Unlovable: The Outcast's Bloodline
"Throw them into the lower transit sector. They’re polluting the entrance."
For nineteen years, Xavier Vance lived a life of absolute security as the second prince of the multi-billion-dollar Vance Corporate Dynasty. He had no active pyrokinesis, no superhuman strength, and zero elemental density.
He was the family "dud." Yet, his father always smiled, promising that his spark was just sleeping and the family would always protect him.
A beautiful lie.
At the great Lustrum Pyre Anniversary Gala, before the eyes of the world's elite media networks, the mask came off.
Xavier’s mother was publicly stripped of her noble contract, his sister was brutally burned, and Xavier was pinned to the rain-slicked asphalt under his half-brother's iron boot.
His father hadn't been protecting him; he was keeping him passive until he could execute a public cleansing to merge his house with a pure metal bloodline.
Cast out into the freezing mud of the lower slums and labeled permanently unlovable by his own flesh and blood, Xavier swore an oath: the Vance Dynasty would burn.
Enter Kaelen Cross. At the elite Consilium Academy, Kaelen is the quiet, slender classmate who always followed Xavier around, acting like a dependent commoner who hated speaking. But when the vultures come to finish Xavier off in the slums, the facade shatters.
Kaelen isn't a commoner. And the terrifying, gravity-crushing power he unleashes in the dark doesn't belong to any registered family.
Hidden within Kaelen’s untouchable sanctuary, the trauma triggers a strange, anomalous reaction deep inside Xavier's locked veins.
It isn't his father's fire, and it isn't his mother's foresight. It is something else entirely. Something old and lethal.
The Vance family has five years until the next great audit. Five years for an underdog with zero output to climb the corporate-magical ranks, master his martial arts, and untangle the dark truth of his bloodline.
They thought they threw a useless dud into the gutter. They have no idea who is standing in the shadows behind him.
“You protected me once, Xavy,” Kaelen whispered, his voice dropping into a quiet, absolute register that vibrated through the stone. “Let me protect us now... at least until you can get back to your obsessive wall punching, then you can protect us again.”