna held his gaze for a long moment, her fingers curling once against the polished wood beside her untouched tea before relaxing again.

Silence settled over the office.

Ilya looked once more toward the photograph of the Italian estate and understood why she had called him herself instead of sending Pike.

This wasn’t only about containing a breach anymore. The Italians needed to understand exactly what they had touched.

Yuna leaned back in her chair, studying him with the same unreadable expression she’d worn six months earlier when he’d first sat across from this desk to negotiate the marriage she’d arranged.

Yuna gathered the three photographs into a neat stack and pressed them flat beneath her palm before letting her gaze rest once more on Daniel’s photograph. “I want them to understand this properly.”

He didn’t need to ask what she meant. Yuna knew enough about the way Ilya handled problems.

Her fingers tapped lightly against the desk, “Tell me, Ilya.” Her eyes lifted to his. “Do you still play fetch?”

Ilya looked at the photograph of the Italian estate one final time before returning his attention to her. “Yes, ma’am.”

Yuna reached for her tea. “Good.”

——————-

Vittorio Moretti preferred to have dinner with his son every Friday.

It was one appointment neither of them missed, if they could help it. Business found its way to the table often enough, but never before the first course had been cleared:, a rule the restaurant understood. 

The private room on the second floor was to remain undisturbed; the wine was always waiting when they arrived, and the staff had long ago learned that whatever happened behind the closed door was none of their concern.

Nico was halfway through complaining about one of the men overseeing a few warehouses when a knock sounded at the door.

One of the guards stepped inside and crossed quietly to the Italian boss’s side, bending to murmur something into his ear. 

Vittorio’s expression tightened as he listened. For a long moment he said nothing, studying the guard as though weighing the implications of what he’d just heard before finally giving a slight nod to the young man. “Mandalo su.” (Send him up.)

The guard inclined his head and murmured a brief acknowledgment into the mic beneath his collar as he turned and slipped back out, the door closing softly behind him.

Across the table, his son frowned and took another sip from his glass. “Di cosa si trattava?” (What was that all about?)

But Vittorio’s eyes never left the closed door. “Resta seduto e non dire una parola.” (Stay seated and don’t say a word.)

Nico looked as though he meant to argue, but something in his father’s expression stopped him. He remained seated, watching the door with growing annoyance, unaware of the unease beginning to gather in Vittorio.

Less than a minute later, the guard opened the door and Ilya Rozanov stepped into the room.

“Rozanov.” Vittorio greeted, the son's gaze moved from Vittorio to the broad-shouldered Russian just inside the doorway, catching the quiet acknowledgement his father gave the name and disliking it at once.

“Mr. Moretti.” Ilya crossed the room as the guard closed the door behind him, offering his hand. Vittorio accepted it in a brief, firm handshake that acknowledged convention without pretending familiarity.

“Please,” Vittorio said, indicating the empty chair opposite them. “Sit.”

Ilya tilted his head and sat, placing the long package from beneath his arm across the center of the table, his hand settling lightly over the butcher paper.

Both Morettis looked at it, Nico’s attention lingering there with open suspicion while Vittorio’s returned to Ilya. “So, what brings you so far east?” 

Ilya smiled faintly. “I got married.”

Vittorio’s brows rose. “Congratulations.” The sentiment was true enough, even as he sent a silent prayer up for whatever poor soul had been forced to marry the Bratvas guard dog.

Ilya inclined his head once. “Thank you, that is why I am here actually. One of your men was sent to gather information on my husband.”

A faint line appeared between Vittorio’s brows. “Your father and I have always understood one another. What makes you believe this came from my house?” 

Ilya tapped one finger lightly against the butcher paper, “Because Daniel Mercer told me he was sent by your son.”

Vittorio went still for the smallest moment, then turned his gaze slowly toward his son who tensed despite his best efforts to hide it.

Ilya regarded him for a quiet second, his expression flat, then turned his eyes back to Vittorio, the meaning clear enough.

Moretti’s mouth tightened. He glanced toward Ilya, lifting one hand in a restrained request for a moment.

Ilya lifted two fingers from the butcher paper and gave him an easy nod.

Moretti turned back to his son, his voice dropping into something low and dangerously controlled. “Che cosa hai fatto?” (What did you do?)

Nico glanced at Ilya before answering. “Abbiamo soltanto verificato una voce.” (We only confirmed a rumor.)

Moretti kept his expression careful. “Quale voce?” (What rumor?)

