Page 239 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

My father is still staring at me from the survivor line.

This time, I don’t run.

Viper reaches me before I take my next breath.

He doesn’t touch me at first. He stops close so that his heat settles against my back, and his scent wraps around mine, dragging me the rest of the way into the present.

His gaze follows mine across the courtyard.

I feel the exact second he understands. He must see the similarity in our features and feel the pain radiating down the bond, and just know that this is the man who sold me.

His end of the bond goes cold with fury.

"That’s him?" he asks.

My mouth is dry. "That’s my father."

Viper crosses his arms, his broad body planted at my back.

A second later, the bond flares.

Knox reaches the courtyard first, coat half-fastened and murder written across every line of his face. Blaze is right behind him, wild-eyed and breathing as if he sprinted from the far side of the fortress. Shade arrives with quieter steps, but his focus finds me with the same terrifying precision.

They all stop when they see where I’m looking.

The realization cuts through the bond, and I know Viper is filling in the pieces I can’t force out through my own mouth.

This is him.

He's the one who inflicted a wound so deep that I know I'll carry the scar for the rest of my life.

My Pack closes ranks behind me, and lets their scents loose, turning the cold courtyard air into Pack territory.

My Alphas want blood.

I feel it in Viper’s silence, in the hard line of Knox’s posture, in Blaze’s barely leashed rage as he stares at my father like he is already imagining every way to cut him to make him scream.

Shade’s anger is quieter.

Colder.

He isn’t ruled by Alpha instinct, and somehow that makes him scarier. The damage he would do would be calculated.

But none of them move.

They stay behind me, letting their presence speak without stealing my right to confront him as I need to, and I love them for that restraint.

My father watches them gather behind me before his attention drops to my neck.

My shirt's collar has shifted beneath my winter jacket, and the raised edges of my mating bites peek above the fabric. He stares at them, and any fool in the courtyard with a basic understanding of Omegas can understand what those marks say.

I am claimed, loved, and protected by a Pack of soldiers notorious for their viciousness.

He spent my whole life looking at me and seeing me as a valuable burden and a sale price. Now he looks at me and finally sees his consequences.

"Daughter," he calls to me weakly, and the ugly and desperate word falls into the space between us.

I stare at him.