"No conspiracy." Dad's voice is innocent.Tooinnocent. "Just telling Sera that she's going to be an amazing Omega one day. Just like a certain someone."
I feel Mom's body shift.
Her arms tighten around me slightly.
When I lean back to look at her face, her expression has changed—something softer there, something vulnerable that she usually hides behind sharpness and strength.
Her eyes lower.
Lock onto mine.
Blue meeting blue-and-green, a mirror and its reflection, the woman I'll become looking at the woman she was.
"That you will," she whispers, and her voice is fierce and tender and absolutely certain. "You'll be even better. And no Alphas are going to change that."
The words land in my chest and take root.
I don't understand their full weight yet—won't understand for years, won't truly comprehend until I'm alone and bleeding and fighting for survival in a world that wants me dead.
But they plant themselves there, deep in my bones, waiting for the moment I'll need them.
"What if I don't like them?" I ask, the question popping out with the random logic of childhood. "The Alphas. What if they're mean? What if they're stupid?"
Mom laughs.
Full and bright and utterlyher—not the polished laugh she uses in public, but the real one, the one reserved for family, for these walls, for moments of genuine joy.
"Then you whip them into shape," she says, and her grin is wicked,dangerous, the smile of a woman who's spent her life making Alphas regret underestimating her. "Until they're exactly how you like them."
She gives Dad a wink over my shoulder.
I hear him chuckle—warm, rueful, the sound of a man who's been thoroughly whipped into shape and wouldn't have it any other way.
I giggle too, even though I don't fully understand the joke.
"Yes, Mommy!" I declare with the absolute conviction of a child who believes in the infinite power of parental wisdom. "I'm gonna doexactlythat!"
She hugs me closer.
Presses a kiss to my forehead.
"That's my girl."
The words settle into my soul like a blessing.
That's my girl.
My badass girl.
My warrior.
My daughter.
The scene starts to blur.
Colors bleeding at the edges.
Sounds fading like music played too far away to hear clearly.
