Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
SOL
I don’t like plans built on apology.
They rely too heavily on timing, on emotional availability, on the assumption that the other person will still be there when you arrive with your explanation polished and your pride stripped away.
We’re in the kitchen when I say it.
“We go tonight,” I tell them, voice even, controlled. “Not as a pack ambush. One at a time. No pressure. No speeches.”
Kai leans against the counter, restless, eyes sharp and shadowed from lack of sleep. Koa stands still but coiled. Finn hasn’t moved much since yesterday, his quiet far heavier than usual.
“We let her set the pace,” Finn says.
“Yes,” I agree.
The air feels thinner without her in the house. Even now, with her just next door, I can feel the absence like a hollow behind my sternum. The bond isn’t clean. It isn’t sealed. But it exists.
It hums.
And then—
It tears.
There’s no gradual escalation.
No subtle shift.
One second I’m standing at the counter, discussing logistics.
The next, something slams through my system so violently my vision fractures at the edges.
Terror.
Not irritation.
Not anger.
Not rejection.
Terror. Absolute and all-encompassing.
It rips down the half-formed bond like claws.
My body reacts before thought forms.
“Lani—” I choke.
As the words leave my mouth, I’m already moving.
The others don’t question it.
They feel it too – less sharp, less immediate – but enough.
I don’t take the path. I don’t use the gate. I vault the fence.
The impact on the other side barely registers. I clear the garden in three strides, the scent of her fear thick in the air before I even reach the front door.
It’s open.
That alone is wrong.
I don’t knock. I don’t announce. I storm through the hallway and into the lounge just in time to see him.
A man has her pressed against the wall.
His hand is locked around her wrist.
A syringe gleams in his other hand.
For half a second, everything slows.
Her scent is erratic – fear, adrenaline, something dangerously close to heat igniting under stress.
The man turns his head at the sound of my entry.
And I somehow recognise him. The similarities. Shared DNA. Her father.
The resemblance is obvious now in the bone structure, the eyes.
But there is nothing paternal in the way he’s holding her.
There is ownership.
Control.
Violation.
Something inside me fractures completely.
I don’t remember crossing the distance.
One moment he exists in front of me.
The next, I have him.
My hand closes around his throat with enough force to lift him clean off the ground.
The syringe clatters across the floor.
His back hits the wall hard enough to crack plaster.
“Touch her again,” I hear myself say, voice unrecognisable, low and feral, “and I will end you.”
His feet scramble against the floor as he tries to find leverage.
“You must be the one,” he chokes.
I don’t loosen my grip.
“The bite.”
Rage detonates behind my eyes.
“You think you can claim what isn’t yours,” he continues, even as oxygen thins.
“She isn’t yours,” I snarl.
“She is my daughter.”
“She is not your experiment.”
The words rip from me before I consciously decide to speak them, something slipping into place from what Lani had previously inferred.
Behind me, I hear the others enter – Kai swearing, Koa’s low growl, Finn’s measured steps cutting through the chaos.
But I don’t look away from him.
His gaze flicks to Lani briefly.
“Do you know what she is?” he demands hoarsely.
“Yes.”
“Do you know what you’ve triggered?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what she was meant to be?”
Something shifts in his expression then – not fear. Desperation.
“She was meant to be the solution,” he says. “The cure. The end of biological corruption.”
My grip tightens.
“She is not broken.”
“She is compromised,” he spits. “I will not let her be reduced to breeding stock.”
The words are enough.
I slam him harder against the wall, the house shaking with the impact.
Behind me, I feel Kai move toward Lani. Koa steps between her and the hallway. Finn kicks the syringe further out of reach.
“Sol.”
Her voice. Shaking. But present.
That single sound slices through the red haze just enough.
I glance at her. She’s pale, breathing unevenly, eyes wide but focused.
Alive.
Rage doesn’t recede.
It condenses.
“You will leave,” I tell him quietly.
“You don’t understand what she is,” he snarls. “The men backing me will not allow—”
“I don’t care who backs you.” My voice is steady now. Controlled.
