Epilogue
“Where the fuck are they?!” I snarled, hurling the classified box across the room. It smashed into the wall, narrowly missing Zolkos.
He didn't flinch.
Just stood perfectly still, expression unreadable, eyes fixed on nothing in particular.
“It appears they have fled,” he said calmly. “And they took the omega with them, sir.”
“Took her where?” I demanded.
Zolkos turned his head toward an alpha soldier standing nearby.
“The hounds tracked them as far as the old base, sir,” the alpha reported, his voice tight. “It looks like she went into heat there. We discovered a makeshift nest.”
“Fuck!” I roared, grabbing a chair and slamming it into the wall. It shattered on impact, splintering into useless pieces. “We were waiting for her to go into heat. We needed more slick samples, Zolkos!”
He finally looked at me then.
Cold. Calculating.
“You assured me your sons were under control,” he said evenly. “That they would fall in line when necessary.”
Something inside me snapped.
I crossed the room in two strides and slammed him into the wall, my hand closing around his throat. The impact rattled the wall, but Zolkos didn't cry out. His pulse beat steadily beneath my grip, infuriatingly calm.
I leaned in close, growling low. “You were supposed to be watching them. Making sure they were compliant.”
My fingers tightened just enough to make the point clear.
“They were your responsibility,” I continued. “Every move. Every thought. And now they’ve gone rogue, taken the omega, and crossed the fucking wall!”
Zolkos’s eyes never left mine. Even pinned, even restrained, he did not struggle.
“Compliance,” he said coolly, “is a fragile illusion when attachment is involved.”
I stilled. "What is that supposed to mean exactly?"
“You refuse to admit what really happened between Patient Zero,” he continued, voice level, precise.
“And Dr. Russell. The lovebirds. I brought my concerns to Command, but they dismissed me. They wanted it swept under the rug, but I always suspected Dr. Russell started the fire as a diversion. When the whistleblower files were leaked to the public, it only confirmed my suspicions. He played a role.”
My grip tightened instinctively.
"If he did play a role, it didn't work out very well for him in the end. He's dead. Patient Zero's dead. Even the pup. All charred to dust," I said, releasing my grip on his neck.
"Maybe… or maybe not."
Zolkos reached down slowly and lifted a thin stack of paper-clipped documents from the overturned classified box. He held them between two fingers, almost delicately, before turning them so I could see.
The first page held a photograph.
It was Omega Mills’s father’s file, Aiden Mills.
I briefly remembered having studied the photograph before. An older man with graying hair and round spectacles, unremarkable at a glance.
“What about it?” I asked.
Zolkos picked up another folder and handed it to me.
Dr. Alexander Russell.
I stared at the two photographs, holding them side by side, studying them more carefully this time. The similarities surfaced slowly.
I would not have seen it if I had not been holding them together.
The same bone structure. The same eyes. The same mouth.
They were the same man.
The realization hit hard, knocking the breath from my lungs.
Dr. Russell had not died in the fire. He had become someone else.
“I never believed he was dead,” Zolkos continued, unbothered. “Nor that the pup was.”
“Dr. Russell escaped the fire," I whispered in disbelief, putting the pieces together.
"He must have been the one to smuggle out the Whistleblower Files. Which also means… Omega Mills is the pup,” I said slowly.
“And somehow my sons figured that out. They figured out what we had planned for her and assumed that we would eventually come for her when we discovered this information. That's why they deserted!”
“It seems likely,” Zolkos replied evenly.
I turned sharply to the alpha soldier standing at his side. “Captain. Assemble a team. Multiple units. I want the best we have. We are going after them.”
The captain hesitated. “We, sir?”
“Yes. I will accompany your unit in the field.”
His spine snapped straight. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
Zolkos spoke again, already thinking ahead. “In the meantime, I will continue working on the shifter serum using the limited heat phase slick samples we have. When will Command authorize human trials?”
“Now that we know Omega Mills is Patient Zero’s pup,” I said, “they will approve anything we request. Are you ready for that, Doctor? Human trials?”
“Yes,” Zolkos said without hesitation. “We only obtained a small heat phase slick sample, taken while the omega was in an induced coma. Combined with her blood and saliva samples, I believe we have finally formulated a viable compound.”
“Show me,” I barked. “Now.”
He turned and led the way from the dormitory toward the science lab.
How had I missed it?
