Down the stark white corridor, in a furnished meeting room, Silas Thorne faced Aris Rose. Aris wasn't just powerful; he was a force of nature barely contained. Silver hair, handsome and elegant features, one might think he was an alpha. He was an Omega; his strong presence on the battlefield was legendary. It felt like there was a physical weight pressing against the sterile air. His eyes, the same metallic-gray as Cait's newly acknowledged ones, burned with fury.
Silas sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. Aris Rose was such a pain in the ass to negotiate with. He poured himself a cup of coffee and placed the pot down on the table. At least it was decent. He watched as Aris emphatically moved his hands. "You are just pissed off that it was me. If it were a prince or diplomat, it would have been fine." Silas said.
"Y-y-you housed her rut, left bruises, on her," Aris growled, the words vibrating with suppressed violence. "You 'knotted' with her. My daughter. An unmated omega heir." Aris shook, first he took Kieran to another Traverse system, and they did not come back for years. The battle between the two families ended up with him not contacting him for years as well.
'What if Silas convinced her to leave or took her?' The insecure thought hit him like a truck.
"Your daughter, she knotted me. She bruised me. Nearly cracked my head open." Silas corrected him. Silas stood with deceptive calm, his own aura a contained vortex.
Aris sighed; it was an annoying sigh. One that grated upon his nerves. Silas used to look up to this guy when he was growing up. On the surface, he provided a nice family home, but he was seen as an unlucky victim of circumstance. Aris had his share of tragedies, but he did not need to take them out on his children and the world.
"She was dying, Aris. The suppressants and the rut collapse were killing her. The protocol demanded my assistance, which I gave. I provided stabilization." He met the older alpha's glare unflinchingly.
"The biological responses were… unforeseen. By both of us. She dominated 'me'. Your daughter does not bear my mark. I have been claimed by her; it is not the other way around." Silas said as he pulled up his sleeve.
Aris's lip curled. "Convenient. Now you claim First Mate status? By right of her 'imprinting' you?" He spat the word. Imprinting is the irreversible biological bond formed during a male omega's first successful mating cycle.
It tied them instinctively to the alpha involved. In their world, it granted the alpha immense legal and social standing over the omega. However, the roles were swapped. She had marked him. She had called the biological dibbs.
"You think a post board room rutting grants you rights to the Rose legacy?" Aris spat.
"Legacy? Do you actually think I care about Alba when I have my own vast territory and wealth that transcends all Traverses? That mate bond, that agreement, grants me a responsibility to her and she to me. It states so in the Accords." Silas countered, his voice dangerously low. How dare he?
"She imprinted on me 'instinctively'. During an act of survival. It's not a claim I sought, Aris, but it's one I cannot ignore. Her biology recognizes me as its primary protector. Especially," Silas added, the steel entering his tone, "considering the man who raised her for twenty years slowly poisoned her to conceal her very existence from you and murdered an entire Beta family."
Aris flinched, a crack in the granite fury. The image of Yvette, running after stabbing him, running and even sacrificing her health to save their child from 'him', hung unspoken between them. His voice, when it came, was rough, stripped bare. "Caleb West or Benjamin Agneau will answer for that. Slowly." Then the fury resurged, directed at Silas. "But 'you'… You took advantage."
"I prevented her imminent death; the rut with the poison was too much for her body to bear. She collapsed in an elevator in front of me. I did my duty so a drunk Alpha would not recklessly hurt her." Silas stated passionately.
"The Authority's genetic confirmation is irrefutable. Your 'Silver Rose' lives. I do not care about the 'Queen' or 'Rose' aspect. She is an omega in severe biological distress, bonded to me. The first mate happened as it was intended. Not in some political offering, but her body 'knighting' me as her champion." Silas continued.
Aris boiled with rage, "She was not in her right mind to do so."
"You know it is not a matter of the mind. It is all biological. You are just pissed off that it is me." Silas said bluntly. "Well, Lord Rose. It is protected by the Accords until she states otherwise. As her protector, I am here on a duty of care. Your feud with a dead woman doesn't supersede her immediate safety or that sacred authority." Silas gently gripped the coffee mug, mindful of his emotions.
Aris's knuckles whitened on the edge of the steel observation table. The sound was annoying. The sterile lights caught the faint tremor in his hand. "Duty of care?" Aris scoffed, the sound raw.
Aris continued, "There is no feud. I loved her mother, Silas. I loved her even when she drove that blade between my ribs. I loved her when she ran, taking my child into the gutter." His voice dropped, stripped of its earlier fury, leaving only a hollow ache.
