(Max’s POV)
Lucian came around the corner already moving, and the first guy — the one who’d been holding my arm twisted behind my back — barely had time to turn before Lucian’s fist connected with his jaw hard enough to drop him straight to the concrete.
The second one let go of me on instinct, spinning to face this new threat, and Lucian didn’t give him a second to recover. He caught the guy’s collar with one hand and drove him back into the brick wall, once, twice, until his knees buckled and he slid down it, dazed.
That left the third — the one who’d thrown the almost-punch — and this one didn’t run. He grabbed something off the ground near the breezeway wall, a loose length of pipe someone had left leaning against a maintenance panel, and swung it hard before Lucian could turn.
It caught him across the temple.
Lucian staggered, one hand flying up to the side of his head, and when he pulled it away there was blood on his fingers, dark and immediate, already tracking a thin line down toward his jaw.
For half a second I thought that would be it — thought the fight would tip, thought I’d have to do something, anything, even if I knew I couldn’t. But Lucian didn’t slow down. If anything, something in his face went darker, colder, and he closed the distance before the guy could swing again, caught his wrist mid-motion, and twisted until the pipe clattered uselessly to the ground.
"You want to hit someone?" His voice had gone low, rough, edged with something that didn’t sound entirely human. "Hit me."
He didn’t wait for an answer. One clean hit to the stomach doubled the guy over, and a second sent him sprawling next to his friend, both of them groaning against the concrete, none of them getting back up in any hurry.
The whole thing had taken less than a minute.
Lucian stood over them for a second, chest rising and falling hard, blood still tracking down the side of his face, and then he turned toward me, and whatever fury had been aimed at them redirected itself entirely onto me instead.
"Who do you think you are." His voice cracked through the quiet like a whip. "Do you have any idea what almost happened to you? Three Alphas, Max. Three. You think you’re some kind of hero because you helped an omega run once?"
"I didn’t—"
"Are you enjoying this?" He stepped closer, and even hurt, even bleeding, there was nothing weak in the way he moved, nothing that made me feel anything but small standing in front of him. "Is that it? You like the trouble? You like making everyone else clean up after you?"
"That’s not—"
"You can’t even save yourself." His voice dropped lower, colder, somehow worse than the shouting. "You think grabbing a wrist makes you brave. It makes you an idiot. It makes you a problem I have to fix every single time you decide to play hero in a world you don’t understand."
I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t sound exactly as small as I felt, so I didn’t give him one. I just stood there and let it land, the way I’d learned to let things land my whole life.
He turned and started walking, and after a second, because I didn’t know what else to do, I followed.
He didn’t slow down for me. Didn’t look back. I caught up at the edge of the breezeway and reached for his hand before I’d really decided to, catching his wrist the same way he’d caught mine, gently, careful of the blood already drying along his knuckles.
"Let me clean it for you."
He pulled his hand back like my touch had burned him. "I don’t need—"
"Please."
He looked at me then, really looked, something exhausted and unreadable behind the anger, and for a second I thought he’d say no. He didn’t say anything at all. He just exhaled hard through his nose and started walking again, and this time, when I fell into step beside him, he let me.
The first aid room was empty at that hour, fluorescent lights humming over a row of cots and a locked supply cabinet the nurse’s aide unlocked for us without asking questions.
Lucian sat on the edge of the closest cot, jaw tight, and let me dig through the cabinet for antiseptic and gauze without offering to help or telling me to stop.
I knelt in front of him, close enough that my knees nearly brushed his boots, and tilted his chin gently to the side with two fingers so I could see the cut properly.
He tensed at the contact but didn’t pull away. A faint shiver ran through him at the light press of my skin against his, the warmth of his jaw lingering under my fingertips a second longer than it needed to.
"This is going to sting," I said, unscrewing the antiseptic.
"Fine."
It clearly did sting — I saw his jaw clench hard when I pressed the gauze against the cut — but he didn’t make a sound, didn’t flinch away, just sat there and let me work in silence broken only by the hum of the lights overhead and the soft rustle of gauze.
My other hand rested lightly on his knee for balance, and I felt another quiet shiver travel through him at the simple weight of it.
"You didn’t have to do that," I said quietly, dabbing carefully at the edge of the wound. "Fight them. You could’ve just walked past."
"You’d have been dead by the time I found someone else to tell." His voice was flat, but quieter now, some of the fury from the breezeway already spent.
"Still. Thank you."
He didn’t answer that either. I finished cleaning the cut, pressed a small bandage over it, and sat back on my heels, looking at my work like it might tell me something he wouldn’t.
The space between us still felt charged, close enough that I could catch the faint heat of his body and the slow, controlled way he was breathing.
"There," I said. "Done."
He stood almost immediately, like sitting still a second longer than necessary wasn’t an option, and started for the door.
I caught his wrist before he made it two steps. The brief contact sent a quiet shiver up my arm, his pulse jumping once under my fingers as if the touch itself had startled something deeper. I didn’t let go right away.
"I’m sorry, bro." The words came out smaller than I meant them to, but I meant every one of them. "I didn’t mean to cause you trouble."
He went very still.
He didn’t pull his wrist free. He didn’t turn around either. He just stood there, back to me, blood already drying dark under a strip of white gauze, and said nothing at all for long enough that the silence itself started to feel like an answer.