Tamed by the Rejected Omega

Chapter 2: The DNA Threat

The silence in the eighty-fourth-floor boardroom was so heavy it felt like a physical pressure crushing the lungs out of everyone present.

Silas remained frozen at the edge of the glass conference table, his storm-silver eyes wild, unblinking, and locked onto the two children standing beside me. His chest heaved in violent, ragged hitches, his broad shoulders trembling under the dark leather of his tactical coat. The scent of ozone and crushed pine needles in the room spiked, laced with a bitter, desperate note of raw desperation.

"They're five years old..." Silas repeated, his voice barely a raspy whisper. He took a single, unsteady step toward us, his hand reaching out as if trying to touch a ghost. "Freya... tell me the truth. Look me in the eyes and tell me who their father is."

Before he could take another step, Marcus moved with fluid, lethal speed. My chief security officer stepped into Silas’s path, his hand resting casually over the concealed holster beneath his suit jacket.

"Step back, Alpha Blackwood," Marcus commanded, his voice cold and even. "You are approaching the Queen's heirs. Advance any further, and my men will treat it as an act of aggression against the Vance royal line."

Silas didn't even look at Marcus. He growled, a low, thunderous sound that vibrated through the floorboards, and swept his arm outward. The sheer force of his Alpha aura flared, a crushing wall of kinetic energy meant to throw Marcus aside.

"Get out of my way," Silas spat, his eyes blazing silver. "Those are my children."

"Silas!" Elder Thomas shrieked from the table, wringing his hands in sheer terror. "Control yourself! You are in the heart of Vance territory! Their private defense militia outnumbers our entire guard!"

I didn't flinch. I didn't step back. Instead, I calmly placed a hand on Marcus’s shoulder, easing him back half a step. Then, I looked down at Leo and Luna.

"Leo, take your sister back to the inner lounge," I said, my voice smooth, gentle, and utterly unshaken by the Alpha aura suffocating the room. "Tell the kitchen staff to fetch your ice cream. I will be with you in five minutes."

Leo didn't run. He didn't hide behind me. The five-year-old boy looked up at Silas, his small jaw set in a hard, rigid line that was frighteningly identical to the man standing across from him. Leo’s tiny hands tightened into fists at his sides, and for a split second, a faint, metallic hum flickered in the air around the boy—the very first spark of a dormant Alpha aura asserting itself in defense of his mother.

"Come on, Luna," Leo said quietly, grabbing his sister's hand.

Luna lingered for a moment, her bright, big eyes bouncing between Silas's tear-streaked face and mine. She gave Silas a small, curious tilt of her head before allowing her brother to pull her through the side door. The heavy mahogany door clicked shut behind them, sealing the children safely away.

The moment the door latched, the air in the room temperature plummeted. I turned my head slowly, locking my icy blue eyes onto Silas.

"You have five seconds to rein in your aura, Alpha Blackwood," I said, my tone flat, razor-sharp, and stripped of any humanity. "Or I will consider your posture a breach of our financial agreement, cancel the four-hundred-million-dollar credit line, and buy up your pack’s debt through third-party liquidators by midnight. You will be bankrupt and landless before sunrise."

Silas flinched as if I had thrown cold water in his face. The furious silver glow in his eyes sputtered, replaced once more by that hollow, agonizing pain. His chest fell as he swallowed hard, forcing his suffocating aura back beneath his skin.

"I don't care about the money, Freya," Silas choked out, taking a shuddering breath. "I don't care about the land! Look at me! You disappeared into the Rogue Territory five years ago! I searched for your body for months! I thought... I thought you were dead! And now you walk back into my life as a royal, holding two children who have my eyes, my bloodline, and my aura?!"

"My name is Victoria Vance," I corrected calmly, stepping around the head of the conference table. My high heels clicked with rhythmic, terrifying precision against the marble floor. "And I suggest you mind your tongue before your hysterical delusions ruin what little future your people have left."

"They aren't delusions!" Silas roared, slamming his massive fist down on the glass table. A fine spiderweb c***k splintered across the reinforced surface beneath his knuckles. "I know my own blood! I felt the flare of the boy's power! He carries the Blackwood Alpha gene! You were pregnant when I..."

He choked on the words. He couldn't even bring himself to say it.

"When you what, Alpha?" I asked, stopping three feet away from him. I crossed my arms, tilting my head up slightly with polite, bored condescension. "When you mismanaged your pack into total bankruptcy? When you allowed rogue factions to overrun your eastern borders? Or when you let your emotions override your business intellect in my boardroom?"

Silas’s face went dead white. A single tear escaped his silver eyes, tracing a path down his rugged cheek before soaking into his collar. "Freya... stop it. Please. You don't have to pretend with me."

"I am not interested in your ghost stories, Alpha Blackwood," I interrupted, my voice as unyielding as iron. "Nor am I interested in the tragic history of whichever former pack member you failed to protect. You made a decision to govern your pack with incompetence five years ago, and now you stand in my building, bleeding money, trying to project your personal grief onto a woman who holds your entire financial existence in her hands."

"Stop calling yourself that!" Silas begged, dropping his voice, his massive posture slumping as if the weight of the universe was crushing his spine. "You're Freya! My mate! My rejected Luna!"

"I am Victoria Vance," I reiterated, each word a slow, calculated blow to his sanity. "The woman who owns your territory's mortgages. The woman who controls your supply lines. The woman who just bought your pack's survival for fifty-one percent of your infrastructure."

Silas stared at me, his lip trembling slightly, completely shattered by the absolute absence of recognition or hatred in my eyes. Hate would have given him hope. Hate would have meant Freya was still in there, burning a fire he could attempt to quench with groveling.

All I offered him was total, suffocating, corporate apathy.