"I thought I could show Yvette that we weren't monsters. That and being Beta-Dominant wasn't a curse. Not like Lord Estridsen, who abandoned her at birth. But she saw only him as a monster, his power… the shadow of Lord Estridsen on me, on all Omegans." Aris said, rubbing his forehead.
He turned fully to Silas, the ice in his eyes thawing into something far more dangerous: grief. "Finding out what that Beta did to her? To 'my' Cait? Poisoning her, hiding her, letting her believe she was nothing…" Aris swallowed hard, the aristocratic composure cracking.
"You have to understand, Thorne. This rage? It's not just posturing. It's a father's terror. That she was hurt. That she was 'alone'. That I wasn't there." He leaned in, the scent of Jasmine filling the air, spicy pressing against Silas's controlled pheromones. Raising high.
Aris slapped the table and spat, "Now you stand there, smelling of her, marked by her imprint, telling me it was 'duty'? Speak of my relationships, tell me how I would offer up my daughter. That was only a movie." Aris paused. "All I see is another powerful alpha who took what wasn't freely offered during her weakest moment."
"She consented. In the right mind. Kieran was there." Silas didn't retreat. He met the raw accusation head-on, his voice dropping to a low, resonant growl. "How dare you accuse me! She chose Aris. Even delirious and poisoned, she fought for control and retained it until she got the shot. She did the work of seven people that night flawlessly and signed the consent forms. It was done above board."
Silas seethed; he was reluctant to be with an Omega female anyway. It was not like his father had not tried to push women onto them. Cait was not the only Omega. She was a strong one, but before the shower and with the suppressants, she was like any other ordinary or weak Omega female.
"If anything, she commanded me. She 'took' me, I consented, but she was rough and forward. With me. Your daughter isn't a victim; she's a force to be reckoned with. And she imprinted 'me'. That bond isn't ownership – it's a biological tether she forged in survival." Silas angrily spat at the Lord of Alba, not caring about his status as a nobleman.
"I understand that Kieran asked you to help her as a favor as your Omega. But she was not thinking-" Aris tried to backtrack. The ABO, Kieran, and Silas made sure everything was done consensually. It was preferable to the alternative of some unknown alcoholic alpha, who might even have a family or even a sexually transmitted disease. The young man was celibate before his daughter, and exchanged pheromones with his own celibate son.
"My duty now is to honor that sacred biological duty, to protect her from threats – including well-meaning fathers who might smother her with the weight of their own trauma and pain. She has nobody to trust, for now, because of this mate mark she instinctively knighted me with. Thorne's do not take responsibility and the sacred contract lightly."
A choked sound escaped Aris, part fury, part anguish. He looked back at the screen. Cait lay still, her silver-blond hair fanned across the pillow, the monitors casting soft glows on her pale skin. She was devoid of color. The sight seemed to physically wound him.
"I would never hurt her." Aris hissed. "Her mother ran from me, Silas. Ran straight into the arms of a man who raised my daughter to believe she was a burden." His knuckles were bone-white on the steel ledge. "I just want the chance to treasure my daughter, to love her. Please. Don't take her away from me. Not again."
Before Silas could respond, the door hissed open, slicing through the tension that had saturated the room. Kieran stood in the threshold, his smoke-gray hair tousled, as if the weight of the situation had ruffled him. His green eyes, bright and piercing, flicked between the two alphas, assessing their moods with keen insight.
'There was more at stake here than just Cait's health,' Kieran thought, feeling the heaviness between them.
"Apologies," he murmured, his voice smooth yet urgent. "Dr. Jameson needs consent for the next round of toxin purging. Cait's vitals are stable, but the residual poison and suppressant in her system are… problematic." He paused, aware of the tension tightening around them, his fox-like features betraying none of the unease simmering in his chest.
"Oh? Tell him to go ahead." Silas said, his tone clipped as he reached for the pad, fingers trembling slightly. He thumbed all the consent forms.
'I need to do this for her,' Silas thought, heart racing as he thumbed the sensor.
Kieran hesitated, the weight of familiar shadows creeping into his eyes. "The thing is, she needs Rhys Mountbatten. This cannot be fixed by pharmacology or a resonance chamber."
The unspoken implication hung heavily: 'She and Rhys were going to meet. She needed another Alpha beside her. So soon. He could not buy this. This was a 'royal' asset that rarely left Alba. One that he had left on a bad note many years ago.
Silas flinched as if he was going to be slapped, the truth of it cutting into him, 'I'll never be enough alone. I will always have to be one of many.' He had inherited strength, health, and intelligence, but healing powers were not among his gifts, and the realization stung.
