Chapter 21 Rowan
Nightmares had begun plaguing my sleep again. Even the warmth of my alphas’ arms and their comforting purrs could not keep the fear at bay after reading Melker’s journal. Patient Zero—Isabel—my mother, had endured horrors beyond imagination.
Captivity.
Experimentation.
Forced breeding.
We would never know every detail, but we knew enough to assemble the bigger picture. After reviewing Arca's database files, Melker’s journal, and the stolen classified documents, here is what we knew for certain.
Firstly, the man I grew up calling my father… was not my biological father.
My mother had been almost three months pregnant when Arca's soldiers captured her north of the border. Dr. Russell smuggled me out of the base before disappearing into the no-man’s-land beyond Falcon City, raising me under a false identity.
His insistence that I remain on suppressants had likely been to hide my shifter nature even more than my omega one.
He knew I would inherit my mother’s genes, and after witnessing what happened to her, he also knew exactly what Arca would do to me if they discovered what I truly was.
The fire that destroyed the medical wing in the old base mere hours after I was born had almost certainly been a diversion. A way for him to fake our deaths and escape undetected.
A small, desperate part of me wanted to believe my mother had escaped too. I hoped her death had been fabricated the same way as his. But deep down, I knew better.
The grief in my father’s voice whenever he spoke of her was too real. Too raw. When you love someone that deeply, loss leaves a wound that never closes. It shapes every breath, every decision, every lie told to protect what remains.
And if she had survived, I know beyond a doubt she would have come for me. She would have reunited with me.
How could a mother accept being separated from her child?
Secondly, we now knew exactly what Dr. Zolkos and General Green were after. And why they were so interested in me.
The same thing Dr. Melker had been pursuing.
The ability to turn alphas into shifters and create a wolf army for Arca.
Zolkos had identified in me the same unique shifter DNA sequence found in Patient Zero. Whether he knew that Isabel and I were related was unclear, but it was only a matter of time before he did. How long until Zolkos realized I was Isabel’s daughter, long presumed dead?
The answer didn’t matter.
What mattered was this.
I was no longer safe within New Arca.
At any moment, Cade could receive an order to surrender me to Zolkos for research, indefinitely. And knowing Cade’s open hostility toward him, I doubted they would even bother to notify our unit. They would more likely storm our dorm in the dead of night and drag me out by force.
My alphas kept assuring me they would never let that happen, but it didn’t matter how strong they were. Arca had endless resources, endless soldiers, endless ways to make people disappear. If Command ordered me removed from the unit, none of us would stand a chance of stopping it.
My life had become impossibly complicated.
I thought back to when I was first taken, to how resentful I had been toward the alphas for facilitating my capture.
All I had wanted was to return to my old life.
Playing gigs at Rosie’s with Cherry Voltage.
Hanging out with Alex and the rest of the band.
Painting, reading, existing on my own terms.
I had blamed them for losing my freedom.
But what would have happened once I inevitably ran out of my suppressants? I had already been rationing pills, running out of people willing or able to procure the ingredients for me. It was only a matter of time before I had no options left.
Without the medication, I would have gone into heat. I would have shifted without warning, with no one to help me, no one to guide me through it. I could have ended up anywhere. In anyone’s hands.
I might not have survived it.
Who knows where I would be without these men.
My resentment toward them had shifted into something different now, something closer to gratitude.
So much had changed in such a short time.
I had gone from wanting to escape these men at any cost, to feeling terrified of being separated from them.
"That won't happen, Pet," Talon whispered in my ear as he grabbed my wrists and lifted them higher into position. I eyed Ryker across from me on the mat.
"You don't know that," I muttered.
"I do. We have a plan. Now, if you don’t want to end up pinned under Ryker again, I suggest you concentrate."
Ryker surged forward, powerful and sure, cocky as always. Our daily defense training had helped me anticipate his moves, to read the way his weight shifted and predict when he’d lunge. I had also learned to use what I had in my favor, stealth, speed, and the fact I was smaller than my opponent.
After killing a wraith, I naively assumed I would suddenly be a badass capable of taking any alpha down whenever I wanted. Reality said otherwise. They still overpowered me almost every time we sparred.
Almost.
There had been a few moments, a few clean wins, where I’d gotten the upper hand. And I didn’t need Talon’s praise to know it wasn’t luck.
I was actually improving.
