Chapter 8 #2
“Both of these women delivered multiple healthy children in a single pregnancy term. Under natural conditions, omega-designated births have declined steadily for decades. My protocol produced pregnancies resulting in two to five healthy children, with omegas in the majority.” His smile is gentle as a scalpel poised above an artery.
“We have extended its benefits beyond the first generation. Some omegas in this room carry them despite never entering my clinic. The scarcity epidemic is not a crisis, ladies and gentlemen. It is a rounding error I intend to correct within a generation.”
Applause rises.
“Both omegas received the protocol from birth, though we are now seeing success in omegas treated later in development. And I could not be prouder to tell you that these two remarkable women are my daughters.”
Bianca gasps, and Tristan pulls her tight against his chest. He speaks into her ear without taking his flat, murderous gaze from the stage.
That makes them Bianca’s sisters.
They speak softly but confidently, their admiration for Montgomery real. They describe being allowed to choose their own alphas without pressure toward a particular pack or bloodline. They talk about large families as a future omegas can reclaim.
“My house is chaos,” the mother of four says.
Her sister smiles. “Mine too. But it’s perfect. And we both want more.”
One loses her place and laughs softly. Her sister reaches over to find the line for her. One of the children tugs at a skirt and is gathered close without irritation. When Montgomery rests a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, she leans into it.
I watch for a glance toward the guards, a held breath when Montgomery moves behind them, any private fracture in the praise. Nothing.
They trust him.
“As most of you know, I am a beta. Beta inheritance is remarkably persistent across generations, which made my own biology the most neutral starting point available.” A restrained ripple of laughter moves through the room.
He waits for it to fade. “Before conception, I treated both contributors: the maternal environment and my own paternal material. The resulting children were no longer confined to the designation outcomes our biology ordinarily favored. Omega expression increased.” He opens one hand toward the women beside him. “My daughters are the proof.”
The spotlight swings toward our table.
“And now,” Montgomery says, and I feel the pressure drop before the storm, “the reason we are gathered on this particular night. Everyone, please welcome the very first. Bianca. Omega Protocol Subject One.”
A laugh tears out of Bianca. Short. Wild. Entirely involuntary.
Her hand flies over her mouth. Then her eyes move from us to the guards ringing the ballroom, waiting to see if they’ll respond to her outburst.
Montgomery extends his hand and Owen surges out of his chair.
Guards peel from the walls in unison, hands dropping toward their belts.
Bianca catches their movement and fixes him with a look that could stop the devil in his tracks, shaking her head once.
Slowly, and at enormous cost, he sits. His hands come down flat on the cloth and the silverware jumps.
She rises and smooths the blue silk over her hips. Chin high, she walks eleven steps to the stage and places her hand in her enemy’s while a hundred strangers applaud.
The ten-foot screen behind them wakes.
I immediately recognize it as footage from the refuge.
The first clip is similar to one I watched with Tristan. Bianca at the treeline in dawn light, resetting a snare with her bare hands.
The montage moves on. She practices with her bow.
The drone must’ve been deadly quiet and farther away than it appears, because nothing in her posture says she knew she was being watched.
In one clip, she takes down a large buck, strips it right there in the woods without help, and carries it back to camp.
I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t impressive. The men in the room are in awe of her too.
A murmur ripples throughout.
Bianca is seeing all of it beneath a spotlight. Her anxiety strikes the bond hard enough to tighten my lungs until it’s hard to breathe.
My hands close into fists beneath the table.
“Bianca and her sisters were designed for the same outcome,” Montgomery says over the images.
“All three underwent developmental suppression. All three carry its benefits. The distinction lies in what followed.” He turns toward her, almost fond.
“My other daughters demonstrate what the protocol produces under protected conditions. Subject One introduced an unanticipated variable through which the protocol’s full scope could be measured.
When Bianca’s life moved beyond controlled conditions, observation continued.
Deprivation. Injury. Isolation. Sustained physiological stress.