Aris's head snapped toward Kieran, a flicker of vulnerability quickly masked beneath a layer of aristocratic control. "Rhys Mountbatten?" His voice dropped.
'Of course, he's chosen the best. Isn't that always the way?' Aris thought. 'Michael will be hurt. He has been trying to romance the 'doctor' for over a decade.'
"His pheromones are potent, refined, and 'regal," Aris said as he gave a pointed look at Silas, as if to underscore the superiority of Rhys's lineage.
'The Thornes might be wealthy, but they are anything but royal. They were lucky, extraordinarily lucky.' Aris thought, the competitive spirit igniting within him.
Silas clenched his jaw, every muscle in his body tense with frustration. 'I won't let this undermine my connection with Cait,' he thought.
"Regal? Where I come from, we elect our leaders based on intellect and skills. The best man wins. Aris, I'll be visiting her, we will talk about her treatment with Doctor Mountbatten when she gets home," Silas asserted with a confident grin, his voice unwavering. "I will be here, daily." He felt a flicker of hope, the kind that came with determination.
Kieran's lips twitched in a ghost of a smile, perhaps amused by the friction crackling between them. Silas was not intimidated by his father's power; he was wealthier and had more power. His family had become a powerhouse, growing crops and understanding what was edible to them. They held more surface territory and ran transit. They had connections to the Canadians, but not as much as they did with the Americans and, by proxy, the Thorne family.
"Well, that's convenient. Working remotely from the Rose estate does have its perks. At least your… affection means I get to see my brothers more often." Kieran's gaze slid pointedly towards Aris, the unspoken victory evident.
'They think they can control everything,' Kieran mused, amused by their pretense of dominance. "Though I suspect Michael might appreciate fewer surprise guests."
"I'd go regardless," Silas declared, the conviction in his voice undeniable. Silas stood firm, unwilling to bend. 'Cait needs me, and I'll fight for her.'
"Negotiable," Aris interjected sharply, wings rustling subtly against his tailored suit, an imperious gesture.
'He thinks he can dictate terms, but I won't back down.' Aris thought.
Silas laughed and turned towards Kieran. He rolled his eyes. "Your old man still thinks he can control his children and me."
"Coincidentally," Aris said, straightening up, "Rhys Mountbatten is scheduled to visit Michael next week. A pheromone exchange. My children possess the finest pheromones on the continent. Maybe the world?"
The subtext was the same as it was when he and Kieran left Alba; he did not fit into their world because he was not a royal and not from their line of the Traverse. It was a stupid assumption. Silas sighed. 'Oh, I am just muscle, huh? Aris thinks that I am just a meat head.' Silas seethed inwardly. He probably still treats Michael with kid gloves. The little pompous prince.
"Stop, please, Dad?" Kieran sighed, a soft, exasperated sound that seemed to draw in the weight of the room. He stepped fully into the space, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.
"Have either of you considered asking 'Cait' what she wants? Or who she wishes to see?" He shot a pointed look between them, his green eyes sharp and unyielding. 'After all, this isn't about us; it's about her.'
"She's awake. She's lucid. Wants to see you both. And neither of you has spoken to her directly about what she wants." Kieran said, protectively.
The unspoken truth echoed in the silence: their intense rivalry and protective instincts had overshadowed the one question that mattered most.
Aris froze. The carefully constructed armor of the Admiral, the patriarch, the strategist, shattered. His silver-gray eyes widened, disbelief warring with a sudden, overwhelming surge of emotion.
"She… she asked for me?" Aris's words were quiet, dreamy, raw, and vulnerable. He turned to Kieran, his silver-gray eyes desperate. "What is she 'like'?" he rasped. "Beyond the pain… beyond the poison… who is my daughter?"
Kieran sighed softly, adjusting his cuff with precise, economical movement. "Father, I spoke with her for perhaps thirty minutes total. She's… guarded. Pragmatic. Observant. Cautious and very hurt? Why don't you see her?"
Kieran met Aris's searching gaze squarely. "She hides her grief well. But the betrayal? It's a wound she carries deep, so kind of like you?" Kieran finished, frowning.
Aris groaned, dropping his head back against the wall with a soft thud. "How do I fix this, Kieran? Twenty years… the movie, the hatred they taught her of her own kind?" His voice cracked. "How do I undo that?"
Silas moved forward, his earlier tension softening into something approaching empathy. It surprised him. He placed a hand briefly on Aris's shoulder. "You can't 'fix' it, you know that," he said, his voice low but firm. "Not like a broken microconverter. You correct the misunderstandings. You treasure what you have 'now'. You take it slow. Earned trust isn't built overnight."
