Chapter: Chapter 37The national psychology conference in Seattle was a whirlwind of ideas and faces. Leonard was there to present his first-year research project, a small poster session, but it felt like a monumental step. He moved through the crowded convention center with an ease that would have been unimaginable a year ago, chatting with researchers, asking insightful questions at talks, his new business cards feeling legitimate in his pocket.He was standing near a coffee cart, scrolling through his phone to check the time for his presentation, when a voice, smooth and vaguely familiar, cut through the chatter.“Leonard Elliot. My, my. How the ambitious climb.”Leonard looked up. Mark Sanders stood before him, wearing a smirk that didn’t reach his cold eyes. He looked the same—perfectly groomed, exuding a sense of superiority that now struck Leonard as brittle rather than intimidating.“Professor Sanders,” Leonard said, his voice neutral. He didn’t smile. He simply closed the distance Mark had tried
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 36Paul had never been one for birthdays. His own, especially, had always felt like just another day—a marker of time passing, often spent grading papers or preparing lectures. Celebrations felt frivolous, and being the center of attention made him uncomfortable. It was a holdover from a childhood where achievements were noted, but feelings were rarely celebrated.So, when his birthday arrived that fall, he expected nothing. He mentioned it offhand to Leonard a week prior, more as a calendar note than a hint. Leonard had simply nodded, saying, "Okay," and Paul had thought nothing more of it.The day began normally. Paul taught his morning class, saw a couple of therapy clients in his home office, and was mentally preparing for an evening of reading journal articles. When he walked out of his office at five o'clock, he stopped short.The living room was transformed. The lights were dimmed, and the curtains were drawn against the early evening dark. Dozens of small, warm-white fairy lights
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 35The Psychology Department’s welcome reception for new graduate students was in full swing. The air in the atrium was thick with the buzz of intellectual curiosity, clinking glasses, and the nervous energy of people trying to impress. Leonard stood near a table of hors d'oeuvres, engaged in an animated discussion with two other first-years and a senior professor about cognitive biases in eyewitness testimony.He was different. It wasn't just the new glasses or the confident set of his shoulders. It was the way he held himself—no longer trying to shrink into the background, but standing firm, his voice clear and sure as he articulated his point. He laughed at something the professor said, a genuine, easy sound that carried across the room.Paul stood by the punch bowl, a cup of lukewarm juice in his hand, watching him. A profound, aching pride swelled in his chest. This was the man he had always known Leonard could be—bright, engaged, unafraid. He had seen the potential buried under lay
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 34Oregon was a world of green. Lush, rain-washed evergreens pressed against the sky, a stark contrast to the East Coast's brick and ivy. Their new apartment was small, sunlight streaming through bare windows, boxes stacked like a cardboard city in every room. The air smelled of fresh paint and pine-scented cleaning products. It was a blank slate, heavy with the promise and terror of new beginnings.The first few days were a whirlwind of practicalities—setting up internet, buying groceries, learning the labyrinthine streets of their new town. Paul had found a part-time teaching position at a small liberal arts college and was building a private practice. Leonard was preparing for the start of his graduate program in the fall. They were busy, purposefully so, using the mundane tasks to avoid the larger, unspoken question of how they would fit together in this new, ordinary life.On the third day, they tackled the study, a small room they’d decided would be their shared office. Leonard was
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 33The sun beat down on the sea of black robes and colorful hoods. The university quad was packed with families, friends, and faculty, all buzzing with the celebratory chaos of graduation day. The air vibrated with laughter, cheers, and the occasional airhorn blast. For most, it was a day of uncomplicated joy.For Leonard, standing in line with his graduating class, waiting to process onto the main stage, it was a day of profound, complex emotions. The weight of the robe felt symbolic. He was shedding a skin—the skin of the broken, anxious student who had walked into Paul’s classroom two years ago.He scanned the endless rows of faces in the audience. It was impossible to pick out anyone specific in the blur of thousands. But he knew Paul was there. He’d insisted on coming, despite the risk. “I’ve watched you fight for this every step of the way,” he’d said the night before, his voice fierce with pride. “I’m not missing the finish line.”The procession began. Pomp and Circumstance swelle
