Chapter 34: Sweet dream

Christian.

But not the younger one.

Not the one at the gala.

The real one.

The one carved from quiet threats and kisses that came with terms.

The one who had long since learned to bend the shape of love into something that choked.

His voice was the same.

Not louder. Not harsher.

Just perfectly measured. The voice of a man who had learned how to use affection like a noose—gentle, steady, patient enough to tighten slowly.

The voice that had once lulled Lucas to sleep in the aftermath of silence.

The voice that still lived beneath his skin, in the hollow of his spine and the base of his throat and every place that time and silk and new names hadn't managed to clean.

Lucas turned his head, the movement stiff and slow, breath caught halfway between scream and denial, terror pulsing through his blood so loudly he almost didn't hear the words—almost.

But not quite.

Because there he was.

Sitting in the chair beside the bed like he had never left it—like time hadn't passed, like Lucas had never run.

He looked the same.

Worse than the same.

He looked restored.

Christian's ash-brown hair, always just slightly tousled when he hadn't styled it, had been carefully combed back, every strand precise, not a hair out of place, as if he'd taken time to become the version of himself that Lucas had once begged for. His jaw was clean-shaven, sharp enough to hurt if you looked too long, and his mouth was drawn into that same almost-smile—the one that tilted just enough to suggest warmth without ever truly offering it.

His eyes—grey, but not dull—silver when the light caught them, too clear, too steady. Eyes that didn't blink when someone broke in front of him. Eyes that had watched Lucas fall apart more than once and had never flinched.

They gleamed in the low golden light of the room like mirrors made for cruelty, reflecting only what he wanted you to see.

The light touched his hands—his left one resting lazily on the arm of the chair, the fingers still long and elegant, familiar in ways Lucas didn't want to admit—and when it caught the rings he wore, it flickered, sharp and soft all at once.

There were two.

One was heavy, thick at the band, crested in black and gold—the symbol of House Velloran carved into the metal like lineage was a promise no one could escape.

The other was simpler.

Just a ring.

Pale metal, thin, worn from time.

A promise ring.

Their promise ring.

It had been Lucas's idea.

Not because he believed it meant something sacred—but because he needed to believe it could.

Because at the time, there had still been hope.

Because he thought if he offered something quiet and small, it might be enough to soften the violence that lingered in Christian's silence.

Because he thought Christian would wear it the way Lucas did—like it meant something you never had to explain.

Lucas couldn't move.

His limbs felt rooted in silk and dread, his breath a slow suffocation wrapped in air that smelled too much like then. He could hear his own heartbeat behind his eyes, loud and frantic, thudding like fists against a locked door.

'No. No. No. I died!'

He screamed it into the void of his mind, into the walls of whatever trap this was.

'I died. I died. I died—'

But the voice kept speaking.

Soft. Calm. Awfully kind.

"Haa…" Christian exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose like Lucas was a minor inconvenience, a complicated treasure. "You know, if I didn't love you so much, you'd be dead."

Lucas's stomach dropped.

There was no fury in Christian's tone. No heat. Just gentle condescension wrapped in the scent of safety turned sour.

"Lucky you," Christian went on, and the smile returned—gentle, like a lullaby laced with opium. "It seems like the last heat was, in the end, favorable."

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, watching Lucas like something beautifully broken.

"You're pregnant with my child."

The words shattered through Lucas like glass.

Not because they could be true. Because they were familiar. He had wanted those words.

Once he had begged for them without speaking, he had hoped they would come instead of orders, instead of silence, instead of being handled like glass and treated like glassware.

He had imagined them once—you're pregnant with my child—spoken gently, spoken with wonder, spoken with pride.

He had written versions of that sentence in his own head like prayers with no god left to hear them.

And now here they were.

Too late. Too sweet. Too sharp.

Christian smiled again—head tilted, fingers steepled, the perfect portrait of a man who had won.

"And to think," he said, "you wanted to throw it all away."

