Chapter Thirteen — File O-17

The silence after the call ended felt heavier than the threat itself.

I stared at the burner phone in my hand.

Stop taking suppressants. And stay close to your Alpha.

My Alpha.

The phrase made something inside me tighten.

Ronan looked at me.

“Give me the phone.”

I handed it over.

He checked the number, then the call log.

“Blocked.”

“Of course.”

Marcus stepped into the office.

“Can it be traced?”

“Maybe,” Ronan said. “Not from here.”

I looked at the empty suppressant case on the examination table.

Twelve missing injectors.

My physician gone.

Blood in his car.

And someone on the other end of a disposable phone talking about me as though my body were part of a schedule.

“This was never about exposing me.”

Ronan’s eyes lifted.

“No.”

“They want the heat.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“That is what we need to find out.”

I laughed softly.

“You say that as though we have not spent the last several hours finding out that everyone around me has been lying.”

Marcus looked away.

Ronan did not.

“You still have one thing they don’t control.”

“What?”

“Your decisions.”

I looked at him.

The sentence should have sounded comforting.

Instead, it made me angry.

“My decisions? Someone changed what went into my body. Someone stole every suppressant I had. Someone took my physician. What exactly am I deciding?”

Ronan stepped closer.

“Whether you let them decide what happens next.”

The heat pulsed low in my abdomen.

Not as violently as before.

But it was still there.

Persistent.

Patient.

Like my body had accepted that it was not going back to normal tonight.

I turned toward Marcus.

“Search everything.”

He frowned.

“We already checked the office.”

“Not the office. Halden.”

“His files?”

“His accounts. His appointments. His personal devices. Everything he touched in the last year.”

Marcus nodded.

“I’ll get the security team started.”

“No Vale security.”

He paused.

“Sir?”

“I don’t know who inside the company I can trust.”

That sentence tasted bitter.

Marcus looked at me for several seconds.

Then nodded.

“I’ll use an outside team.”

He left.

Ronan watched the door close.

“You trust him.”

“As much as I trust anyone.”

“That is not what I asked.”

I looked at him.

“No. I don’t trust anyone completely.”

“Smart.”

“Coming from you, that sounds less like advice and more like a confession.”

His mouth curved slightly.

Then he walked toward Halden’s desk.

The drawers had been emptied except for the burner phone.

He examined the underside.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for what they missed.”

“They took the computers.”

“People who steal obvious things often forget the boring ones.”

He crouched.

Ran his fingers beneath the desk.

Then stopped.

“What?”

Ronan pulled at something taped beneath the frame.

A small black memory card came free.

I stared at it.

“You were saying?”

He smiled.

“Boring.”

Marcus returned before I could answer.

“I found a laptop in the reception storage cabinet. It still works.”

“Bring it.”

Minutes later, we were sitting in Halden’s office with the memory card inserted into an old computer that looked as though it had not been used in years.

The screen opened to a password request.

Ronan leaned back.

“Of course.”

I looked at the prompt.

No hint.

No recovery option.

Only a blinking cursor.

“Halden always used dates.”

“Birthdays?” Marcus asked.

“No. Medical milestones.”

I tried the date of my first suppressant injection.

Wrong.

My first heat.

Wrong.

The date my designation was officially falsified.

Wrong.

Ronan looked at me.

“You know that date?”

“I know all of them.”

His expression changed.

I ignored it.

Then I remembered something.

Halden had once told me that the first successful stabilization protocol had been the reason I was alive.

“What year did O-17 begin?” Ronan asked.

“I don’t know.”

I stared at the photograph in my pocket.

The one my father had given me.

Hospital room.

Incubator.

Daniel Kerr.

SUBJECT O-17 — VIABLE.

I entered my date of birth.

The screen opened.

Nobody spoke.

Folders appeared.

Most were ordinary medical labels.

Hormone monitoring.

Suppressant dosing.

Bloodwork.