Last Updated: 2025-12-17
Chapter: Chapter 32Spring bled into early summer, bringing with it the frantic energy of finals and the looming reality of graduation. The fragile normalcy Leonard and Paul had built—their clandestine dinners, their quiet evenings in Paul’s apartment, the simple, hard-won comfort of falling asleep next to someone—was now shadowed by a pressing question: What next?The ethics committee’s review had resulted in a formal reprimand for Paul and a permanent note in his file. He was barred from teaching undergraduate courses for two years. It was a professional blow, but not a fatal one. He still had his research, his graduate students. But the university, once his kingdom, now felt like a gilded cage, a place of sidelong glances and quiet judgment.They were sitting on the floor of Paul’s living room, surrounded by a sea of Leonard’s textbooks and notecards. The air was warm, the window open to let in the evening breeze. Leonard had just finished his last final exam. A strange, weightless feeling had settled
Last Updated: 2025-12-17
Chapter: Chapter 78The cracked photograph remained on the console table, a silent, screaming testament to the line that had been crossed. In the hours that followed its arrival, the penthouse underwent a subtle but profound transformation. The air of corporate crisis was replaced by something else—a cold, focused, and deeply personal fury. Caius moved with a new intensity, his silence more threatening than any outburst. The battle was no longer about stock prices or boardroom politics; it was a vendetta.That evening, after a series of terse, encrypted calls, Caius emerged from his study. He found Lynn sitting in the living room, staring blankly at a book he hadn't read."Come with me," Caius said, his voice flat, devoid of its usual clipped authority. It was a command, but it carried a weight that went beyond business.Lynn looked up, startled. The expression on Caius's face was unreadable, but his eyes held a glint of something dark and final. This wasn't a lesson. This was a revelation.Without anoth
Last Updated: 2026-01-15
Chapter: Chapter 77: The Unforgivable ProvocationThe fragile, unspoken truce that had settled after the night of drunken vulnerability shattered with the arrival of a simple, unmarked package. Three days had passed since the email leak, and the penthouse was a pressure cooker of contained chaos. Caius operated with a cold, machine-like efficiency, his every move calculated to contain the financial and reputational hemorrhage. The public narrative was a battleground, with the Evans PR machine fighting a desperate rearguard action against the tide of damning evidence. Lynn kept to the shadows, a ghost in the machine of Caius’s war, his own emotions a tangled knot of vengeful satisfaction and gnawing fear.The package was delivered by a courier with a nondescript uniform. James intercepted it at the door, his usual impassive demeanor replaced by sharp wariness. He ran it through a scanner before bringing it into the foyer, placing it on a marble console table.“It’s clean,” James reported to Caius, who had emerged from his study at the
Last Updated: 2026-01-15
Chapter: Chapter 76The days following the email leak were a descent into a silent, high-stakes war. The penthouse became the nerve center of a corporate siege. Caius was a ghost, visible only in fleeting glimpses—pacing the study during endless conference calls, his voice a low, relentless drumbeat of commands and countermeasures. The air was thick with the scent of strong coffee and tension. He had James install multiple large screens in the study, each displaying a different battlefield: stock tickers, news feeds, legal dockets. The empire was under assault, and Caius was fighting a multi-front war with a cold, terrifying ferocity.Lynn kept to the periphery, a silent witness to the storm. He saw the strain on Caius’s face, the shadows under his eyes that no amount of authority could conceal. The invincible facade was still there, but it was stretched thin, like ice over a raging river. The emails had struck a blow far deeper than any scandal about Lynn’s captivity. They had attacked the foundation of
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 75The manufactured calm lasted less than forty-eight hours. The Evans Group's slick press release and carefully staged photographs had successfully muddied the waters, turning public sympathy towards the "sensitive artist" and casting doubt on the initial salacious reports. But it was a temporary victory, a bandage on a festering wound. Lynn existed in a state of suspended animation, the taste of humiliation still bitter in his mouth. He avoided the studio—it felt tainted by the photoshoot—and spent his time listlessly staring out the window, watching the city that was buzzing with a distorted version of his life.The new attack came not from a tabloid, but from a respected, mainstream financial investigative journal, The Capital Ledger. It wasn't a whisper; it was a thunderclap.James entered the living room, his face graver than Lynn had ever seen it. He handed Lynn a tablet without a word. The headline was stark black and white, devoid of sensationalism, which made it all the more te
