6. Finn
Finn
We’re weightless, the two of us, suspended in the dark with stars scattered in every direction.
Her dark eyes find mine and hold them, and I reach out to touch her cheek, as gently as I can.
And she lets me. There’s a sadness in her eyes that reaches something deep in me, surfacing for a moment and then gone.
Her scent wraps around me, rain and crushed rose petals, threading into my lungs and through every fiber of me.
She leans in, her breath warm against my mouth, her lips almost brushing mine—
Sylvie.
The alarm shatters the dream. I jolt upright, my heart hammering, the sheets tangled around my legs. For a disoriented moment I’m still in that suite, feeling the warmth of her lips against mine.
Then the alarm registers.
Fuck.
I’m out of bed and through my bedroom door in seconds, bare feet thudding against the hardwood floors of the house. The alarm is louder in the living room, a pulsing wail that makes my head throb.
Max and Ethan are already there, both dressed. Max’s jaw is tight, his eyes sharp. Ethan is running a hand through his hair, his one tell when he’s stressed.
I’m standing in my boxers.
“There’s been a break-in at Synthera.” Max’s voice cuts through the alarm like a blade. He must see the confusion on my face because he snaps, “Get dressed. We need to leave. Now.”
I don’t argue. I’m back in my room, yanking on jeans and a sweater, shoving my feet into boots. Seconds later I’m following my packmates out the door.
The house sits at the edge of the Synthera estate, separated from the main complex by half a mile of manicured grounds and a line of oak trees that the three of us planted the year we broke ground.
Ethan had insisted on it, said the building needed something living around it.
Max had rolled his eyes and picked up a shovel anyway.
This land used to belong to his family. I still remember what stood here before, a sprawling old manor that looked dark and oppressive, something I had sensed even as a teenager. Now it has been replaced with Synthera, the complete opposite of what used to be there.
We cross the grounds at a near-run, the security alarm still wailing in the distance. The main building looms ahead, four stories of glass and white stone, dark now except for the emergency lights flickering in the windows.
Nathan Grint, head of security, meets us at the entrance. He’s a compact man in his fifties, former military, with a face that rarely shows expression. Tonight, he looks worried.
“Mr. Cavill. Mr. Brooks. Mr. Preston.” He nods to each of us. “This way.”
We follow him through the lobby, past a reception desk that’s usually staffed by someone cheerful, and into the main corridor. Our footsteps echo in the silence. The building feels off without people in it, like a body without a heartbeat.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Someone broke into the Clinical Wing,” Nathan says over his shoulder. “Basement level.”
I exchange a look with Ethan. The Clinical Wing is where our most sensitive work is kept.
“The basement?” Max’s voice is clipped. “That’s three levels of security clearance. How the hell did they get through?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine, sir.”
We reach the elevator bank and descend two levels, emerging into a corridor lined with reinforced doors and biometric scanners. Nathan leads us to a door marked CLIMATE-CONTROLLED STORAGE. Or rather, to what’s left of it.
The access panel has been torn open, wires spilling out like entrails. A small device, some kind of bypass module, is still attached to the circuitry, blinking faintly.
“They used this to override the security code,” Nathan explains. “Sophisticated tech. Not military-grade, though, I’d recognize that. This looks more like something a private manufacturer built.”
“And the temperature control?” Ethan’s voice is tight.
Nathan hesitates. “It was disabled for approximately fourteen minutes before we got it back online.”
Fourteen minutes.
I watch Ethan’s face go pale. I know what’s in that storage room. Years of research and countless prototypes, the foundation of everything Synthera has been working toward.
Fourteen minutes might have been enough to destroy all of it.
“How did they get into the building in the first place?” Max demands.
Nathan leads us back upstairs, through the administrative wing, past darkened offices and empty break rooms. We stop in front of a small window, the kind you’d barely notice during the day, tucked into a corner near the supply closets.
The window has a clean circular cut in it, just large enough to reach the latch inside.
“They came in through here,” Nathan says. “Cut a hole just large enough to reach the latch. It sits in a blind spot between two of our outdoor motion sensors, so entry didn’t trigger anything.”
“And inside?” Max asks.
“They moved through freely using a cloned keycard, and that alone doesn’t flag the system. But when they reached the basement level and attached the bypass device to the storage room panel, that triggered the alarm.”
“Whose keycard was cloned?” Max’s voice is quiet.
Nathan hesitates. “We checked the access records. There’s no way to know for certain. The clone was sophisticated enough that it could have been made from any of the active keycards in the building.”
The implication hangs in the air. Anyone. It could have been anyone.
Nathan leads us to the security hub, a room full of screens and blinking lights covering every angle of the building, where his team has already pulled up the relevant footage.
We watch in silence.
The intruder appears, a dark shape dropping through the broken window with the fluid grace of someone who’s done this before. Small build. Ski mask. Dressed in black, head to foot.
They move through the building like they own it.
They don’t hesitate or take a single wrong turn, bypassing the first security checkpoint with the keycard. Left at the first junction. Right at the second. Straight to the basement stairs.
It’s like watching someone follow a map.
“How long were they in the building total?” Max asks.
“Twenty minutes,” Nathan replies. “Entry to exit.”
“And they went directly to the Clinical Wing? Didn’t try to access any other areas?”
“No, sir.”
The footage continues. We watch the intruder attach the bypass device to the control panel beside the storage room door. Seconds later, the temperature readout on a nearby monitor begins to climb as the climate control fails.
Then they’re gone. Out the same window they came in, disappearing into the night like they were never there.