"If you truly believe those children belong to your bloodline," I continued smoothly, reaching into my blazer and pulling out a sleek silver pen, "then demand a DNA test."

Silas blinked, stunned. "What?"

I walked past him, pulling a blank royal affidavit form from Marcus’s leather portfolio and dropping it onto the cracked glass table.

"Sign the order," I said coldly. "Demand a genetic match protocol through the High Council's legal court. It will take three weeks to process. It will require blood samples, court hearings, and public exposure. But know this, Silas..."

I leaned in closer, until the faint scent of my lily-and-snow perfume filled his senses, completely masking any trace of the sweet Omega scent he was desperately searching for.

"...the moment you file that petition, I will pull every cent of Vance capital from your banks. I will freeze your pack's trade permits. I will hire every mercenary clan from the Western Reach to guard my children, and I will tie you up in royal litigation until your pack starves to death in the winter. Is chasing a ghost worth the total extinction of the Blackwood Pack?"

Silas stared at the paper, then at the pen in my hand, his breath coming in shallow, terrified gasps.

He was trapped.

If he signed the paper to prove the twins carried his blood, he would satisfy his desperation—and destroy the thousands of pack members depending on my bailout to survive the coming month. If he didn't sign it, he had to stand by and treat his own flesh and blood as the untouchable royalty of a total stranger.

It was an impossible choice: sacrifice his pride, or sacrifice his duty.

"You are heartless," Silas whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of horror and desperate awe.

"I am a CEO, Alpha," I whispered back, leaning down until my lips were inches from his ear. "And in my world, sentimentality is a flaw that gets you killed."

Silas flinched as if I had driven a silver blade straight into his ribs. He closed his eyes, his massive chest shuddering as silent, agonizing sobs racked his frame. His hands hovered over the contract, shaking violently, before his fingers slowly curled into fists and pulled back.

He couldn't sign it. He couldn't destroy his people.

"Wise choice," I said, stepping back and smoothing down the lapels of my obsidian blazer. I gestured toward Marcus. "Show the Alpha and his council out. I have a business empire to run."

Elder Thomas and the other two pack representatives practically sprinted to grab their coats, eager to escape the suffocating aura of the room. But Silas didn't move immediately. He slowly raised his head, wiping the moisture from his eyes with the back of his hand. The broken, helpless look was gone, replaced by something far more dangerous: a quiet, terrifying resolve.

"You can claim you're Victoria Vance all you want," Silas said, his voice low, deep, and echoing with the dark promise of an Alpha who had found his reason to live. "You can take my pack's land. You can make me crawl through shattered glass. But I am not leaving this city. I will fulfill every term of this contract. I will stand at your side as your pack liaison. And I will prove to you—every single day for the rest of my life—who you really are to me."

I didn't give him the satisfaction of a response. I didn't even look at him as I turned my back and walked toward the private elevator.

"Good luck with your delusions, Alpha Blackwood," I said softly as the silver elevator doors slid shut between us. "You're going to need it."

The private elevator descended in total silence, dropping forty floors before bringing me to the personal residential wing of the Vance Tower.

The moment the doors opened into the quiet, sunlit hallway, the rigid, icy mask I had maintained for the last hour shattered.

I leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator, taking a long, ragged breath, my hand trembling as I touched the center of my chest. Beneath my silk blouse, over my heart, the skin felt burning hot.

The severed mate bond.

For five years, it had remained a dull, numb ache—a silent phantom scar that only throbbed when the weather turned cold. But standing three feet away from Silas, smelling his scent, hearing his voice, and watching his storm-silver eyes burn with tears, the dormant embers had ignited into a terrifying blaze. My inner wolf was pacing frantically behind her cage, confused and clawing at my ribs.

Quiet, I commanded her internally, squeezing my eyes shut until the darkness swallowed the phantom pain. He doesn't get Freya. Freya is dead. He gets the Queen.

A small hand touched my knee.

I opened my eyes to see Leo standing in the hallway, holding a small paper cup of vanilla ice cream. His silver eyes, so painfully like his father's, were filled with quiet, analytical concern.

"Is he gone?" Leo asked softly.

I forced a warm, gentle smile onto my face, crouching down until I was at eye level with my son. I reached out, brushing a stray lock of dark hair from his forehead.

"Yes, my love," I whispered, keeping my voice sweet and stable. "He's gone."

"He smelled like the pine trees from the old maps," Leo noted, taking a small bite of his ice cream with his wooden spoon. "And he kept looking at you like he saw a ghost."

"He's just a man who doesn't know how to separate the past from the present, Leo," I said softly, taking his free hand into mine. "Nothing for you to worry about."

"He looked strong," Leo added, his little eyebrows furrowing as he processed the encounter. "When he got mad, the floor shook. But Marcus said he's the Alpha of the pack that controls the valley."

My breath hitched slightly. I had always been careful never to speak ill of their origins, but children, especially children born of royal and Alpha blood, were far too sharp to be completely shielded from the world.

"No one controls us, Leo," I promised him, kissing his knuckles. "Not him. Not anyone. I promise you."

"I know," Leo said simply, turning his sharp gaze toward the elevator doors. "Because if he tries to push us around, I'll grow up and take his valley."

A genuine, soft laugh escaped my lips, the first real emotion I had felt all morning. I pulled my son into a tight hug, burying my face in the soft crook of his neck.

I had built an empire from the blood and mud of the Rogue Territory. I had buried Freya in that wilderness and crowned Victoria in her place. Silas Blackwood could spend the rest of his life hunting for a ghost, groveling at a shadow, and searching for a girl who no longer existed.

He thought he was going to break through my mask. He had no idea that the mask had long since become my skin.