CHAPTER 6

"Get the hell away from me, Adrian. Your hands... there’s blood on them."

Samuel backed into the heavy mahogany door of the master suite. The hallway was silent, but the air still tasted like the pine and ozone of the Great Hunt. Outside, the pack was still howling, celebrating the banishment of Isabelle Reed. Inside, the world was fracturing.

Adrian didn't stop. He stepped into Samuel’s space, his massive frame blocking out the light from the wall sconces. He reached out, his fingers stained with a dark, drying crimson. "It isn't mine, Sam. It's the price of treason. Isabelle tried to kill you. I did what had to be done."

"Is that what you told yourself five years ago? When my father died?" Samuel’s voice cracked. He slapped Adrian’s hand away. "She said you held the blade. She said you were the one who ended him."

Adrian’s jaw shifted. A muscle jumped in his cheek. He didn't deny it. He didn't even flinch. He just leaned in, his silver eyes turning dark, the pupils swallowing the mercury. "Isabelle is a snake. She bites to survive. Don't let her venom cloud what we have."

"What we have is a cage!" Samuel shoved past him, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

He ran. He didn't know where he was going, only that the gilded walls of the East Wing felt like they were shrinking. He bypassed the main staircase, ducking into a service corridor used by the servants. The air here was cooler, smelling of floor wax and damp stone. He kept going, descending a set of narrow spiral stairs that seemed to lead into the very bedrock of the estate.

The light flickered. A single, naked bulb hummed overhead. At the bottom of the stairs was a heavy steel door, its surface scarred by time. There was no keypad, no biometric scanner. Just a rusted lever.

Samuel pulled it. The metal screamed, a high-pitched protest that echoed through the hollow basement.

The room beyond wasn't a storage cellar. It was a laboratory.

Fluorescent lights buzzed to life, flickering over rows of glass vats filled with murky, amber fluid. The air was thick with the scent of chemicals—formaldehyde and something metallic. In the center of the room sat a workstation piled with yellowing folders and digital drives.

"What the f**k is this?" Samuel whispered.

He grabbed the nearest folder. The cover was stamped with a sigil he recognized—the elder Stain crest, belonging to Adrian’s late father, Silas. Below it, in bold, block letters: PROJECT SUN-OMEGA.

Samuel’s fingers shook as he flipped the page. A photo was clipped to the top. It was a picture of him. Not the him of now, but a younger version, barely twenty, strapped into a chair with wires snaking under his skin.

He didn't read the words; he inhaled them.

Subject 07: Samuel Thorne. Genetic baseline: Human. Infusion attempt 14: Successful. Integration of ancient wolf marrow achieved. Marrow source: The First King’s tomb.

"Experiment," Samuel choked out.

The files laid it all out. He hadn't been born a hybrid. He wasn't some mythical creature destined to save the pack. He was a biological construction. A lab rat. Silas Stain had spent decades trying to manufacture a weapon that could heal the Alpha line, and Samuel was the only success.

The door behind him creaked.

"You weren't supposed to find this floor, Sam."

Adrian stood in the doorway. He looked different in the sterile, white light of the lab. Sharper. More dangerous. He didn't look surprised. He looked like a man who had been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"You knew," Samuel hissed, clutching the file to his chest. "You knew I wasn't born this way. You knew your father turned me into a... a freak!"

"I knew what he did." Adrian walked forward, his boots echoing on the concrete. "I was there the night he finished the process. I was the one who stopped him from cutting you open to see how the marrow bonded. I killed him to save you, Samuel. That’s the blood Isabelle was talking about. I took my father’s life to keep you from becoming a corpse on that table."

"And then you let me run? You let me live in the dirt for five years knowing I was a ticking time bomb?"

"I let you be free!" Adrian roared, his voice bouncing off the glass vats. "Because I couldn't look at you without seeing his sins! But the bond... the Heat Echo... I didn't plan for that. My wolf chose you before I knew you were his creation."

