Bound by Bloodline

Chapter 12

I should have gotten up the second the conversation ended.

Instead, I stayed there for a few seconds too long, caught in the quiet that had settled between us, too aware of the warmth still trapped in the sheets, too aware of the way the room felt different after everything he had said.

That was my first mistake.

The second was looking at him again.

He was still watching me, still propped slightly on one arm, his expression calmer than it had been at any point since I met him. In the morning light, with sleep still softening the harder edges of him, he looked less untouchable.

Less dangerous.

That was a lie, obviously.

But for one reckless second, it was an easy one to believe.

I broke eye contact first, pushing the blanket back and sliding out of bed before the feeling in my chest could settle into something I did not want to name. The floor was cool beneath my feet, grounding enough to clear some of the haze from my head.

“I need a minute,” I said.

His voice came low and steady behind me. “Kaia.”

I paused, but I did not turn around.

“What.”

“You can take more than a minute.”

Something about the way he said it made my throat tighten.

Too soft.

Too understanding.

Too easy to want.

That alone was enough to make me keep walking.

I stepped farther into the room, running a hand through my hair as I tried to slow my thoughts down. The morning had cracked something open between us. I knew that much. I could still feel it, that dangerous shift, the one that made everything seem a little less sharp and a little more intimate than it should have.

I needed distance.

I needed something real.

My gaze moved over the room again, slower this time. The clean lines. The dark wood. The careful order of everything around me. It still looked the same as it had the night before, but now I noticed the details I had missed. A watch set perfectly beside a folded pair of cuff links. A stack of papers aligned too neatly on a side table. A locked drawer built into the desk near the far wall.

I stopped.

My attention narrowed.

It was not the locked drawer itself that caught me. It was the thin corner of a file barely visible beneath it, like someone had pushed it in too fast and not far enough.

Something about it made the back of my neck prickle.

I should have ignored it.

I knew that.

But I had spent too much of my life surviving by noticing the things I was not supposed to see.

Behind me, the bed shifted.

“You are thinking too loud,” he said.

I glanced over my shoulder. “That is not a thing.”

“It is with you.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but I felt it anyway. The way his voice had dropped into something almost familiar. The way part of me was already starting to know what he sounded like when he was amused, when he was serious, when he was trying not to say too much.

I hated that.

So I looked away again.

And reached for the file.

The second my fingers touched it, something in the room changed.

Not physically.

Emotionally.

Like the air itself had tightened.

“Kaia.”

This time, there was no softness in my name.

I froze.

Then, slowly, I looked down.

The folder was plain black, heavy, with a strip of red across the top. My pulse started to climb before I even opened it. Maybe it was the way he had said my name. Maybe it was instinct.

Maybe it was both.

I should have put it back.

I opened it instead.

The first page hit me like ice water.

OMEGA EXPERIMENT

CLASSIFIED

SUBJECT TRACKING AND BOND RESPONSE

For one second, I did not understand what I was looking at.

Then I saw more.

Rows of typed notes. Scent suppression references. Hormonal response observations. Failed bond attempts. Handwritten annotations in the margins. Dates. Locations.

And a name.

Hale Biotech.

My blood ran cold.

I turned the page too fast, my fingers suddenly unsteady, scanning without really reading until my eyes caught on words that made my stomach drop.

Omega subjects remain unstable without successful Alpha anchoring.

Forced bond adaptation may result in emotional dependency, aggression, and long term imprinting.

Subject retention remains priority.

My mouth went dry.

No.

No.

I looked up so quickly the room almost tilted.

Ronan was already off the bed.

Already moving toward me.

And all at once, the softness of the morning shattered.

“You knew,” I said.

The words came out quiet at first, almost disbelieving.

Then louder.

“You knew.”

His jaw tightened. “It is not what you think.”

I laughed, and the sound was ugly.

“Really.” I lifted the file slightly, my hand shaking now in a way I hated. “Because from where I am standing, it looks exactly like what I think.”

“Kaia.”

“No.” I stepped back before he could reach me. “Do not say my name like that.”

His expression darkened immediately. “Like what.”

“Like you have any right.”

He stopped moving.

For a second, neither of us said anything.

I could feel my pulse everywhere. In my throat. In my wrists. In the hand clutching the file hard enough to crease the edges.

“This is why you brought me here,” I said.

The words came fast now, sharp with panic and anger and humiliation. “This is why you would not let me leave. This whole time you knew exactly what this was.”

His eyes locked on mine. “I did not know it was you.”

I almost choked on the bitterness rising in my throat.

“Oh, that makes it so much better.”

“It is the truth.”

