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Angel's Share was quieter these days. No laughter from the rafters, no high-pitched notes on the lyre, no spontaneous ballads about love, wine, and sky-kissing freedom.
No Venti.
Kaeya noticed it. Everyone noticed it, really, but no one said anything—because to ask was to confront the truth:
That Spring had come and gone. And that Venti—Beta Venti—had vanished with it.
No one had seen him at the tavern since the last frost thawed into heat, the kind that pulled instincts from bodies like threads from old cloth. The bards used to joke about being immune to Spring, floating above biology like music itself.
But even Betas cracked sometimes.
Especially the ones who knew what they couldn’t smell.
---
LATE EVENING | STORMTERROR’S LAIR
Kaeya found him where the air was clearest—among crumbled ruins and dragon bones, crouched beneath a half-broken pillar with his lyre beside him, untouched.
Venti didn’t flinch when Kaeya approached. Just curled a little tighter into his cloak and said, “I was wondering when you’d come.”
Kaeya didn’t smile.
“That obvious?”
“Only to people who know the sound of your boots on cracked stone.” Venti’s voice was soft. Not coy. No teasing lilt. A little tired.
“Why here?”
“Because it’s high.” Venti tilted his head back, squinting into the fading sky. “And the wind up here doesn’t carry them. The smells. The instincts. The ache.”
Kaeya’s eye narrowed.
“You mean us.”
Venti didn’t answer. His fingers toyed with the edge of his cape.
“I’m not hiding from you, Kaeya.”
“Maybe not consciously,” Kaeya murmured.
---
MEMORY | EARLY SPRING
Kaeya remembered it too clearly. The moment Spring had broken across the city—like a fever that hit all at once. Alphas stiffened. Omegas went glassy-eyed. Even Betas moved differently—some trying to vanish, others forced to keep working, their nerves snapping at phantom pressure.
And Venti?
Venti stopped singing.
He hadn’t even said goodbye.
Just one last evening at Angel’s Share, where he’d gripped his mug too tightly, his smile strained, his words slower. Then vanished.
For weeks.
---
NOW
“I thought you weren’t scared of anything,” Kaeya said, stepping closer. His voice wasn’t mocking. It was low, a little hoarse. His body burned under the long-tail end of a rut that hadn’t fully burned out. He’d restrained himself—locked himself up, drank suppressant wine, fought with cold water and colder thoughts.
But he’d still thought of Venti.
Still looked for him in every quiet place.
Venti’s answer was quiet. Barely more than a breeze.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then what?”
Venti’s fingers stilled.
“I’m afraid of what I don’t understand. Of being… caught. Not just by a body. But by feelings I can't sense the way you do. I can’t smell if you want me. Or if you just want someone to—” his voice faltered “—burn through. I can’t tell if I’m comfort or prey.”
Kaeya’s expression hardened—but not with anger.
With realization.
“You think I’d use you.”
“I don’t know,” Venti whispered. “That’s the problem with Betas, Kaeya. We never know. Everyone else plays the game with the rules wired into their skin. We’re the audience. Watching. Hoping the next Spring doesn’t end with us in the infirmary.”
Kaeya’s gloves were off. He approached with slow, deliberate steps and dropped to one knee, eye to eye.
“You’re not the audience to me.”
Venti blinked.
“You’re the whole song,” Kaeya said softly. “And I’ve missed it.”
---
EVEN LATER | THE EDGE OF THE WIND
They didn’t kiss right away.
There was no frenzied claiming. No instinctual submission. Only the slow folding of Venti into Kaeya’s arms, letting himself be held without fear of being chased, touched, or overpowered.
Kaeya breathed in his hair—not because it carried a scent, but because it carried him. The absence of Alpha-Omega pheromones was a relief, not a loss.
It was just Venti. And the space between them, finally closed.
They sat like that until stars bled into the sky, and Kaeya whispered:
“If you hide again next Spring... take me with you.”
Venti's lips quirked, faint but real.
“Only if you promise not to sing.”
“I’ll bring wine instead.”
“...Then we have a deal.”