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 74The day after the scandal broke, the penthouse was a hive of silent, furious activity. Caius was sequestered in his study, the low, constant murmur of his voice on conference calls a testament to the battle being waged in the digital and corporate arenas. Lynn remained in his room, the tablet James had given him a window to the outside storm. He watched as the initial tabloid article was picked up by more mainstream outlets, the narrative of the "troubled artist" and the "controlling billionaire" gaining traction. Each new headline was a fresh wave of nausea. He saw his own face—haunting, beautiful, vulnerable—splashed across gossip sites, a symbol in a story he hadn't chosen.He felt a perverse sense of exposure, as if his skin had been peeled back for public consumption. The gilded cage had become a panopticon, and he was the star attraction.In the late afternoon, James entered without knocking. He carried a garment bag and a demeanor of grim efficiency. "Mr. Lynn," he said, hangin
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Chapter: Chapter 73The fragile, thorn-protected peace of the penthouse was shattered not by a physical attack, but by a digital whisper that grew into a roar. It began subtly. Lynn was in the living room, attempting to read, when James entered with a tablet, his face a mask of grim neutrality."Mr. Lynn," he said, his tone carefully devoid of inflection. "You should see this."Lynn took the tablet, a cold dread settling in his stomach. On the screen was an article from a sleazy but popular online tabloid, The Daily Whisper. The headline was sensationalist clickbait: "IS EVANS GROUP HEIR HOLDING ARTIST CAPTIVE? SHOCKING DETAILS OF RE-EMERGED PRODIGY'S DISAPPEARANCE!"The article was a masterclass in insinuation. It mentioned Lynn's "sudden and mysterious" withdrawal from the art scene after his acclaimed Swiss exhibition. It featured a grainy but poignant photo of him from the opening night of Unsilenced, looking pale, intense, and hauntingly beautiful—the perfect image of a troubled genius. It quoted "a
Last Updated: 2025-12-22
Scars of Silence(MxM)
In a world slowly being erased, the quiet is the killer.
Ethan Ashworth’s life ended the day the Silence touched him, leaving a smooth, numb patch on his skin and a ghost where his memories used to be. He is one of the Marked—doomed to be hollowed out, unless the hunters of Die Jägerfind him first. His only hope is the Library, a secret sanctuary for those the Silence hasn’t yet consumed.
There, he meets Lorenzo Cavalli, a former soldier marked not by emptiness, but by a rage that refuses to be silenced. Their connection is immediate, volatile, and unwanted—a psychic bond forged in shared terror that screams against the quiet. It’s also the one thing the all-consuming Silence cannot stomach. Their bond isn't just a link; it’s a weapon. A wrong note in a world demanding perfect silence.
On the run from relentless hunters and a creeping nothingness that eats sound, memory, and soul, Ethan and Lorenzo discover a terrible truth: the Silence isn't random. It's a hunger. And it’s gathering, preparing to swallow the world whole.
Their only chance is to turn their unwanted connection into a blade, and walk into the heart of the consuming quiet. To kill a god of silence, you don’t fight with a shout. You fight with a scream that is also a love song.
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Chapter: Chapter 79I don’t know how long I stayed on the floor. Time lost all meaning. The quiet in the apartment wasn’t peaceful; it was the quiet of a tomb. The silence of the bond was the worst part. It had been a constant in my life for so long—a hum, a warmth, a storm, a comfort. Now it was just… nothing. A void where Lorenzo used to be.The crumpled list of terms lay on the floorboards like a dead thing. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t touch it. Non-negotiable conditions. His words. Final. Absolute.My mind tried to process. To find a third option, a compromise, a crack in the logic. But there was none. Lorenzo hadn’t left any room. It was his way, or it was over. A part of me, the part that was still the man who had fallen in love with a storm, wanted to scream, to fight, to argue. But who would I argue with? The door was closed. The channel was shut.I thought about taking the deal. I imagined it. Packing up our life. Going to some sun-drenched villa in Tuscany. Sitting in silence with a thera
Last Updated: 2026-01-20
