Chapter 20 #2
Darius Monroe, if you are reading this, it means you have my most precious jewels. Our children. I want you to understand what that sentence means before I explain it, because it is true in every way that matters and happened without your knowledge or consent.
The room did not move.
I was sold twice. The first time by the parents who should have protected me. The second by the Alpha who purchased me.
Everything that followed happened against my will.
They injected me with genetic material taken from you, Darius. DNA collected without your knowledge during one of the attacks on your pack. It was never random. Those attacks weren't raids.
They were collection missions.
The blood they took from you became the subject of another experiment. Another attempt to force something the Goddess never intended.
I was one of those experiments.
Destiny's hand tightened in mine.
Many Omegas were injected, but most did not carry to term. Those who gave birth had children who did not survive. They conducted various experiments for years without understanding why their results kept failing.
It took them years to understand what they were doing wrong. They thought your bloodline could be forced, but it couldn't.
Only the woman chosen by the Goddess can carry a Monroe child. No amount of stolen blood, injections, or experiments could change that.
None of us knew.
Not them.
Not me.
They only learned the truth after our children survived, while every child created through their previous experiments was lost.
He paused.
Our children, Zane and Zara, are special. They are advanced, and six months ago, they started showing signs of elemental powers. That is when they tried to take them.
We escaped, and every mile since then has been spent trying to reach you. I wanted our children to know their father. I wanted them to know they belonged to something other than fear.
They found us before we could make it.
So I became the detour.
As long as they are chasing me, they are not chasing them.
If this letter reaches you before I do, please protect our children. They deserve the family they were born into, even if I never get the chance to see it.
I am doing everything in my power to find my way to all of you.
Darius took a deep breath and set the letter down.
The war room was completely silent.
Carter stared hard at the table. Marcus sat completely still, the steady presence of an Alpha already holding the room together before anyone asked. Destiny’s hand unconsciously found her stomach.
"Darius," I called out. Quiet. Just his name.
He looked up.
"We have the pups," I said. "They are here and safe. We are going to find her."
He nodded once.
"Walk us through what you found," Marcus said.
Six hours of work. This intelligence architecture, which typically requires weeks to develop in most operations, was built quickly because Darius did not start from scratch. He followed an established thread in the files from the start.
The Underground Market wasn't primarily about trafficking. This shift in perspective clarified everything. Yes, trafficking and captivity were real — but they weren't the main focus. Instead, they were part of the infrastructure that supported the true purpose.
The point was the program.
Darius explained, "They have been executing a genetic program for over five years. The aim was to create enhanced offspring—children from particular bloodlines with elemental traits that would normally take generations to develop naturally. They attempted to engineer these characteristics."
"Using Omega women," Sage said. Entirely level.
"Yes. Selected and matched without their knowledge or consent, using material extracted from targeted bloodlines. Monroe's DNA was a primary target. The elemental concentration in this bloodline is significant. They have known this longer than we realized, and they were watching us."
Carter said, "The raids. The battles we thought were acts of territorial aggression. The attack at the clinic a few years ago."
"Collection operations," Darius said. "Designed to create enough chaos to collect biological material without the pack realizing what was being taken. Primarily blood, tissue, when they could get it."
The room absorbed that.
Every battle. Every raid. Every morning. We had been using the wrong math for years.
"The pups in the facility," Gran said. Her voice was steady. "Tell me."
Darius was quiet for a moment—the quiet of a man about to say something that will permanently change the room.
"The program produced many children, but most did not survive at the facility. The conditions were unsuitable for pups—particularly those deemed failed specimens." He paused briefly, then resumed.
"Those who survived were assessed for the target abilities. Pups who demonstrated them were retained for further study, while those who did not were redistributed via the Market's existing nodes."
"Experimentation," Destiny said. Flat. Exact.
"Yes."
The word landed and stayed.
"How many?" Everett said.
“At least ten children were confirmed to have been at the facility at various times. The records document successful extractions from numerous unnamed shifters. However, the most recent location is not recorded in the documents I have access to.”
Everett nodded. Jaw set. Hands still on the table.
Dana's hand covered his.
"What do we need?" Marcus said.
"The witch," Darius said. "Her message referenced specific file locations that I believe contain the children's current status and whereabouts. I need her cooperation, and I need it soon."
"Then we reach her," Marcus said.
"One more thing," Darius said.
The room looked at him.
"Amira." Her name, spoken in the war room for the first time, carried a particular quality in the way he said it — flat and precise, with something beneath the precision that had never appeared on Darius's face before.
"She is not running randomly. I traced the route she used to bring the children here. It is a planned path with built-in stops and contacts. She has been deliberately moving toward this compound. She has known where we are for some time."
"Which means she is close," Carter said.
"Close," Darius confirmed. "And whoever is hunting her knows the direction she is moving."
The room adjusted.
"Perimeter," Marcus said. The Gammas were already moving. Carter was at the display, and Darius was back in his files.
I looked at Destiny beside me. She was studying the map — every approach road, everything between here and wherever Amira was — with the focused intensity of a woman who had already run the numbers and reached a conclusion.
"The Beta said he drove six hours to get here from her last known location. She became the detour and, more than likely, took this route here.” She pointed to the river along the north side. “On foot, taking the back routes, she is about a week out.” Destiny took a breath.
Darius went still.
“She managed to escape and stay on the run with two young pups for months. She is moving smart,” Destiny said, looking at Darius. ‘She is going to make it, brother. We are going to make sure of it," she added.
I looked at Destiny and felt something settle inside me.
A year ago, she would have disappeared into the woods searching for Amira, alone, carrying the weight by herself. She would have convinced herself it was safer that way.
Now she was standing in the middle of a war room, shoulder to shoulder with the people she'd once believed were temporary.
She wasn't finished healing.
Neither of us expected her to be.
But somewhere between the nightmares, the quiet moments by the waterfall, the arguments that forced us to tell each other the truth, and every day she'd chosen to stay rather than run... she'd stopped surviving alone.
I watched her strategize without hesitation, already thinking three moves ahead, already protecting people who had become hers.
A slow smile found me.
She wasn't moving alone anymore.
She was moving with us.
Across the war room, Marcus was already issuing orders. Carter was mapping routes and contingencies. Darius had disappeared into a web of Council records that would eventually reveal where to strike next.
Everyone had moved without hesitation.
Because there was no debate to be had.
Amira wasn't just Darius's responsibility.
She belonged to this family now.
The Council spent decades chasing bloodlines, stealing lives, and trying to undo the Goddess's work.
They believed fear would scatter us and that relentless pressure would keep us reacting to their moves.
However, they were wrong. They assumed that thirty years of pursuit would instill fear in us, but it did not.
Instead, they forged exactly what they feared.
The Mystic Warriors.
A family that didn't bend.
Didn't break.
And never stopped fighting until every one of their own was home.