Chapter 64

How much did you have to like someone, exactly, to go so far as to imprint on them?

The red surfboard tucked under Björn’s arm swayed with each step he took. A short distance behind him, Zev followed, snickering as he picked a fight.

“Are you ever going to meet an Omega worth imprinting on?” Zev taunted. “You’ve never even dated anyone, and look how old you are.”

Whenever Iris thought back to that day six years ago, the memory always began with that exact scene.

The forecast had predicted only a light rain. Yet, as they headed toward the beach, a headwind fought them, blowing hard from the opposite direction. Riding that wind—sharp with the brine of salt and fishy water—Zev’s and Björn’s pheromones scattered through the air. The scent of pine scorched by smoke and something akin to stiff leather brushed against Iris’s skin.

Walking at the very back, Iris narrowed his eyes. Even though these were pheromones he had smelled for years and grown accustomed to, he could not help but frown whenever he met his cousins. Alphas simply could not tolerate one another’s pheromones. While Omegas supposedly found them seductive, between Alphas, they were nothing more than body scents potent enough to be thoroughly unpleasant.

“Why don’t you say the same thing to Rhys, then?” Björn countered, clearly irritated that his brother, older by just a year, was targeting only him. Dragging Iris into the crossfire, he added, “He’s never dated anyone either.”

Minding his own business until that moment, Iris suddenly found himself the center of attention. Zev glanced back at him, walked backward until he caught up, and slung an arm around Iris’s shoulders to pull him forward. Now, the three of them walked abreast.

“Looks like I’ll have to set something up if I want to make proper Alphas out of both of you,” Zev joked.

The expression Zev wore in that moment closely mirrored the faces of Iris’s father and brother as they existed in his memory. The men of the Elliott family, carrying Swedish blood, tended to look remarkably alike. Pale blond hair, towering heights, and light, blue-toned eyes were their shared traits. Zev and Björn had inherited them all, and Iris’s older brother, who had once stood in this very place alongside them, had looked much the same.

“Come on, Rhys and I are completely different,” Björn chimed in again, eager to defend himself. “I just don’t date anyone, but I’ve slept with plenty of people. Rhys, though? He’s still a virgin. His standards are so high he didn’t even sleep with his prom date. Even when we go clubbing together, I’ve never once seen him kiss an Omega.”

As the topic drifted into entirely unnecessary details, Iris, who had remained silent the whole time, finally spoke up.

“Shut your mouth, Björn,” Iris said, his voice dropping low and cold. He had been in a foul mood from the moment they insisted on coming to the sea on such an overcast day. “Unless you want to go back right now, just walk quietly. You do know that if Auntie and Uncle find out you went surfing on a day like this, the first thing they’ll confiscate is your credit card.”

When his pheromones began to spread, exposing his irritation exactly as it was, Björn quickly averted his eyes. According to Blake, his cousin on his mother’s side, Iris’s pheromones possessed a sharp force that made the back of one’s throat sting. Finding the tension hard to endure, Zev tried to soothe him.

“Since when does that idiot ever think before he speaks?” Zev said, squeezing Iris’s shoulder. “Calm down, Rhys. We finally got together, so let’s just have fun.”

“You two are the only ones having fun,” Iris retorted. “I said I didn’t want to come to the sea. Did we really have to go surfing on a rainy day?”

The moment the words left his mouth, a heavy raindrop fell with a distinct plop onto his cheek. A faint rumble rolled through the clouds, which had bruised into the dull gray of wet cement. As if on cue, the sky opened up.

Somehow, Iris felt a sickening pit form in his stomach.

“You hate it that much?” Zev asked, watching Iris’s shifting mood. “Even though you’ll just be reading under the parasol? We only wanted you to get a little more used to the ocean, but if you really can’t handle it, we’ll go back.”

Despite his massive size, Björn’s lips jutted out in a boyish show of sulking. He cut Zev off mid-sentence, his tone snapping with sudden heat.

“You think you’re the only one who lost Dylan? Dylan was like a brother to us, too. He was our friend, our older brother, and our younger brother. How long are you going to keep whining like a coward about hating the ocean? Zev, stop babying him.”

Shaking off Zev’s restraining hand, Björn strode away. Zev watched his brother’s back, clad in a blue surfing suit and heading straight for the churning water, before swallowing a heavy sigh. Still keeping his arm around Iris’s shoulders, Zev spoke quietly near his ear.

“He wanted to show you the technique he learned recently,” Zev murmured. “He said that if you saw him riding the waves really well, maybe you wouldn’t only think of bad memories every time you looked at the ocean. It’s a simple way of thinking, but…”

Zev looked at his cousin with deep pity in his eyes, reaching up to stroke Iris’s hair.

