The clock on the microwave blinked 10:48 PM. Still no one home.
Damien sat on the couch with both knees pulled to his chest, the TV screen dark, his socks mismatched. One was sliding halfway off, but he didn’t fix it. He just kept looking at the door. Not scared. Not exactly. Just… waiting.
Behind him, the hallway was quiet. Clara had fallen asleep hours ago—after insisting on reading The Hungry Moon out loud even though she couldn’t read yet. She made up half the story. Then passed out drooling on his shoulder. He’d carried her to bed. She was heavier than before. Probably meant she was growing again.
He was so tired. But the light was still on. He told himself he had to stay up. Just for five more minutes. Just until—
Click.
The sound of the door unlocking sliced through the quiet like a gift. Damien jolted upright, sock skidding on the laminate floor as he ran to the entryway.
He slowed just before the door fully opened—trying to look composed. Adult. Not like a kid who’d been sitting there for hours tracing constellations in the popcorn ceiling.
The door creaked open. It was just Mom this time. Hair windblown. Coat half-buttoned. One sleeve wet with rain. She smelled like old train seats and vending machine coffee. Her eyes looked like they’d blinked too many times and still hadn’t woken up.
“Hey, baby,” she said softly, stepping in and closing the door behind her. “Still up?”
Damien just nodded.
She put her keys in the bowl, kicked off one shoe, then crouched down slowly in front of him. Her hand came up to brush a stray curl off his forehead. “Clara sleeping?”
He nodded again. Yawned without meaning to.
She smiled, just a little. Then her face shifted—not harsh, not tired. Just… serious. She cupped his cheek. The way moms do when they want you to listen, but they don’t want to scare you.
“Listen, Damien. I might have to work nights for a while, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And sometimes your dad might not be back right away. He’s got a new contract. We’re figuring it out.”
He nodded, slower this time. She paused. “So I need you to be the one who keeps an eye on Clara. You can do that, right?”
He blinked, holding it in. Holding the weight. Like it had always been waiting for a place to land. “Okay,” he said. Voice small. “I can do that.”
She smiled again. Kissed his forehead.
Damien opened his eyes in the parked car. The interior was the only space in his day that still felt unassigned.
The taste was still there. Clear consommé, reduced to precision and salt. Elegant enough for a state wedding. Clean enough to disappear before it reached memory.
It didn’t disappear.
For a moment, it matched the fluid from the facility—thin, measured, nutritionally complete, stripped of appetite. Not food. Compliance in liquid form. He used to swallow it without looking, cup after cup, under white light that flattened every surface into instruction.
The car door opened. Night air entered in a narrow blade.
He stepped out into the Foundry courtyard, still in his suit, tie half-loosened. The reception’s warmth clung to the fabric: polished wood, soft laughter, hands on shoulders, the practiced intimacy of people who signed violence by memo and toasted each other before dessert.
Three nights earlier, many of the same men had sat under recessed lighting and mapped budget transparency, jurisdictional boundaries, risk-distribution curves, and contingency leverage if the Border Defense Corps refused cooperation. Tonight, those same mouths softened around wedding cake and private-school stories, the room performing warmth with the confidence of long practice.
The Commander stood at the front of the reception hall and lowered his voice by half a register. Not the cadence of command—something softer. He spoke about his daughter learning piano. About the first time she fell and refused to cry. The room responded with a collective, gentle amusement. They laughed as if none of them had ever signed a lockdown order.
A council member had drifted into Damien’s orbit, glass touching glass, concern offered in the language of succession. EB pressure acknowledged. Burnout anticipated. Future assigned.
He crossed the courtyard without hurry.
Gravel answered beneath his shoes in small, contained sounds. Overhead lights cast the same administrative color temperature as containment corridors, as observation wards, as every room where care and control shared a wall and pretended not to.
Dinner had ended in applause. His jaw still held the aftertaste of broth engineered to be forgettable. By the time he reached the gym entrance, the taste was gone.
The Foundry gym was nearly empty when he arrived. At this hour, it usually was.
He moved to his locker and slipped out of the suit jacket, hanging it on the hook inside without looking.
Cufflinks into the metal dish bolted to the shelf. The shirt came off next.
When the training fabric settled over his shoulders, his breathing returned to its own rhythm.
He moved to the rack he used most often and began loading plates. One at a time. Steel meeting steel in clean, contained sounds.
He pulled a bench into the rack and set it upright. Seated barbell overhead press.
The bar rested across the hooks at eye level.
“If I had your physique, I would never put clothes back on.”
Damien didn’t turn.
He sat, unhooked the bar, lowered it carefully to the shelf of his collarbones. Wrists stacked. Forearms vertical.
Lucien stepped closer, as if merely passing through.