Samuel’s vision blurred. The gold in his eyes flared, a bright, angry light that reflected in the glass. He felt the fire rising in his blood again, the Sun-Omega power reacting to his distress.

"I'm a weapon," Samuel whispered, looking at his own hands. "A manufactured piece of hardware."

"You're my mate." Adrian reached him, his hands grabbing Samuel’s shoulders. "Fk the lab. Fk my father. You’re mine."

He pulled Samuel into him, the contact a jolt of pure electricity. Samuel tried to fight, to push the monster away, but his body was already betraying him. The chemical scent of the lab was drowned out by Adrian’s cedar and rain. The Heat Echo, triggered by the stress and the proximity of the Alpha, surged.

Samuel’s knees buckled. Adrian caught him, his hands sliding down to Samuel’s waist, hiking the silk robe up.

"Not here," Samuel gasped, even as he arched his neck, offering the mark to Adrian’s teeth. "Not in this place."

"Right here," Adrian growled. "Where you were made. I'm going to remind you who you belong to."

Adrian shoved the folders off the workstation. Paper scattered like falling snow. He lifted Samuel onto the cold metal table, the surface biting into Samuel’s bare thighs. There was no tenderness now. Only raw, possessive hunger.

Adrian didn't bother with his own clothes beyond the essentials. He unzipped his trousers, his cock springing free, thick and pulsing with a heavy vein. He grabbed Samuel’s legs, spreading them wide, pinning them against his own broad shoulders.

"Look at the vats, Sam," Adrian hissed, leaning down to lick the pulse point on Samuel’s neck. "Look at where you came from, and feel what you are now."

He entered Samuel with a brutal, shallow thrust that made Samuel’s eyes roll back. It was messy. The friction of skin against the cold metal, the sound of their heavy breathing echoing in the hollow room. Adrian began to pound into him, his movements fast and jagged.

"Oh, f**k! Adrian!" Samuel screamed, his head banging back against the workstation’s monitor.

The pleasure was a sharp, biting thing. Samuel reached down, his fingers finding Adrian’s cock as it slid in and out of him, the slick heat of their combined fluids coating his hand. He was cumming everywhere, the white mess staining the Project Sun-Omega files beneath him.

Adrian flipped him over, forcing Samuel onto his hands and knees on the table. He gripped Samuel’s hips so hard his fingers left deep, red imprints.

"Tell me," Adrian growled, his voice a guttural rasp as he lunged into Samuel from behind, doggie style. "Tell me you're mine. Not the lab’s. Mine."

"Yours!" Samuel sobbed, his voice breaking. "I'm yours, goddammit!"

Adrian’s thrusts became more violent, his heavy body weight crushing Samuel down against the table. The metal creaked under the strain. Samuel felt every inch of him, the literal weight of the Alpha King claiming every cell of his manufactured body.

With a final, guttural roar, Adrian buried himself to the hilt, his seed flooding into Samuel, hot and thick. They stayed like that for a long time, the only sound the hum of the fluorescent lights and the ragged gasps of two broken souls.

Samuel lay flat on the metal, his limbs shaking, his skin stinging from the cold and the friction. The lingering warmth of the bond was the only thing keeping him from shattering.

Adrian pulled out, the sound wet and final in the silence. He didn't look at the files. He looked at the mark on Samuel’s neck, now glowing a steady, calm blue.

"We leave this floor," Adrian said, his voice cold again. "We never come back. You’re a Stain now. That’s all that matters."

Samuel sat up, his robe tattered, his body aching. He looked at the folder. A single line of text caught his eye before Adrian pulled him away.

Phase Two: Termination of the Subject if the Bond Fails.

Samuel let Adrian lead him toward the stairs, but his mind stayed in the lab. He wasn't just a mate. He was a survivor. And as the steel door hissed shut behind them, he knew one thing for certain.