Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
LANI
By the third day, I can’t pretend it’s a coincidence anymore.
It isn’t just heightened senses. It isn’t stress.
It isn’t leftover fever. The pattern is too consistent, too precise.
The restlessness creeps in whenever I’m alone too long.
The tightness in my chest builds slowly, not painful but insistent, like something coiling.
And the moment one of them steps into my space, it changes.
Not equally.
Not randomly.
Differently.
Kai sets me on edge, but in a good way. Bright heat, sharp awareness, pulse racing too fast. The bitterness in his scent is like a lick of danger, of temptation. A dare. It feels reckless and alive and dangerous, like leaning too far over a cliff and enjoying the drop in my stomach.
Koa steadies me. His presence lowers the pitch of everything inside me. His sweetness makes my breathing even. The world feels more solid. Like gravity has returned.
Finn hasn’t been around much but when he is, it’s like basking in the sun.
And Sol—
Sol does something else entirely.
I don’t like thinking about it.
The first time I test it deliberately, I tell myself I’m only curious.
He’s in the study, the door half open, sunlight cutting across the polished wood floorboards.
I hover in the hallway longer than necessary, my body already aware of him before I step inside.
The air shifts the second I cross the threshold.
Cleaner. Cooler. Something in my chest loosens in a way that is almost humiliating.
He looks up from whatever he’s reading.
“Lani.”
Just my name.
The restlessness that’s been needling at me all morning recedes. Not gone. But muted. Like someone turned down the volume.
I hate that it’s so obvious.
I walk further in, leaning against the edge of the desk. “We need to talk.”
His gaze sharpens immediately. “About what?”
“About whatever this is.”
He doesn’t pretend not to understand.
“Be specific,” he says calmly.
“My body,” I reply, the words sounding absurd even to me. “My reactions. The way things feel different depending on who’s near me.”
He goes very still.
“I thought it was just heightened senses,” I continue, forcing myself to keep speaking before I lose momentum. “After being sick. But it isn’t. It’s too precise. Too…intentional.”
He doesn’t interrupt.
“When Kai gets close, it spikes. Sharp. Almost overwhelming.” I swallow, hating how exposed this makes me feel. “When Koa’s near, it steadies. And when you walk into a room—”
I stop.
His eyes darken slightly. “When I walk into a room, princess?”
“It settles,” I say quietly even as my heart double beats at his use of a nickname for me. “Immediately. Yours is the strongest reaction of them all.”
Silence fills the space between us.
His jaw tightens, not in anger but in something closer to calculation.
“You were bitten,” he says at last.
The word lands heavy.
“Yes.” I wonder for a moment how he knows, but given that I’m his space and hardly trying to hide the mark, he must have seen it at some point.
“By an alpha.”
“I’m aware,” I reply dryly. “I was there. It was consensual, you know.”
His gaze flicks briefly to my neck before returning to my eyes. “It wasn’t superficial.”
“No,” I say, pulse quickening for a completely different reason now. “It wasn’t. I don’t really understand why it isn’t healing.”
He stands slowly, closing the space between us without touching me. The shift in proximity is subtle but immediate. The coiling tension in my chest unwinds another fraction.
I exhale before I can stop myself.
He notices.
“That wasn’t just adrenaline,” he says.
“Then what was it?”
He studies me for a long moment, as if weighing whether I’m ready for the answer.
“Your system’s been destabilised,” he says carefully.
“That’s vague.”
“Yes.”
I cross my arms. “Try again.”
Something almost like frustration flickers across his face before it smooths away.
“Some people don’t present on schedule,” he says slowly. “Some suppress. Some are late.”
My stomach drops.
“Late what?”
His gaze holds mine. Steady. Unflinching.
“Late bloomers.”
The words settle into place with quiet dread.
“No. No…I’m not… I’m not an omega, Sol,” I say immediately.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it.”
“I’m explaining possibilities.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s not possible.”
“Why?”
Because my father would have known. Because my childhood would have been different. Because everything would have been structured around it. Because if I were—
“No,” I repeat, firmer this time. “I would know.”
“Not necessarily.”
I step back, putting space between us even though my body protests the distance. “You’re saying the bite did this?”
“I’m saying the bite may have triggered something that was already there. If you were just a beta, it would have healed by now. You know that.”
The room feels too small suddenly.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s biological.”
“I’m not an omega,” I insist. “My father—”
I stop myself too late.
Sol’s eyes sharpen. “Your father what?”
“He…would have known,” I say, jaw tight. “He tracked everything. Bloodwork. Schedules. Development markers. If there was even a hint of that…”
Control. Conditioning. Preparation.
Silence stretches.
“And you’re certain nothing was suppressed?” he asks carefully.
I stare at him, pulse hammering in my ears, thinking about my father’s greatest experiment.
I can’t answer him, so I change the topic.
“So what,” I say slowly, trying to steady my breathing, “I’ve just…activated? Emerged? Bloomed? Because an alpha bit me?”
The words feel unreal as they leave my mouth. Detached. Clinical. Like I’m talking about someone else’s body.
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate. Clean.
My brows pull together. “That doesn’t make sense. It wasn’t even deliberate. It was chaos. I was running.”
“You were running,” he repeats, voice lower now. “Adrenaline was high. I lost control.”
The words don’t register at first.
Then they do.