His eyes flicked downward, toward Lucas's body—still limp, still unmoving, still wrapped in silk that felt too much like surrender. "I almost lost you. That was unwise."

Lucas's heart beat so hard it hurt.

Not from belief. Not from affection.

But from recognition.

Because the illusion was holding. But so was he.

The real him.

Somewhere under the fear. Somewhere under the silk.

'No. This isn't right. He never said that. Not then. Not like this.'

The thought sparked.

Small. Fragile. His.

Christian leaned closer, elbows pressing into the mattress, voice falling to a whisper meant to sound like devotion.

"You'll stay this time, won't you?" he murmured. "You'll be good. You'll stop trying to run."

Lucas blinked. Just once.

The ceiling above him flickered—one light too bright, the chandelier slightly off-center.

A ripple in the dream. Barely there. But enough.

His breath shuddered out—rough, too loud, suddenly his.

And for the first time, Christian's smile faltered.

Just a little.

"Lucas?"

That voice. Still calm.

But now there was pressure behind it. Urgency. A demand.

'Wake up.'

Lucas didn't hear the words—but he felt them.

Not from Christian.

From somewhere else. Someone else. A presence he couldn't name—but knew was real.

Knew it wasn't him.

—

He jolted upright with such force the air tore from his lungs, his body lurching forward like he could outrun whatever had followed him out of the dream. His throat was raw, his hands shaking, sweat clinging to his skin like fear rebottled itself inside him.

The air around him felt too sharp.

The room too quiet.

He didn't realize he was crying until the sound came out—soft, broken, the kind of cry that didn't shake the walls, but emptied something inside him.

No gasping. No screaming. Just a breath that caught, then broke, and didn't stop breaking.

He curled forward instinctively, fists clutching the sheets, shaking so finely it felt like even his bones had splintered.

Trevor was already there.

His arms slid around him without hesitation, not tight, not clinging, just present—just enough to say you're not alone, not this time, not again.

He didn't speak.

Didn't ask.

Didn't offer anything that could be mistaken for a solution.

Because there was nothing to fix.

Just a boy who had woken from a memory shaped like a cage, still wearing its keys like shackles.

Lucas pressed his face into Trevor's chest, breath hitching again, smaller this time—but not quieter. Not to him.

Trevor held him—without demand, without question, without anything that might crack the fragile shape Lucas had folded himself into—and Lucas, for once, allowed it, not because it made the grief easier, not because it chased the dream away, but because the warmth anchored him just enough to keep the panic from dragging him under again.

He wept—not with theatrical gasps or chest-wracking sobs, but with the quiet, awful rhythm of someone who had run out of places to bury it, whose body was now doing the unspoken work of mourning something he couldn't name aloud.

And still, he said nothing about the dream.

Nothing about the room he'd recognized with a single breath, the stitching in the sheets that whispered of ownership, the voice that had once taught him to mistake cruelty for devotion and silence for safety.

He didn't speak Christian's name.

He didn't confess the words that had nearly broken him all over again—the lie wrapped in velvet: you're pregnant with my child—not because they weren't real, but because they were too real, too familiar, pulled from a history no one else was supposed to know had ever existed.

So he cried.

And Trevor let him.

No questions. No timeline. No suggestion that this needed to be explained or rationalized or made neat again.

Just a steady hand on his back, another tangled in his hair, and breath that stayed measured, unwavering, as if offering a rhythm Lucas could hold onto until his own came back.

He didn't know how long they stayed like that.

Minutes, hours, time twisted by grief and exhaustion and the fading scent of a nightmare still clawing at the corners of his awareness.

But eventually, the sobs softened—not because the pain was gone, but because there was nothing left to pour out—and Lucas found himself breathing again, shallow at first, then deeper, the way a body does after surviving something it doesn't yet understand.

And when Trevor spoke—softly, carefully—it wasn't to ask what happened.

It was just to say:

"You're here. That's enough."