AN OMEGA'S CYCLE: TRAPPED IN HEAT WITH MY FOUR STEPBROTHERS.

ADRIAN’S POV

I settled back into the chair and kept my eyes on Jayden, although I was no longer sure whether I was looking at a frightened captive or a man who had decided that the only way he could survive was by lying to me.

Maybe he was spending so much time cooking up the perfect bullshit to say.

A few minutes earlier, he had finally agreed to talk, and I had expected him to give me something useful immediately. Instead, he sat there breathing heavily, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. I opened the folder again and placed it on my lap, waiting for him to begin while refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how impatient I was becoming.

"Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out," I told him, leaning forward with my elbows resting against my knees. "I want to know who contacted you, how they contacted you, what they offered you, what you were instructed to do with Nicholas and whether anybody else was involved. You have one opportunity to give me the truth, Jayden, so don’t waste it trying to tell me something you think I want to hear."

Jayden lowered his eyes for several seconds before finally speaking. "I don’t know who the accomplice is because I wasn’t working with that person directly," he admitted, rubbing his wrists against the restraints as though trying to ease the discomfort. "I was hired by the person behind everything, and most of what I was told came through him. I knew what I was supposed to do with Nicholas, I knew where to take him and I knew that I was supposed to make sure he didn’t get back to your family, but I wasn’t given every detail about the people involved. I wasn’t the person making the decisions. I was the person carrying them out."

I stared at him, waiting for the rest.

"Then give me the name of the person who hired you," I said, closing the folder slowly as I watched his face. "You don’t get to hide behind the word ’hired’ after everything you’ve done. Someone gave you instructions, someone provided whatever resources you needed and someone clearly expected you to finish this without getting caught. Tell me who that person is."

Jayden hesitated. Then he looked directly at me. "Your father."

For a second, I didn’t understand what he had said.

What the fuck?

I simply stared at him. Then I laughed. Because I couldn’t help it.

The sound came out before I could stop it because the accusation was so ridiculous that my mind rejected it immediately. My father? The man who had spent the last several days searching for Nicholas, sitting beside his unconscious wife in a hospital and ordering special forces to find him? The same man who had demanded that we tell him everything about Nicholas’s disappearance? Jayden couldn’t possibly expect me to believe that.

"You’ve officially run out of things to say," I said, standing from the chair with a disbelieving smile. "I gave you a chance to tell me the truth, and instead you’ve decided that accusing my father is going to somehow make me doubt him. You should have chosen someone else because there isn’t a single person in this family who knows my father better than I do. If you think I’m going to believe that he hired you to kill Nicholas, then you’ve completely misunderstood the situation you’re in."

Jayden shook his head quickly. "I’m not making it up, Adrian. I know exactly how it sounds, and if I were sitting where you’re sitting, I wouldn’t believe it either, but your father is the person who contacted me. He knew about Nicholas before you boys even understood what was happening, and he knew exactly what Nicholas was. He wanted him gone."

I walked toward the table and picked up Jayden’s phone.

"Then prove it," I said, turning the phone over in my hand before looking back at him. "You keep telling me that you have evidence, so stop talking and show me something that actually connects my father to you. Messages, calls, photographs, anything. If you’re lying, I’m going to know."

Jayden nodded toward the phone. "Open the gallery. I kept the evidence there because I knew I might need it if something went wrong. Go through the folders until you find the report. It should be near the top because I saved it recently."

I unlocked the phone and followed his instructions, scrolling through photographs and documents. Most of what I saw was useless—pictures of locations, screenshots, photographs of Nicholas from different points in time and documents I didn’t immediately recognize. Then I found the report.

I opened it and my eyes moved across the page.

I read it once. Then again. The name at the top was Jayden’s and the second name belonged to my father.

The report stated that the two were biological brothers.

I stared at the screen and my first reaction was disbelief. Then I laughed again.

"This is what you’ve got?" I asked, holding the phone up slightly as I looked at him. "A DNA report you could have fabricated yourself? You expect me to believe that my father has been secretly hiding a brother from us for years because you put a document on your phone? Do you honestly think this is enough to convince me that you’re telling the truth?"

Jayden’s expression changed. "You think I made it?"

"Of course you did," I replied, dropping the phone onto the table. "You know exactly what you’re doing. You found a way to create something that looks official, put my father’s name on it and now you’re hoping I’ll panic. I’m not going to."

Jayden leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed. "Adrian, listen to me. I didn’t create that report. I didn’t need to. Your father knows who I am, and he knows exactly what happened between us. If you call him right now and tell him you’re with me, watch how he reacts. Don’t tell him what I’ve said. Don’t give him any warning. Just ask him about me and see what happens."

I stared at him. "You really want me to believe that my father has a brother nobody in this family has ever heard about?"

"He does," Jayden insisted, his voice becoming more urgent. "And he has spent years making sure nobody finds out. That’s why I told you to look at the report. You can keep pretending I’m lying, but the evidence is sitting right there."

