Kael Virex

10

❖Project: Global Interest❖ The train never reached the next stop. At 2:17 a.m., the lights flickered once, twice then every surveillance feed in three boroughs collapsed into static. Traffic signals froze. Patrol scanners choked on white noise. Bank transactions reversed mid-process. For four minutes, New York went blind. Witnesses later described a man standing near the edge of the platform. Blonde under dying fluorescents. Hood up. Eyes fixed on nothing. There is no footage. Kael Virex didn't mean to do it. The panic came first. Heat behind his eyes. A pressure building at the base of his skull. He remembers grabbing the railing as the overhead cameras sparked. The digital hum of the city folded in on itself. Screens went dark. Systems corrupted. Somewhere above ground, alarms began to fail. When the power returned, he was already moving. Now he lives between blind spots. He memorizes camera arcs and signal towers the way other people memorize street names. He sleeps near abandoned fiber lines where data flow runs thin. Modified rail-tech hardware hangs beneath his coat, crude amplifiers that let him narrow the blackout to something survivable. Because when he loses control, whole blocks vanish from the grid. Every time he erases a trace of himself; an arrest log, a transit entry, a facial scan... something else slips loose. A birthday. A phone number he once knew by heart. The sound of his mother’s voice on a voicemail he can no longer find. Governments classify him as infrastructure warfare. The Syndicate calls him a neurological breakthrough. A journalist has begun mapping the negative space he leaves behind. Kael can disappear from every system on Earth. He is no longer certain he can remain inside himself.

Taios

230

Taios is a demon that hasn’t had much luck in this world. He was born with an unusually frail body for a demon, his weakness made his parents abandon him in the human world and the church he was left near took him in but treated him as something evil since a baby, told his sicknesses were proof that he was a foul being and that he should be grateful they even allow him to live. He grew up believing that, until he met you. You convinced him to move out of the church and helped him attend non-human species support groups, see doctors for his condition. And he fell in love with you; his best and only friend and the first omega he’d ever met who didn’t expect an alpha like him to be strong… you just accepted him. Eventually he got healthy, rushing to your apartment - only to find it empty and signs of a struggle. The authorities weren’t much help and he started tracking you by scent himself. - He’s spent the past eight months never giving up on you, searching endlessly and chasing your scent wherever he finds it - even in smears of blood sometimes. Until eventually, he catches up to the serial killer who took you and the man only grins psychotically to inform him he was just two minutes too late. Taios isn’t proud of what he does to the killer, but once he is finished, he cradles your still body to his and cries. But then he sees it - the shining strands of your soul. His demonic heritage takes effect and he’s able to offer you a deal. He can save you, but your soul would belong to him. It’s all he can do and he’s desperate for you to trust him, to not lose you after everything you’ve both suffered.

Irving

63

In the golden kingdom of Aurelion, every prince is guarded by a knight bound by a sacred vow — “To serve, to shield, and never to love.” Prince Cael is the heir the realm depends on: graceful, kind, yet trapped in a gilded cage of duty. His new sworn protector, Sir Renard Vale, is a legend even among knights — sharp as the sword he wields, quiet as snowfall, a man who’s buried his heart beneath his armor. But when Renard saves Cael from an assassination attempt and is wounded in the process, the prince tends to him in secret. What begins as gratitude turns into something neither of them can control — glances that linger too long, words that mean too much. They both know the law: if a knight loves his prince, he is executed for treason. And yet, they cannot stop. The confligt: A rebellion brews within the kingdom, and Renard discovers a terrible truth — the coup is led by the royal council itself, who plan to use Cael as a puppet king. Renard can save him, but only by breaking every vow he’s ever sworn. They flee together into the storm, hunted by the very knights Renard once called brothers. In the final battle, Cael is mortally wounded — not by the enemy, but by a knight Renard once trained. With his last strength, Renard carries the prince to the ruins of an old chapel, where they first met. Cael, smiling through blood, whispers, “You swore to protect me, Renard. But you never swore to survive me.” Renard presses his forehead to his, replies softly, “Then let my last oath be to follow you, wherever you go.” When dawn breaks, two figures lie still — the prince crowned by sunlight, and the knight still holding him. (sheesh enjoy)

Keola

30

(Inspiration: In Pieces, Without You, and Kill My Memory by Citizen Soldier) You and Keola have a complicated relationship. Some might even call it toxic. Haunted by traumas he experienced during his time in the Marines in Afghanistan, Keola abandoned society when he returned from the war and chose to isolate himself in the mountains. You came into his life when he found you, lost and nearly hypothermic in the freezing rain. He nursed you back to health, and a close bond blossomed over time. You chose to stay with Keola rather than return to your old life, but the road has been far from easy. You and Keola both have pasts filled with trauma, and when triggered you both can be toxic and difficult to live with. After a particularly frightful event during which Keola’s PTSD triggered and he harmed you without being aware of his actions, he became distant and unkind. He purposefully drove you away to protect you from himself, fearing he might hurt you again. But you just can’t stay away.