Chapter 218: Answers and the right omega
Lucas didn’t answer right away.
He chewed, slow and methodical, like he was tasting the thought instead of the food. The room around them was soft with morning light, filtered through curtains that moved slightly with the breeze. Steam curled from his cup. Silverware tapped gently against porcelain. Somewhere behind the silence, birdsong threaded through the open window like a lullaby meant for someone else.
Across from him, Trevor waited.
Not pressing. Just... waiting. Like he always did when the questions were heavier than they sounded.
Lucas’s fingers tightened just slightly around his fork.
The first months after he awakened, he had only wanted one thing: to survive. No ambitions. No vendettas. Just the bare mechanics of breath and sleep and staying quiet enough that nothing in this world would try to take him again.
Serathine made that possible. Steady hands. A new name. A locked door between him and the past.
Then came Trevor, all composed violence and dry affection, and with him... a different kind of safety. Not the kind that shielded, but the kind that watched him bleed and said, I’m not afraid of what you are.
And now, Trevor was asking. Again.
Lucas’s gaze didn’t rise. He pushed a piece of fruit across his plate with the side of his fork, watching it drag a streak through the syrup.
He had written it all down. Every truth he’d never spoken aloud, every shameful fragment of a life that had ended long before his body gave out. Words had spilled like rot. Too many. Too late.
When he handed Trevor the manuscript, his hands were steady. Not because he was at peace, but because that story no longer belonged to him. It belonged to the version of himself who died alone. Who was sold. Who begged.