The Sound of Something Breaking

Three months of his life were playing through someone else's speakers, and the world was calling it a masterpiece.

Liam stared at the screen and laughed. Short and hollow, nothing funny about it. Jason Blake. Number one trending. Over two million streams and climbing.

He scrolled through the comments, and each one stung more than the last. People were calling it genius, saying the drop hit different, that the layered distortion was proof Jason Blake was a rare talent who understood music in ways most producers never would.

He knew that drop. He had built every single layer of it himself, and it had cost him real time and real sleep and pieces of himself he couldn't name. Now a stranger was being handed a crown for it.

He had done everything right. Kept his head down, worked harder than anyone else in the room, stayed quiet when people talked over him, accepted half the credit just to keep his seat at the table. He had played by every rule, and this was where it landed him.

Someone like Jason Blake—loud and connected and untouchable—would take what he wanted and walk away clean. And Liam would sit here watching the numbers climb because he was nobody. That thought hurt more than anything else on the screen.

He grabbed his phone and dialed.

"Pick up. Pick up."

"Liam?" Zara's voice came through breathless. "What's going on?"

"Have you seen the news?" He didn't bother with a greeting. There was nothing normal enough about this moment to pretend otherwise. "The track I registered last week. It's out right now, Zara, and it's sitting under Jason Blake's name like I never touched it."

She asked him to send the link. He did, then sat staring at the ceiling while the numbers kept climbing. When she finally spoke, her voice had dropped, and somehow that was worse than if she had shouted.

"Liam, that's yours. Every single part of that is yours."

He already knew that. Hearing it out loud didn't fix anything; it just made the weight of it harder to sit with. "I know it's mine. What I want to know is what I'm supposed to do about it."

"You go there," Zara said, and he could hear her patience running out. "You walk in and you take your things back. Some fool doesn't come out of nowhere and steal what belongs to you without facing anything for it. Go make him understand what it means to do that to you."

When Liam ended the call, he grabbed his jacket and walked out.

The building was glass and steel and city light, the kind of place designed to make you feel small before you even got to the door. Liam walked through it anyway. The lobby had marble floors and high ceilings and a silence that pressed down on everything. He crossed it without slowing down.

The receptionist looked up at him with no real interest. He asked for Jason Blake, and her expression didn't move at all. He told her he had worked on the track just released under Blake's name and that he needed five minutes.

She glanced at him once, then back at her screen like he hadn't said anything worth stopping for. "Mr. Blake doesn't take unscheduled visits."

Liam raked his fingers through his hair and tried again. "You don't get it. I need to see him. Right now."

She adjusted her glasses and looked at him straight on. "If you don't leave, I will call security."

Liam leaned over the desk, his voice rising. "I need to see Jason Blake right now! Do you hear me? Right now!"

She didn't flinch. Didn't reach for the phone. She just looked at him with a small, polished smile, as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world. Like a stray dog had wandered in and barked at the furniture.

Liam stared down at his clothes—worn hoodie, scuffed sneakers, jeans with frayed cuffs—frustration twisting his face. He should have put on something nicer when he came. No wonder this woman looked at him like he had just walked in from nowhere.

He opened his mouth to try again when he felt two arms grab him. Before he knew it, he found himself thrown outside the building.

A few minutes later, he was sitting in a bar, hoping to wake up from this drink soon. Even after more than one drink, he didn't seem to be getting drunk at all.

He was about to order another when he felt the air shift.

It started with a scent: warm, deep, and commanding.

His fingers tightened slightly around the glass as something unfamiliar curled low in his stomach.

He was an omega. He had known that his whole life. But he had never felt it like this. A warmth and pressure settled in before his mind could explain it. Something stirred low in his chest—instinctive and unfamiliar. His body reacted before his mind caught up. His fingers tightened around his glass, and his pulse moved differently, without him deciding it should.

He turned his head slowly.

The man was standing near the bar, tall and broad-shouldered, dressed with the kind of confidence that comes from never needing to try. His face was controlled, as if something under the surface was tight, waiting to break free. He wasn't looking at Liam.

Then, as if he could feel it too, the man raised his gaze, searching for the scent, and his eyes met Liam's.