Lyra POV- Strategy Wing
The numbers lined up like stitches.
Lyra's work on the Marketing Efficiency strategy landed with quiet precision. Clean metrics, logical pivots, minimal flare. Executives called it sharp. Michael just called it "right."
He watched her skim a vendor report with one hand while answering a budget inquiry with the other. Nothing rushed. Nothing wasted.
The kind of fluency that only came from focus. Or the need to hide inside something too structured to unravel.
But he was starting to see the cracks.
---
Cassian POV
Cassian read her margins like signals.
The phrasing on the latest report stuttered in places. One sentence curved longer than her usual. There were two typos in the sub-header. A missing timestamp. Not enough to flag, but enough to notice.
The tea cup left near the corner of her terminal had gone cold by the time it was collected. He saw it. Said nothing. But he noticed the color had deepened. Red clover, not green. For nausea, if he remembered correctly.
He didn't ask.
Didn't need to.
But the way his eyes tracked her across the briefing room that afternoon. The way his shoulders tilted when she stood too slowly, said he was past guessing.
---
Lyra POV - Admin Floor
Talia pulled Lyra aside in the admin wing.
"You're on your feet too much."
"I'm fine."
"You're pale."
"It's the lighting."
Talia gave her the look that meant she wasn't buying anything. "And the half-lunch? The vertical nap at your desk yesterday?"
"I'm working."
Talia handed her a protein bar. "And I'm watching you."
Lyra sat still, breath caught somewhere between reason and instinct. The nausea hadn't gone away. The fatigue pressed harder each day, and her focus frayed at the edges more often than not. It had crept in slowly. A few weeks after that night.
She didn't want to name the thought at first.
But it lingered.
Omegas were warned from the beginning. What heat meant, what could happen. The biology of it wasn't complicated. Neither was the risk.
And now that possibility sat in the back of her mind, quiet but relentless. Not just a maybe. A weight.
---
The elevator was crowded again.
Theo stood at the back, arms loose, gaze neutral. Cassian near the front, unreadable. Lyra pressed near the wall, one hand on the rail.
Something slipped.
Not loud. Not obvious.
But warm.
Instinctive.
Cassian turned his head. Not sharply, but enough. Theo shifted a step forward, body intercepting airflow. Quietly. Deliberately.
Cassian didn't speak. But he looked at her when she stepped off. And kept looking long after the doors closed.
---
That night, she stopped at the pharmacy.
No list. No hesitation. Just aisle six. Box in hand. Paid in cash.
At home, the test lay on the sink edge while the water ran. Alexa padded in, tail flicking.
She waited on the floor, back against the cabinet.
Three minutes.
Two lines.
Clear.
She didn't cry. Just stared.
There it was.
The truth.
And it wasn't going away.
---
Cassian POV
Cassian sat at his desk, the lights low.
The folder from Michael's division sat open. Her initials were on the review note.
His fingers hovered above his tablet.
He pulled up the scent trace result from the gala night, 5 weeks ago.
> Identity Match: Elmont, Lyra – Level 1 Certainty
Timestamp: Private Elevator – 11:37 PM
There it was.
The final line that made everything else snap into place.
He closed the file slowly.
Not shocked.
Not even angry.
Just certain.
And still not sure what he was going to do about it