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Instead, they focused on mutual passions.

A vision for the breed kind burned in her heart. She passed it on to him, her eldest son. He wanted the hope she’d taught him about. It didn’t matter that they rarely agreed on the route to get there. They also never agreed on what to do about his brothers.

“There’s still the Monster,” Kane said slowly.

“Don’t call him that,” she snapped back, impatient. Her glass face cracked a bit at the edges. Wrinkles creased around her eyes and mouth that he hadn’t noticed before. She appeared tired. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her tired.

“He has caused me as much trouble as the whelp.” Kane didn’t mince words. She knew what he wanted to do about it.

“If you and your father had listened to me about them both, there would have been no trouble. But an alpha always knows best, doesn’t he, dear?” Framed by a red-flowered scarf, her face was as sweet and sugared as a saint, but Kane didn’t miss the sarcastic, passive-aggressive reprimand in her voice at all.

“Alphas raise alphas. Omegas raise omegas,” Kane quoted his father’s words.

“Wait until you have sons whose minds you can’t read and daughters who don’t jump at your every bark. Give Nothonal more time. You are not losing anything ceding Sector 2, anyway.”

“I’m not? Do you know what they are doing there? He’s made it a garden to grow anarchy. I thought you wanted to unite the alphas, teach them some self-control?”

“You know he wasn’t always this way,” she said with a sigh, looking at the ceiling with an eye roll at hearing her own beliefs spoken back to her. “If your father had kept his word, this would not have happened.”

“Will you ever forgive my father for that?”

“I love him. He has my blessing, as do all my unmated sons.”

His mother’s blessing had made their family unbeatable. No other omega matched her. Kane had searched for one himself. The lack kept him single for many years, until a too-young omega burst into his life and chose him. His Beauty appeared with a multitude of gifts. Since she was still young, she might develop more.

Kane was old, and Annalise’s breeder’s blessing had kept him alive through things most alphas would not survive. The same with his brothers. After his father nearly died in a bomb explosion, she’d saved him, the father of her children too. Making him her mate, she opened her heart and her forgiveness.

His mother had made a study of their own kind. She jokingly told many about her little hobby, but Kane knew better. Maxed-out data pads and handwritten journals on breed evolution filled all her private spaces. She had teams working with her, some in the open and some in secret. The obsession consumed her free time.

“You know that Nothonal has endangered omegas, betas, drones.” Kane couldn’t let it go. As a significant part of the takeover of the Twelve, Kane’s second oldest brother earned the reward of a sector to command. After he took command, he allowed the alphas there to act like animals.

“He is no worse than your father was or some of his men. Or some of the current Administration. We could both stand to learn from this lesson.” Her frown was so deep that it aged her face into that of an old woman Kane had never seen before.

“Mother?”

“Might makes right. It is a powerful instinct in alphas,” she said over his pause, not giving him a chance to ask about her health. “It tramples everything else. The alpha at the top of the pile rules them all. Isn’t that right? Yes, some are born who are content to rule themselves—manage their own little households—but somewhere in the alpha code is a creature that seeks nothing more than food, sex, and power. It is what it is.”

She sounded resigned. He knew she believed that to keep the breed from killing each other off, they would have to learn peaceful coexistence. Peace was not a single alpha’s goal. Unmated males had nothing better to do than fight for position. They needed a female to give them purpose.

“Alphas want to win. To be the last one standing. To dominate at all costs and keep mine safe,” Kane corrected her.

“And that is why you have alphas forming secret societies with plans to break you, the Administration, and everything your father united. They can’t stand working together. They aspire to be you, my son, the last male standing. I had hoped we got rid of the truly militant ones.”

“It’s in the blood.” He shook his head. There would always be fighters and killers among them.

“Blood and muscle is not all the breed is. We could grow beyond that. Maybe the next generation. Or the generation after that. My Meridon was born to a generation of peace. Your brothers, your father, couldn’t stand that, but he smelled different to you from the first and you wanted to fix him.”

He frowned. He’d never thought of it that way.

She met his eyes, and the age he’d seen on her face disappeared like a mask she’d forgotten she was wearing. “Someone is slow walking the information I asked for in three of the sectors. I want you to take care of it, please. This isn’t going to help us get where we need to go.”

He let her change the subject.

“Not everyone thinks your research is important,” he said in agreement. He knew that his mother often had her request blocked because she was an omega.

“Some alphas are neanderthals.”

Kane gave her a blank look.