CHAPTER 6: No One Owns Aria Vex
1143 Words
The press called it a "meltdown." That’s what they saw on the footage leaked forty-eight hours after the attack—a young pop star, blood on her hoodie, standing over a smoking body in a crumbling warehouse below Old City. They didn’t see the fangs, or the tech grafts embedded in the thing’s spine. They didn’t see the pipe jammed through its chest, or the console glowing with ancient sigils behind her.
All they saw was Nova Quinn—America’s favorite scandal.
Aria Vex leaned back in the limousine as the news anchor replayed the footage for the fifth time.
“Sources inside ReVive Records say Nova Quinn was treated for ‘trauma-induced delusion.’ No arrests have been made. No one knows who the man in the video was. The singer has refused to comment.”
Aria stared at the screen. She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.
“Turn it off,” she said.
Kellen, seated across from her, tapped his wristband. The sound died.
“You’re going to have to say something,” he said quietly.
She shook her head. “Not yet. Not until I control the story.”
“Dominic wants you briefed before the dinner. You’re already a liability in their eyes. The proxies are circling.”
“Good,” she said. “Let them. I’ll give them something to choke on.”
---
They dropped her off at the event hall thirty minutes later. Cameras flashed the moment she stepped out—heels clicking on wet stone, black dress sleeveless and sharp as glass. She didn’t smile. She didn’t wave. She didn’t look like a girl who’d lost her mind.
She looked like a wolf in silk.
Inside, the ballroom glittered. Vampires in velvet. Shifters in tailored suits. Corporate heads sipping blood-laced champagne. Aria moved through them like a current—cool, unreadable. People watched her like a bomb wrapped in beauty.
A stage had been prepared. Lights warmed. A script waited on the teleprompter.
She ignored it.
When her moment came, she stepped into the light, microphone in hand.
“I’m not here to apologize,” she said.
Gasps. Murmurs.
She let the silence stretch.
“I’m not unstable. I’m not confused. I’m just awake. Awake to the lies you feed the public. Awake to the predators hiding in your pretty masks.”
In the crowd, a man in a silver mask stiffened. Aria caught his eye—and smiled.
Her words twisted, just slightly. Layered with frequency-encoded subtext. A trick only the Ghost Network’s buried allies would hear.
::Project Crownbite is live. The Vex vault is compromised. Phase Two begins now.::
Then she walked off stage.
---
Dominic was waiting in a side hallway. His face unreadable. His arms folded.
“That’s what you call laying low?” he said, voice edged in steel.
Aria shrugged. “You didn’t say not to hijack the spotlight.”
He stepped closer.
“Do you know how many calls I had to block this morning? How many treaties nearly fractured because you opened your mouth?”
“Maybe they deserve to break. Maybe it’s time people stopped pretending this city isn't soaked in blood.”
He grabbed her wrist.
Not hard. But not gently, either.
“Don’t play games with me, Aria.”
She stared at his hand.
“Let go.”
He didn’t.
The tension between them snapped like wire. She shoved him. He pushed back. The wall caught her. His hand hit the wall beside her head.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said.
“And you think you’ll stop it by caging me?”
His breath hitched. She could feel his body aligned with hers—heat, power, restraint barely holding.
“I’m not trying to cage you,” he said, voice lower now. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Then start treating me like I know what I’m doing.”
He didn’t move.
Didn’t kiss her.
But his restraint was a knife between them.
When he finally stepped back, the wall behind her was still shaking.
“I’ll do it my way,” she said.
“And if your way gets you taken?”
“Then I take them with me.”
---
That night, in her penthouse, Kellen decrypted the message embedded in Nova’s private server. The file wasn’t just corrupted—it was encoded with a contract.
A pact.
Nova Quinn’s father had signed a deal with House Damaris six months before the Vex m******e.
Aria read it twice. Three times.
Nova’s father had sold access to Vex blood tracking networks in exchange for performance protections and silence. He’d opened the gate. Let them in.
She dropped the tablet onto the table. “They used her,” she said.
“They used you,” Kellen corrected. “Your rebirth wasn’t an accident.”
The realization cut deeper than she expected. “So I’m a weapon... wrapped in glitter and pop songs.”
“No,” Kellen said. “You’re the one holding the blade now. That changes everything.”
---
Two nights later, Dominic’s inner circle hosted a private dinner in the ValeCorp Sky Room. The skyline shimmered beyond the glass walls, lights dancing like stars.
Aria wore red. Not soft red. Blood red.
Alric wasn’t there. But his proxy was.
A woman with silver eyes and a smile too sharp. She kissed Aria’s cheek.
“Nova,” she whispered. “Or should I say... Aria?”
Aria smiled back. “Careful. People might think you’re flirting.”
Dinner was lies wrapped in truffle oil and smiles. Deals beneath the table. Secrets under every fork.
“I hear you’ve been stirring the waters,” said a vampire elder across from her. “You always this bold when you’re cornered?”
“I don’t believe in corners,” Aria replied. “Just pressure points.”
She planted three listening devices before dessert.
She overheard the whisper first—Project Crownbite. Said like a curse.
“A weapon,” someone said. “No longer just theory.”
“Does Vale know?”
“No. But the girl—she’s critical.”
Aria left the table smiling.
---
That night, she hacked into Crownbite’s root archive.
It wasn’t a political initiative.
It was a weaponization program—targeting omega-blooded hybrids. Designed to breed and break them into loyal assets.
Aria wasn’t meant to die.
She was meant to be harvested.
The final line of the file made her blood run cold:
> SUBJECT: VEX_ARIA // STATUS: UNRETRIEVED. MUST SECURE FOR BREEDING PROGRAM
She stared at the screen.
Then at the shadows in the penthouse.
Kellen stood silent nearby. He had read it too.
“You understand now,” he said. “This isn’t about war. It’s about legacy.”
She whispered, to no one:
“No one owns me.”
---
- Writer
