Julian Novels & Stories

No fucking way. Julian?

Elias’s heart stopped. It wasn't a monster. It wasn't a prop. It was Julian. Julian was a sixth-grader who had moved to the district only three months prior. He was a quiet, brilliant boy who always wore long sleeves, wide-brimmed hats, and heavy sunglasses. He was an albino. His condition was severe; his skin lacked any protective pigment, making the sun his most lethal enemy.

Julian wasn't dead. The wight I had just destroyed had been a decoy. The real Julian Crescent stepped out from behind the heavy iron pipe organ on the high balcony. He looked identical to the vessel the same charcoal-black hair, the same predatory golden eyes but his aura wasn't a static, oily frequency. It was hot, thick, and laced with the genuine, unyielding authority of an Alpha born to command. He didn't carry a silver axe; he held a standard Southern enforcer saber, the steel gray and unadorned.

A flood of text and emojis exploded on his screen. ★Chiper is watching you★: 0_0!!!!!! Julian-brother~! On it! Nothing gets past God Seven! 🦸🦸🦸🤫😻😻😻Ooh, a mole hunt! My favorite! Don’t worry, pretty new assistant, I’ll clear your Victoria’s name! 🤸🤸🤸 ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 I stared, confused, at the chaotic stream of characters. Julian pinched the bridge of his nose, a sign of pure annoyance.

“I am listening. Speak.” Julian bowed quickly again, then raised his head. His throat was dry, but his words came strong. “I knew you through Steve, my very good friend. I heard you recently came here to seek asylum. You seem like a promising man, may I know more about you?” “Your Majesty, my name is Julian. I was once under Alpha Cassius as his daughter’s professor and bodyguard. Going back to my backstory, he eliminated my family because my dad refused to betray his best friend who was from here.”

Thunderheads bruise the sky beyond the treeline—just heat lightning now, but the pressure feels like a held breath. And somewhere inside this house is Julian. She hasn’t seen him in person since the holidays, just a few photos her mom had posted on F******k before disappearing to Europe for the summer. Grace had zoomed in on them more times than she’d admit. Julian with his button-down sleeves rolled, scotch in hand, that unreadable half-smile curving his mouth. A little more gray at the temples, maybe, but still the same lean body, the same shoulders that seem too broad to belong to a man who prefers books to sports.

Julian's actions, while ethically dubious, stemmed from a profound personal tragedy. "Once I knew that," Julian continued, his voice hardening with a cold resolve, "I had to know who. The timing, Vivienne's secrecy... it didn't take long for the trail to lead back to Elias. It wasn't easy, though. He's good. He works in tech, too, and he'd scrubbed any trace of their relationship, covered his tracks meticulously. But I found enough to know."

He was stunning. Tall, broad-shouldered, with smooth olive skin and dark hair that fell slightly over his forehead. His white uniform shirt stretched across a muscular chest, and his sleeves were rolled up to reveal strong forearms. His eyes were a deep, warm brown, and when he smiled at me, it felt like the temperature in the room rose several degrees. “Welcome. I am Julian,” he said, his voice smooth and low, like velvet. “I understand your partner could not make it. I promise I will take very good care of you tonight.”

My fingers were slick with sweat, making them slip occasionally on the glass-topped keys of the old machine, but I couldn't afford to slow down. Julian was at the mahogany cutting block, his shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows to reveal forearms that were entirely clear of the Vane network’s silver circuitry. Without those biometric implants to regulate his stamina or process mechanical layouts at a glance, he looked distinctly human—exhausted, his shoulders slumped, but his focus entirely unyielding. He was hand-feeding the heavy ledger pages into the manual cutter, his movements falling into a steady, rhythmic cadence with the clack-clack-clack of my typ