He hesitated, then answered with a faint note of satisfaction he didn’t quite manage to hide. “Che Yuna Hollander ha un erede.” (That Yuna Hollander has an heir.)

The color draining from Vittorio’s face finally caught Luca’s attention, some of his earlier confidence beginning to falter. “Cosa?” (What?)

The existence of a hidden heir was not the surprising part. Plenty of powerful families kept their children out of sight, and if anyone could conceal one successfully, it was Yuna fucking Hollander.

But there were conventions even men like them observed. You did not go searching through another family’s private life unless you were prepared to answer for whatever you found.

And if Ilya Rozanov sitting at his table was any indication, Yuna had made certain the consequences would be severe.

It was obvious to Vittorio who Rozanov’s new spouse had to be.

He ignored his son’s question. “Daniel ha mandato le fotografie da qualche altra parte?” (Did Daniel send the photographs anywhere else?)

“Le ha mandate a me.” (He sent them to me.)

“Chi altro?” (Who else?)

“Nessuno.” (No one.) 

Vittorio studied his son for a long moment, his fingers tightening once around the stem of his wineglass before he set it carefully back on the table. He knew Nico well enough to recognize the lie. “Hai agito senza parlarmene.” (You acted without speaking to me.)

“Ci serviva qualcosa da usare contro di loro.” (We needed leverage.)

“Ti serviva il mio permesso.” (You needed permission.)

Nico’s gaze cut briefly toward Ilya before returning to his father. “Da quando dobbiamo chiedere il permesso per indagare sugli Hollander?” (Since when do we ask permission to look into the Hollanders?)

Vittorio closed his eyes briefly and drew one measured breath through his nose.

“Non è un grosso problema. Erano solo un paio di foto,” Nico said, but the defense had lost some of its force. “Non è nemmeno successo niente.” (It’s not a big deal. It was just a couple of photos. Nothing even happened.)

Nico’s last words hung in the room.

No one answered them.

Across the table, Ilya waited with the same quiet patience he had arrived with, one hand still resting lightly on the butcher paper. He made no attempt to interrupt the exchange, as though the outcome had never been in doubt.

Vittorio looked at him for a long moment before his attention returned to his son. “Non è successo niente?” (Nothing happened?)

Ilya peeled the butcher paper back then. A clean, pale length of bone struck the polished table when he tipped it free. 

It was Daniel’s tibia.

It rolled once through the space between the plates before stopping beside Moretti’s untouched glass.

Vittorio’s eyes followed it just as Nico shoved back from the table, the chair legs scraping sharply across the floor. His hand disappeared beneath his jacket, but Vittorio caught his wrist before he reached the gun.

“Hai perso completamente il cervello, cazzo? Devi calmarti!” he snapped, forcing his son’s arm back against his side. (Have you completely lost your fucking mind? You need to calm down!)

Nico jerked once against his grip. “Calm down? He killed Daniel!”

Ilya frowned faintly. “Mm, no.”

Both men looked at him.

“Daniel is alive,” Ilya said, reaching for the untouched glass of water beside an empty plate and taking an unhurried sip. “Very much so.”

Nico looked back at the bone.

Whatever he saw there drained the anger from his face, leaving only disbelief. Then horror.

Ilya set the glass back down on the table and tipped his head toward the pale length of bone lying among the dinner plates. “That is a small gift for Jessica, by the way.”

The son stared at him.

Ilya winked. “Make sure she receives it, will you?”

“You’re fucking insane.” 

“Probably,” Ilya said mildly. 

Vittorio tightened his grip on Nico’s wrist until his son finally stopped struggling. “Basta.” (Enough.) He held him there for another moment, making sure the warning had settled, then released him with a curt tilt of his head toward the door. “Fuori.” (Out.)

Nico’s jaw tightened, but he knew better than to argue again. He cast one last look at Ilya before leaving, the door closing firmly behind him.

For several seconds, Vittorio remained standing beside the empty chair, his attention resting on the pale length of bone among the dinner plates. Then he reached for the bottle beside his untouched glass and poured two fingers into the empty cup across from Ilya. Then he set the bottle down and returned to his seat.

Ilya held his gaze for a moment before reaching for the glass, the amber liquid catching beneath the light as he lifted it. 

The drink settled the matter neatly enough. 

Unlike his son, Vittorio understood the courtesy being extended to him. Nico remained standing beneath his father’s roof with all his limbs intact, and Ilya had brought the insult to the head of the family, allowing him the opportunity to correct it himself. 