“Why the hell would anyone want to do this?” The words escape before I can stop them.
Nobody answers. But I can see Max and Ethan thinking the same thing I am.
This wasn’t random. Whoever did this knew exactly which room to target and how to cause maximum damage in minimum time. The question isn’t whether they had help. It’s who gave it to them.
We reconvene in Max’s office at the far end of the executive floor. It’s a nice space during the day, lots of natural light and a clear view over the grounds. At this hour it’s mostly just shadows, lit only by the glow of a desk lamp.
Ethan crosses to the shelf and pulls the bottle from behind the books, the one we save for emergencies. He pours three glasses, hands one to me and one to Max, and sinks onto the leather couch with his own. I drop down beside him and take a long swig that burns all the way down.
Max remains standing at the window, his reflection ghostlike in the dark pane.
“It was an inside job,” I say. “It has to be.”
“I agree.” Max sets his glass on the sill untouched. “The question is who. And why.”
“Could it be a rival company?” Ethan turns the glass in his hands. “Industrial espionage isn’t exactly rare in biotech.”
“They didn’t steal anything,” Max says quietly. “They went straight to climate-controlled storage and disabled the cooling. This wasn’t espionage.” He pauses. “This was someone trying to destroy Equinox.”
I’d thought of it too. I just hadn’t wanted to believe it.
Years of work. Years of failed compounds, recalibrations, prototypes that almost worked and then didn’t.
Equinox is the closest we’ve ever come to giving omegas full control over their designation.
It would erase their scent and eradicate heats.
There would be no biological markers left that could identify someone as an omega at all.
The prototypes are stored in climate-controlled conditions because the compound is temperature-sensitive. Fourteen minutes without proper cooling could destabilize the entire batch.
“You think someone targeted Equinox specifically?”
“Think about what it represents.” Ethan sets down his glass, his gray eyes serious.
“We’re not just talking about a medical breakthrough.
We’re talking about fundamentally altering the power dynamic between designations.
An omega on Equinox would be undetectable.
They couldn’t be tracked by scent. They couldn’t be claimed without consent.
They couldn’t be found if they didn’t want to be found. ”
“Freedom,” I say slowly.
“Exactly.” Ethan nods. “And there are a lot of people, a lot of alphas, who have built their entire lives on the assumption that omegas don’t have that kind of freedom.
Trafficking networks. Breeding programs. Traditional packs who believe omegas should be controlled for their own protection.
” His voice takes on an edge I rarely hear from him.
“Equinox threatens all of it. Of course someone would want to destroy it.”
I let that sink in. “So you’re saying we painted a target on our own backs.”
“I’m saying we always knew this work would make enemies.” Ethan meets my eyes steadily. “We just didn’t expect them to move this fast.”
Max turns from the window, his expression carved from stone. “The question remains: who’s feeding them information? That intruder didn’t stumble onto our security weaknesses by accident. Someone told them exactly where to go and what to do.”
“It could be anyone,” I say, frustrated. “We have, what, eighty employees? Any one of them could have access to building layouts, security schedules—”
“Not anyone.” Ethan shakes his head. “Access to the basement wing is restricted. And not everyone knows about Equinox. Whoever did this knew what was down there and how to get to it. We can narrow it down.”
“What if we just fire everyone?” I suggest. I know it’s a stupid idea the moment the words leave my mouth.
Max almost smiles, a grim twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“We can’t afford that, Finn. And it wouldn’t solve the problem.
Whoever’s behind this won’t stop just because we remove their contact here.
They’ll find another way in.” He pauses.
“Besides, we don’t know if our source even realizes what they’ve done.
Someone with access could have been compromised without knowing it—a copied keycard, a cloned phone. ”
“So we need to investigate.” I drain the rest of my bourbon. “Find out who’s been talking, and to whom.”
“We need help,” Ethan says quietly. “This is beyond what Nathan’s team can handle.”
“It might even be someone on Nathan’s team,” Max says. “We can’t rule it out. We need someone from the outside, people who know how to find leaks and plug them without tipping off whoever’s watching.” He pauses and looks up at us. “Sentinel.”
Sentinel Security. We’ve been supplying them with military-grade suppressants for years now, part of an arrangement that’s benefited both parties. Pack Hayes runs a tight ship, and they’ve become something like allies over time. As close to friends as men like us make.
“You think they’ll take the job?” I ask.
“I think Griffin will be very interested in why someone is trying to sabotage the company that produces the suppressants his people depend on.” Max moves to his desk and picks up his phone.
“I’ll call him in the morning. For now, we secure the building, assess the damage to Equinox, and keep this quiet. ”
“Quiet?” I raise an eyebrow.
“If there’s a mole, we don’t want them to know we’re looking.” Max’s gaze turns distant and focused, the look he gets when he’s three moves ahead in a chess game only he can see. “Let them think they succeeded. Let them get comfortable. That’s when they’ll make mistakes.”
Ethan and I exchange a glance. We’ve seen Max like this before, controlled, methodical, patient in a way that borders on predatory. Whoever did this has no idea what they’ve woken up.
“Get some sleep,” Max says, already turning back to his desk.
But later that night, sleep doesn’t come. I lie in the dark long after the house goes quiet, and somewhere between the adrenaline and the exhaustion, she finds me again. Sylvie. Her lips soft beneath mine, parting for me. Her scent. The way she looked at me right before she kissed me.
I know we need to find whoever tried to destroy everything we’ve built, but for some fucked up reason, all I can think about is finding her.