The silence in the common room was heavy enough to feel. Kaela's personal story hung in the air, a raw piece of history that felt too genuine to be a corporate lie.

Lucian studied her, his eyes narrowed. The crowd was forgotten; it was just the two of them now, a quiet war of wills in the center of the room.

"You have an appealing point," Lucian finally said, his voice low and measured. "But how do you know my name?"

A faint, almost apologetic smile touched Kaela's lips. She gestured slightly with her chin towards Silas, who was still frozen mid-swig. "I guessed. The way he tells his stories… there's always a 'Lucian' making the tough calls in the background. The calm one. The leader. It wasn't hard to figure out which one you were."

Lucian closed his eyes for a brief second and let out a long, slow breath. He looked at Silas, who offered a weak, guilty shrug. Then he turned his gaze back to Kaela, his decision made.

"I won't work with you," he said, his voice flat and final. "Or your corporation. Nobody else." He didn't raise his voice, but it carried through the entire inn. He then looked around the room, his eyes landing on each of his team. "I have my team." He looked at Evelyn, who gave a steady, supportive nod. His gaze flicked to the top of the stairs where Reia stood, her expression unreadable but present. He glanced at the shadows where Vyn's silhouette was just visible. "With my older brother," he said, his eyes finally settling on Marc, who stood with his arms crossed, a grim look of agreement on his face. "We are all the forces we need."

It was a declaration of independence, a statement of faith in the family he had built. The patrons watching felt a shiver of respect. This was no desperate band of fugitives; this was a unit.

Kaela listened, her head tilted. She didn't look offended. She looked… intrigued.

"I like the courage," she said, and she sounded like she meant it. "Truly, I do. But there's a line between courage and a death wish." She took a small step forward, her violet eyes intense. "There is no way you are taking on Omni-Stellar by yourselves. Not truly. They have private armies, sector-wide influence, enough firepower to glass a moon. Unless you are a bunch of Alpha-level rankers, you don't stand a chance."

The term 'Alpha-level' hung in the air. In the common parlance of the galaxy, it referred to the highest tier of military or paramilitary operatives, individuals or units capable of shifting the balance of a small war. Most people never met one.

From the top of the stairs, a soft, clear sound broke the silence.

Reia chuckled.

It wasn't a loud laugh. It was a single, dry exhalation of air, laced with such profound disdain that it cut deeper than any shout. Every eye in the room turned to her.

She leaned against the banister, looking down at Kaela with an expression of icy amusement.

"Weak planet," Reia said, her voice cool and precise. "We are all Omegas."

The effect was instantaneous.

The color drained from Kaela Selyn's face. Her composed, ethereal mask shattered into pure, unvarnished shock. Her iridescent skin seemed to pale, and the subtle glow of her crystalline hair flickered. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.

Omega.

The word was a legend, a ghost story told in military academies and black-site intelligence briefings. If Alphas were the pinnacle of conventional power, Omegas were something else entirely. Myths. Assets so powerful, so classified, that their very existence was routinely denied by every major government and corporation. A single Omega was said to be worth a fleet. A team of them was an extinction-level event.

The silence in the Drifting Leaf was now absolute. The dockworkers and locals didn't understand the full weight of the word, but they understood the CEO's reaction. They understood they were in the presence of something far beyond what they had imagined.

Kaela's mind raced, recalculating everything. The flawless data leak. The way they'd ghosted all of Helios's tracking. The effortless rescue of the uncle. Marc's casual, reality-bending display of power. It wasn't just skill. It was a magnitude of power she had only ever seen in theoretical threat assessments.

Her shock slowly melted into a dawning, chilling relief. She looked from Reia's cold smile to Lucian's resolute face, to Marc's imposing figure.

"I see," she whispered, the words mostly for herself. She looked directly at Lucian, a new, profound respect in her eyes. "Then it is a very good thing I stepped in when I did."

She took a deliberate step back, a gesture of deference she had not shown anyone until now. "My director, Renick… he wanted to send an assault team. If he had…" She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. The image of a Helios security team being effortlessly dismantled by these people was now vividly clear in her mind. It would have been a slaughter, and it would have made Helios their next enemy.

"Your secret is safe with me," Kaela said, her voice regaining some of its composure, though it was now layered with a new wariness. "You clearly don't need my army. But the offer of resources, of intelligence, of a safe port… that still stands. Not as a corporate CEO to a potential asset. But as one outsider to others."

She looked at Lira and Midas, then back to Lucian. "Even Omegas have people they want to protect."

With that, she gave a slight, formal nod. She didn't wait for an answer. She had gotten what she came for—the truth—and it was far more than she had bargained for. Turning, she walked back through the silent common room, the crowd parting for her once more, this time with a sense of awe and fear.

As the inn's organic door swished shut behind her, the spell was broken. The noise slowly returned to a hushed buzz.

Lucian looked up at Reia, a single, deep line of frustration etched between his brows.

Reia met his gaze and gave a tiny, unapologetic shrug. "She needed to know the caliber of the weapon she was pointing," she said simply, before turning and disappearing back upstairs.

Marc walked over to Lucian, clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Well," he grunted. "That certainly simplified things."

Lucian just sighed, running a hand down his face. They were safe for now. But the world had just gotten a lot more complicated. They were no longer just fugitives. They were legends walking, and the galaxy had just gotten a very dangerous hint of it.

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