Truthfully, that part had been Yuna’s decision. Left to Ilya, he would have sent the staff home, locked the doors, and burned the building down- but his mother-in-law preferred solutions that left fewer bodies, even if Ilya didn’t mind the clean up.

Vittorio seemed to understand that too.

There would be no more opportunities after this. 

The drink was not gratitude or an apology. It was an acknowledgment between men who knew the rules well enough not to speak them aloud. Vittorio had a son to discipline and a house to put back in order before Nico’s stupidity cost him more than one man. 

Ilya took a sip. Vittorio could keep his family, his territory, and his pride, so long as Shane was never made part of their business again.

——-

Hayden was leaning against the car when Ilya finally stepped out of the restaurant, his arms folded tightly across his chest and his attention fixed on the entrance.

Waiting in Italian territory while the crazy fucking Russian held a private conversation with one of their bosses had left him increasingly restless. The Bratva and the Morettis might not have any bad blood between them, but Hayden still would have preferred to wait behind the wheel.

Ilya crossed the pavement at an unhurried pace and held out his hand for the keys.

Hayden stared at him. “You know, most people let the getaway driver sit behind the wheel.”

“Most getaway drivers can actually drive.” Ilya said, opening the door.

Hayden looked briefly tempted to hit him, but Ilya was already getting in. “See this is why no one likes you.”

“Shut up and get in the car, Pike.” Ilya said as he shut the door.

Hayden stared at him through the windshield for one long second before mumbling “I fucking hate this guy,” then yanked open the passenger door and climbed inside.

Chapter End Notes

I’ll add a link to the tumbler page explaining anything you guys have questions about so feel free to ask if your confused about anything,
Just needed to tie these loose ends before we started the courting arch

Chapter 51

Chapter Summary

To celebrate 400k+ hits
And because my beta agreed I should be merciful, I bring to you, a treat.

Chapter Notes

Beta read by jebeno22. 💛

Shane woke slowly to the press of lips against the top of his foot. Not the warmth of the blankets, but to the slow, deliberate press of lips against his skin.

A small sound slipped out before he was fully conscious, his toes curling beneath another gentle kiss. The mattress dipped near his calves, and a hand settled loosely around his ankle, warm and broad, holding him there while another kiss lingered against the delicate bone.

His body recognized the scent before his mind did. Cold mountain air and pine, familiar enough now that something in him softened toward it automatically. It was comforting.. actually. Now that he thought about it, it kind of smelled like—

“You’re awake,” Ilya murmured, his voice rough with sleep and something softer beneath it.

“Mm.” Shane kept his eyes closed for another second, listening to the morning rain against the windows and feeling the quiet rhythm of Ilya’s breath against his skin.

When he finally opened them, Ilya was at the foot of the bed and, of course, already watching him.

The room always felt strangely hushed on weekend mornings, wrapped in the kind of quiet that only seemed to exist before the rest of the world properly woke. Ilya’s hand was still curved around his ankle, broad enough to make Shane’s foot look smaller than it actually was, his thumb tracing once along the inside of the bone before his gaze lifted to Shane’s face.

“Доброе утро,” he murmured. (Good morning.) 

Something about Ilya slipping into Russian with him always settled embarrassingly low in Shane’s stomach. He swallowed, voice coming out breathier than he intended. “I… what are you doing?”

One corner of Ilya’s mouth lifted.

His attention wandered over Shane with a weight that felt almost physical, lingering on the button-up sleep shirt that had ridden high enough to expose a strip of his stomach before dropping to the bare length of his thighs beneath his sleep shorts.

“You should not wear these shorts in my bed,” Ilya said softly, pressing another kiss to his ankle.

Shane’s brow pinched before he could help it. What was wrong with his shorts?  “You don’t like them?”

Ilya’s mouth curved against his skin. “No,” he said. “I like them very much.”

Oh. 

Ilya’s hand moved higher as he said it, his palm sliding unhurried over Shane’s calf before his fingers closed gently around the muscle there. The touch was firm without being rough, almost absentminded in the way he squeezed once before letting his hand settle there.

“I also like that you do not wear those stickers anymore,” he added, pressing the next kiss just above Shane’s ankle.

Shane had to concentrate on keeping quiet.

It didn’t help that Ilya looked like a Greek fucking god kneeling between his legs, broad and beautiful and unfairly composed, blond curls still soft from sleep and sharp blue eyes fixed entirely on him while his mouth moved slowly over Shane’s skin. “M-my scent patches?”

“Mhm.” Shane felt the hum against his calf before Ilya lifted his eyes to meet his again. “Makes my bed smell like you.”

