More silence. Then, quietly: "You're lying."
"I wish I were." I let a note of genuine sadness creep into my voice — I'd always been good at that, manufacturing emotion on demand. "The funeral is Saturday, if you'd like to come. Pay your respects. I know she would have wanted you there."
"I'm not coming anywhere near you," Ava said, and I heard the steel in her voice, the same steel her mother had shown me the night she'd tried to take her daughter and run. "Don't call me again."
The line went dead.
She didn't come to the funeral. I hadn't expected her to, she was too smart for that, knew it would be a trap. I'd planted the seed of doubt, the knowledge that her mother was gone. Let her carry that grief alone, out there in the world, with no one to comfort her.
She changed her number within the hour. My team confirmed it the next day, the old number was disconnected, and she'd gone even deeper underground. It didn’t take us long tofind her new number and address. My boys already making sure her new apartment had cameras and was owned by us.
The fire had burned down to coals again. I didn't bother to feed it this time, just sat in the gathering darkness, thinking about the past. About choices made and prices paid.
Ava was mine. Had been mine since the moment her desperate mother placed her in my hands. And now she was my sons' bound to them by biology and trauma and a decade of careful manipulation.
She'd run, yes. That was unfortunate, a temporary setback, a last gasp of rebellion before acceptance set in. But she'd come back. They always came back, in the end. The bond wouldn't let them do anything else. Elena had learned that lesson the hard way. Had learned that you didn't raise a daughter to defy David Harper and walk away unscathed. Nine months of suffering for her failure, nine months of watching her body wither and fail, never knowing that the tea her caretakers brought her so faithfully was the very thing killing her.
I finished my whiskey and set the glass aside, watching the last embers fade to ash. Ava would be fine. She'd recover from the bond sickness, settle into her new life, give my sons the heirs they needed to continue the Harper legacy. She'd be happy, even, happiness was easy enough to manufacture when you controlled all the variables.
If she ever tried to run again... well. I'd dealt with obstacles before. Slowly, if necessary. Patiently. I had learned long ago that the most effective punishments were the ones no one ever suspected.
I picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Mercer's number. Best to have him on standby, just in case. Forty-eight hours, I'd told Mason. If the bond sickness hadn't resolved by then, they'd need medical intervention.
The doctor answered on the third ring. "Mr. Harper," he said, his voice smooth and professional even at this hour, the voice of a man who understood that my calls took priority over sleep. "How can I help you?"
"I may have a patient for you soon," I said, my voice pleasant, professional, betraying nothing of the thoughts that had occupied my evening. "An Omega with severe bond sickness. I trust you can be discreet?"
"Always, sir," he said, and I could hear the understanding in his tone. Mercer had worked for me for fifteen years. He knew better than to ask questions.
"Good," I said, allowing myself a small smile in the darkness. "One of my boys will be in touch."
The call ended. I set down the phone and stared into the dying fire, thinking about investments, and returns, and the price of keeping what was mine. Elena had paid that price. Her daughter never would, because Ava would never be foolish enough to run again.
I was certain of it.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
MASON
She was dying.
Not quickly, not dramatically, but slowly, cell by cell, her body consuming itself in its desperate search for something we couldn't give her. Eighteen hours since we'd found her in the snow. Eighteen hours of skin contact, of scent saturation, of rotating shifts so she was never without at least two of us pressed against her.
It wasn't working.
I stood in the doorway of the nest room, watching my brothers try to save her. Caleb had her cradled against his chest, his face buried in her hair, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding himself together. Leo sat on her other side, her hand clasped in both of his, his sharp features drawn tight with fear he couldn't quite hide. Ethan was checking her vitals again, the way he'd been doing every fifteen minutes since we'd brought her home, his gray eyes fixed on the tablet in his hands like the numbers might change if he stared hard enough.
They hadn't changed. Not enough. Her heart was still skipping. Her temperature kept fluctuating. And she hadn't opened her eyes in over six hours.
"Mason," Ethan said, his voice quiet, controlled, but I heard the crack beneath it, the fracture lines of exhaustion and terror that he was barely holding together. He looked up from his tablet, his gray eyes red-rimmed behind his glasses, his face pale and drawn in the dim light of the nest room. "Her cortisol levels are still spiking. The bond sickness isn't responding to proximity alone."
I knew. I'd known since hour twelve, when her breathing had gone shallow and her skin had taken on that waxy pallor that made my Alpha howl with desperate fury. I'd known, and I'd been putting off the conversation we needed to have because I wasn't sure I could stomach it.
"We need to talk," I said, my voice rougher than I intended, scraping past the tightness in my throat like gravel over stone. I gripped the doorframe hard enough to feel the wood creak beneath my fingers, anchoring myself against the tide of fear threatening to pull me under. "All of us. Now."
"I'm not leaving her," Caleb said, his head coming up from where he'd buried it in her hair, his pale eyes red-rimmed and exhausted, dark circles carved beneath them like bruises. His arms tightened around Ava's limp form, pulling her closer against his chest as if he could physically hold her to this world through sheer force of will.
"You don't have to. Just... listen." I moved into the room, my footsteps heavy on the wooden floor, each step feeling like I was walking toward my own execution. I settled on the edge of the nest, close enough to touch her if I needed to, close enough to see the faint blue tinge around her lips that made my stomach clench with terror. Her scent was wrong, sour with sickness, sharp with distress, nothing like the warm honey andwildflowers I'd grown addicted to over the past months. My Alpha clawed at the inside of my chest, demanding I fix it, demanding I do something, anything.
