“I don’t want—”
“At least you’d survive our help,” the man added. “A Berserker catching an Omega in your state? He’d tear you apart.”
“I need to go,” Cass said, panic rising in his chest, making his voice go thin and high. “Please, I need to—”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Mei’s grip turned painful. “Not until we—”
“He’s not going anywhere with you.” The voice cut through the marketplace noise like a blade—low, cold, and instantly recognizable. Cass’s head snapped around, and everythinginside him went simultaneously tense and loose, fear and relief tangled into a ball. Riot stood a few feet away, his expression carved from stone. But his eyes—
These eyes were wrong.
The gold had swallowed almost everything—bright and luminous and glowing in a way that wasn’t natural. Then Riot blinked, the muscles standing out in his neck like he was fighting against something inside himself. Slowly—painfully slowly—the gold began to recede. Green bled back into his irises like ink spreading through water, until his eyes looked almost normal again.
Almost.
There was still more gold than Cass remembered from before. There was still that faint luminous quality lurking just beneath the surface, threatening to swallow the green again at any moment.
The marketplace seemed to freeze around them. People who had been pretending not to notice the confrontation suddenly found urgent reasons to be elsewhere, creating a wide bubble of space around the four of them. Cass could hear whispered conversations dying mid-sentence.
Everyone’s afraid of him, Cass realized.Everyone except me.
And that didn’t make sense, did it? Riot’s eyes had just glowed, and the man behind Cass had just said he would tear Cass apart.
But all Cass felt, looking at Riot’s carved-stone face and tension-rigid shoulders, was a desperate urge to go to him. He wanted to press close and breathe in strawberries and cream until the fear went away.
“Just making conversation with our new friend,” Mei said, her smile returning even as she released Cass’s wrist. Cass could see the red marks her grip had left and half-moon indents from her nails. “He’s having a confusing day, aren’t you sweetheart?”
“He’s not your concern,” Riot said. His voice was so low it seemed to vibrate in the air, resonating in Cass’s chest in a way that made his breath catch.
“Isn’t he?” The man behind Cass finally stepped away. “An Omega in his condition, wandering around without protection? Someone should be concerned.”
There it was again—condition,state, as if everyone knew something about Cass’s body that he didn’t. As if his flu symptoms meant something more than just illness. But before he could ask, Riot made a sound. Low and rumbling, almost like a growl, and every hair on Cass’s body stood up in response.
“We’ll be seeing you both again,” Mei said, already backing away into the crowd. “Soon.”
Then they were gone, melting into the marketplace like they’d never been there at all, and Cass was left standing frozen as Riot turned toward him.
“Are you hurt?”
The question was gruff, almost harsh, but Riot’s eyes were scanning Cass from head to toe, his hands hovering near Cass’s shoulders without quite making contact, but close enough that Cass could feel the heat radiating off him. Close enough that the strawberries and cream scent wrapped around him like a blanket.
I’m fine, Cass should have said.Thank you for your help. I’ll go back to the hotel now.
Instead, what came out was: “Why have you been following me?”
“Because people like that exist. Because you wander around like you’ve never heard of self-preservation. Because—” He stopped. “It doesn’t matter why.”
“That man said you’d tear me apart.” Cass hated how his voice wavered. “Is that why you’ve been following me? Because you want to hurt me?”
Pain flickered across Riot’s face—there and gone so fast Cass almost missed it. But Cass was good at reading pain. He’d seen enough of it at Springfield Gardens, in the meditation rooms where people cried through their spiritual breakthrough. This was real pain. The kind that came from being seen as something he didn’t want to be seen as.
“If I wanted to hurt you,” Riot said quietly, “I’ve had plenty of chances.”
Around them, the marketplace crowd maintained its distance, staring openly. Cass caught whispered fragments carried on the wind:
“—poor Omega. Berserker’s got his scent—”
“—surprised it hasn’t just taken him already—”