Something warm and buzzy unfurled low in Shane’s stomach at the implications of that. “That’s just because I sleep here sometimes.”

If Shane had thought his face was hot before, he didn’t particularly want to know what it looked like when Ilya’s mouth curved against his skin “And also,” Ilya murmured, “because you scent my bed in your sleep.”

 As he said it his hands slid to Shane’s knees and slowly drew them apart, his grip firm enough that Shane could feel the strength behind it. 

Ilya kept his eyes on him the entire time, watching closely enough that he knew Ilya would stop if he so much as tensed the wrong way. Instead, Shane’s legs relaxed beneath his hands and let themselves be guided open, the easy compliance sending heat straight up his throat. 

Cool air brushed the warmer skin of his inner thighs and suddenly he was terribly aware of the position Ilya had put him in. Of how little resistance his body had offered, and of how much he apparently liked being handled when it was Ilya doing the handling.

A soft whimper caught behind Shane’s lips, his body already bracing for wherever Ilya’s mouth went next.

Ilya lowered his head and pressed his lips to the inside of Shane’s knee for a kiss. Just one at first, almost gentle, before his mouth closed over the same spot with enough pressure that Shane felt the mark forming beneath his lips.

Shane gasped, his eyes squeezing shut, the sudden bite of pleasure making his leg twitch beneath Ilya’s hand.

He probably should’ve been embarrassed by how easily Ilya was getting reactions out of him. Even with his eyes closed, Ilya’s attention felt almost tangible, settling over him until Shane was painfully aware of every reaction he failed to hide.

“Eyes on me, котёнок.” 

There was no impatience in it, just quiet certainty but somehow, that was worse. Shane opened his eyes to find Ilya was waiting for him.

Their gazes caught and held while Ilya’s hand moved slowly down his leg, and Shane felt hyper aware of him, the warmth of his palm, the lingering sensitivity where his mouth had been, the weight of Ilya between his legs. Even Ilya’s scent seemed stronger now, pine and cold air surrounding him until Shane could taste it with every uneven breath. He shifted a little, the movement drawing him a fraction closer. Ilya's smile deepened as his gaze moved over Shane’s face. “You smell so good right now,” he murmured.

One broad hand closed around Shane’s ankle when his leg shifted again, stopping the movement easily and making Shane’s breath catch. 

God, he was hot.

Shane wasn’t exactly small himself either. He worked out, had muscle on him, and was stronger than most people assumed. Ilya was just fucking enormous.

There was no mistaking just how much stronger Ilya was when he held him like this, could feel it in the casual certainty of his grip. He had simply decided where Shane’s leg belonged, and Shane’s body had gone warm and pliant beneath the decision.

Another kiss from the blond landed higher along his thigh now, then another. Ilya’s free hand smoothed over the top of Shane’s leg as he went, almost soothing in contrast to the hand keeping him still and the hot, deliberate attention of Ilya’s mouth. Then Ilya smiled against his skin, and Shane realized with some irritation that the bastard knew exactly what he was doing to him.

Shane’s breathing had gone uneven, anticipation fluttering through him. His whole body felt strangely loose and heavy against the mattress, too sensitive in Ilya's bed, every small brush of fabric dragging over his skin reminding him that he was in his alphas territory, in his room, his bed. 

Another pass of Ilya’s hand over his thigh made the awareness settle deeper until Shane could feel Ilya’s claim everywhere—the sheets beneath him, his scent around him, his hands deciding where Shane stayed.

His heart kicked hard against his ribs as another kiss landed higher now, over the flesh of his inner thigh. 

Then he latched his mouth to the spot, and Shane’s hand clenched in the sheet, heat pulling lower in his stomach.

Despite the fact that Ilya was bigger then him, taller then him, stronger then him and an alpha. Shane knew exactly how little it would take to stop him, knew with a certainty that made his ears heat that one uncomfortable look from him and those hands that had probably killed hundreds of people would let him go immediately.

Whatever explanation he might have found for that disappeared when Ilya bent and kissed the inside of his knee again, his mouth traveling higher before his teeth grazed lightly over the sensitive skin of Shane’s thigh.

Shane jerked and Ilya’s hand tightened immediately, steadying him. “Easy, baby,” he murmured. “I have you.”

Shane’s eyes squeezed shut, the words going straight to his cock. Ilya kissed him again, higher still, and then sucked a mark into the inside of his thigh with slow, filthy patience, making a pathetic little sound leave Shane’s mouth before he could stop it.