The resemblance had been there from the beginning. Of course, I had noticed it. That's the reason I asked Zolkos to take the omega's samples in the first place. Her copper hair, blue eyes, and the same striking contrast that had once defined Isabel. I hadn’t ignored it. I had questioned it.
And Zolkos had given me an answer.
He assured me the similarities were nothing more than the fire shifter gene expressing itself. Just as all shifters shared the same yellow eyes, it was assumed fire shifters often carried visible markers. Red hair. Blue eyes. Physical traits tied to the gene, not to lineage.
I had accepted that explanation without hesitation.
It never occurred to me that the resemblance wasn’t genetic coincidence at all. That it wasn’t the fire shifter gene shaping her appearance, but inheritance. Blood.
Isabel’s blood.
Isabel was dead. All of them were. That was the truth I had lived with for years. There were no survivors.
And Rowan wasn’t even a shifter, not in the way her mother had been.
So I never would have imagined it.
Never would have considered that the omega standing under my authority could be Isabel’s daughter.
Isabel... she was so beautiful.
Not fragile or soft. Beautiful in a wild way that made men want to tame her.
Perhaps that same quality is what my sons found so alluring in her daughter. Perhaps that's why Cade seemed so keen to break her.
When Command selected me to breed her mother, I tried to be patient. Civil. I had made overtures, framed them as romance, as opportunity. Offered her comfort, status, protection. I had wanted her to be willing before I took what I was owed. It was easier that way.
She rejected every one of my overtures, coldly and openly, as if I were beneath her.
But Dr. Russell… what she saw in him was beyond me. He lacked strength, lacked dominance. The man was soft-spoken and unassuming, barely qualifying as an alpha, choosing a medical career over combat. Yet somehow he held her attention.
I had been eager to rut her, eager to produce elite shifter offspring.
But she was venomous toward me.
Saving all her soft affection for the good doctor.
They must have colluded together. Planned the fire to smuggle out the pup.
Isabel's death was certain. I had seen her charred body, belly still round after giving birth so recently. The rest of the bodies were unrecognizable. We had used their dog tags and IDs to identify them, classifying them as deceased.
I never would have put it together.
Yet somehow my sons had.
My traitorous offspring, determined to dismantle everything I had built. Was this how they repaid me? After everything I had given them? All they had, the training, the promotions and the careers, was because of me!
Ungrateful disappointments.
We would see how defiant they felt rotting in deserter cells, or shipped off to the colonies for a few years.
Zolkos led me into the lab and opened one of the refrigeration units. He withdrew a small vial filled with a deep violet liquid and held it up to the light.
“That’s it?” I demanded.
“Yes,” he said calmly. “This is what we have been trying to produce for decades. I only collected enough heat phase slick for one human trial until we retrieve the omega and collect additional samples.”
I rolled up my sleeve and held out my arm.
“Sir?” Zolkos hesitated.
“Give it to me,” I snapped. “Get a syringe. That’s an order.”
“Sir, we do not know what the outcome will be. You know previous alpha trials resulted in fatalities.”
“You said this one would work,” I growled. “Do you believe that or not?”
“Yes,” he said after a beat. “I do.”
“Then I will be the first,” I said. “The first alpha turned shifter. I have waited over twenty-five years for this. I will not wait any longer. Get the syringe!”
Zolkos moved quickly then, laying out sterile instruments on a tray. He drew the liquid into the syringe, inspecting it once more before stepping closer.
“This may be uncomfortable,” he warned.
I bared my teeth. “Do it.”
The needle pierced my skin.
The serum burned as it entered my bloodstream, a sharp heat spreading outward from the injection site. Zolkos withdrew the syringe and stepped back, watching me closely.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Fine,” I snapped.
The word had barely left my mouth when irritation surged through me, sudden and irrational. My skin prickled. The lights overhead seemed too bright.
“I thought this was supposed to turn me into a shifter,” I snarled. “I don’t feel any—”
Pain exploded through me, so white hot and overwhelming, it ripped through my body, stealing my breath. My vision fractured, doubling, then splitting again. The room swam, colors bleeding into harsh light and shadow.
I staggered, clutching at the edge of the table as nausea and fury collided. Every movement sent spikes of agony through my skull.
“Sir,” Zolkos said sharply. “General?”
The lights burned my eyes. My head felt like it was tearing itself apart.
Then everything went black.