Ryker shifted, and I read the movement as him being about to lunge right, so I ducked left.
But just as I was learning his moves, he was learning mine.
I realized too late that he had tricked me.
He switched direction at the last second, arms snapping around my waist, and slammed me onto the mat with a hard thud.
“Tricky, tricky, Kitty. You've got to be quicker than that,” Ryker taunted, pressing his weight down on me.
I could feel his hard dick grinding into my thigh, and a helpless sound escaped me before I could stop it.
“Ryker. Get off her. Now. Not here. Her scent,” Talon warned, his voice sharp.
Ryker hopped off me immediately, and I actually pouted at the loss of his body against mine. Lately, I had been such a horny bitch.
“I thought my scent dulled when the packmate-bond completed,” I said, sitting up. “Am I still a target for other alphas?”
“Not normally,” Talon said, eyes narrowing on me, “but you’re very close to heat, Rowan. Your scent is—”
Ryker cut in with a grin, “Fucking yummy.”
My eyes darted around the gym, and suddenly I was very aware of the attention on me. A few alphas who usually kept their gaze firmly away from me because of Ryker and Talon were now openly scenting the air, eyes flicking toward me like they couldn’t help it.
“Time to go,” Talon said, voice darkening as he stepped closer. He’d noticed the shift in energy too.
Talon, who usually let me walk on my own, fastened his tattooed hand at the base of my neck and steered me out of the gym.
Ryker took point, leading us toward the dorm with uncharacteristic focus.
I tried to douse my arousal, tried to smother the scent leaking off me, but even the weight of Talon’s hand on my neck sent sparks rushing through me.
“Fuck,” Ryker groaned under his breath.
“Move faster,” Talon barked. “Rowan, eyes down. Do not look at anyone.”
I did exactly what he said. Within minutes, we crossed the threshold into our dorm. Cade must have heard the door because he stepped out of his room, eyes narrowed as he scanned the tension on our faces.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” he asked, looking between the three of us.
“Nothing…” I muttered, cheeks burning.
Cade scented the air. His gaze snapped to Talon.
“She’s close to heat, Cade. She needs to stay in the dorm from now on. Her scent was drawing every alpha in that gym.”
Cade nodded once and motioned for Talon to follow him, clearly about to discuss something privately.
“Hey! No. If this is about me, I want to know too,” I demanded, crossing my arms.
Cade sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and dropped onto the couch. “I suppose you’d just eavesdrop anyway.”
We all moved to sit, waiting for him to continue. Killian emerged from his room and leaned against the wall.
“We’re leaving,” Cade said.
“What? Leaving and going where? Back to Falcon City?” I looked between them, but none of the alphas looked remotely surprised. Which meant they all knew this information already.
“Leaving New Arca,” Cade clarified.
“What!?” I stared at him, horrified. “We can’t leave New Arca. Where would we even go? Helix Territory? That’s almost as bad as the Northern Borderlands—”
“We’re not going to Helix.”
“Phew, that’s good. Okay. Then where?”
“The Northern Borderlands.”
I didn’t need to speak. My face said everything. My expression might as well have yelled, “You’re fucking joking, right?”
“There’s a faction of shifters growing in the north,” Cade said. “For decades, they lived in small, scattered, hidden colonies. Years ago, Arca launched raids, rounding them up to recondition and conscript them. That's why they took your mother.”
“The ones who survived didn’t stay put,” he continued. “They fled farther north and disappeared completely. For decades, Command thought the problem was solved.”
Cade’s expression darkened. “They were wrong. The packs have reemerged recently, larger and far more organized than before. They’re no longer hiding, and they’ve started attacking Arca soldiers on northern missions.”
"Why haven't I heard about any of this?" I asked.
“Command won’t admit how serious it’s become,” he added. “They don’t want to acknowledge a threat they helped create.”
Ryker nodded. Talon stayed silent. Killian simply watched me, unreadable.
Cade continued, “The packs are territorial and despise Arca, for good reason. But I suspect they’ll take in deserting shifters looking for asylum.”
“We’re deserting!?” I blurted.
“Yes,” Cade said without a shred of hesitation.
“Why?”
“There’s nowhere in New Arca that is safe for you anymore. Our job is to protect you, and we can’t guarantee that here. We also can't protect you on our own. There's four of us against an entire military. We need allies.”