C23 Untouchable

ALARIC

The office restroom should have been my sanctuary. A place to breathe, to escape the chaos of the office for a few stolen minutes. But as I stepped inside, I realized sanctuary was a luxury I could no longer afford.

Three of them—two junior managers and one assistant, faces twisted in fury—were waiting for me. Their eyes burned with spite, their postures screaming arrogance and entitlement. Their mouths moved in unison, words meant to intimidate, humiliate, and mock me.

“You think you can humiliate Sydney and get away with it?” one of them sneered, stepping closer. “I'm sure you feel high and mighty because you were privileged to kiss her. You think you’re untouchable?”

I froze for the briefest of moments, weighing my options. I could strike, I could destroy them. I could rip their arrogance to pieces and leave them broken in the shadows. But I didn’t. Not yet. The secret of who I was, of what I could do, had to remain intact.

“Step back,” I said, voice low, controlled, dangerous. “Now.”

They laughed. Mocking. Insufferable. One lunged forward, cocky grin plastered across his face, and I knew he thought he could best me.

I moved like water, precise, lethal—but restrained. Every block, every shove, every strike calculated to inflict just enough pain to warn them, not enough to reveal my true nature. I couldn’t let them see what I was, couldn’t let them know the monster I had spent centuries mastering.

But restraint didn’t stop the heat that surged through me, didn’t quiet the anger roaring in my chest. They had crossed a line. They had humiliated me.

The fight ended quickly, but not cleanly. As I left the restroom, a sharp ache ran along my side, a small cut along my temple, and bruises blooming where I had blocked or dodged. Nothing serious, but enough to sting. I wasn't bothered, I knew it would heal before sunset.

But she was bothered.

Sydney Stallone was impossible to ignore, and she didn’t try. She met my gaze in the corridor with that fox‑sharp look she kept when she wanted to be taken seriously, or when she wanted to unsettle someone. There was something in the way she tilted her head, the small frown that folded between her brows, that told me she’d seen me—the cut, the bruise, the set of my jaw. She didn’t pretend not to notice.

“Alaric,” she said softly. “Are you hurt?”

I kept my eyes level with hers, replying with constrained courtesy. “A scratch. It’ll heal.”

She stepped closer, concern genuine for a moment. “What happened —”

“Some idiots attacked me in the,” I interrupted. I did not want her pity. I did not want her to think I needed protection because she had anything to do with it. Her involvement in the viral circus had been reckless, yes, but her sympathy now was something else—an intrusion with soft edges.

“I’ll make sure they face disciplinary action,” she announced, voice sure. “I won’t have people harassing anyone in my company.” The confidence in her words was audible, like the click of a stiletto on marble.

I laughed once—too harsh, too sudden. “You think a memo and a reprimand will fix what you’ve already set in motion?” The words came out colder than I’d meant. A real laugh would have been honest, bent with humor; this was edged, hollow. “You stabbed the heart of everything I’ve been trying to keep intact. You walk through my life like a storm, and then you want to tidy the wreckage.”

Her jaw tightened. Shock flickered, then hardened into defiance. “What are you saying, Alaric? That this is my fault?”

I looked at her, really looked, the way someone studies a puzzle whose pieces refuse to sit still. “You kissed me in a public restaurant like conquest. You dragged me into that mess and—” I stopped, because my voice had risen and people in the hallway were glancing. No one had to know every detail, but she deserved the truth of the heat riding my words. “—you’ve been upending everything about my life since you walked into it.”

“You think I wanted that?” Her face hurt in the precise way anger does—tight, hot. “I didn’t ask for your life to implode. I was—” She swallowed. “I was trying to make you mine.”

“You would make a sport of anything,” I said, and the words were sharper than I thought they could be. “A game. A bet. You didn’t see the edges.”

“You’re blaming me for being alive?” she shot back. “For living and making choices—reckless choices—yes, but my choices aren’t the reason you have enemies. Those men chose to be petty. They chose to harass. I won’t let them hide behind your silence.”

“You always choose drama over discretion, Sydney,” I said. There was something raw in my chest now, a kind of tiredness that had nothing to do with bruises and everything to do with the weight of being what I am. “You throw yourself into the fire and then wonder why it burns.”

She flinched as if struck. Hurt colored her features in a way that made my anger feel like a bruise on someone else.

“You sound like you’re lecturing me,” she whispered, wounded and indignant at once. “I’m trying to fix it.”

“You fix things with consequence, not bandages.” The words left me with the metallic tang of apology that never quite reaches the mouth. “You should have thought before you acted. You should have considered the fallout before you lit the match.”

The corridor felt too small. Voices in adjacent offices lowered as if the argument were a dangerous animal. People watched, because people are always waiting for someone else’s fall. For a flash, I saw the way her eyes slid to the bruise along my side and up to the faint cut on my temple. Sympathy warred with something darker—defiance—and the sight of it rattled me.

“Alaric,” she said, softer. “We can handle this. They’ll be disciplined. The HR logs—”

“Save your speeches.” I stepped back, the motion abrupt, physical. “Save your apologies. They are not enough.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then looked at me in a way that knew both grievance and apology. “I’m sorry—” she began.

“Don’t.” I cut her off, and in that single syllable there was exhaustion and something like grief. “You brought me into public view. You made my life complicated. I deal in shadows for a reason.”

“I was trying to help you,” she said, voice breaking on the last word.

“You are the reason things are wrong,” I said finally, the accusation raw and heavy. “You are the reason I’m unbalanced.”

That hung between us like a verdict. Her face crumpled; anger was replaced by a sting I saw, too late, I had inflicted.

“I didn’t mean—” she started, voice small.

“You didn’t think,” I finished for her, because I couldn’t stand the sound of her attempting to justify the chaos. “And now I have to clean up a mess I didn’t want. Leave me.”

I walked away before either of us could say more. My steps were steady; my hands a little tight at my sides. Behind me, I heard her shut the space between an apology and the echo of the hallway. I didn’t look back.

-------------

I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. Every scenario played through my mind—the humiliation, the mockery, the audacity of those fools. My fists ached, my body still thrummed with adrenaline. I was going to make them pay for everything!

I got up and went hunting.

---

Finding the first one was easy. He’d laughed too loudly at his own cleverness, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I cornered him behind his apartment building, dark streets stretching like a warning in front of him. The fight was short. Precise. Brutal. When I left, he would remember every second. Pain, fear, regret.

The second fought harder, more arrogant. Big mistake. By the time I was done, he was gasping on the floor, broken in ways that would leave him thinking twice before ever underestimating me again.

The third had tried to hide, thinking she was clever. Hah. Cleverness didn’t save anyone from me. I found him. And when I was done, he would wake up the next morning wishing he had never laughed at—or raised his hand at me.

By the time I returned home, the night was silent. The city slept, oblivious to the justice I had dealt. I sat alone in my dark apartment, letting the adrenaline drain from my body. Satisfaction coursed through me like a bitter drug. They would think twice before crossing me again.