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( Leon POV )

Sleep didn't come.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling for most of the night. The mark at my throat pulsed in slow, deliberate waves, making it hard to find a comfortable position for more than a few minutes. I tried lying on my side. The ache sharpened. I went back to my back, pressed a cool palm flat against my neck, and it helped only while my hand stayed there.

Around two in the morning, I gave up and took one of the sleeping pills Dr. Whitmore had prescribed years ago for a different kind of sleeplessness. It didn't help this time. I lay awake and watched the numbers change on my bedside clock. My whole body felt tight, like a wire someone was plucking from a distance. Around four, I stopped fighting and just let myself lie there, exhausted and awake, until the window went grey with morning.

I showered before breakfast because I didn't trust my face not to give away my state. I came downstairs in a shirt buttoned to the collar and sat down at the table across from my mother, trying hard to look normal.

The eggs sat untouched in front of me. I moved them around the plate instead of eating, tracing slow circles with my fork. It took my mother exactly four minutes to notice.

"You haven't eaten anything." Elena De Luca set down her coffee cup and studied her son over the rim of her glasses. "Leon."

"I'm not very hungry." I offered a small smile, the kind I'd practiced for years. "Long night."

"You look pale." Her eyes narrowed slightly, revealing the sharpness of a mother who recognized when her son was lying. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm fine, Mama." I set the fork down and made myself meet her eyes so the lie would land better. "It's probably just the wedding. Everything's happening so fast."

It worked, mostly, because it was the explanation she was ready to accept. Every young omega felt nervous before a wedding; that was understood, a fact of nature. Elena's face softened, and she reached across the table to pat my hand.

"That's normal," she said. "It'll pass."

My father didn’t look up from the newspaper beside his plate. "Adrian's coming by today," Alessandro De Luca said in his flat, businesslike tone, as if discussing a shipment. "Get yourself ready."

"Yes, Papa."

I excused myself before they could look at me too closely again and climbed back up to my room with my shoulders set in a careful way, holding something together by sheer will.

The piano sat in the corner of my room, an old upright my grandmother had left me. It was out of tune in the higher registers, but I'd never bothered to fix it because I liked it that way. The small imperfection felt honest in a house where nothing else was allowed to be. I sat on the bench, let my hands find something slow and wordless, and closed my eyes.

The music didn't solve anything. But for a few minutes, it made the ache at my throat feel like it belonged to someone else.

I didn't hear the door open.

I didn't hear footsteps, soft against the carpet, until the last chord faded under my fingers. The silence that followed broke with the sound of two hands clapping, slow and warm.

My eyes snapped open.

Adrian stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching me with an expression I hadn’t seen in a long time unguarded, quiet, almost tender.

"How long have you been standing there?" I jumped up, smoothing down the front of my shirt and adjusting the collar with a motion that had become automatic over the last two days.

"Long enough." Adrian smiled and pushed off the doorframe. "I didn't want to interrupt. You don't play like that very often anymore."

"I didn't know you were coming up."

"I heard the piano from the hall." He stepped further into the room, close enough that I had to fight the urge to step back. "I forgot how good you are."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing." Adrian reached out and tucked a strand of hair back from my forehead. He did it so gently that it made the guilt sit heavier in my chest than it had all week. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead, lingering there a moment. "I'll wait for you downstairs. Take your time."

He left the way he'd come, unhurried. I stood alone in the middle of my room for a long moment after the door clicked shut, hating quietly, thoroughly every part of how easy Adrian made it look to be good to me.

I sat on the edge of my bed and let myself have exactly thirty seconds of that feeling before I stood up, showered a second time even though I didn't need to, and dressed in something with a collar that sat higher and stiffer than anything else I owned.

Rafael was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when I came down, leaning against the banister with the loose, relaxed posture of someone who had never worried about being caught doing anything.

"There he is." Rafael grinned and pushed off the banister. "The blushing bride."

"Don't call me that."