“You have a file in your room.”

“It is not mine.”

“It is in your room.”

He took one step closer.

I stepped back again immediately.

The bond reacted like it hated the distance, tightening hard enough to make my chest ache, but I shoved the feeling aside.

“You lied to me,” I said.

“I withheld information.”

My eyes widened. “That is your defense.”

“No.” His voice sharpened for the first time. “It is the truth.”

The room felt too small now, too close, the walls pressing in around me as every piece of the last few hours rearranged itself into something uglier.

The way he had known too much.

The way he kept saying I was not leaving.

The way he had looked at me like this was bigger than either of us.

Because maybe it had been.

Because maybe he had known exactly how big all along.

“You work with them,” I said.

His brows pulled together. “No.”

“Your name is on this.”

“My family name is.”

I stared at him.

Then laughed again, because that somehow felt worse.

“That is not the clarification you think it is.”

His expression turned colder, but not detached. More like angry at the direction this was going and angrier still that he could not stop it.

“Hale Biotech belongs to my father,” he said. “Not me.”

“That does not mean you are innocent.”

“I did not say I was innocent.”

That stopped me.

For half a second, I forgot how to breathe.

The file felt heavier in my hands.

“What does that mean.”

He did not answer right away, and that silence hurt more than if he had.

Because now I knew. Now I understood. He did know something. Maybe not all of it. Maybe not me specifically. But enough.

Enough to keep this.

Enough to look at it.

Enough not to tell me.

I swallowed hard.

“You had this here,” I said, quieter now, because anger was slipping into something else, something worse. “You knew about the experiments and you still looked at me like I was supposed to trust you.”

His gaze did not waver.

“I never asked you to trust me.”

“No.” My voice broke slightly and I hated it. “You just made it impossible not to need you.”

The words landed between us like something breakable.

For the first time since I opened the file, something shifted in his face. Not guilt exactly. Not regret.

Something rawer.

“Kaia.”

I shook my head.

“Do not.”

I could feel the burn behind my eyes now, the humiliating pressure of emotion I refused to let turn into anything visible. Anger was easier. I wanted anger back.

But all I could think about was the way I had woken up in his arms. The way he had answered me honestly. The way, for one stupid, reckless moment, I had almost believed the closeness between us belonged only to us.

And now this.

A file.

An experiment.

His name.

It was too much.

“You do not get to look at me like that anymore,” I said.

His jaw tightened. “Like what.”

“Like I matter.”

The second the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back.

Not because they were untrue.

Because they were.

Because I should never have let him hear that.

His expression changed again, the anger in it dimming into something far more dangerous.

“You do matter.”

“No.” I gripped the file tighter. “Not if this was in your room.”

He took another step.

I stepped back.

This time I hit the edge of the desk behind me, the wood pressing into my spine.

“You are not listening to me,” he said.

“You are right,” I snapped. “I am not. Because I am done listening.”

His eyes dropped briefly to the file in my hands, then lifted again.

“You think I kept that because I support it.”

“I think you kept it because you knew.”

“I kept it because I was trying to find out who was behind it.”

I stared at him.

The room went still.

That was not what I expected.

Not even close.

He exhaled slowly, like he had not meant to say that yet, like the words had been dragged out of him by the force of the moment.

“My father built half of what is in that file on the lie that it would stabilize Omega bonds and reduce violence between designations,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “I found out two years ago that there were unofficial trials. Human trials. Missing records. Subjects who disappeared from the system entirely.”

My heartbeat turned uneven.

“And you did what,” I asked.

“I started keeping everything I could get my hands on.”

I looked down at the pages again.

The notes.

The annotations.

The evidence.

Not trophies.

Records.

My anger faltered for a second.

Just a second.

Then I looked back up.

“You still should have told me.”

“Yes.”

The answer came without hesitation.

It knocked something loose in me again.

No excuse.

No redirection.

Just yes.

I hated how much that mattered.

I hated it more that it hurt.

His voice dropped lower.

“I did not tell you because I did not know how much of this was connected to you yet.”

“And now.”

His gaze held mine.

“Now I know it is everything.”

My breath caught.

The bond pulsed again, deep and painful and alive beneath all of it, like it did not care that I was angry, like it did not care that part of me wanted to throw the file at him and walk out the door.

I looked away first.

Because if I did not, I was not sure what would happen.

And that was worse than the anger.

Worse than the fear.

Because the cliché part, the most dangerous part, was this.

Even after the betrayal.

Even after the file.

Even after knowing I should not.

I still wanted him to explain.

I still wanted it not to be what it looked like.

That was the real problem.