"The doctors," Ethan repeated, and there was cold fury in his voice. "You mean the parade of doctors you went through because none of them would keep prescribing?" He flipped to another page, a list of names, dates, prescription records. "I tracked it all, Ava. Fourteen different doctors in six years. Some wouldn't prescribe at all because they didn't believe Omegas should suppress their nature. Others would only give you a year before cutting you off. So you kept switching. Kept finding whoever would write the prescription."
My stomach turned. I remembered those desperate searches. The clinics that turned me away. The doctors who lectured me about my "biological purpose." The ones who agreed to help butonly for a limited time, forcing me to start the hunt all over again.
"I took whatever I could get," I admitted, my voice small.
"Whatever you could get," he echoed flatly. "Different brands, different dosages, different formulations. No consistency, no monitoring, no one tracking how the medications interacted or what they were doing to your body long-term." He flipped to another page — this one showing organ function over time. "The lowest-quality suppressants on the market, half of them. Black market pills when legitimate doctors wouldn't cooperate. You were poisoning yourself with whatever random chemicals you could get your hands on."
My stomach dropped even further.
"Your liver function was declining," Ethan continued, his voice clinical but his eyes dark with old fear. "Your kidneys were showing early signs of stress. Your bone density was decreasing at an alarming rate. Six years of inconsistent, unmonitored suppressant use. If you'd continued on that path for another twelve to eighteen months..." He trailed off, jaw tightening.
"I would have died," I finished, the words hollow in my mouth.
"Organ failure," he confirmed, his green eyes holding mine with painful intensity. "Slow. Painful. Completely preventable, if you'd had proper Omega care. If you'd had Alphas who could provide what your body needed." He paused, his hand reaching out to rest on my knee — light, present, asking permission rather than demanding. "If you'd had us."
I didn't pull away from his touch. "You could have told me. Before. You could have shown me this data and?—"
"Would you have believed us?" Ethan interrupted gently, his thumb tracing a small circle on my knee. "Would you have come willingly if four Alphas you were running from showed upand said 'your suppressants are killing you, come live with us instead'?"
I thought about it. Really thought about it. Six years of fighting my own biology, three of those years spent running and hiding, would I have listened?
"No," I admitted, the word bitter on my tongue, hating how true it was. "I would have thought it was a trick. A manipulation."
"Exactly." Ethan closed the binder and set it aside, leaning forward in his chair until his face was level with mine, his green eyes intent on my face. "So we did the only thing we could. We watched. We waited. We tracked your health from a distance and planned for the day we'd have to intervene."
"Intervene," I repeated flatly, my voice hardening. "You mean kidnap me."
"I mean save you." His voice didn't waver, his gaze steady and unapologetic. "And yes — keep you. Because you're ours, Ava. You've been ours since the day you presented, and watching you slowly kill yourself was the hardest thing I've ever done." I didn't know what to say to that. The evidence was right there in front of me — years of meticulous research, all pointing to the same conclusion. I had been dying. Slowly, invisibly, but dying nonetheless. And they had known. They had watched and waited and planned, and then they had taken me.
"Why?" I asked finally, my voice small. "Why go through all of this? The research, the waiting, the... everything. Why not just find another Omega? One who wanted to be claimed?"
Ethan was quiet for a long moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose in a gesture that made him look suddenly younger, more human.
"Do you know anything about my mother?" he asked, and the question was so unexpected that I blinked.
"No. I don't think anyone ever mentioned her."
"They wouldn't have." A bitter smile crossed his face, there and gone. "She's not exactly a point of pride for the Harper family." He set his glasses on the desk and met my eyes directly. Without the lenses between us, his gaze was startlingly intense, green as sea glass, deep as the ocean.
"Her name was Madeline," Ethan said, his voice carefully controlled. "She was a Beta. Met my father at a charity event when he was thirty-two. She was twenty-five, beautiful, ambitious. They were together for almost two years."
"But they never married," I said, remembering what little I knew about David Harper's complicated romantic history.
"No. And he never marked her." Ethan's jaw tightened, a muscle ticking beneath his skin. "Betas can't bond the way Omegas can, but marking still means something. Commitment. Possession. Permanence. My father refused, and she resented him for it."
"What happened?" I asked, leaning forward slightly in my chair.
"She cheated on him." The words were flat, clinical, but I could hear the old wound beneath them. His jaw worked for a moment before he continued. "Multiple times, with multiple men. When he found out, she was already pregnant with me. He demanded a paternity test, half-convinced I wasn't even his."
My chest ached for the boy he must have been, growing up with that shadow over him. "But you were," I said softly, searching his face for the pain I knew must be there.
"I was." A humorless laugh escaped him, sharp and bitter. "One hundred percent Harper, for better or worse. My father took me in when I was three, after Madeline decided motherhood was interfering with her social life. I've seen her maybe a dozen times since then. She sends a card on my birthday sometimes. When she remembers."
"Ethan..." I reached out and touched his knee, mirroring the gesture he'd made earlier, wanting to offer some comfort for the pain I could see beneath his controlled surface. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." He covered my hand with his, his fingers warm and steady, his thumb brushing across my knuckles. "I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you so you understand."
"Understand what?" I asked, my brow furrowing with confusion.
