Completely inappropriate for the situation.
"Now this is a stupid way to die."
A laugh escapes—high, manic, the sound of someone whose brain has officially given up on processing reality in any normal way.
Hanging upside down.
Bomb strapped to my chest.
Betrayed by the man I trusted.
What a fucking week.
"It is."
The voice comes from below.
Familiar.
Wrong.
I twist—the motion sending me swinging slightly, the ring creaking with the movement—and look down at the figure standing on the concrete floor beneath me.
My blood runs cold.
He looks like Kai.
Exactlylike Kai.
Same dark red hair, though shot through with grey at the temples. Same strong jaw, same aristocratic bone structure, same air of absolute authority that radiates from every pore.
But older.
Aged.
And his eyes...
His eyes are nothing like Kai's.
Where Kai's dark gold holds complexity—pain and conflict and the struggle between who he was raised to be and who he's choosing to become—this man's gaze holds nothing but emptiness.
Cold.
Calculating.
Completely ruthless.
Kai's father.
The man who killed my parents.
The man who's been trying to kill me since I was twelve years old.
"You're all the same," he says, and his voice is smooth—cultured, polished, the voice of someone who's used to being obeyed. "You Omegas. Pretty on the outside, poison on the inside."
He circles beneath me—slow, deliberate, a predator examining prey that's already been caught.
"I'm glad my son wasn't invested in the pussy," he continues, and the crudeness of the word is jarring coming from someone so polished. "That's what happens in Sage's case—emotional attachment clouds judgment. But Kai?" A smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "Kai understands priorities."