“Did you forget something?”
Damien didn’t answer. He didn’t know what he meant.
“The Chairman joined us for dinner tonight,” Lucien said. “First time in months.”
A pause. Long enough to invite curiosity.
“He seemed… pleased.”
The bar moved upward. Slow. Controlled. Locked overhead.
Lucien waited.
“You know what Theo said?”
Damien didn’t respond.
Lucien’s mouth curved. “He said one day he’d take Vale’s position. That he’d become the core of the Foundry. Promised he wouldn’t disappoint anyone.”
The plates tremored faintly at the top of the press before Damien brought the bar down again.
“I’m not the core,” Damien said.
Lucien waved that away. “I know.”
He tilted his head, studying Damien’s profile.
“But don’t you want to know the Chairman’s expression?”
Damien guided the bar back into the rack. Metal struck metal with a low, final note.
“What expression.”
It was the first question he had initiated all evening. Including the wedding.
Lucien smiled.
“Same as always. Completely unreadable.”
He imitated the Chairman’s measured calm. “‘I’m looking forward to it.’”
The bar came down again, heavy and exact.
Lucien didn’t leave. “Don’t you find it ironic?” he asked. “Theo was explaining before dinner that Vale’s position isn’t held up by muscle.”
He gestured toward the rack. “And here you are. Training shoulders.”
Damien adjusted his grip.
“He’s right,” he said.
The next set began.
Lucien let out a quiet laugh.
“He told me you two had ten o’clock. Said you wouldn’t be late. Not after a wedding.”
The bar stalled mid-press. Only for a second.
“He waited until ten-thirty.”
The room settled into the sound of controlled breathing.
Damien locked the bar overhead, held it there, then lowered it back into the rack with deliberate care.
“I forgot.”
His tone was level. Not apologetic.
Lucien didn’t smile this time.
“He meant it,” he said quietly. “You know the type. Once they place you somewhere, they don’t move you easily.”
Damien sat upright and reached for his towel.
“He shouldn’t place me anywhere.”
Lucien leaned back against the column, studying him.
“But you are there.”
Damien didn’t deny it. He stood and added another plate. The metal slid onto the sleeve with a clean click.
He pulled his phone from his bag. The screen lit his face in a pale wash. He stared at it for a moment, then typed.
Tomorrow. 7 a.m.
Sent. Screen dark.
Lucien glanced at the added weight and laughed under his breath.
“Are you serious?”
No response. Lucien stepped closer and nudged the bar lightly with two fingers.
“This? I wouldn’t even have to draw on my draconic factor for this. Neither would you.”
The lights in the gym were stark and unforgiving.
Everyone carried it. The draconic factor was universal.
Every human body carried draconic factor. Only a fraction ever awakened Kamuy. Fewer still could draw on the factor deliberately—convert it, amplify muscle density, reinforce tendons, offset fatigue.
Lucien could. Theo could.
Damien could.
That was exactly why he didn’t.
He unhooked the bar again.
“I’m not training strength,” he said.
Lucien raised a brow. “Then what are you training?”
Damien lowered the bar slowly to his collarbones.
“Not using it.”
Lucien blinked once, then laughed.
“You’re serious.”
Damien pressed upward. Slow. Controlled. Locked.
He held the bar at his shoulders before the next repetition. His breathing remained even—no vascular pressure at the temples, no subtle heat threading through bone. He kept the movement honest. Every inch carried by muscle alone.
“You don’t think that’s a waste?” Lucien asked.
“No.”
“Why.”
“Because if I get used to it,” Damien said, pressing again, “I’ll forget what I can do without it.”
Lucien didn’t answer that.
He watched in silence as Damien completed the final rep and guided the bar back into place.
“You’re strange,” he said at last.
Damien sat upright, breath steady.
He reached into his bag. Paused. Empty.
“What.”
“Stabilin.”
He usually injected around this time each month. Not out of urgency. A delay of a few days wouldn’t destabilize him. But the timing mattered. A calibration point.
Lucien crossed to his locker, rummaged briefly, and tossed a vial across the room.
“Found a spare.”
Damien caught it easily. The blue liquid shifted once under the light.
“Thanks.”
“When.”
“Tomorrow.”
Lucien shrugged. “Next week would be fine.”
“I’m flying to Europe tomorrow.”
Lucien tilted his head slightly. “Bureau,” he asked, “or Chairman?”
Damien didn’t answer. He loaded the vial into the injector. The click was precise. He pressed it against his arm. Needle in. Fluid delivered. Quiet.
Lucien watched him.
“You even regulate this.”
Damien capped the injector and returned it to the bag.
“Not regulate.”
“What then?”
He stood again and slid another plate onto the bar.
“Habit.”