(Max’s POV)
I gave it another ten minutes before I accepted the truth: he wasn’t coming.
I started walking in the direction I thought was home, because staying at an empty curb felt worse than moving, even moving wrong.
The problem was I didn’t actually know which direction home was. I’d been in the car exactly once, going the opposite way, half-focused on not looking as nervous as I felt.
I didn’t know street names. I didn’t even know what the neighborhood was called.
The city got less familiar the longer I walked. Glass towers gave way to older buildings, then to quiet residential blocks that all looked identical, gated houses set back behind hedges too tall to see over.
My phone was nearly dead I’d forgotten to charge it that morning, one more thing I hadn’t thought to plan for in a life that had changed too fast for me to keep up with.
I spotted a woman waiting at the crosswalk and stepped toward her.
"Excuse me," I said. "Do you know where the Cross estate is?"
She blinked at me.
"The Cross estate?" she repeated, as if the words themselves were unfamiliar.
"Yes. The Cross family’s estate."
Her eyes flicked toward the traffic, then back to me. She gave a quick shake of her head.
"No. Sorry."
"Oh. Do you know anyone who might—"
The light changed.
She stepped off the curb with the crowd.
"Wait," I called after her. "Maybe you could just tell me which direction—"
But she was already walking faster, disappearing among the people before I could finish.
The sun started going down. That was when the fear really settled in not loud, not dramatic, just a steady, cold weight in my chest that made my steps a little faster, a little less sure.
Three guys were leaning against a low wall near a corner store, and I felt it before I understood what I was feeling that same instinct I’d learned my whole life, the one that told me don’t look, don’t make eye contact, just keep walking. One of them peeled off the wall as I passed.
"Hey." He fell into step half a pace behind me, too close. "You lost?"
"I’m fine," I said, not slowing down.
"Didn’t ask if you were fine." Another voice, from the other side now, and I felt myself boxed in without quite being touched yet, the particular kind of fear that comes from being surrounded by people bigger than you who know it. "Asked if you were lost."
I didn’t answer. I just kept walking, faster now, heart hammering, waiting for a hand on my shoulder that never quite came.
One of them leaned in close enough that I felt his breath near my ear. He inhaled once, sharp, like he was tasting the air around me, and whatever he found there made him pull back with something between disgust and amusement.
"Human," he said, flat, like the word itself was an answer to a question none of them had bothered to ask out loud.
They lost interest all at once, the way people lose interest in something that isn’t worth the effort of hurting.
The one who’d been closest scoffed, shoved my shoulder hard enough to stagger me sideways, and then they were walking away, already laughing about something else, already forgetting I existed.
I stood there on the sidewalk for a second, breathing hard, waiting for my legs to remember how to work.
I found a bench outside a shuttered pharmacy and sat down before I fell down.
My hands were shaking when I pulled out my phone six percent battery, no idea where I was, and exactly two people in this entire city who might actually answer if I called.
I tried Mom first. It rang twice before she picked up, and the second I heard her voice I had to work hard to keep my own steady.
"Max? Honey, where are you, it’s almost seven—"
"I got lost," I said, and hated how small my voice sounded. "Lucian didn’t come get me after school. I tried walking and I don’t— I don’t know where I am."
"Oh, sweetheart." The worry in her voice made my throat tighten. "Okay. Okay, stay exactly where you are, send me a picture of the street, anything. I’ll call a car for you right now."
She stayed on the phone with me until the cab pulled up eleven minutes later, and I don’t think either of us said much of anything, just the sound of her breathing on the other end so I’d know I wasn’t alone.
I gave the driver the address off a text she sent, and I watched the city blur past the window, my reflection pale and tired staring back at me from the glass.
I made it home just past seven thirty, showered fast, and came down for dinner already exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with my legs.
Everyone was already seated. Mom shot me a look the second I sat down checking, silently, that I was actually okay and I gave her a small nod that I hoped covered more than it did.
Lucian’s chair was empty.
He came down twelve minutes later, dressed for somewhere that wasn’t dinner dark shirt half-unbuttoned, the smell of expensive cologne arriving before he did, car keys already spinning around one finger like he had somewhere better to be.
