[BL]Reborn as the Empire's Most Desired Omega
Chapter 87: From Detention to Diplomacy

Chapter 87: Chapter 87: From Detention to Diplomacy

Blackridge Detention Facility

Two hours later

The cell was warm, and the lights were too bright for comfort. Not torture—not yet—but far from the luxury Misty Kilmer had grown used to.

She sat across the table, no makeup, no jewelry, her hair bound back by standard detainment bands. Her robe had been replaced with plain grey, and her expression was tight with fury and disbelief.

Caelan stepped into the room with the slow, quiet purpose of a man who was very much done pretending to be reasonable.

He didn’t sit.

He placed a folder on the table in front of her with a slow move.

When Misty didn’t speak, he opened it.

Photos. Reports. Scans. The original medical evaluations. Christian’s lawsuit. Odin’s contract. Lucas’s sealed profile. A second copy of the original buyer clause—Faceless Agatha. All laid out in order, each page more damning than the last.

"I want names," Caelan said, voice calm. "Every accomplice. Every payment. Every time you handed Lucas over to someone and called it protection."

Misty scoffed, but her fingers trembled. "You have no authority to interrogate me like this."

"Oh, I do," Caelan replied. "You sold a minor into bonded servitude with falsified legal status. You bypassed court registries. You tampered with royal bloodlines. And you signed a contract with an untraceable buyer—one who is now active and targeting a duchess protected by House Fitzgeralt, House D’Argente, and the Crown. And you seem to forget that I’m the Emperor."

He leaned down, just slightly, voice still low.

"You are not rich enough to hide behind lawyers anymore. And if you think I won’t painfully extract the truth for myself, you’ve forgotten who the hell I am."

Misty swallowed, suddenly very aware that the velvet court and gilded lounges she once haunted were a thousand kilometers away.

"And what happens if I talk?" she asked quietly.

Caelan’s eyes narrowed.

"If you talk," he said, "you’ll be kept alive. If you lie—" his gaze dropped to her shaking hands— "I will hand you over to Trevor. And he doesn’t need you alive."

He stood fully upright again.

"You tortured a child. You sold him. You tried to erase him. And now he wears the colors of the North and signs declarations as Grand Duchess."

He paused.

"That’s not fate," he said. "That’s a reckoning."

Then he turned to the guards. "Prepare the extraction room. We’ll see how much her memory improves after an hour."

And Misty, for the first time in her life, realized there would be no audience this time.

No mercy.

And no one left to buy her silence.

—

The study was quiet again. Not empty, just still—like the room itself knew it was holding something heavier than ledgers or territorial maps. The tablet on Trevor’s desk blinked once, indicating the arrival of a secured file.

Trevor didn’t open it immediately. He already knew what it contained.

Caelan had been efficient—unsurprisingly so. Misty Kilmer had been arrested at the southern gate, her belongings confiscated, her communications frozen. The moment the formal order passed the imperial seal, Trevor’s access had been updated.

The file contained everything.

Misty’s failed escape.

Her statement—uncooperative at first, until Caelan had made her realize silence wasn’t an option anymore.

And, alongside that, the transcripts from Lucas’s former tutors.

Trevor read them slowly. Every word. Every lie. Every omission dressed in civility. Every phrase was like, I didn’t know how to help or I didn’t realize it was that bad.

He finished reading, then placed the tablet face down on the desk.

Lucas was finally safe. That was the only line that mattered.

And even so, Trevor’s fingers tightened around the edge of the desk. Quiet rage wasn’t foreign to him. But this was something else. This was patience used like a weapon, drawn so tight it hummed. NovelFire

He wouldn’t tell Lucas. Not now. Not when they had just begun to settle into a rhythm that felt less like survival and more like life. Not when the palace still watched. Not when Lucas was at most months away from his first real heat in this new body, this new world, this new title.

He stood, smoothing his sleeves and turning toward the window. Early summer light filtered through the glass, softening the lines of the room. In the distance, the faint hum of the estate gardens echoed with voices of staff and the occasional bark of a hound.

Lucas was nearby.

—

Trevor found him in the garden just past mid-afternoon, tucked into the crook of the stone bench beneath the early-blooming trees. Lucas had one leg folded up, the other lazily extended, stylus tapping against the screen as he made slow edits to a staff document. A faint crease marked his brow, though the sun caught on his cheekbones and softened him in a way that made Trevor’s chest ache in the quietest, stupidest way.

"You look like someone who’s about to sentence half the staff to exile," Trevor said as he sat beside him.

Lucas didn’t look up, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "Only a third. I’m being merciful."

Trevor watched him for a moment—just the stillness of his hands, the occasional flicker of a page, the way he chewed the inside of his cheek when thinking.

"I was wondering," Trevor said after a pause, tone light, casual—too casual for the weight behind it. "Would you want to come to Saha with me?"

Lucas glanced up, blinking once. "What?"

"I mean," Trevor shrugged one shoulder, resting an arm along the back of the bench, "the visit is diplomatic on paper—Dax has been circling again—but we’ve got a few months before your heat starts, and the court already thinks I married you for politics."

Lucas tilted his head. "Didn’t you?"

"Only fifty percent," Trevor said, deadpan. "The rest was your face."

Lucas snorted.

Trevor grinned, but his eyes softened as he added, "Seriously. Everyone’s speculating. Some are saying we’re madly in love, some think we’re fated, and others are convinced Dax is going to throw a goblet across the hall because I broke his heart."

Lucas blinked. "Wait—Dax?"