Page 68 of Discordant Cultivation

But even as the fury coiled tight in his gut, something else pulsed beneath it. Dark. Satisfied. Hungry.

Vale’s thumb hovered over the play button. He should be planning Eliza’s professional destruction. He should be calling lawyers, issuing takedown notices, making sure she never touched a camera again.

But the view count was climbing—200,000 in the past hour—and the comment section exploded with speculation that made his chest tight with something between horror and satisfaction.

He pressed play.

The footage was devastating in its intimacy. Kieran’s body stiffening in the chair like something out of a horror film, Vale’s voice cutting through the chaos with commands for Eliza to stop filming. But she hadn’t stopped, had she? The camera captured everything but his face—Vale gathering Kieran’s stiff body against his and gently lowering him to the floor.

And then his voice, soft and unguarded in a way he’d never heard himself: “Stay with me, sweetheart. I’m right here. You’re going to be okay.”

Sweetheart. Fuck. I called him sweetheart on camera.

But Eliza had done her job. Vale could hear it immediately—the full production treatment on the audio before the collapse. She used only the Steadicam footage, the intimate angles. The mix was perfect: fabric rustling as Kieran moved around the basement, tonal shifts in his voice as he changed positions,the whispered lines amplified just enough to be clearly heard without losing their vulnerability. She must have worked nonstop to finish it, and it sounded beautiful.

The performance itself was a masterpiece. Everything Vale had cultivated, everything he’d broken and rebuilt in Kieran, distilled into four minutes of artistry.

Eliza’s instincts for viral music content were impeccable. She knew exactly what would captivate an audience, how to balance artistic merit with emotional devastation. It was just that Vale didn’t want to be seen, not even partially.

The footage cut there, but the damage was done. Vale scrolled through comments with the kind of horrified fascination usually reserved for car accidents:

The way he cradles him... who is that? That’s someone who CARES

That gentle voice talking him through it... I need someone to take care of me like that

Daddy energy is OFF THE CHARTS. Who is this mystery man?

They’re definitely together. Look how he touches his hair. That’s intimate as hell.

I’m shipping it. Thorn and his protective caregiver. Someone write the fanfiction.

The tenderness... I’m literally crying. This is what love looks like.

Love.

Vale’s grip on his phone tightened. Strangers on the internet seeing what he was too terrified to name, recognizing something in that basement footage that felt too honest…

The view count kept climbing.

He should destroy her for this. Hecoulddestroy her for this.

But beneath the fury at the loss of control, something else pulsed.

They see it. They see that he belongs to me. They see what I am to him, even if they don’t know who I am.

The world was watching Vale claim his prize, and instead of pure violation, there was possessive heat spreading through his chest.Let them see. Let them all see that Kieran was his—the wounded artist with his devoted protector, the tortured genius with his careful keeper.

Eliza would still pay for the breach. But later. When Vale’s hands weren’t shaking and his chest wasn’t tight with this confusing mix of rage and joy. When he could think past the primal need to catalog every comment recognizing what he’d been trying not to name.

Vale scrolled through more comments, each one feeding something hungry in him:

He’s so protective I can’t—

The way he says ‘sweetheart’ like it’s the most natural thing...

I need a 10-hour loop of him saying ‘You’re going to be okay’ in that voice.

Yes. See how I hold him. See how he needs me.