Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
ETHAN
She was magnificent when she was angry.
I stood in my study, watching her on the monitors, six different angles, six different views of the woman who'd consumed my every waking thought for the past years.
She was pacing the bedroom like a caged animal, all coiled energy and barely contained fury, her red hair wild around her face and her green eyes blazing with hatred.
God, those eyes. The same shade as mine, people used to say.
Back when she was a girl, back when she'd follow me around the estate asking questions about whatever book I was reading, they'd joke that we could be siblings.
Same green eyes, same sharp mind, same tendency to watch and analyze before speaking.
There was nothing brotherly about the way I watched her now.
On screen, she stopped pacing and stared at the door, the one I'd designed, the one with the rotating codes and biometric locks and thirty-minute lockout protocols.
I could practically see the gears turning in her head, that brilliant mind working through the problem, looking for weaknesses, for angles, for any way out of the trap I'd spent three years building.
She wouldn't find one. I'd made sure of that.
I settled into my chair and pulled up the files I'd been maintaining since the day she ran.
Three years of data, organized and cross-referenced and updated daily.
Her work schedule. Her eating habits. Her sleep patterns.
Her spending, movements, health records, social interactions, or lack thereof.
I knew everything about her. Every nightmare that woke her screaming at one in the morning. Every time she cried in the shower, thinking no one could hear. Every nest she built and destroyed, ashamed of instincts she couldn't suppress no matter how many pills she swallowed.
Some people might call it obsession. They wouldn't be wrong. It was more than that. It was devotion. It was dedication. It was the absolute, unwavering certainty that she belonged to us, and that someday, someday soon, she would understand that too.
My phone buzzed. Mason.
How is she?
I glanced at the monitors. Ava had given up on the door and retreated to the nest, curling into the blankets with her back to the camera.
Her shoulders were shaking. Crying again.
The sight made something twist in my chest, not guilt, exactly, but something adjacent to it.
Something that wished there had been another way.
There hadn't been. I'd run the scenarios a hundred times. A thousand. Every path that didn't involve taking her by force ended the same way: with Ava alone, miserable, slowly destroying herself with suppressants and isolation and the stubborn refusal to accept what she was.
This way was better. Harder, yes. Crueler, maybe. But better.
Angry, I typed back. Scared. Fighting it hard.
His response came immediately. Expected. Don't push too hard today. Let her settle.
I smiled slightly at that. Mason and his endless patience. His unshakeable belief that if we just gave her enough time, enough space, enough gentle handling, she'd come around on her own. He wasn't wrong, exactly. But he wasn't entirely right either.
Ava was stubborn. More stubborn than any Omega I'd ever studied, and I'd studied plenty in my research phase.
Most Omegas, when confronted with compatible Alphas and the biological imperative of heat, surrendered within hours.
Days at most. Their bodies overrode their minds, their instincts drowned out their resistance, and they gave in to what nature demanded.
Ava had been fighting her nature for six years.
She'd suppressed her heats, denied her instincts, and run three thousand miles to escape the pull of a pack bond she'd never even acknowledged.
She wasn't going to break just because we were nice to her.
She was going to break because we were going to take her apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the Omega underneath.
And then we were going to put her back together, and she was going to be ours.
The thought sent a pulse of heat through my blood that had nothing to do with clinical detachment. I turned back to my files, pulling up the timeline I'd constructed. Three years of work, all leading to this moment.
Month One.
We'd found her within two weeks. It wasn't hard, she'd been sloppy in her panic, using her real social security number to rent an apartment, applying for jobs under a name that was only slightly different from her own.
Amateur mistakes. The kind a frightened girl made when she was running on adrenaline and terror instead of logic.
I'd wanted to bring her back immediately. So had Caleb, he'd nearly put his fist through a wall when we found out she was gone, and it had taken both Mason and Leo to keep him from getting in his car and driving to her that night.
But Mason had said wait. And Mason was Prime, so we waited.
"Let her see what life is like without us," he'd said, his voice calm even though I could see the strain around his eyes, the tension in his jaw.
"Let her try to build something on her own.
When she realizes she can't, when she's lonely and scared and desperate for connection, she'll be ready to come home. "
I'd disagreed at the time, thought he was being too soft, too patient, too willing to let her suffer when we could end it with one quick strike.
Now, three years later, I understood what he'd been doing.
He'd been letting her break herself. Letting her exhaust every option, every path, every possibility that didn't lead back to us.
So that when we finally came for her, she'd have nothing left to fight with.
It was brilliant, really. Cruel in a way Mason would never admit to, but brilliant.
Month Three.
I'd set up the infrastructure. The shell company that owned her apartment building.
The scholarship fund that paid for her nursing program.
The pharmacy that filled her prescriptions, and would later become our primary tool for her acquisition.
She thought she'd found those things on her own.
Thought luck had finally smiled on her, giving her a cheap apartment in a safe neighborhood, a scholarship that covered her tuition, and a job at a hospital that was always hiring.
She had no idea that every step she took toward "independence" was a step further into a cage I was building around her.
Month Six.
Leo started handling the men.
It was necessary. Ava was beautiful, even suppressed, even scent-blocked, even doing everything she could to be invisible, she drew attention. Alphas noticed her. Betas too. Even other Omegas seemed to gravitate toward her, sensing something kindred beneath the chemical mask.
We couldn't have that. The Alpha who asked her out for coffee? Leo had a conversation with him. Very friendly. Very persuasive. The man moved to another city within the week.
The Beta coworker who kept finding excuses to eat lunch with her? His apartment caught fire three days after he asked for her number. Electrical fault, the fire department said. Very unfortunate. He transferred to a different hospital.
The Omega in her nursing program who wanted to be study partners? We let that one go. She wasn't a threat. Ava needed something, someone, to keep her from spiraling into complete isolation.
We wanted her lonely. We didn't want her dead.
Year One.
I started sending the gifts.
Anonymous, of course. Untraceable. Little things that would appeal to her Omega instincts even through the suppressants.
A cashmere throw in exactly the right shade of cream.
Pillows that were softer than anything she could afford.
A weighted blanket that arrived on her doorstep the week after I noticed her searching for one online.
She never questioned where they came from.
Never wondered why she kept finding perfect things at prices she could afford, in stores she just happened to walk past, at exactly the moments she needed them most. She just accepted them.
Brought them home. Added them to the nests she built and dismantled and rebuilt, never understanding why she couldn't stop.
I watched her curl up in that cashmere throw every night for two years.
Watched her bury her face in it when she cried.
Watched her reach for it in her sleep, clutching it like a lifeline.
She didn't know it smelled like Mason. The scent was faint—we'd been careful about that, not wanting to trigger conscious recognition, but it was there.
Sinking into her subconscious. Teaching her body to associate comfort with pack, safety with Alpha, home with us.
By the time she realized what we'd done, it would be too late.
Year Two.
The suppressant tampering began. This was the part I'd spent the most time on. The research. The calculations. The precise calibration of compounds and dosages designed to accelerate her body's natural resistance without triggering any alarm bells.
It had to be gradual. Too fast, and she'd notice the symptoms, go to a doctor, get a new prescription from a pharmacy we didn't control.
Too slow, and we'd be waiting another five years for her system to break down on its own.
I settled on eighteen months. Eighteen months of slowly reducing efficacy, slowly introducing compounds that would make her body fight the suppressants harder, slowly pushing her toward the edge of a cliff she didn't even know she was standing on.
The math was beautiful. The execution was flawless.
And the results...