Lucinda’s face contorted with rage at the mention of her deceased mate. The careful Botox and surgical improvements couldn’t hide the ugly twist of her mouth, the way her eyes went flat and dangerous like a snake’s before it struck.
“You dare speak of Dominic? You?” Her voice rose with each word. “You, who murdered one son and corrupted the other with your heat?”
When she spoke, her voice dripped poison sweet enough to kill. “If you let this murderous slut in our home, I’ll make sure every pack in the territory knows their Lycan King thinks with his knot instead of his brain. They’ll know you’re weak, controlled by base urges, unfit to lead.”
The threat hung in the air like a guillotine blade. Damon’s jaw worked silently, a muscle ticking with suppressed words. I watched him wage war with himself, defend the omega carrying his child or appease the mother who’d help him secure power. The choice he made, when it came, felt inevitable.
His hand gripped my arm, not gently, steering me toward the stairs without a word of defense. Lucinda’s triumphant smile followed us like a curse, her victory complete in his silence.
“Third floor, east wing,” he said tightly as we climbed.
Not the family quarters then. The guest wing, where visitors were kept separate from real family, where inconvenient persons could be contained without contaminating the bloodline’s sacred spaces.
Nathan stood outside my designated room, and recognition hit like a slap. He’d been one of the guards who’d dragged me to trial, who’d watched as Damon carved away my mark. His expression stayed professionally neutral, but I read pity in his dark eyes. Pity was almost worse than hostility.
Damon opened the door to reveal a space that mocked my Millbrook apartment with its luxury. A sitting area with silk-upholstered furniture. A bathroom with marble fixtures and heated floors. French doors leading to a balcony overlooking the compound’s immaculate gardens. By any standard, it was accommodation fit for visiting royalty.
It was also clearly a containment unit.
The windows opened only six inches, enough for air, not enough for escape. The balcony doors had stops installed, preventing them from opening fully. The locks were electronic, the kind that worked from outside with override codes. Even the bathroom window was reinforced glass, pretty but unbreakable.
“Nathan will be outside if you need anything,” Damon said, already backing toward the door like he couldn’t leave fast enough.
“What I need is freedom. Can he provide that?”
“You know why that’s impossible now.” He paused at the threshold, not quite meeting my eyes. “For your own safety.”
“My safety,” I repeated, tasting the lie. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
He left without answering, the electronic lock engaging with a soft click that might as well have been a gunshot. Through the door, I heard him speaking to Nathan in low tones. Instructions for my containment, no doubt. Meal schedules. Bathroom breaks. All the logistics of keeping a pregnant omega secure without making it look too much like imprisonment.
I stood in the center of my luxurious cell, taking inventory. The bed was king-sized with sheets that probably cost more than I’d made in a month at Wayne’s. The closet held maternity clothes in my size. Someone had been shopping while I was being retrieved. The bathroom was stocked with prenatal vitamins, the expensive kind I couldn’t afford.
Through the windows, I could see guards patrolling the grounds. The same paths, the same patterns I remembered from my brief time as Damon’s mate. Nothing had changed except my status. Then, the guards had been for protection. Now they were wardens.
The twins moved restlessly, responding to my emotional turmoil with their own protests. I sank onto the bed, hand pressed tomy belly, trying to soothe them. They didn’t ask to be conceived in a political disaster. They didn’t ask to be the living evidence of their father’s poor judgment and their mother’s inconvenient survival.
“We’re home,” I whispered to them, the word bitter on my tongue. “Such as it is.”
I was back where it all started, but everything had changed. The marks on my throat had scarred over. The bond in my chest was severed. The twins in my belly were the only proof that once, briefly, I’d been more than an unwanted guest in this house of wolves.
Now I was just another problem to be managed, another secret to be contained, another inconvenient truth locked away until a solution could be found.
But as I lay on silk sheets in my beautiful prison, I made a promise to myself and my children: This time, I wouldn’t go quietly. This time, I’d make them all pay for underestimating a cornered omega with nothing left to lose.
28
— • —
Rhea
An hour after Damon’s departure, a soft knock interrupted my spiral of panic. I’d been pacing the confines of my luxurious prison, mapping exits that wouldn’t open, calculating odds that didn’t favor me. The sound made me freeze mid-step, wondering what fresh hell awaited.
The maid who entered was an omega too, mid-twenties, with the kind of careful movements that spoke of years navigating alpha households. Her uniform was impeccable, her honey-brown hair pulled back in a neat bun that exposed the unmarked column of her throat. Pretty, in the understated way that wouldn’t threaten the lady of the house but might catch the master’s eye.
“I’m Sophia,” she said, as she set down a bunch of clean linens on the dressing table. “Alpha Damon requests your presence at dinner. I’ve brought a few things you could try on.”
The dress she produced from a garment bag was beautiful, deep green silk that caught the light like liquid emerald. The empire waist would accommodate my bump while the flowing fabric would maintain elegance. Designer, definitely, with the kind of careful construction that whispered money in every stitch.