Aris lifted his head, the despair momentarily shifting to weary contemplation. He straightened, pulling a small, polished wooden box from his inner jacket pocket. It was unadorned, elegant.
Silas watched him palm the box, then added quietly, "From what I have gathered, she loves plants. Flowers especially. Tea – chamomile, no sweetener. She's naturally assertive, but quiet about it. Intelligent. Keeps her wits under pressure. Very stubborn." A faint, genuine warmth touched Silas's icy blue eyes. "She seems… like a rose. Your blood."
Kieran's gaze flicked to Silas, a rare warmth and deep appreciation softening his sharp grey eyes. As Silas's friend, his omega assistant, he cared. That fierce loyalty was why leaving the Rose estate hadn't been a hardship, despite his father's fury. He couldn't shake the feeling that some of Aris's hostility towards Silas stemmed from the way Kieran had chosen his path – and how Silas had fiercely defended his right to walk it.
The unspoken understanding hung between the three men: Cait was the fragile center, and navigating her world required patience none of them were accustomed to. Aris stared down at the small box in his hand, his thumb tracing the smooth wood. In it sat the heir's ring. Once his mother's.
The Rose legacy wasn't just power and pheromones; it was responsibility. And his daughter, lying fragile in the room behind him, was the most precious, complicated responsibility of all. He took a slow, deliberate breath, squaring his shoulders.
'Slow. Earned. Treasure.' The former Admiral in him was strategizing again, but this time, the battlefield was his daughter's shattered trust. He glanced towards Cait's room, then back at Silas, a flicker of reluctant acceptance replacing the raw anguish.
"Slowly." Aris echoed, the word heavy with newfound resolve. He slipped the box back into his pocket, his gaze hardening with purpose. The game had changed.
Silas watched the exchange, his own tension momentarily forgotten. He met Kieran's gaze, a flicker of understanding passing between them. "I'm not leaving anytime soon," Silas stated firmly, his voice low but resolute. He turned his attention back to Aris.
"Take your time. See your daughter." There was no challenge in Silas's tone now, only a quiet acknowledgment of the fragile moment unfolding. "She needs her father."
Kieran nodded, a subtle warmth softening his sharp features. "She's waiting," he murmured, gesturing toward the door leading to the hallway. Honestly, he ripped it off like a bandage on a wound. He would have hugged her if she were not in such a bad condition.
Aris took a shuddering breath, squaring his shoulders as if preparing for battle, yet his steps were hesitant, almost reverent, as he moved toward the threshold. The tension in his face eased, his silver eyes becoming gentler. He paused, hand hovering over the door panel, his gaze fixed on the smooth metal surface. For a heartbeat, the hardness in his facade vanished, replaced by a man trembling on the edge of a long-denied dream.
Inside the sterile room, Cait lay propped against pillows, her mercury-silver eyes wide and watchful. The harsh hospital lights softened the stark angles of her face, highlighting the exhaustion etched beneath her composed stillness. She looked like a ghost and her. Yvette.
Her gaze tracked Aris as he entered, wary but unflinching. The air crackled with unspoken history – twenty years of absence, betrayal, and poisoned lies hanging thick on her. She didn't speak, didn't move, simply observed him with the unnerving quiet intensity Silas recognized from her primal phase. An Omega dominant was leagues above the average Omega, and this was her at her weakest.
Her small hands lay folded atop the crisp sheet, knuckles pale. The faint scent of Gardenia, muted but distinct, mingled uneasily with the antiseptic air.
Aris stopped a few feet from the bed, his imposing frame suddenly seeming uncertain. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again, his voice rough with suppressed emotion. "Caitriona…" It was barely a whisper, laden with a lifetime of longing.
"Hello?" Her voice was rough and raspy. Barely audible. Her eyes didn't waver.
She was assessing him, Silas realized, with the same pragmatic scrutiny she'd once used on complex logistics reports. Calculating the threat. Measuring the man against the ghost of the father she'd never known. The silence stretched, taut and fragile.
Aris shifted his weight, his body jittery. He seemed to shrink slightly under her quiet scrutiny; the formidable retired Admiral was momentarily eclipsed by a man utterly out of his depth. "I…" He faltered, his aristocratic composure crumbling. "I don't know where to begin."
His silver-gray eyes, mirrors of her own, held a desperate vulnerability Silas had never witnessed before. Even though their time so far had been brief and they had barely spoken together, he had seen her at her most fragile and confused state. She reminded him of a first sprout with a seed still hanging off it, yearning to grow but ever so fragile.
"Twenty years…" The words choked him. He looked away, raking a hand through his silver-streaked hair, his shoulders slumping. "I failed you. Before you were born. Failed your mother."
