Built, Not Born
Kain Jeffries was born into Tasmania's most enigmatic dynasty, but he wanted calluses, not inheritance. He chose construction sites over boardrooms, built a life with Brianne, and counted down the months until their daughter arrived. Then someone pushed him through a door that shouldn't exist. Brianne followed. Their daughter was born in a world with no hospitals, no safety, no way back. And Kain learned what a father becomes when there's nowhere left to run.
Kain Jeffries could have had anything. The Jeffries name opened doors across Tasmania—boardrooms, bank accounts, a future already mapped in someone else's handwriting. He wanted none of it. He wanted concrete dust and honest sweat. He wanted Brianne's paint-stained fingers intertwined with his. He wanted to hold his daughter and know he'd earned the right to call himself her father.
He was twenty-three when his uncle's partner shoved him through a portal in a Berriedale living room. Brianne came after him—pregnant, terrified, choosing him over everything she knew. They built a life in a settlement carved from hostile ground, surrounded by strangers who became family because there was no one else left.
And while they were learning what survival actually costs, the family Kain left behind was butchered. The manor. His parents. His sisters. Slaughtered weeks after he vanished, buried before he knew they were dead.
Kain builds houses now. Raises his daughter. Loves Brianne the way he promised he would.
But some nights, he catches himself staring at his own hands and wondering what else they'll do before this is over.
