Chapter One

22 years ago

Aksel Cleghorn was four when his father brought home the boy.

The boy was quite possibly the prettiest thing Aksel had ever seen. Light-brown wavy hair framed the face of an angel. The angelhad large green eyes, soft pink mouth, and delicate, creamy skin.

Aksel stared at the boy, unable to look away. He felt... odd. Almost hungry. Which was stupid, because that boy wasn't a candy. He couldn't be eaten.

"Children," his father said sternly, looking at Royce and Aksel."Meet Lucien, your—your stepfather."

What?

His brother was the one to voice his question aloud."Father?" Royce said, frowning."I don't understand. This boy can't possibly be older than me."

He was right. The boy actually looked younger than Royce, who was fifteen. Unlike Royce, the boy was rather small, his size and fine features betraying his designation. Omega.

"Lucien just turned fourteen," their father said shortly. Glancing at the small omega, he laid his hands on Aksel and Royce and took them aside. His voice was lower when he spoke again. "Lucien has nowhere else to go, so now he's part of our family. His pack disowned him and I had to take him as a second spouse to give him a home and the protection of our name. I expect you boys to treat him with courtesy and respect. Don't push him around. He… he had a very traumatic experience. The poor kid doesn't likebeing touched."

Royce nodded, seemingly satisfied with the explanation.

Aksel wasn't.

"What's a traumatic experience?" he said.

His father's face became grim. "You're too young to understand," he said after a moment. "And it's not my story to tell. Just... be careful with the kid. He was hurt very badly and having been rejected by his pack couldn't possibly have been easy, either. He has no one in the world anymore—except for us."

Aksel wanted to know more, but he knew his father wouldn't tell him anything else. The grown-ups never explained things to him, as if he were a baby. He was four , almost five!

So Aksel decided to question the boy, but he had to wait hours before all the excitement around Lucien's arrival died down. Luckily, Aksel's parents got distracted by Belinda—his newborn little sister—so after dinner, when Lucien left the room, no one noticed when Aksel followed him out of the house.

But his legs were shorter, and before he could catch up to him, Zinedine and Thoros, the ten-year-old twins from theneighboring estate, were suddenly in his way.

"Isn't that the Cleghorns' little beast?" Zinedine said with a laugh. "Hey, Beasty!"

Glowering at them, Aksel shoved the older boy aside and marched forward. He could ignore them. He could.

"Beasty thinks it can ignore us, Zi," Thoros said with an obnoxious smirk, sticking out his leg and trying to trip him up.

Aksel shoved him aside, too. They might be twice his size and age, but they weren't stronger. Being a Xeus was good for something.

"Grab it, let's teach it a lesson!" Zinedine said, grabbing him from behind while his twin did the same from his other side. They yanked his arms behind him, making Aksel stumble forward and then step back awkwardly as he tried to regain his balance and free his hands.

"What are you doing? Let go of him!"

Aksel whipped his head up.

Lucien was advancing on them, a fierce frown on his sweet face. "Let go of the boy this instant," he demanded, putting his hands on his hips and looking down his nose at the twins—and never mind that they were bigger and taller than him. He looked like a vengeful angel: fragile, beautiful, but so very brave and fierce.

Aksel stared at him in fascination and, right there and then, he knew he wanted him. He wanted him for his own.

"And who are you ?" Zinedine said, leering at the omega.

His twin laughed. "Idiot, don't you recognize him? It's the slut who had a platoon of Pelugian soldiers between his legs."

Lucien paled, flushed, and then paled again. His lips opened, wobbling, and closed again without uttering a sound, his scent becoming sour with misery and mortification.

Aksel's vision turned red. With a growl, he slammed his head into Thoros's stomach, and when the boy let go of his arm, slammed his fist into his crotch. Howling in pain, Thoros fell to the ground, and Aksel turned and pounded his fists into Zinedine's body with all his strength. The older boy staggered and tried to retaliate, but he was no match for a pissed-off Xeus, the age difference between them notwithstanding.

"Hey, that's enough," Lucien said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Breathing hard, Aksel straightened up and looked at the bloody, groaning boys on the ground.

He glared at them one last time before allowing Lucien to lead him away, toward the rocky beach behind the house.

"Are you okay?" Lucien said, pushing Aksel down to sit on a boulder as he examined Aksel's knuckles. "You might need medical treatment."

