My sons were captivated. All four of them, drawn to her like moths to flame, their Alpha instincts recognizing what I'd seen years ago: this was their Omega. The missing piece that would bind them together into an unbreakable pack.
Elena saw it too. And she was not pleased. She came to me that night, after Ava's presentation, her face pale and her hands shaking. She'd finally understood, I think. Finally realized thatthe comfortable life I'd given her came with a price she'd never agreed to pay.
"You can't have her," she said, her voice trembling but firm, her small hands clenched into fists at her sides. She stood in the doorway of my study, refusing to come any closer, as if proximity to me might contaminate her. "She's my daughter. She's not, she's not some broodmare for your sons."
"She's an Omega," I replied calmly, not bothering to rise from my chair, letting her see how little her defiance concerned me. "And she's been living on my estate, surrounded by my sons, for five years. The bond has already begun forming, Elena. It's too late to stop it."
"Watch me," she said, her chin lifting, a flash of steel in her eyes that I'd never seen before. The beta who'd been so grateful, so compliant, so easy to manage, she was gone. In her place stood a mother who'd finally realized the wolf had been in the henhouse all along.
She tried, I'll give her credit. Tried to take Ava and leave, tried to find somewhere else to go, tried to warn her daughter about the cage that had been built around her so carefully she'd never noticed the bars. Elena was a beta with no resources, no family, no allies. And I was David Harper.
I didn't kill her then. I should have, perhaps, but I was patient. I could afford to wait. Elena's attempts to leave were easily thwarted…where would she go? Who would take her in? She had nothing, was nothing, except what I allowed her to be.
So I let her stay. Let her watch as my sons circled her daughter, as the bond deepened despite her protests, as Ava grew into the Omega I'd always known she would become. Let her feel the helplessness of a mother who couldn't protect her child.
Then Ava ran.
Three years ago, just after her eighteenth birthday, my little investment slipped through my fingers and disappeared into the world. Gone. Vanished. Three years of nothing, no trail, no sightings, no way to find her despite every resource I threw at the search.
I was... displeased.
Elena, of course, was overjoyed. She tried to hide it, but I saw the relief in her eyes, the way her shoulders loosened for the first time in years. Her daughter had escaped. Her daughter was free. Everything Elena had prayed for had finally come true.
I couldn't allow that. The poisoning started slowly, about a month after Ava disappeared. Small doses, carefully administered by staff who knew better than to question my orders. Arsenic in her tea, just enough to make her tired. To give her headaches. To make her skin pale and her appetite fade.
Elena thought she was getting sick. Stress, the doctors told her, the doctors I paid to lie. Grief over her daughter's disappearance. She needed rest, they said. She needed to take care of herself.
She got worse instead.
Over the following months, I watched her deteriorate with clinical detachment. The vomiting started around month three. The hair loss around month five. By month eight, she was bedridden, too weak to do anything but lie in the guest house I'd so generously provided, wondering why her body was betraying her.
Ava had run. Ava had escaped the future I'd planned for her, had rejected my sons, had made a fool of me. Elena had raised her to do it. Had planted the seeds of rebellion, had nurtured that stubborn independence, had failed in the one task I'd given her, keeping my investment safe and compliant.
She had to pay for that. Someone had to pay.
Elena died nine months after Ava ran. The official cause was listed as cancer, aggressive, untreatable, a tragedy. I attended the small funeral, expressed my condolences to the few staff members who'd grown fond of her, and had her ashes scattered in the garden where she used to watch Ava play.
My sons never knew. They thought it was simply bad luck, a cruel twist of fate that had taken the woman who'd been like an aunt to them for so many years. They grieved, in their way, and then they moved on. I told them to keep searching for Ava. Told them their Omega was out there somewhere, suffering without them, dying slowly without the bond she needed to survive. I didn't tell them that I'd already extracted my price for her rebellion from her mother's failing body.
Some things a father keeps to himself.
I knew, of course, that my sons were using Harper family resources to track her. The private investigators, the surveillance networks, the digital footprint analysis — they thought they were being clever, hiding their obsession from me, but nothing happened with Harper money that I didn't know about. I allowed it. Encouraged it, even, in my subtle way. Their desperation to find her only strengthened their bond to each other, united them in common purpose. And when they finally caught her — and they would catch her, I had no doubt — they would be ready.
In the meantime, I had my own ways of finding people.
It took my team three months to track down Ava's phone number. She'd been careful, I'll give her that — burner phones, cash transactions, no fixed address. But everyone slips eventually. A single credit card charge at a pharmacy in Ohio, and we had her.
I called her myself the day Elena died. Sat in this very study, whiskey in hand, and dialed the number my people had provided.
She answered on the fourth ring, her voice wary and tight. "Hello?"
"Avalon," I said, keeping my tone gentle, sorrowful, the voice of a grieving family friend delivering terrible news. "It's David Harper. I'm so sorry to call you like this, but I thought you should know — your mother passed away this morning."
Silence on the other end. I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow, and could almost see the color draining from her face.
"What?" she finally managed, her voice barely a whisper.
"Cancer," I said, letting the lie roll smoothly off my tongue. "It was aggressive. By the time the doctors caught it, there was nothing they could do. She went peacefully, in her sleep. She wasn't in pain at the end."