Cait remained silent, but her gaze flickered – a subtle shift Silas caught. Not softening, not yet, but perhaps… listening. Her eyes watered, her yellowed sclera showing widely as he spoke. She was not used to this kind of emotional vulnerability.
The raw pain in Aris's admission seemed to resonate in the stillness of the room. He took a tentative step closer, his hand hovering uselessly at his side.
"Your mother… Yvette… she was…" Aris stopped, unable to finish the sentence, the old wound bleeding fresh grief onto the sterile floor.
Cait's lips tightened almost imperceptibly. The mention of her mother, the betrayal she'd lived with, was a palpable trigger. "Please don't," her voice husky. "Please.." Her hands shook.
"Cait, I loved her. Just know that for now..." Aris said, his voice wavering with emotion. A tear ran from his eyes.
Silas watched from near the door, Kieran a silent presence beside him. He saw the tremor in Cait's folded hands, the slight tightening of her jaw. She wasn't ready for grand apologies or explanations. She needed acknowledgement.
Aris seemed to sense it, too. He drew a ragged breath, forcing his gaze back to hers. "Benjamin Agneau," he stated, the name dripping with venomous contempt.
"What he did… hiding you, starving you… letting you believe…p-poisoning you..." Aris's voice cracked. "That rage you feel? Towards him? Towards the lies? It's justified."Aris leaned forward slightly, his intensity focused solely on her. "But the shame? The feeling of being… less? That's his poison, Cait. Not yours. Never yours."
Aris's voice dropped, thick with conviction. "You are a Rose. My daughter. An Omega like me, and your brothers. Your strength… It terrifies men like him. You aren't a tool or dirty like in those foul movies. You are a gift."
Cait's breath hitched. A single tear escaped, tracing a path down her pale cheek before she swiftly wiped it away with the back of her hand, her expression hardening again, but the dam had shown a crack. Aris saw it. His own eyes brimmed with tears.
"I don't expect you to immediately embrace your life and the legacy. Please do not be afraid or ashamed." Aris, his voice raw. "I only ask… the chance to prove, I'm not the monster your mother feared. I am not a man who would ever abandon any of his children, no matter what they were."
Aris slowly, deliberately, extended his hand towards her, palm open, empty – an offering, not a demand. It hovered in the charged space between them, a bridge across twenty years of darkness.
Cait stared at his hand, then lifted her gaze back to his face. The silence deepened, heavy with the weight of a shattered past and the terrifying possibility of a future. Her mercury eyes searched his storm-gray ones, looking for the truth beneath the pain.
Slowly, hesitantly, her own small hand began to uncurl from the sheet. It trembled slightly as she reached out, inch by inch, across the sterile void separating them. Her fingertips brushed the air just above his open palm and flopped into his hand weakly.
"I used to stare in the mirror," Cait said, pausing to wet her very cracked lips. "and wonder who I could take after...I look like you, Father." She licked her lip once again, a sniffle escaping her lips. Followed by a choking sob.
Aris held utterly still, barely breathing, his entire world narrowing to that fragile point of almost contact. A choked sob escaped him, quickly stifled, as her fingers finally, tentatively, settled against his smooth skin. The touch was feather-light, hesitant, yet it sent a visible shudder through his powerful frame. Tears welled freely in his eyes now, tracing paths through the carefully maintained facade. He didn't dare move, didn't dare close his hand around hers, terrified of shattering the moment.
Cait's gaze remained locked on their joined hands – hers pale and small against his larger, weathered one. Her expression was unreadable, a tumult of confusion, grief, and a dawning, terrifying flicker of something else. Recognition? Hope? The sterile room seemed to hold its breath.
Kieran exchanged a glance with Silas, a silent understanding passing between them. This was just the beginning. The fragile connection sparked, but the path ahead was littered with thorns – and the suffocating weight of the Rose legacy.
Silas's jaw tightened; he had felt the emotion coming off of her. It was palpable to him. Her shock and happiness felt like a ripple in his chest. The sadness felt like an uncomfortable clawing. He felt this profound need to protect Cait's fragile peace. He watched her fingers resting on her father's hand, the tentative bridge forming, and knew the real battle for her trust, her safety, and her future was only just beginning.
Silas was seething from the conversation and the circumstances; it would be better if she were not his daughter. He would have taken her home with him if it weren't for this damn familial connection.
The poison was still in her veins, her body decimated, meaning Rhys Mountbatten's presence was necessary. He was compatible with Michael. He knew in his heart that she would mark him. He had to set aside his possessiveness because he felt hurt coming from her because of him. It might just decimate him.