He didn’t sit. He didn’t apologize. He just reached for a piece of bread off the table like he was passing through.
"Where were you," Damian said. Quiet. Too quiet.
"Out." Lucian didn’t even look up.
"You were supposed to bring your brother home from school."
"I had somewhere to be."
"He waited," Damian said, voice sharpening, "for over an hour. Alone. In a city he doesn’t know. He had to call his mother and take a cab because you couldn’t be bothered to remember one simple thing."
Something in Lucian’s jaw ticked, but he still didn’t look at me. "He’s not a child. He can find his own way around."
"He got lost, Lucian." Damian’s voice dropped, and something in it made even Lucian go still. "Do you understand what could have happened to him out there? Alone, unclaimed, human?"
"That’s not my problem."
"It is exactly your problem." Damian set his fork down, and the sound of it against the china was somehow louder than shouting would have been. "You will take him with you tonight. Wherever you were planning to go. You will show him the city so this never happens again, or you will explain to me personally why you’d rather see him hurt than spend one evening being decent."
"This is my night. My friends. My life." Lucian’s voice had an edge now, low and furious. "You don’t get to hand him to me every time you feel guilty about the wedding."
"Then you’d better get used to it," Damian said, flat and final, "because until he knows this city as well as you do, you are his ride, his guide, and whether you like it or not his brother. Or you can explain to me exactly what kind of punishment feels appropriate for leaving a member of this family stranded."
The silence afterward had teeth in it.
Lucian’s eyes finally landed on me one flat, unreadable pass, no apology anywhere in it, nothing at all except irritation that I’d become the reason for this conversation.
"Fine," he said, to his father, not to me. "Get ready. Ten minutes."
I didn’t own club clothes. I didn’t know that was a thing I needed until I was standing in front of my closet with ten minutes on the clock, staring at the same three button-downs I’d worn to every dinner and interview I’d ever had.
I picked the least formal one, dark slacks, and told myself it would be fine.
It was not fine.
I knew it the second I got in the car and Lucian’s eyes flicked over me once, something unreadable and faintly disgusted crossing his face before he looked back at the road and said nothing at all.
I knew it more when we walked into the club low lights, bass I could feel in my teeth, everyone dressed like they belonged there and I felt every part of my outfit turn into a spotlight.
"Nice look," someone said as we passed, not bothering to lower his voice. "Who dressed you, your priest?"
Laughter followed, easy and careless, the kind of laughter that costs the people doing it nothing at all.
Lucian didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down. He peeled off toward a booth full of people who lit up the second they saw him, already reaching for a drink someone pressed into his hand, already laughing at something I couldn’t hear from the corner I found for myself against the wall.
I watched him from there for a long time. Watched him drink.
Watched someone pass him something he lit and drew on slow, smoke curling up past a face that looked, for the first time since I’d met him, almost relaxed.
Watched three different people orbit him like he was the only interesting thing in the room, and maybe, to them, he was.
He didn’t look for me once.
A girl found me instead, pretty, unbothered by the stares I was getting, and took my hand before I could think of a reason to say no. "Come dance."
I glanced toward Lucian’s booth without meaning to. He was watching. Not concerned. Not curious even. Just watching, the way you watch something mildly embarrassing happen to a stranger.
I got up and followed her onto the floor because staying against that wall for one more second felt worse than whatever humiliation was waiting out there.
It was worse.
I didn’t know how to move to music like this. I never had.
I felt every wrong angle of my own body, heard the laughter start somewhere behind me before I’d even finished my first attempt at a beat, felt hands appear out of nowhere to steady me into an even more ridiculous position for everyone’s amusement.
Someone tipped a drink, "accidentally," and I felt it soak cold through my shirt, down my collar, onto skin that flinched but didn’t otherwise react.
I didn’t say anything. I’d learned a long time ago that saying anything just gave people more to laugh at.
I looked toward the booth once, drink dripping off my chin, dignity gone, half-hoping stupidly, uselessly hoping that he’d get up. That something in him would decide this had gone far enough.
He didn’t move.
He just watched, glass in hand, face giving away absolutely nothing at all, and let it happen.