Ilya paused like the sound had flipped a switch in him. “Do that again,” he said, voice low, his lips brushing against Shane’s skin as he said it.

Shane’s whole body flushed. “I didn’t—”

“You did.” Ilya kissed the mark he’d made, almost tenderly. “Was very pretty.”

Shane’s fingers clenched in the sheets and his breath stuttered when Ilya kissed his other leg, followed by another slow pull of Ilya’s mouth against the inside of his thigh until the pressure was sharp enough to make Shane’s hips shift. “Ah—fuck—”

His body was trembling in eager anticipation beneath Ilya's hands, he could even smell himself now, his pheromones warm and sweet and thick in the air between them. 

Ilya breathed him in slowly, making Shane’s stomach flip.

His thighs tried to close on instinct, but Ilya didn’t let them. He pressed one broad palm to Shane’s knee and slowly guided it back open. 

The touch wasn’t rough, but it didn’t need to be. The certainty of it was enough to make Shane’s pulse jump. Maybe he should start wearing his patches again, at least at night. It was becoming increasingly unfair that Ilya could tell exactly what touching him did before Shane had even managed to pretend it wasn’t happening.

Spread like this, there was no hiding his body’s reaction. His cock was hard beneath the soft fabric of his shorts, the scent of his slick and his pheromones obvious enough that heat crawled up his throat knowing Ilya could see the obvious damp spot in his shorts now. 

Shane’s fingers twisted harder in the sheet. “Ilya.”

Ilya lifted his head enough for Shane to see his face, his mouth still close to Shane’s thigh, his eyes darker in the gray morning light. 

“Shane.” Ilya said, voice low and deliberate, His fingers toying with the waistband of Shane’s shorts. “What is your color?”

Rain sounded softly beyond the windows, quiet enough that Shane could hear his own uneven breathing. “Green,” he managed, voice shaky.

Pleased by the answer, Ilya's lips curled in that cocky, devastating way that made Shane’s stomach tighten all over again. 

His breath broke as Ilya’s fingers dipped into the waistband of his shorts and tugged them down slowly, still giving him one last chance to tense or pull away or change his mind.

But instead of doing any of those things, he bit his lip and lifted his hips in shy compliance, making Ilya’s mouth water.

The growing scent of slick between them was unmistakable, and Shane saw the exact moment Ilya caught it- because the alpha licked his lips, composure thinning at the edges of his own scent as he dragged the shorts the rest of the way down Shane’s shins and tossed them somewhere off the side of the bed, leaving nothing left to hide behind.

Shane’s cock lay hard against his stomach, flushed and aching, precum already pooling on the skin below his belly button. Slick shining between the globes of his ass, obscene in the soft morning light, visual proof of just how thoroughly Ilya had undone him with nothing but a few kisses.

Ilya’s gaze dropped between his legs, fixed and intent, making Shane’s whole body impossibly hotter, but he barely had time to be embarrassed before Ilya’s hands were on his knees again, opening him again with slow, reverent hands. Ilya’s attention was so intent that Shane somehow felt more exposed beneath his gaze than he did from being naked. 

Ilya had a way of doing that to him—watching him with this focused, hungry attention, like Shane was already under his hands even before he touched him. And fuck, maybe that should have scared him. Maybe it would have, had it been anyone else, but when Ilya looked at him like that, hands steady on his knees, Shane found he was disturbingly okay with being prey, so long as Ilya was the one hunting.

“Just look at you,” Ilya said, voice rougher now. “All this just from sleeping in my bed?”

Shane covered his face with one hand. “Ilya—”

“Absolutely not.” Ilya caught his wrist and pulled it away, mouth pressing briefly to the tender inside before he pinned it firmly to Shane’s side. “I want to see you.”

Shane’s eyes burned, not with tears exactly, but because his body felt too full of sensation, too warm, too helplessly pliant. Every place Ilya touched seemed to stay lit after his hand moved on, and every breath dragged more of the alpha’s scent into him until Shane felt dizzy with it.

Ilya lowered himself again, hands settling beneath Shane’s thighs to hold him open with steady pressure. He paused there, close enough so Shane could feel each breath against the wet heat of him.

Shane’s eyes squeezed shut, his entire body trembling in anticipation.

For one suspended second, nothing happened. Only Ilya’s hands on his thighs. Only the rain against the windows. Only the scent of pine and cold air and alpha sunk so deeply into the bed it felt like Shane was breathing through him.

Then Ilya licked him right through the slick his body had already given up before closing around the base of his cock to suck and lick his way to the tip.