Chapter 8
WELLER
Ituck her hand into my elbow, and together we step outside to the luxury golf cart waiting to transport us down the path to Montgomery’s estate. The house rises beyond the trees, a gaudy marriage of glass and metal against dense forest, illuminated tonight like a specimen jar.
The ride takes only minutes. Cars crowd the circular drive, their lights sliding across the glass facade. Our driver deposits us at a side entrance, where we are escorted toward the front table.
When Bianca told us he admitted paternity over breakfast - barely troubling himself to defend what he had done to Kate - the final pieces of him locked into place.
He has no fear of scandal because no scandal can reach him.
Dr. Emmett Montgomery is revered as the best omega doctor in the world.
He wins awards. Delivers speeches. He raised omega birthrates and solved health crises the field had abandoned.
The world will forgive a god his methods.
There are guards everywhere, and a young woman in a sleek dress and an earpiece walks us to a table.
Two entrances at our backs. One service door left of the stage. Every surface is glass or stone.
Guests mingle. Booming conversations and warm laughter. The clink of glass. The pop of a champagne bottle.
It doesn’t take long before I feel my father’s presence at the edge of the room. He stands near the bar in a tux, sipping his usual. His eyes catch mine and sharpen.
Two fingers lift and he beckons me.
Come here.
The gesture of my childhood. The one that ends with me in front of his desk while he explains, in detail, what I have done to embarrass or disappoint him.
I hold his stare, then I shake my head.
No.
My father’s face does not change. The hand around his glass goes perfectly still. He takes two measured steps toward our table before security glides into his path. For once, the men standing between us do not belong to him.
Vincent holds court near the windows, one hand in his pocket while a cluster of men lean in to hear him.
Alexander has two giggling women on his arms. One I recognize from company meetings... Felicity, maybe? But the other is unfamiliar. Tristan’s mother is not here, but we knew she was out of the country.
The fathers of the three men we killed stand in the space between Vincent’s circle and Alexander’s, close enough to belong to either.
By the time the first course arrives, my father, Vincent, and Alexander have taken their assigned seats. The chair beside Alexander stays empty, CHARLES MILLER printed on the place card.
Colleen has been silent for too long.
The meal continues in careful rounds. Wine. Champagne. Courses made for photographs rather than hunger. None of us touches the alcohol.
Bianca rearranges food on her plate while she studies the room.
I watch her notice the same thing I did: omegas scattered among the guests, and children.
An extraordinary number of children in miniature formal wear, velvet bows and shiny shoes, eating bread beneath tables while their parents toast at the right moment during speeches.
A man near the stage rises to praise Montgomery’s genius, generosity, and three decades of service to omega health. The room drinks with an enthusiasm that feels less like gratitude than liturgy.
Tristan draws his chair back, looks over at Bianca, and pats his thigh.
“You cannot be serious.”
“Sweetheart.” He makes the word luxuriously patient. “There are one hundred and forty-three people in this room. One hundred and thirty of them are alphas, and every single one is looking at my mate like she is the dessert course. I am providing accurate signage.”
“Signage.”
“So come sit down, Omega.”
She does.
Blue silk spills over the black of his pants when she settles on his lap and over his thighs. His arm closes around her waist as though this was always the intended seating arrangement.
His scent changes immediately. Burnt amber and fig deepen into something rich and smug, rolling from him in slow waves: an alpha announcing to every alpha in the room that he possesses what they want and none of them will ever touch her.
He lifts his chin and lets his eyes go half-lidded, displaying her with the lazy confidence other men reserve for watches or cars.
He knows exactly what he is broadcasting.
The other men in this room are only his first audience.
His second is sitting at this table, and he is driving all three of us insane on purpose.
His hand finds the slit in her dress with suspicious accuracy. His fingers slide through to bare thigh. Slowly. His thumb passes over a scar and continues upward while the room churns around us.
“Everyone is watching,” he murmurs into Bianca’s hair, delighted, “and you are soaked. I find those facts fascinating in combination. Shall we discuss my theories?”
“I will stab you with a salad fork.”
“At this point, I count your stabby ways as foreplay.”
Tristan catches her chin and kisses her. His tongue slips between her lips, and the kiss keeps going until her breath breaks and she pushes against his chest.
