Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
LANI
The engine sound doesn’t belong here.
It’s too smooth, too controlled, too expensive for the narrow private road that dips down towards the beach car park – where tyres usually crunch slow over gravel and engines struggle on the incline before cutting out.
The sound alone is enough to freeze something inside me, a deep, instinctive recognition that bypasses logic.
I move to the window slowly, careful not to be seen before I’ve confirmed what my body already knows.
A black car sits at the end of Nanny D’s drive.
Immaculate.
Out of place.
It shouldn’t be there. No one comes down here unless they mean to.
The driver’s door opens.
My father steps out.
For a moment, my brain refuses to accept it. He looks almost the same as always – tailored coat, posture straight despite the faint sway I now recognise as being down to the drink. But there’s something else in the way he scans the street, something urgent and uncontained.
My pulse slams so violently I feel it behind my eyes.
No.
No, no, no.
He shouldn’t know.
He can’t know.
The front door handle rattles.
He doesn’t knock.
He tries the handle.
My throat closes.
I locked it.
I locked it. I know I did.
…Right?
A heavy fist pounds against the wood a second later.
“Lani.”
My name isn’t spoken.
It’s commanded.
Every cell in my body reacts at once. The nest behind me might as well be on fire. My scent spikes, sharp and unstable, fear bleeding into the air without my permission.
The handle rattles again.
Then the pounding stops.
Silence.
For half a second, I think he’s left.
Then the side gate creaks open.
He has a key.
Of course he does.
Gran never changed the locks.
The back door opens with a solid, deliberate click.
My legs move before my brain does, backing me into the hallway, heart pounding so hard it feels like I might be sick.
His footsteps are measured as he enters.
Not rushed.
Certain.
“Lani.”
He appears in the kitchen doorway, and the first thing I notice is the smell of alcohol beneath his usual cologne. Not sloppy drunk. Not staggering.
Controlled, but unraveling.
His gaze sweeps the room once, sharp and assessing.
Then it lands on me.
For a moment, something flickers in his expression that looks almost like relief.
Then he inhales.
The relief vanishes.
His jaw tightens.
“You’ve presented.”
It’s not a question. But my silence confirms it anyway. His lip curls with disgust.
He steps further inside, and the air between us feels charged and wrong.
“You think I wouldn’t be notified the moment your levels spiked?”
The words land like a physical blow.
My stomach drops.
“You’ve been monitoring me?” I whisper. “Even with me gone?”
His expression shifts, not to guilt, but to irritation.
“Of course I have,” he says flatly. “Do you think I invested two decades into research without safeguards?”
Research.
The word turns my blood cold.
“You were my breakthrough,” he continues, voice steady despite the alcohol threaded through it. “My proof of concept. The first viable candidate for permanent reclassification.”
I stare at him, the room tilting slightly.
“You drugged me,” I say. “Constantly. Without my consent and against my will.”
“I stabilised you.”
“You experimented on me.”
His eyes flash. “I protected you.”
My scent spikes again, fear bleeding into the air so thick it almost chokes me.
“You were never meant to present,” he continues, stepping closer. “Suppressants are too transitional. I needed long-term genomic alteration. Do you understand what that would have meant?”
I don’t answer.
He doesn’t need me to.
“It would have rewritten everything,” he says. “A cure. An answer. The end of biological hierarchy as we know it! I would have restored balance. Restored order.”
“You would have erased me,” I whisper.
His jaw tightens. “I would have saved you.”
The words are almost tender.
That’s what makes them terrifying.
He moves his hand inside his coat.
I see the syringe before I fully register what I’m looking at.
Clear barrel.
Metallic glint.
Liquid already drawn.
My breath leaves my lungs in a broken sound.
“I’ve refined it,” he says, stepping closer. “The last iteration was unstable. The bite you were subjected to accelerated presentation before I could intervene. That won’t happen again.”
“You can’t reverse this,” I say, backing away, but terrified that I’m wrong.
“I can.” His eyes burn with conviction.
“My omega is already activated,” I continue, my voice shaking. “You can’t just erase that. It could be dangerous.”
“I can suppress the genomic markers permanently,” he says, almost impatient now. “Force expression down. Rewrite the pathways. Even now. I’m certain you won’t die. Not like your mother.”
The wall meets my back.
My mother? He did this to her too? That’s really how she died?
All these years and I had no idea?
The hallway suddenly feels too narrow, too small.
I’m not a person to him, a voice in my head whispers. I’m a prototype.
“You were meant to secure everything,” he continues, words spilling faster now. “Funding. Political leverage. My title reinstated. The reform agenda passed. Do you know how many parties are waiting for proof that omegas can be corrected?”
Corrected.
My skin crawls.
“I’m not broken,” I whisper. “I don’t need correction.”
“You are compromised,” he snaps.
The word slices through me.
“I will not let you be claimed,” he says, voice lowering. “I will not let you become breeding stock for men who see you as nothing but heat cycles and leverage.”
My pulse stutters violently.
“You think they see me that way?” I manage.
His gaze flicks past me briefly – up the stairs, towards the bedroom.
He smells them now.
All of them.
The nest.
His nostrils flare.
“You’ve been nesting,” he says, disgust threading through his tone.
Heat floods my face despite the terror.
“You’ve already bonded,” he realises.
The fury that ignites in his expression is immediate and uncontrolled.
“You let them mark you.”
“You drugged me,” I fire back, something breaking loose inside me. “You altered my body without consent. You used me.”
He steps forward suddenly, closing the remaining distance in a heartbeat.
His hand clamps around my wrist.
Not violently.
But firmly enough to remind me how strong he is.
“You will come home,” he says, voice low and shaking now. “We will fix this.”
He raises the syringe.
I stop breathing.
“I don’t want to be fixed,” I whisper.
“You don’t understand what you’re becoming.”
“I do.” The truth lands hard and clear inside me. “I’m not your cure.”
His grip tightens. “You are my legacy.”
The needle catches the light.
My scent explodes into the air, fear and adrenaline and something far more combustible mixing at once.
Somewhere, deep in my body, heat begins to stir.
Not fully.
But dangerously.
And for the first time since he walked in, I realise something else.
If he injects me now—
He doesn’t just erase my presentation.
He could destroy whatever bond is forming.
Whatever I chose.
Whatever I might still choose.
“No,” I breathe.
His hand moves.
And I scream.