Chapter: Chapter 78Two days passed. Two days of suffocating silence. Alessia went back to Milan, her face etched with worry. “Call me,” she begged, hugging me tight at the station. “The second anything changes. Or if you need me to come back.”I promised. Then I was alone in the apartment. The silence was complete now, a living thing that followed me from room to room. I didn’t go to the office. I couldn’t face pretending. I worked from home, or tried to. Mostly, I stared at walls.The bond was a constant, low-grade ache. Not the sharp pain of a fresh wound, but the deep, throbbing pain of a limb held in the wrong position for too long. I could feel him out there. He wasn’t gone. He was… holding himself apart. The connection was stretched so thin it felt like a single, frayed thread. One good tug would snap it.On the morning of the third day, the thread finally twitched.Not a call. Not a text. An email. From Lorenzo’s secure account, the one he used for business.Ethan,We cannot continue like this. T
Last Updated: 2026-01-20
Chapter: Chapter 77Lorenzo didn’t come back that night. The silence in the apartment was a physical weight, heavier than any threat we’d faced. Alessia and I cleaned up the cold pasta in a wordless, grim ritual. The slammed door seemed to have sucked all the air, all the warmth, out of the rooms.She made up the sofa for herself. “I’ll stay tonight,” she said, her voice small. “In case… you know.”In case he came back raging? In case I fell apart? I just nodded, numb.I lay in our bed, in the dark, surrounded by the scent of him on the pillows. The bond was a strange, hollow ache. It wasn’t the sharp pain of a break. It was a dull, empty throb, like a phantom limb. He was out there, alive, furious, hurt. But the connection felt muted, stretched thin, as if he’d put a wall around his end of it. Or maybe I had.Sleep was impossible. Every sound from the street—a car door, a distant siren—made my heart lurch. Was it him? But the door never opened.By dawn, I was a wreck. I got up, made coffee. Alessia was
Last Updated: 2026-01-20
Chapter: Chapter 76The drive back from the symposium was a blur. The neat rows of grapevines, the soft evening light—it all felt unreal, like a painting I was looking at from the wrong side of the glass. Dr. Thorne’s words echoed in my head. Asynchronous evolution. A living bridge. The beautiful lie.The white business card was in my wallet. A secret. My first real secret from Lorenzo.I parked the car and sat for a moment, staring at the familiar facade of our apartment building. Our fortress. Our cage. The lights were on in our living room. He was home.I took a deep, shaky breath and went inside.The smell of garlic and herbs hit me as I opened the door. Lorenzo was in the kitchen, stirring something in a pot. He looked up as I came in. His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes scanned my face, looking for… something. Guilt? Defiance?“Hey,” he said, his voice casual. Too casual. “How was the office?”“Fine. Busy.” The lie tasted like ash. I hung up my coat, my back to him. “Smells good.”“P
Last Updated: 2026-01-20
Chapter: Chapter 75Alessia stayed with us. The apartment, which had started to feel like a silent battleground between Lorenzo and me, was now filled with the quiet, raw sounds of her grief. She moved like a ghost, her eyes red and puffy, eating little, sleeping less. We tiptoed around her, our own argument buried under the immediate need to care for her.Lorenzo was in his element. The protector. The father. He made her soup. He sat with her for hours, not talking, just being there. He called her professors, arranged for extensions. He was building a fortress around her, just like he wanted to build one around us. And it was working. Slowly, she began to emerge from the worst of it, propped up by his unwavering, solid presence.I tried to help. I listened. I hugged her. But I felt… sidelined. An observer. Their shared history, their shared blood, created a bubble I couldn’t fully enter. My attempts to talk about the future, about other possibilities, felt hollow next to Lorenzo’s silent, steadfast guar
Last Updated: 2026-01-20
Chapter: Chapter 74The argument about the research institute hung in the air between us for days, a low-grade static that made the quiet apartment feel charged. We moved around each other carefully. We talked about work, about the weather, about Alessia’s upcoming visit. We didn’t talk about the email. We didn’t talk about the bond. It was the first thing we’d ever truly agreed not to discuss, and the silence felt like a wall.I didn’t reply to Dr. Thorne’s email. But I didn’t delete it either. It sat in my inbox, a tiny, glowing ember of possibility. I’d read it again when Lorenzo was in the shower, or out on the balcony. Rare interpersonal dynamics. Sustained synergy. The words were a siren song to the part of me that felt adrift.Lorenzo, sensing my continued interest, doubled down on “normal.” He planned a weekend trip to the mountains. He bought tickets to a symphony. He suggested we finally get that dog we’d half-joked about. It was all meant to be comforting, to anchor me in the life we had. But
Last Updated: 2026-01-19
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