Before I realize it, I’ve moved my chair closer.
I need proximity. The need is not dignified.
Her head turns, and bright blue eyes - dark now at the edges - settle on me.
“Why are you hovering, Weller?”
“I am not hovering.”
“Looming, then.”
“I’m wondering why Tristan is taunting the alphas in this room, like we don’t have enough problems.”
She lifts my hand from the table and turns it palm-up. One pink nail traces the lines there, and my pulse gallops.
“You’ve been fidgeting with your cufflinks all night,” she says. “It’s distracting.”
“I do not fidget.”
“No?”
Holding my gaze, she draws my index finger into her mouth.
Warm. Wet. The slow stroke of her tongue along the underside. Her cheeks hollow, and the whole architecture of my discipline illuminates like a city grid at midnight.
She releases me slowly, lips dragging softly over my knuckle. The small sound at the end would be inaudible to everyone else, but not to us.
“There.” Her smile is pure mischief. “Now you have something to fidget over.”
“Bianca.”
My voice comes out husky.
“Yes, Alpha?”
Innocent as arson.
Across the table, Freddie’s second toothpick snaps cleanly in half. He does not look away from her mouth.
“Baby,” he says, his easy demeanor gone dark, “you are playing a dangerous game in a room where none of us can do anything about it.”
She smiles at him, radiant and merciless. “That’s what makes the game fun.”
Owen has flattened both hands against the tablecloth, either anchoring the table or himself.
His nostrils flare with every wave of her scent.
Vanilla and burnt sugar have saturated our section and begun drawing attention from six neighboring tables.
His gaze shifts between her mouth and Tristan’s hand beneath her hem.
“Owen.” A warning. Slight pressure on the valve.
“I’m fine.”
He doesn’t sound fine.
“He’s fine,” Bianca agrees.
She stretches against Tristan like a cat in sunlight, holding Owen’s stare as she blows him a kiss.
Later, he mouths.
“Assuming we survive the evening,” Tristan says. Then he presses his lips to the crown of her head - the gentlest thing he has done all night, smuggled beneath the swagger.
His hand moves higher along her thigh. Her breath catches, and the bond flares.
Then her chin lifts and the wall locks back into place.
“Don’t think this means you’re forgiven.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tristan says darkly.
She laughs.
The sound does more damage than her mouth on my finger.
Then the lights dim. The quartet cuts off.
Montgomery takes the stage.
“Friends. Colleagues. Honored guests.” His amplified warmth settles over every table. “Tonight, I want to speak to you about the omega.”
And he does. His mission. His life’s work. The fragility of the omega population, declining numbers, heats that can still kill. His passion is genuine; that is what makes it obscene. He speaks of omegas like they’re precious. Scarce. Worth any sacrifice.
“For thirty years, my work has asked one question.” His pause lands exactly where he planned it. “How to perfect her so she will succeed.”
Perfect. My father has used the word all my life, usually from behind a desk while he itemized the distance between his standard and his son. Montgomery says it about an omega’s body. My shoulders square for the rest of the correction.
“Sturdier. Stronger. Less at the mercy of her own biology. And, most critically—” Another precise pause. “More fruitful. Over twenty years ago, my team developed a supplement protocol. Tonight, you will meet the results.”
He raises one hand toward the side of the stage and two omegas step forward.
Both look close to Bianca’s age. They wear formal gowns and composed smiles. Two groups of preschool-aged children walk beside them, holding hands in small chains.
Three children. Then four more.
“Even among omegas paired with packs,” Montgomery says, indicating to the omegas, “the average pregnancy produces a singleton: one gestation, one child, one paternal bloodline. Producing offspring for every bloodline within a pack may therefore require years of carefully managed pregnancies. Heteropaternal superfecundation allows a single multifetal gestation to produce children from multiple paternal bloodlines, eliminating that inefficiency within one cycle.”
The room goes silent.
“Scarcity is not the only threat to the omega population. Dependency is equally dangerous. An omega whose health and reproductive future depend upon access to a compatible alpha possesses no true biological security. She possesses a single point of failure. My work is intended to eliminate that vulnerability - to give omegas biological security without dependence on alpha compatibility.”
He pauses as if to let it sink in.