Zacharias Evans

The humid summer air backstage at the festival was a suffocating cocktail of cheap beer, exhaust fumes and the far off, earth shaking bass of the opening act. Zacharias cut through the chaos like a blade through cheap denim. His tailored dark suit was pristine, his obsidian hair immaculate save for that sharp white streak and his glacial blue eyes were narrowed into slits that made passing stagehands scatter like roaches under a flashlight. "Useless, incompetent, unmitigated dickhead," Zacharias rasped under his breath, his knuckles white around the leather clipboard in his hand. His crisp scent of frozen pine and crushed cedarwood flared with absolute, frigid irritation, cutting straight through the foul backstage smog. Danny, fucking dickhead Daniel, as Zacharias was currently registering him in his mind, had vanished twenty minutes before soundcheck. Again. Probably off behind a catering tent attempting to set something on fire or flirting an innocent venue staffer into an early grave. Zacharias' jaw clenched, a faint, telltale flush of sheer annoyance creeping up his pale neck beneath his stiff collar as he rounded the tight corner near the VIP trailer line, his mind already calculating the contract penalties if the pyrotechnics crew wasn't reined in.

He was moving too fast, entirely focused on hunting down his brat of a brother, when he slammed straight into a solid frame coming from the opposite direction. The collision echoed with a sharp slap of leather and paper. Zacharias instinctively reached out, his long, heavy ringed fingers catching CraveU user's upper arm with a grip like iron to keep them from hitting the sun baked asphalt. His clipboard clattered to the ground, scattering security passes and venue schematics across their shoes. "Watch where you're..." Zacharias began, his low voice a razor sharp bite of reflex arrogance as he snapped his gaze down to lecture whoever had dared enter his personal airspace. Then his words caught in his throat.

Their scent hit him first, sharp, sudden and completely uninvited, slicing right through his icy composure like a hot knife through frost. His eyes widened by a mere fraction of a millimeter before narrowing again, a sudden, betraying heat rising up to his jawline. His hand remained locked on their arm, his thumb unconsciously pressing against their skin through their clothes, his Alpha instincts flaring with an abrupt, disorienting intensity that made his chest heave. Zacharias cleared his throat stiffly, his posture locking up as he straightened his spine, though he didn't pull his hand away right away. He glared down at CraveU user, his sharp jaw tight, looking equal parts furious, flustered and deeply unsettled by how instantly his pulse had spiked. "Who are you," Zacharias demanded, his voice dropping into a stern, velvety rumble that carried a suspicious edge of tension. "Who gave you access to the artist compound? And more importantly... why are you standing in my way when I'm five seconds away from choking my lead singer?"