“You know Björn and I both care about you, right? So don’t think too badly of him. Dylan really was incredible at surfing. When you got a little older, Dylan always wanted to teach you himself…”

Hearing Zev’s voice thicken as he mentioned the brother who had died long ago, Iris found himself unable to say anything more.

In truth, the only reason he had questioned their outing today was because he had read that surfing during the rain was highly discouraged in California. Depending on the location, coastal runoff polluted the beaches, drastically increasing the risk of bacterial infections. Björn had already developed a stress-related ear disorder while attending medical school, and Iris simply had not wanted to see his cousin dive into filthy water for no good reason.

But Björn had insisted that rainy days were the ones that truly belonged to surfers, adamant that it had to be today. He had spent the entire morning complaining that the waves in New York could never compare to these, grumbling that the last few days had been utterly boring. Iris had wondered what his cousin was trying so hard to prove, but after hearing Zev’s explanation, a wave of guilt washed over him.

“…I’ll wait out here, so go ahead,” Iris said softly. “I’ll watch the two of you.”

“You’ll be all right?” Zev asked, turning to face him.

“I’m an adult now, Zev. I graduated, too. I’m not afraid of the ocean anymore. I just… don’t like it.”

At Iris’s reassurance, Zev finally smiled.

“That’s right. My cousin is a brave person. Then we’ll be right back. Björn will come to his senses once he swallows some dirty seawater anyway. There aren’t any sharks here, and it’s relatively safe, so nothing will happen. We’ll play around for a bit and come right out.”

They were only a year apart in age, yet Iris could not fathom why Zev had felt so much like an actual adult back then. Looking back, Zev had ultimately been no different from Iris—just another kid in his early twenties—but at the time, his presence felt entirely mature. Zev had promised it was safe despite the rain, and believing him, Iris watched his two cousins march into the water.

For about an hour, everything seemed fine. The rain gradually grew heavier, but it did not carry the violent weight of a storm. If anything, the waves were lower than expected. Watching Björn struggle out in the swells, Iris began to regret ever worrying about that idiot. By the time he decided that the sight of Björn wiping out like a fool was actually amusing, a faint smile played on Iris’s lips.

Before he became a sculptor, Iris Elliott was not ordinary, but he was not particularly special either. By some stroke of luck, he had been born the second and youngest child of a wealthy family, living a life where he could pursue whatever he wished. His home was harmonious, his path devoid of major twists or turns. Though he had been born somewhat sensitive, he was delicate in equal measure, a trait that made him fiercely protective of the people around him. Back then, Iris smiled as beautifully as his name suggested, laughing far more often than he ever did now.

His entire personality changed during the summer vacation when he was fifteen.

The Elliott men were born strong and athletically gifted, harboring a particular love for the water. Iris alone was the sole exception. Perhaps because he took after his mother so deeply, he despised the sensation of his body getting wet and sand sticking to his skin; he never enjoyed surfing the way his father and older brother did. He swam occasionally, but he always found reading or drawing far more captivating than plunging into the surf.

Still, he had never hated the sea. Iris used to love the scent of it. On clear days, he adored the relaxed atmosphere and the way the sunlight glittered across the shifting water. Until he turned fifteen, the sea in Iris’s memory had been a peaceful sanctuary that embraced everything. If his family had only returned safely from their vacation that year, perhaps Iris would now be riding a surfboard alongside his cousins.

For Iris’s birthday, which arrived just before he was set to start high school, the family of four decided to take a yacht trip. His father and older brother, lifelong lovers of the ocean, had been ecstatic for months. Their excitement proved contagious, and gradually, even Iris and his mother found themselves unable to hide their anticipation. Had an urgent matter not arisen at his mother’s company right before their departure, she would have boarded that yacht with them.

To mask his disappointment, his father had joked that it had turned into a “men’s trip” instead. As Iris’s mother saw them off, his father made an absurd, grand promise that he would bring her back a tuna. Leaving behind his mother, who laughed heartily at the silly remark, the three Elliott men set off.

The trip that was supposed to last a week ended in just four days.

A violent storm hit.

Iris’s father did everything within his power to protect the vessel, but the blackened sea showed absolutely no mercy. Unable to endure the violently heaving swells, the yacht capsized. It happened so fast they didn’t even have time to don their life jackets.

The last thing Iris saw before losing consciousness was his father’s anguished face, fighting desperately to pull his children from the wreckage. Dark blue eyes, heavy with despair, held Iris and his brother in a final, sorrowful gaze.

Tragically, Iris was the only one who survived.