Chapter 1
I swear, this is the craziest thing I have ever done in my life.
Being locked in the same laboratory with my sworn enemy, as test subjects.
My father swore the clinic would cure me.
Instead, I woke up strapped to a steel bed, the seal that hid my Omega scent for twenty years dissolved, while a cold voice announced the start of the Eclipse Project.
Then the door was kicked in by Kane Blackwood, heir to the pack my family has feuded with for generations.
Now we’re locked in the same cage, flooded with drugs designed to force a mate bond. The lab offers ten million dollars, enough to save my sister’s life. Refusing means being forced anyway.
But my father didn’t only sell me out. He also knew the secret I’ve hidden my whole life: my scent can bring even the strongest Alpha to his knees.
They injected us with aphrodisiacs, forced us to strip naked and stand under lasers for vital sign scans.
Yet when he pinned me against the wall and kissed me forcefully, his tongue roughly invading my mouth, I still fell into it.
But after the sex, we could not help wondering what those people in the lab really wanted.
My father swore the clinic would cure me.
Instead, I woke up strapped to a steel bed, the seal that hid my Omega scent for twenty years dissolved, while a cold voice announced the start of the Eclipse Project.
Then the door was kicked in by Kane Blackwood, heir to the pack my family has feuded with for generations.
Now we’re locked in the same cage, flooded with drugs designed to force a mate bond. The lab offers ten million dollars, enough to save my sister’s life. Refusing means being forced anyway.
But my father didn’t only sell me out. He also knew the secret I’ve hidden my whole life: my scent can bring even the strongest Alpha to his knees.
Kane hates me. I hate him. Yet he said yes to the experiment before I could, and I need to know what was on that slip of paper.
To survive this place, we’ll have to stop trusting the people who built it, and start trusting each other.
The restraints bit into my wrists every time I pulled. I kept pulling anyway.
Steel bed. Metal cuffs at my wrists, ankles, and across my hips, locked so tight I couldn't even curl a finger. A hospital gown so thin it might as well have been transparent.
The room was blindingly white, cramped like a public shower stall, and cold enough to make my teeth ache.
None of that was what scared me.
It was the back of my neck. The seal I'd worn over my gland for twenty years, the one that kept my scent flat and my body quiet, the one that let me live as a Beta, was gone.
Something had dissolved it while I was out, and the bare skin beneath prickled like an exposed nerve.
Treatment, my father had called it.
Three days ago, my father Victor had gripped my shoulders with what looked like genuine anguish on his face. "Selena, listen to me. You need to get treatment. Your recessive Omega gene defect can't be put off any longer. I've found the best medical facility for you."
I'd believed him. To avoid becoming a bargaining chip in some arranged marriage, I'd hidden my secondary gender and pretended to be a Beta for twenty years.
I thought my father was the only person who wanted to protect me.
But he'd lied.
This wasn't a hospital at all.
An emotionless mechanical voice crackled overhead: "Subject V-07 is awake. Heart rate 140. Recessive Omega gland seal removal at sixty percent. Preparing for compatibility testing."
Subject?
As I thrashed, trying to wrench my wrists free, the security door in front of me exploded inward with a deafening bang, buckled by a kick from the other side.
Before I saw anything, I smelled it.
Cedar. Cold, dense, edged with smoke, rolling across the room like weather.
I knew that scent. Every Vare child learned it before they learned to read, the way you learn which snakes are venomous: the Blackwood Alpha line. The pack that swore my father had sold out eleven of their scouts at Ashfall Ridge. The pack that spat when they said our name.
My stomach dropped. A Blackwood Alpha could smell what twenty years of seals had hidden, and my seal was gone.
Then came the chains. Iron dragging over concrete, a grating screech, closer with every step.
What came through the doorway wasn't a nurse, and it sure as hell wasn't a rescue team.
Kane Blackwood.
Alpha heir to the Blackwood pack. Also the sworn enemy of the Vare Pack.
He was shirtless, his sculpted muscles bulging with veins that stood out from sheer rage. Thick alloy shackles, half-torn from their moorings, still dragged from his wrists and ankles.
His thick black hair was soaked with sweat, plastered messily against his temples and neck. His pupils were a rare dark gold with vertical slits, like amber scorched by wildfire. His bare torso was all coiled muscle, every line drawn so taut it looked ready to snap.
Fuck. I had to admit all those Omegas wanting to marry him had a point. But not me. Never me.
He was breathing hard, like a beast freshly escaped from a fighting pit. He jerked his head up, and those dark gold slitted eyes locked onto me on the bed.
What little oxygen remained in the room was instantly sucked away.
"Shit," he cursed under his breath. "A Vare."
He stalked toward me step by step, the iron chains scraping across the floor with a grating screech. "My lunatic father really outdid himself this time. The lab rat he prepared for me is actually one of my family's mortal enemies."
"Stay away from me, Blackwood!" I bit out, forcing myself not to tremble under that crushing pheromone pressure.
"You think I want to see you? I'd rather carve out my own gland with a knife than be stuck in the same room with you!" I shouted at him.
Kane let out a cold laugh. He lunged forward and slammed both palms down on the metal bed frame on either side of my head. The impact made my ears ring.
"You think I'm enjoying this, Selena?!" he snarled. "Open your damn eyes and look at this hellhole! This is the ‘Eclipse Project'! They pumped us full of aphrodisiacs and bonding agents. They want us to rut like mindless animals and force a mate bond between us!"
Mate bond? Forced bonding?!
My whole body went rigid. My blood turned to ice.
My father knew about my unique recessive Omega physiology—how my pheromones could suppress even the most violent Alpha. So he'd tricked me into coming here to serve as a sedative for the Blackwood Alpha heir?
"Despicable..." I whispered.
"Despicable?" Kane grabbed my chin, his grip so brutal I thought he'd shatter my jaw. "What right does anyone from the Vare family have to talk about despicable? You think I don't know what your father did at Ashfall Ridge? And now your father's joined forces with my power-hungry bastard of a father to lock us in a cage like dogs for breeding!"
"Shut up! My father had nothing to do with what happened back then!" I shot back furiously. That was slander the Blackwood family had smeared us with.
"Still lying!" Kane's fingers tightened viciously.
At that moment, the loudspeaker suddenly emitted a piercing high-frequency whine, followed by that cold mechanical voice returning with nauseating clarity,
"Test subjects Kane Blackwood and Selena Vare, comply with instructions immediately and approach the designated point. Non-compliance will trigger enforcement protocol. Compatibility testing will now commence. Both subjects are to remove all clothing."
"WHAT?!"
"FUCK?!"
We spoke in almost perfect unison.
