P R E L U D E
The city is already breaking when Elias meets Him.
Sirens tear through the streets.
Ambulances slam into the admissions bay.
Glass dust hangs in the air like breath held too long.
Inside the emergency room, bodies stack faster than names can be spoken.
Elias is twenty five.
One month into his rotations.
Still learning how to carry the weight of a badge that feels too heavy on his chest.
He steps through the sliding doors knowing this night will change him.
He just doesn’t know how yet.
Then he sees him.
Dr Hernandez.
The new attending everyone whispers about.
Too young for his authority.
Too calm for the chaos around him.
Dr Hernandez moves through the trauma bay like the world has narrowed to exactly where he stands.
Blood on his gloves.
Voice steady.
Eyes sharp in a place where hesitation kills.
Elias feels it instantly.
Not just attraction.
Not nerves.
Recognition.
Something inside him contracts and expands at the same time, like a door opening in his chest that he didn’t know existed.
...
They don’t meet gently.
They collide under pressure.
A critical patient comes in fast.
Bleeding out.
Barely conscious.
Elias grabs the gurney and moves too quickly, his attention pulled by Seren’s presence like gravity.
Metal crashes.
Instruments scatter across the floor.
The room freezes.
This is where interns get destroyed.
Seren turns, already forming the words that cut mistakes down to size.
Then he sees Elias’s face.
And stops.
For a breath, the emergency department recedes.
Two sets of eyes lock.
Fear.
Intensity.
Something older than either of them.
Dr Hernandez doesn’t understand why his anger dissolves.
Elias doesn’t understand why he isn’t dismissed.
Dr Hernandez only says one thing.
“You’re with me.”
...
They move in brutal synchrony.
Hands passing instruments.
Blood flowing.
Commands landing before they are fully spoken.
Elias is shaky but precise.
Dr Hernandez is relentless and attentive.
Something between them stabilizes the chaos instead of adding to it.
Then the dying man reaches into his jacket.
And everything fractures open.
...
A symbol is gold.
Perfect.
Impossible.
It lands in Elias’s palm warm from the man’s body and sends a shock straight through his chest.
The dying man whispers to both of them.
“They are coming for you too.”
Then the monitor flatlines.
Elias closes his hand around the symbol without thinking.
Dr Hernandez sees it.
Neither of them knows what it is.
Both of them know it matters.
And both of them know the warning was meant for them.
This is not a meet-cute.
This is ignition.
Two men locking into each other at the exact moment the world begins to hunt them.
...
The romance does not bloom slowly after this.
It detonates.
Under pressure.
Under pursuit.
Under the kind of intimacy that forms when desire and survival collapse into the same moment.
LIGHTLINE: THE FIRST LAW
Available January 1, 2026
If this prelude grabbed you by the chest, you already know what kind of love this is.
The kind that doesn’t ask permission.
The kind that changes everything.
Get Chapters 1 - 3