"Groom, then. Whatever word fits you." Rafael fell into step beside me, hands in his pockets, eyes flicking over me with the kind of assessment that always made me a little uneasy, though I never could say why. "You look terrible, by the way. No offense."

"Thanks, Rafael."

"I'm serious. Pale. Sweaty." Rafael tilted his head and studied me with mock concern that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Cold feet already? The wedding's not for months."

"I'm fine."

"Sure you are." Something flickered behind Rafael's easy smile there and gone fast enough that I almost missed it. It was a thin thread of something sharper under the teasing. "Lucky you, anyway. Adrian Castellano, waiting downstairs, kissing your forehead like you're something precious." He said it lightly, but an edge folded into the lightness, one I had felt before without quite naming it. "Must be nice."

"Rafael—"

"I'm just saying." Rafael's smile widened, easy again, the moment smoothed back over as quickly as it had cracked. "Some people get everything handed to them."

I didn't answer. I'd learned a long time ago that responding only gave Rafael more to work with, and today I didn't have the energy to spare.

Adrian was waiting by the car when we reached the front steps. He opened the passenger door himself, waving off the driver with a small gesture. "Just us today," he said, glancing at me. "I sent the guards ahead. Thought we could use some quiet."

I slid into the seat, and Adrian rounded the car, settling behind the wheel.

"What's the plan for today?" I asked once we pulled onto the main road.

"I wanted to make up for yesterday." Adrian kept one hand on the wheel while the other found mine on the seat, fingers intertwining loosely. "Leaving you at dinner like that. It wasn't fair to you." He glanced over, his expression apologetic. "There's a florist my mother likes for the ceremony. I thought we could go together and actually choose something instead of letting her decide everything."

"That sounds nice," I said, meaning it more than I expected to.

We drove in something close to comfortable silence for a while, the city moving past the windows. Then Adrian's thumb stilled against the back of my hand.

"You went to the hospital that night," he said carefully, like he'd been turning the question over since he got the message. "What was wrong?"

My chest tightened. "Nothing serious. Just a headache. It happens sometimes when I don't sleep well."

"You should have told me. I would've come with you."

"I didn't want to ruin your night over a headache."

Adrian looked at me, something uncertain in his expression. He didn’t push it further, and I exhaled slowly, thankful the moment did not turn into something harder to navigate.

The bell above the door chimed soft and brass-toned as we stepped inside, and the smell hit me before anything else did, wet stone floors, damp green stems, the sweet-heavy perfume of lilies stacked in buckets along the back wall.

The shop was narrow, deeper than it looked from the street, every surface crowded with blooms in a hundred different states of arrangement.

An elderly woman looked up from behind the counter, a pair of shears still in one hand, and her whole face brightened the moment she recognized Adrian.

"Mr. Castellano." She set the shears down, wiping her hands on her apron before coming around the counter. "Your mother said you'd be by this week. I've set aside the peonies she asked about."

"Mrs. Delacroix, you're a miracle worker." Adrian's smile came easy, unguarded in a way I rarely saw from him outside moments like this. "This is Leon. My fiancé."

"Ah." Her eyes moved to me with open warmth, the kind reserved for people who hadn't yet learned to be suspicious of everyone in a room. "The famous Leon. Adrian talks about you every time he comes in here, you know. Drives me half mad picking flowers to match a man I'd never met."

"All good things, I hope," I said, and the smile came easier than I expected it to.

"Only good things." She was already moving toward the back, waving us to follow. "Come, come. I have the spring stock in today. Let's see what suits you."

The back room was even more crowded than the front, buckets lined up in uneven rows, ranunculus and sweet pea and roses in shades I didn't have names for.

Adrian moved through it like he'd been here a dozen times before, which, I realized, he probably had, picking things up, turning them in the light, setting them back down with the easy confidence of a man entirely comfortable in his own life.

"What do you think of these?" Adrian held up a spray of white peonies, full and soft-edged, turning to hold them against my shoulder like he was testing a swatch of fabric. "My mother wants something classic. I keep telling her classic doesn't have to mean boring."