Aksel shook his head. "They'll heal on their own. They always do." He smiled proudly and boasted, "They badly bruised my ribs last month, but it stopped hurting the next day!"

The look Lucien gave him was tight, his pretty eyes infinitely sad. "It's not right that a child has such extensive experience with injuries."

"I'm not a child!" Aksel said with a scoff. "I'm almost five."

Chuckling harshly, Luciensat down next to him.

They were silent for a while, watching the angry sea.

"What were you doing out there alone?" Lucien said at last. His voice was gentle and melodic. So soothing. Aksel liked it very much. He didn't know anyone else who spoke like that. He also liked that Lucien's eyes didn't linger on the tufts of fur on his cheeks—everyone else's did, and their scents inevitably tinged with disgust and wariness. He liked that Lucien's eyes remained firmly on his. He didn't seem to care that Aksel was a Xeus.

"I'm almost five, not a baby!" Aksel said again."I can go anywhere I want!"

Lucien's lips twitched, and Aksel felt inordinately pleased. He wanted to make him smile more.

"Your name is Aksel, right?" he said.

Nodding, Aksel shifted closer to him, and after a moment's thought, climbed into the boy's lap.

The boy tensed up a little, and then relaxed again, looking at him softly with his wide green eyes.

"You smell sad," Aksel said, reaching up and touching the boy's smooth cheek."Thoros upset you. I saw—I smelled it."

Lucien's throat moved. "He didn't upset me. I don't care what people say about me."

Aksel frowned. He could smell the lie in Lucien's scent, but maybe Lucien wanted to believe it. Aksel understood. He always said that he didn't care what people said about him, but... but it still made him angry. Sometimes, it still hurt.

"I don't care neither," he said.

"I don't care either," Lucien corrected him gently.

Aksel wrinkled his nose in distaste, and Lucien laughed a little, his eyes sparkling.

Aksel couldn't look away from him. The boy really was the prettiest thing ever, but when he laughed, he was ethereal. It was like he shone with light from the inside, exuding warmth and wholesomeness and everything nice and good.

He couldn't imagine anyone hurting that.

But he could imagine people wanting to possess that.

"We can ‘not care' together," Aksel declared.

Lucien laughed again, but this time his laugh lacked genuine amusement. It wasn't fake. Just sad. Aksel hated it.

"Do you want a hug?" Aksel said. "The baby—my baby sister—stops crying when I give her a hug." The baby really did. Aksel's father had explained that it was the pack bond calming her down, but Aksel hoped it would work on Lucien too, even though they obviously didn't share a family bond.

Lucien blinked a few times, his eyes a little shiny."I'm not exactly a baby," he said with a fragile, strained smile. "And I'm not sad."

Liar.

"I'll hug you anyway,"Aksel said with a scoff, wrapping his arms around Lucien's chest.

Lucien stiffened.But after a long few moments, tentatively, he hugged back.

And little by little, the sour undertones receded from his scent. It became sweeter. Like flowers or something. Not the nauseatingly sweet kind, but the kind that made Aksel think of the sun on his face in the early summer. Aksel breathed it in greedily, rubbing his face against the scent gland on the boy's slim neck. He was only vaguely aware of the low sound coming from somewhere until Lucien suddenly chuckled.

"Are you growling?" he said.

Blinking, Aksel lifted his head and looked him in the face. "I'm an alpha," he said, puffing up his chest. "I'm comforting you. You're an omega of our pack. Alphas take care of omegas."

A sad smile curled Lucien's lips. "They do," he whispered, some unidentifiable emotion flickering over his face before his smile became more genuine. "You're adorable, sweetheart."

Aksel frowned, deeply unimpressed. "I'm not! I'm an alpha. Alphas aren't adorable."

Lucien giggled. It was the prettiest sound Aksel had ever heard. He wanted to bottle it up and listen to it forever. He wanted to make Lucien laugh again. Force him to laugh all the time.

The feeling—the greed he was feeling—was too much. Aksel growled in frustration and buried his face against Lucien's scent gland, scent-marking him aggressively. He knew his alpha pheromones weren't strong yet—that would happen only when he was old enough to present—but he was a Xeus. Everyone knew Xeus alphas were very stinky from birth. For the first time, Aksel was glad that he was stinky.

He was going to make Lucien stink of him. So that his laughter belonged to him, Aksel. Only him.

Only him.