You were running.
I lost control.
Everything inside me goes still.
I look at him properly then. Not as the steady one. Not as the grounding presence that makes the restless hum in my chest quiet.
As a man who just said something he wasn’t meant to.
“What?” I whisper.
He realises it too late. I see it in the fractional shift of his shoulders. The way his jaw tightens.
“You said an alpha bit you,” he says carefully.
“Yes.”
The floor feels unsteady under my feet.
“And—”
“It was you.” It’s not a question. It’s a blade.
Silence slams into the room.
“You,” I repeat, the word splintering. “It was you.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“I didn’t understand what it would trigger,” he says. “Not fully.”
A brittle laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Not fully? You sank your teeth into me and you didn’t understand?”
“You were baiting,” he says, a flicker of frustration breaking through his control. “You were pushing. I reacted.”
“I was running,” I shoot back. “As per our agreement.”
“You were supposed to be a beta. It was supposed to be safe for everyone.”
The words land hard.
His expression tightens. “I didn’t mean to claim you.”
“You bit me.”
“Yes. But I thought I was biting a beta. I thought it was just sex.”
The admission hits like a physical blow.
My mind flashes back to the beach – the sand under my feet, the rush of adrenaline, the heat of the chase in the cold of the storm. The moment I thought it was part of the game. Part of whatever reckless energy we’d built between us.
Not something that could change me.
“I didn’t mean to trigger your presentation,” he says, and for the first time there’s something raw in his tone. “If I’d known you were—”
“Were what?” I demand.
His silence is answer enough.
“You really do think I’m an omega,” I say flatly.
“I think you’re presenting like one.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” he agrees quietly. “It isn’t. But it’s the most likely answer here, Lani. Be logical.”
My breathing turns shallow.
“And the sickness?” I press. “That was, what? My body just collapsing for fun?”
“Destabilisation,” he says. “Your system trying to recalibrate after the bite accelerated what was already there.”
“And when you stayed away?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer quickly enough.
My stomach twists.
“That made it worse,” I say slowly. “Didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
The honesty burns.
“So let me get this straight,” I say, stepping back because I need distance or I might do something stupid.
“An alpha bites me. That triggers something I didn’t know existed.
My body spirals. And the person who did it stands at a distance and watches me fall apart.
Watches me get sicker and sicker, to the point that someone else had to step in just to keep me alive. And the whole time, he knew why.”
“I stayed away because I didn’t trust myself not to destabilise you further,” he says.
“You already had. I can’t see how being around me could have made it any worse, Sol.”
Silence.
The room feels smaller. Thicker. My pulse is roaring now – with fury and something dangerously close to betrayal.
“You don’t get to decide what this makes me,” I say, voice low and shaking. “You don’t get to change me and label me an omega just because you couldn’t hold yourself together.”
“I didn’t decide,” he says quietly. “It was already there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
His gaze doesn’t waver.
“Because your body responds to mine whether you want it to or not.”
The words hit too close.
I hate that part of me knows he’s right.
“That doesn’t mean I’m an omega,” I say, but it sounds weaker now. Unsteady.
“It means your system recognises something in me. There’s…a bond in place between us now…regardless of what you are.”
“So what happens next?”
His expression hardens in a way that feels less like authority and more like resolve.
“You stabilise,” he says. “You don’t isolate. You don’t push your limits. And you don’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
“And if I don’t like it?”
“That won’t change it.”
The words sit heavy between us.
I swallow hard, trying to steady my breathing.
“I’m not ready for this,” I say quietly.
“I know.”
“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t say it like you planned it.”
“I didn’t.”
“But you started it.”
“Yes.”
Another clean, brutal admission.
My mind jumps to my father – the monitoring, the appointments, the rigid control over everything from diet to sleep to bloodwork. The drugs. So many drugs.
“My father tracked everything. If I were – if there was even a hint—”
He never would have let me leave.
“Suppression exists,” Sol says carefully. “Late presentation exists.”
“You’re asking me to believe my entire life has been mislabelled.” A lie.
“I’m asking you to consider that it may have been managed.”
Managed.
The word lands like a punch.
Controlled. Adjusted. Hidden.
“And you think biting me was the spark,” I say.
“Yes. The key that opened the lock and unleashed…this.”
The finality of it makes my chest tighten.
I look at him differently then. Not just as the calm centre of the storm. Not just as the one who makes the restless hum quiet when he walks into a room.
But as the catalyst.
“You don’t get to lose control with me again,” I say quietly.
Another beat of silence.
His jaw tightens. “I won’t. I swear to you I won’t. I’ll be here for whatever you need, but I won’t touch you like that again. You have my word.”
My body still hums beneath the anger – not as violently as before, but enough that I know this isn’t going to disappear because I’m furious about it.
“I can’t be an omega,” I say again, softer now. “That changes everything.”
“Yes,” he agrees quietly.
“I don’t know who I am if you’re right,” I admit, the words scraping on the way out.
“I know. I’m so sorry, Lani.”
This time it doesn’t sound patronising.
It sounds heavy.
I turn away before he can see how much that shakes me.
And that’s what terrifies me most.
Not the heat. Not the heightened senses.
But the possibility that the life I thought I understood was built on something unfinished, something that has only just started to wake. And if that’s true, then this isn’t temporary.
It’s only the beginning.