"They're beautiful." I studied the way the white caught the light, soft against the dark of my jacket. "Though I don't know the first thing about flowers."

"You don't need to. That's what I'm here for." Adrian grinned, setting the peonies down and reaching for something else, a spray of pale lavender stems I didn't recognize. "This one's for texture, apparently. Mrs. Delacroix's rule, not mine."

"Delphinium," she called from across the room, not looking up from the arrangement she was assembling. "And he's right, it's for texture. Trust the woman who's done this for forty years."

Adrian laughed, low and genuine, and held the delphinium up beside the peonies, tilting his head to consider the combination. "What do you think? Too much, or not enough?"

"I like it." I meant it, surprising myself slightly. "It doesn't look like every other wedding I've been to."

"Good." Something in Adrian's expression softened at that, pleased in a way that felt disproportionate to the compliment. "I wanted it to actually feel like something we chose. Not just, you know. What everyone expects."

I didn't answer right away. I picked up a single peony instead, turning the stem between my fingers, watching the way the petals caught light at the edges, soft and slightly translucent.

"You're good at this," I said finally. "Making things feel considered."

"I try." Adrian stepped closer, tucking a loose strand of hair back from my face with a gentleness that had nothing performative in it. "I want you to actually like your own wedding, Leon. Not just survive it."

Something in my chest pulled tight at that, guilt threading through whatever warmth the morning had built. I looked down at the peony still turning in my fingers instead of at Adrian's face.

"I know," I said quietly. "Thank you."

Mrs. Delacroix appeared at my elbow before the moment could stretch any longer, a small bundle of ranunculus held out toward me. "Here. Smell these. Tell me if they're too sweet."

I leaned in, breathing in the soft, papery scent, and let myself, for the length of that single hour, believe it might actually be this simple, a man who loved me easily, flowers chosen with care, a wedding that could feel like something other than a debt being paid.

It was easier to believe standing here, surrounded by things that smelled like beginnings instead of secrets.

"Not too sweet," I said. "Perfect, actually."

Adrian's smile widened, unguarded and pleased, and for the length of that hour, I let myself have it, the ordinary sweetness of a man who deserved so much better than the lie standing across from him in a room full of flowers.

We left an hour later with a folder of arrangement options under Adrian's arm. As we walked back to the car parked two streets over, I felt something change.

Not the ache. Not the low burn I had grown used to over the last three days.

Something sharper. A sudden pull, like a string tied behind my sternum had just gone taut and pulled hard. I stopped walking without meaning to.

"Leon?" Adrian's voice sounded distant, like it was coming from underwater.

My eyes scanned the street against my will. I looked at storefronts and faces, searching for something my body seemed to already sense was there.

Close.

That was the only word that came to mind. Close. I felt it like heat radiating off a stove without touching it; a presence pressing against the edge of my awareness that hadn’t been there a block ago but now filled the whole street.

Two blocks away, in a car idling at a red light, Damian Moretti sat with his hand braced against the wheel and his jaw tight. Every muscle in his body suddenly felt alert, like a man who goes still when he hears his name in a crowd and can’t find who called it. He looked out the window, scanning the pedestrians crossing in front of him. He found nothing but felt everything.

The light turned green. The car behind him honked. He drove on, unable to shake the sense that he had just missed something by the width of a single street.

"Leon." Adrian's hand gripped my shoulder, firmer now, genuine concern breaking through. "You went pale. What’s wrong?"

"I don’t—" My vision tilted; the street felt like it was tipping sideways at the edges. The pull, the exhaustion, and three sleepless nights crashed together in a single wave that crested and broke all at once.

"Leon!"

Adrian caught me before I hit the ground, one arm wrapping around me tightly as I fell against Adrian’s chest. His voice cracked in a way I had never heard before—sharp, frightened, completely stripped of its usual calm.

"Someone call an ambulance! Now!"

My eyes fluttered, the street blurring above me while Adrian's face swam in and out of focus. Just before the darkness took over completely, I felt it one last time, faint and fading with my consciousness.

Close. So close.

Then nothing at all.