Her survival established the limits of the work. ”
The murmur sharpens.
“Consider the developing omega. From the onset of maturation, her biology devotes enormous resources to cycles, heats, and reproductive structures that may remain dormant for years. The expenditure is substantial, the benefit deferred, and the resulting physiology unnecessarily fragile. Suppress omega presentation throughout development?—”
He opens one hand as though releasing a bird.
“—and those resources are reinvested. Greater bone density. Stronger cardiovascular architecture. Superior tolerance for physical and hormonal stress. My other daughters demonstrate those advantages under protected conditions. Bianca proved they persist under sustained adversity. When presentation is finally permitted, each omega awakens mature and fortified, with reproductive capacity her untreated peers cannot approach. Suppression was never deprivation.”
He looks at Bianca, and the naked pride I find there is the worst thing I have seen tonight.
Applause swallows the ballroom.
I hear only the ocean in my ears and, beneath it, the ledger of her life recalculating itself. He took her girlhood as capital. Now he stands onstage collecting the dividend.
Movement near the stage draws my attention.
The three Haversham fathers have moved closer to Bianca, even though they each have a woman on their arm. All three stare at my mate with an appetite that has shed every polite disguise. I kick Tristan’s foot beneath the table. He follows my gaze, and his eyes turn arctic.
The brilliant doctor has presented his daughters as something rare and priceless to a room full of hungry wolves.
And Bianca is the first and most versatile in his miracle line of heirs. Every alpha in the ballroom has lifted their head like a hound hearing a whistle.
The target he painted is larger than he can imagine.
Or precisely as large as he intended.
With him, I cannot decide which possibility is worse.
A guard carries a bow onto the stage, and the audience titters.
At the far end of the ballroom, a target rolls into place in front of dark glass. Montgomery is planning to hand my mate a weapon in a room full of men she wouldn’t hesitate to kill.
She takes the bow from him and runs her fingertips over it as if reintroducing herself to an old friend.
Baby-blue silk brushes her ankles above narrow heels that have no business looking dangerous.
The diamonds at her throat catch the ballroom lights, but the moment her hand closes around the grip, every polished detail becomes camouflage.
The rage falls away and I’m simply in awe of her.
A photographer crouches near the stage with a professional camera braced against his face.
The lens follows Bianca from the bow in her hand to the set of her shoulders.
The shutter chatters. Montgomery intends to turn her into something that can be printed, circulated, and admired long after tonight.
Then I notice the phones.
Two men near the windows have theirs raised. Another at the next table zooms in as Bianca rolls her shoulders loose. I unbutton my collar as heat from the anger that’s building makes it hard to concentrate. No one should have pictures of her.
Bianca tests the string with two fingers and nocks an arrow. Her weight shifts, and the pointed toe of one heel turns toward Montgomery. Her hips begin to follow.
So does the bow.
Every muscle in my body locks.
Montgomery clears his throat softly enough to sound polite. Bianca looks at him, and the bow remains angled between them for what feels like an eternity while the photographer’s shutter goes silent. Then her heel turns back toward the target.
She studies the distance, raises the bow once, then lowers it again. She turns the nock by a fraction, shifts her rear foot inside the narrow heel, and rolls her drawing shoulder loose. Her gaze travels the impossible line over the crowd to the target. The bow rises again.
I recognize the stillness that comes over her. It was there in the footage just before the buck went down. Her shoulders settle. The string reaches the corner of her mouth and stops.
The arrow flies across the ballroom, and the people beneath its path duck out of the way, but Montgomery never flinches.
It hits the target dead center, and the room detonates in applause. Men are on their feet.
She sets the bow down on a stool. An assistant hands a glass of champagne to Bianca, then to Dr. Montgomery.
He holds his glass out to her. “A toast to you, my dear. You are most impressive.”
Montgomery drinks first. For a moment, I expect Bianca to toss the drink in his face. Instead she places the glass to her lips, tilts her head back, and drinks the entire thing.