I picked up the phone again.

Jayden continued before I could say anything. "And don’t think you can kill me and make this disappear. If your father finds out you’ve killed me before I tell you everything, you’ll have a much bigger problem than you realize. He’ll know exactly what happened, and you won’t be able to pretend you never heard any of this."

I looked at him sharply.

"My father has no brother," I said, my voice firmer this time. "I’ve known him my entire life. I’ve heard stories about his childhood, his parents, his family. There has never been another brother. You’re inventing a person because you’ve realized you’re running out of excuses."

Jayden shook his head.

"No," he said, leaning back against the chair. "You’re thinking about the family your father told you about. I’m talking about the family he hid."

I said nothing.

He continued. "We were separated when we were young. I didn’t grow up with him. I was taken away because of what I was, and by the time I was old enough to understand what had happened, I had already been moved around enough that finding my way back wasn’t simple. Your father was an Alpha, and I was an Omega. That was the problem. He couldn’t have an Omega brother attached to his name, especially not one who could expose parts of his past that he had spent years burying."

My grip tightened around the phone and Jayden watched my face carefully.

"I eventually found him," he continued, his voice quieter now. "I didn’t walk into his life and announce who I was. I watched him first. I learned what kind of man he had become and what he believed about Omegas. Then I approached him. At first, he didn’t want anything to do with me. He wanted me gone. But eventually he realized I could be useful to him."

I shook my head. "This is insane."

Jayden didn’t stop. "You think I wanted to spend my life doing this? You think I enjoyed following people around and getting rid of Omegas because I had nothing better to do? Your father gave me a reason to believe I was finally useful to the person I had spent my entire life trying to find. Every time an Omega became a problem for him, I dealt with it. Every time somebody threatened something he wanted protected, I handled it. Nicholas wasn’t the first."

My stomach tightened. "Nicholas was targeted because he was an Omega?"

"Because he was an Omega who had become a problem," Jayden answered, his expression becoming serious. "Your father didn’t want him around, and neither did some of the people connected to him. I was told to make sure Nicholas disappeared before he could become more difficult to control. I wasn’t supposed to let him reach the authorities or anyone outside your family. I was supposed to make the problem disappear."

I stared at him.

For several seconds, I couldn’t find anything to say. My mind kept going back to the hospital.

My father had been so concerned about his disappearance. The way he had demanded updates. None of it made sense. Unless Jayden was lying.

He had to be lying. He had to be.

"You expect me to believe that my father ordered Nicholas’s death while simultaneously sending people to find him?" I asked, walking slowly across the room as I tried to make the pieces fit together. "You expect me to believe he hired you, then allowed us to search for Nicholas, then sat in the hospital while his wife collapsed because her son was missing? What kind of person would do that?"

Jayden’s expression hardened. "The kind of person who doesn’t want his own children knowing what he’s done."

I stopped.

Jayden continued, "He needed you boys to believe he was searching for Nicholas. He needed your mother to believe he was doing everything he could. He needed the authorities to believe he wanted Nicholas found. That’s how people like him survive. They don’t stand in the middle of the room and announce what they’re doing. They make sure everyone around them thinks they’re doing the opposite."

I looked down at the phone again.

The DNA report was still open and my father’s name was right there.

I couldn’t explain why seeing it made my chest feel tight.

"Why would he trust you?" I asked, returning to the chair. "If you’re really his brother, why would he use you for something like this?"

Jayden looked at me for a long moment. "Because I was already outside the family," he said, shifting slightly against the restraints. "Because nobody knew about me. Because if I got caught, nobody would connect me to him. And because he knew exactly what I had become after spending my life being treated like I was something people could throw away. He knew I’d do whatever it took to remain useful to him."

I stared at him and he looked exhausted now.

"And Nicholas?" I asked, my voice quieter. "Why was he so important?"

Jayden’s eyes dropped. "Because someone wanted him gone."

"Who?" Jayden hesitated and I leaned forward. "Who wanted Nicholas dead?"

Jayden looked back at me. "I told you, I was hired by your father."

That answer did nothing to answer the questions in my head, it only created more of them.

I stood abruptly, grabbed the phone and headed toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Jayden asked, watching me carefully.

I stopped with my hand on the door. "I need to make a call."

"You should talk to your father before you decide what to do with me," Jayden said, straightening as much as the restraints allowed. "And when you do, don’t tell him what I said. Ask him about me first. Ask him whether he has a brother. Ask him what happened to that brother. Then watch his face when you mention my name."

I opened the door because I couldn’t answer him.

I walked out of the basement and closed the door behind me, leaving the guards on the other side.

The phone was still in my hand and the DNA report was still open on the screen.

I stared at my father’s name for several seconds before locking the phone.

Jayden was messing with me.

But... Something scared me— what if he wasn’t?

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