I knew everything about her. Every nightmare that woke her screaming at one in the morning. Every time she cried in the shower, thinking no one could hear. Every nest she built and destroyed, ashamed of instincts she couldn't suppress no matter how many pills she swallowed.
Some people might call it obsession. They wouldn't be wrong. It was more than that. It was devotion. It was dedication. It was the absolute, unwavering certainty that she belonged to us, and that someday, someday soon, she would understand that too.
My phone buzzed. Mason.
How is she?
I glanced at the monitors. Ava had given up on the door and retreated to the nest, curling into the blankets with her back to the camera. Her shoulders were shaking. Crying again. The sight made something twist in my chest, not guilt, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Something that wished there had been another way.
There hadn't been. I'd run the scenarios a hundred times. A thousand. Every path that didn't involve taking her by force ended the same way: with Ava alone, miserable, slowly destroying herself with suppressants and isolation and the stubborn refusal to accept what she was.
This way was better. Harder, yes. Crueler, maybe. But better.
Angry, I typed back.Scared. Fighting it hard.
His response came immediately.Expected. Don't push too hard today. Let her settle.
I smiled slightly at that. Mason and his endless patience. His unshakeable belief that if we just gave her enough time, enough space, enough gentle handling, she'd come around on her own. He wasn't wrong, exactly. But he wasn't entirely right either.
Ava was stubborn. More stubborn than any Omega I'd ever studied, and I'd studied plenty in my research phase. Most Omegas, when confronted with compatible Alphas and the biological imperative of heat, surrendered within hours. Days at most. Their bodies overrode their minds, their instincts drowned out their resistance, and they gave in to what nature demanded.
Ava had been fighting her nature for six years. She'd suppressed her heats, denied her instincts, and run three thousand miles to escape the pull of a pack bond she'd never even acknowledged. She wasn't going to break just because we were nice to her. She was going to break because we were going to take her apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the Omega underneath. And then we were going to put her back together, and she was going to be ours.
The thought sent a pulse of heat through my blood that had nothing to do with clinical detachment. I turned back to my files, pulling up the timeline I'd constructed. Three years of work, all leading to this moment.
Month One.
We'd found her within two weeks. It wasn't hard, she'd been sloppy in her panic, using her real social security number to rent an apartment, applying for jobs under a name that was only slightly different from her own. Amateur mistakes. The kind a frightened girl made when she was running on adrenaline and terror instead of logic.
I'd wanted to bring her back immediately. So had Caleb, he'd nearly put his fist through a wall when we found out she was gone, and it had taken both Mason and Leo to keep him from getting in his car and driving to her that night.
But Mason had said wait. And Mason was Prime, so we waited.
"Let her see what life is like without us," he'd said, his voice calm even though I could see the strain around his eyes, the tension in his jaw. "Let her try to build something on her own. When she realizes she can't, when she's lonely and scared and desperate for connection, she'll be ready to come home."
I'd disagreed at the time, thought he was being too soft, too patient, too willing to let her suffer when we could end it with one quick strike. Now, three years later, I understood what he'd been doing. He'd been letting her break herself. Letting her exhaust every option, every path, every possibility that didn't lead back to us. So that when we finally came for her, she'd have nothing left to fight with.
It was brilliant, really. Cruel in a way Mason would never admit to, but brilliant.
Month Three.
I'd set up the infrastructure. The shell company that owned her apartment building. The scholarship fund that paid for her nursing program. The pharmacy that filled her prescriptions, and would later become our primary tool for her acquisition. She thought she'd found those things on her own. Thought luck had finally smiled on her, giving her a cheap apartment in a safe neighborhood, a scholarship that covered her tuition, and a job at a hospital that was always hiring.
She had no idea that every step she took toward "independence" was a step further into a cage I was building around her.
Month Six.
Leo started handling the men.
It was necessary. Ava was beautiful, even suppressed, even scent-blocked, even doing everything she could to be invisible, she drew attention. Alphas noticed her. Betas too. Even other Omegas seemed to gravitate toward her, sensing something kindred beneath the chemical mask.
We couldn't have that. The Alpha who asked her out for coffee? Leo had a conversation with him. Very friendly. Very persuasive. The man moved to another city within the week.
The Beta coworker who kept finding excuses to eat lunch with her? His apartment caught fire three days after he asked for her number. Electrical fault, the fire department said. Very unfortunate. He transferred to a different hospital.
The Omega in her nursing program who wanted to be study partners? We let that one go. She wasn't a threat. Ava needed something, someone, to keep her from spiraling into complete isolation.
We wanted her lonely. We didn't want her dead.