Which is far more dangerous.
“You come near her again,” I continue, lowering him just enough that his feet brush the floor, “and there will be no politics left to hide behind.”
His gaze flicks to the others.
Four alphas.
Unified.
Not playing.
Not negotiating.
For the first time, doubt flickers in his eyes.
“She is activated,” he says, trying for composure and failing. “You’ve already destabilised her system. She’s volatile.”
The word detonates something primal in me. I feel it – the edge of heat igniting under the terror.
He’s right about one thing. She is volatile. Because he frightened her. Because he threatened her autonomy. Because the bond just snapped tight under stress.
I release him suddenly.
He stumbles, catching himself against the wall.
Kai steps forward immediately, fury bright and barely contained. Finn blocks the doorway. Koa doesn’t move from Lani’s side.
“You will leave,” I repeat.
He straightens slowly, adjusting his coat like this is a boardroom and not a kitchen with a cracked wall.
“This isn’t finished,” he says.
“It is,” I reply.
He steps towards the front door, but pauses on the threshold. He looks at Lani one last time. Not with love. With calculation.
Then he moves faster than I expect.
His hand disappears inside his coat.
The shift in the air is instant.
Gun.
The first shot cracks through the air, deafening in the enclosed space. Glass shatters behind me, and Kai swears violently. I move toward him, but he has already pivoted, the barrel tracking wildly.
The second shot finds me.
The impact is not dramatic at first – just a brutal punch to my side that steals breath and heat in the same instant. A split second later, pain blooms outward, white-hot and consuming, spreading down my ribs in a thick wave of warmth.
I don’t fall.
I step forward.
Because he’s no longer aiming at me.
He’s aiming at her.
Time fractures into slow motion. I see Lani’s eyes widen, sense the reactive spike in her scent as fear collides with something dangerously close to heat. I move, but I am a fraction too slow.
Finn is not.
He slams into her father from the side with the force of a charging bull, driving him into the wall. The gun discharges again, the sound muffled by bodies colliding and furniture cracking. They hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and fury, grappling for control of the weapon.
It is not elegant. It is not strategic. It is brutal and desperate.
Her father fights like a man who has already lost everything and intends to drag someone down with him. Finn fights like a man who understands precisely what is at stake if he hesitates.
There is a final, concussive crack.
Then stillness.
Finn rises slowly from the floor, breathing hard but steadying by the second, composure sliding back into place over adrenaline. The gun rests in his hand. Her father does not move.
Blood spreads in a dark bloom beneath him.
The room fills with silence so thick it feels tangible.
Kai is at my side now, his hand pressing hard against my ribs where warmth continues to seep between my fingers.
“You’ve been shot,” he says, voice tight.
“I noticed,” I reply, though my vision wavers at the edges and everything sounds slow, or far away. Maybe underwater.
Across the room, Lani steps forward. The fear in her scent shifts rapidly, transforming into something hotter, deeper, unstable. Violence has triggered something in her system that none of us can ignore. Stress, adrenaline, blood – it all feeds the temperamental edge already present.
She reaches me before I can step toward her.
Her hands press against my chest, then slide down to my side where blood stains my shirt. Her fingers tremble, but her gaze is focused, locked on me as if the rest of the room no longer exists.
“Sol,” she breathes.
The way she says my name tightens the bond like a wire pulled taut.
The pain fades to background noise. All I feel is her.
Behind us, sirens begin to wail faintly in the distance, carried through the open door. Finn glances toward the sound, already calculating the next moves.
“I’ll handle this,” he says, voice calm now, billionaire composure settling over the violence. “Self-defence. He fired first. The backlash will be contained.”
No one argues because he’s right. Because the consequences, horrific as they are, will not destroy us.
But as Lani’s scent deepens, heat beginning to stir violently beneath shock and adrenaline, I realise something else entirely.
The crisis isn’t over. It has only transformed into something new. And whatever happens next will bind or break us permanently.