Nausea. Sweating. Dizziness. The sensation of razor blades carving through my stomach.
I nearly went to a doctor.
But then I noticed something.
The pain wasn’t constant.
At first, I assumed it was random. Then I realized it wasn’t.
Serena would shift in her chair in front of the monitor, and the ache would spike. She’d lean closer to the screen, and something inside my abdomen would pull so tight I’d have to brace myself against the wall.
The worst hit three days after Violet disappeared.
I was in the kitchen, chopping herbs, when a bolt of pressure tore through me so violently I dropped the knife.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
My vision bleached white at the edges. Down the hall, I heard Serena swear—not in anger, but in horror.
The pain pulsed again.
That was when I went to Vinny’s office.
That was when I learned First Chapter Heat Clinic was experimenting on Violet, and Logan had sanctioned it.
They’d injected her with something designed to exaggerate her pregnancy. Not necessarily the biology, just the presentation.
Bigger. Rounder. More visibly fertile.
Serena explained it in clinical terms.
Receptor stimulation. Hormonal amplification. Accelerated physical presentation.
All of it engineered to trigger alpha breeding instincts.
To make her irresistibly fertile. Undeniably claimed. So visibly pregnant that any alpha who looked at her would feel that primitive, possessive snap along his spine.
And if it worked?
What stopped them from using it on other omegas? Pregnant or not?
What stopped them from manufacturing that reaction?
That instinct?
I asked Serena.
She laughed it off at first.
But as the days stretched into weeks, I saw the way she looked at the screen.
I never asked to watch the feed.
Not once.
But the hunger on Serena’s face was unmistakable.
Vinny? I’d seen it in him.
