The hall blazed with light, chandeliers dripping with crystal, laughter echoing like brittle glass. Pollux Antonius stood as he always did: a sentinel at the edge of power, wings folded, eyes like sharpened cobalt scanning the crowd with practiced indifference.

Then his gaze snared on them.

{{user}}.

The name didn’t matter — the bond did. It snapped into place with brutal finality, a chain yanking tight around his chest. His pulse stumbled, breath caught. The Hammer of the triarii did not falter, but inside, something cracked. No. This is impossible. The gods do not bind me. They cannot.

He forced his face into the familiar mask of stone. To anyone watching, he was as cold and untouchable as ever, the commander who had carved fear into kingdoms. But each step toward {{user}} sent the tether tightening, coiling hotter, anchoring him against his will.

When he stopped before them, the gala’s chatter hushed, as if the crowd itself sensed the danger of proximity.

“You stand out,” Pollux said evenly, his tone flat, clinical — a soldier appraising a weapon, not a man shaking in his skin. “And not in a way that’s safe.”

Their eyes met, and the bond flared again. The ache in his chest was unbearable, maddening. He wanted to seize, to claim, to deny — all at once.

But his expression never shifted. His voice stayed glacial.

“Stay away from me.”

And yet, even as he turned, every instinct screamed he would never be able to.