Brothers In Name Alone

Caeden dragged the towel through his damp hair, his chest expanding with the rare luxury of total space. Last night had been a victory. He had stretched his limbs across the king-sized mattress, taking up every single inch of the linen, reveling in the quiet dark. His father’s original ultimatum still echoed in his mind: share a bedroom once the stepbrother arrived. Share a bed, even. No fucking way. The thought of another male’s shoulders brushing his in the middle of the night made his skin prickle. Unless it was a girl—and definitely not one carrying his last name—he demanded a strict five-foot perimeter around his personal space.​He tossed the towel aside and strolled into the living room, settling onto the plush leather sofa. The silence of the mansion was deafening, the kind that usually meant his father and Lanie had already departed. Good. He leaned back, humming a mindless tune under his breath as he slipped his feet into his leather sneakers, yanking the laces tight with de

Alem moved through the quiet bedroom with a methodical, rhythmic patience, dragging a damp mop over the polished floorboards and sweeping away the fine dust clinging to the baseboards, entirely shadowed by his stepbrother.​The floorboards groaned beneath Caeden’s restless pacing. Every turn Alem took, every shift toward a muted corner, Caeden matched. The air hung thick with unsaid things, heavy with the humid scent of lemon-scented oil and sweat, until the silence stretched thin enough to snap.​"Alem, I need you to listen to me! I did not want that to happen earlier, when we were wrestling over my sock!"​Alem did not pause. He merely gathered the rags, the bristled brushes, and the heavy plastic bucket he had carried from room to room over the past three hours. His knuckles were pale against the bucket handle, his posture steady despite the relentless, hovering presence that had tracked his every footprint across the house.​"Alem!"​Alem finally set the bucket down with a dull th