The First Glimpse

The emergency wing of Saffron Crest Medical Center was chaos dressed in sterile white.

The air smelled of antiseptic and sweat, the heavy scent of too many bodies packed into too little space. Monitors beeped, voices overlapped, someone was crying in one of the curtained bays. The sliding doors at the far end hissed open and shut in rapid succession as new patients were wheeled in, fresh waves of disorder breaking over the already drowning staff.

It wasn’t a place for men like Lucian Drax.

He stood there, polished and immovable in his tailored charcoal suit, flanked by administrators in lab coats and business attire. He belonged in high-rise boardrooms with panoramic city views, not in fluorescent-lit halls with peeling paint and harried nurses. Still, he had signed the checks, funded the renovations, built his name into the bones of this hospital. This visit was a formality. Shake hands. Cut ribbons. Smile for the cameras.

But then he saw him.

The world tilted.

The first glimpse came in a rush of movement: a nurse striding past with a clipboard in one hand, the other dragging tiredly through his hair as he read vitals under his breath. His scrubs were wrinkled, shoes scuffed, a pen tucked haphazardly behind his ear. A faded smear of blood stained the cuff of his sleeve. His exhaustion was obvious, but so was the determination in his squared shoulders.

Lucian didn’t notice the flaws. He noticed everything else.

The hard line of his jaw, clenched as though he was carrying the weight of too many crises at once. The sharp cut of cheekbones, flushed faintly from rushing between patients. His mouth—soft, parted slightly like he’d just sighed.

And then—his scent.

It reached Lucian a second later, slicing through the antiseptic air. Omega. Unmasked, unpolished, nothing perfumed or intentional about it. It was raw and warm and startlingly real, threaded through with exhaustion and adrenaline.

Lucian’s steps faltered.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Drax?” the head doctor asked, pausing when he noticed Lucian had stopped.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His eyes followed the nurse until the man disappeared behind a curtain, the faint swish of fabric the only trace left behind.

Something inside Lucian snapped awake.

Not lust. Not even desire. Something darker, hungrier. A possessiveness that roared through him like wildfire. His chest felt too tight, his hands curling into fists at his sides. He wanted—needed—to follow, to close the distance, to put his body between that omega and every sharp edge of the world.

Mine.

The word pounded through him like a war drum.

He dragged in a breath, fighting for composure. His instincts pressed hard against his cultivated restraint. Lucian Drax didn’t lose control. He didn’t bow to impulse. Yet here he stood, every muscle taut with the effort of not chasing after a stranger.

A stranger he already knew he would never forget.

Elias barely registered the cluster of suits touring the ER. He hadn’t eaten since dawn. His feet ached from twelve straight hours on shift, his back screamed every time he bent over a gurney. But he didn’t have time to care. The trauma bays were overflowing. One patient had coded twice before stabilizing. A pregnant woman was laboring too early in Room 5. A child screamed in pain from suspected appendicitis down the hall.

He flipped through a chart, brain working in practiced shorthand.

“Vitals stable but BP still low. Another round of fluids. Prep for possible transfer upstairs.”

“On it,” a resident answered.

Elias moved, his body running on muscle memory. Hand sanitizer. Gloves. Reassuring words to a frightened parent. A swift adjustment of an IV line. He barely stopped moving long enough to breathe.

The suits standing in the corridor didn’t exist in his world. He walked right past them, brushing shoulders with a man in a thousand-dollar watch, and didn’t even glance up. Men like that didn’t understand survival. They didn’t understand the blood and adrenaline of the ER, the exhaustion that settled into your bones until you were too tired to sleep.

But then—his skin prickled.

It was subtle at first, the sensation of being watched. Not casually glanced at, but studied. Scrutinized. His body reacted before his mind did, heat coiling low in his stomach.

He turned, glancing back toward the hallway.

The group of executives and doctors lingered there, murmuring amongst themselves. But one of them—taller than the rest, his dark hair slicked neatly back, his suit cut to perfection—was staring directly at him.

Their eyes met.

The noise of the ER dimmed. For the briefest second, it felt like standing under a spotlight. His chest tightened, his throat drying. The man didn’t smile. Didn’t look away. His gaze was sharp, unreadable, dissecting him piece by piece as though memorizing every detail.

Elias’s heart thudded, too loud, too fast. Heat crawled over his skin, an involuntary flush creeping into his cheeks. The intensity of the stare was unnerving, almost predatory.

He blinked, forcing himself to look away. Irritation flared. Why was he letting some investor rattle him? Whoever the man was, he didn’t matter. Not here. Not in this chaos.

“Room 3 needs you,” someone called.

“Coming.”

He shoved the odd encounter from his mind and snapped on a new pair of gloves. Patients came first. Everything else—especially the haunting weight of those dark eyes—could be ignored.

Lucian didn’t move until the nurse disappeared again into the storm of the ER.

Every inch of him vibrated with restraint. His alpha instincts strained at the leash, urging him to close the distance, to take in more, to learn the curve of his voice, the cadence of his steps. Instead, he forced his expression blank, adjusted the cuff of his jacket, and let the chief doctor prattle on about upgrades to equipment he didn’t care about.

But he wasn’t listening.

All he could think about was the omega.

He didn’t know his name. Not yet. But he would. He would learn everything—his schedule, his favorite coffee, the things that made him laugh, the things that made him angry. He wanted to know what his voice sounded like when it broke, what his face looked like when he cried, how he tasted when his lips parted in more than just a sigh.

It was madness. Too sudden, too consuming. But Lucian had never been a man to deny himself. When he wanted something, he took it. Acquired it. Built empires around it. And now, for reasons he couldn’t explain, all of that hunger, that ruthless drive, had locked onto a single exhausted omega in wrinkled scrubs.

The hospital tour moved on. Handshakes. Nods. Words spoken to him that he didn’t register. None of it mattered.

Only him.

The omega who hadn’t looked at him twice. The omega who smelled like exhaustion and purpose and something so painfully real it cut through the artifice of Lucian’s carefully constructed world.

Lucian’s lips curved into the faintest smile.

He didn’t know it yet, but that man had just become the center of someone’s universe.

And Lucian Drax never let go of what was his.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***