Then one folder stood apart from the rest.

O-17 MASTER FILE.

My pulse slowed.

Marcus whispered, “Open it.”

I did.

The first document was a genetic report.

My name was nowhere on it.

Only:

SUBJECT: O-17

DESIGNATION: OMEGA

STATUS: VIABLE

PRIMARY MATCH: A-04

Ronan leaned closer.

“A-04.”

I looked at him.

“You.”

His expression hardened.

“Maybe.”

I opened another file.

Photographs.

Dozens of them.

Me as a child.

At school.

At medical appointments.

Walking through Vale Tower.

Some taken from surveillance cameras.

Some taken from far enough away that I had clearly never known the photographer was there.

My stomach turned.

“They watched me.”

Marcus looked pale.

“For years.”

I scrolled.

Age eleven.

Fourteen.

Seventeen.

Twenty-one.

Twenty-five.

Then recent.

Three months ago.

Last week.

Yesterday.

Ronan’s jaw tightened.

“This program never ended.”

“No.”

I opened another document.

This one was titled:

COMPATIBILITY PROTOCOL — O-17 / A-04

The first page listed blood markers.

Hormone response.

Scent compatibility.

Fertility probability.

My hand stopped moving.

At the bottom:

REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS PROJECTION: 98.7%

I felt sick.

Marcus swore quietly.

Ronan looked away.

For the first time, he seemed as violated by the file as I felt.

I scrolled farther.

A note had been added only six months earlier.

Natural exposure between subjects remains preferable. Forced intervention carries elevated psychological resistance.

I stared at the sentence.

Ronan’s voice became cold.

“They wanted us to meet naturally.”

“They wanted us to think it was natural.”

Marcus pointed at the next line.

“Look.”

I read it.

Trigger event authorized upon confirmation of O-17 fertility window.

My skin went cold.

The gala.

The sabotage.

The heat.

Ronan.

Everything had been scheduled.

I opened the authorization record.

Most of the names were encrypted.

One was not.

APPROVED BY: D. KERR

I leaned back.

“Daniel started it.”

Ronan’s eyes narrowed.

“Maybe.”

“You think someone used his authorization?”

“I think a dead man is a convenient person to blame.”

He was right.

Again.

I hated that.

Another file sat beneath the authorization.

SECONDARY MATCHES.

My hand hovered over it.

Ronan noticed.

“Open it.”

I did.

A list appeared.

Six names.

All Alphas.

All heirs to major families.

Ronan was first.

His score was 98.7%.

The next was 74%.

Then 68%.

Lower.

Lower.

Lower.

I looked at Ronan.

“You were not the only one.”

“No.”

“But you were the one they wanted.”

He stared at the screen.

“By a wide margin.”

The heat in my body suddenly felt less biological and more like a trap closing.

Marcus opened another document.

“This one is encrypted.”

The title was enough to make me stop breathing.

PREGNANCY OUTCOME PROJECTIONS — O-17

Ronan went completely still.

I looked at him.

Neither of us spoke.

Marcus whispered, “Do you want me to close it?”

“No.”

My voice sounded distant.

“Open it.”

The password field appeared.

This one had a hint.

THE FIRST SUCCESS.

I stared at it.

Then entered one word.

VIABLE

The document unlocked.

The first sentence appeared.

Subject O-17 was not created to inherit Vale Dominion.

My pulse stopped.

The next line loaded.

The inheritance was merely the mechanism required to preserve access to the bloodline.

Ronan stepped closer.

I scrolled once more.

And there it was.

The sentence that changed everything.

O-17’s primary purpose is successful gestation of a genetically compatible Alpha heir.

For several seconds, I could not breathe.

Then a final note appeared at the bottom of the page.

Added three days ago.

A-04 proximity confirmed. Begin conception protocol.

Ronan whispered my name.

I looked at him.

The heat inside me surged.

And somewhere in the clinic, a lock clicked shut.