Chapter 16 Corvus
sixteen
Corvus
I shouldn't be doing this.
But I don't.
Because knowledge is power, and understanding Vespera Levine has become the most complex problem I've ever tried to solve.
It's 2:47 AM. I'm in my room at the lake house, laptop open, her phone's data streaming to my screen in real-time. Dorian gave her the phone back yesterday as a "gesture of good faith." Oakley thought it was a good idea. Even I agreed—publicly.
But privately, I knew exactly what I'd do the moment she was asleep.
The initial data dump is extensive. Eighty-nine missed calls. Two hundred and thirty-four texts. Fifty-two voicemails. Her father dominates the numbers—desperation in digits. Stephanie not far behind. And then there's someone named Ben Rosen.
Fifteen calls. Sixty-four texts. Ten voicemails.
That's... excessive. Statistically anomalous for a two-week acquaintance.
I start reading.
Where are you? I'm at the car like you asked
Vespera it's been 20 minutes, are you okay?
I went back to the theater. No one's seen you
Standard concern. Appropriate for the circumstances.
But then:
I'm getting scared. Please answer
It's been two hours. I called the police. I'm sorry if you're mad but I had to
He called the police. For someone he'd known two weeks. Interesting.
Day 2. Your dad filed a missing person report. He's devastated
How does he know about her father? How close did they get?
My chest tightens. I tell myself it's just data analysis. Pattern recognition. Not the hot spike of something irrational crawling up my throat.
Day 3. They found your bag backstage. Your wallet and keys still in it. Everyone thinks something bad happened
Day 4. I keep replaying that night. The roof. What I said. Did I scare you off? Was it my fault?
The roof. What happened on the roof?
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache.
Day 5. Marcus canceled the final performance. Said it didn't feel right without you. We're all lost without you
Day 6. I don't know if you'll ever see this but I need you to know - you were the best thing about this summer. The best Medea I've ever seen. The best person I've ever met.
Best person he's ever met. After two weeks.
The repetition of "best" isn't just rhetoric. It's infatuation masked as praise.
Something hot and vicious tears through my chest. I catalog it clinically—elevated heart rate, shallow breathing, tension in shoulders and jaw. Fists clenched so tight the laptop edge bites into my palms.
Anger.
No. Not just anger.
Possessiveness.
Which is absurd. I don't do possessive. I do rational. Analytical. Strategic.
But this Beta—this insignificant, powerless Beta—thinks he has a claim on her. Thinks he can text her, worry about her, remember nights on roofs with her.
I scroll up through the message history, my hands less steady than they should be.
Morning, evening star! Coffee's on me if you're ready in five!
Evening star. He has a pet name for her.
My vision actually blurs for a second. I blink hard, force focus.
You're brilliant. The way you played that scene today - I couldn't look away
Want to grab dinner after rehearsal? Nothing fancy, just... I'd like to spend more time with you
I know you're dealing with a lot. But I'm here. Whatever you need
And then I find it. A text from the night before she was taken:
What I said on the roof - I meant it. Every word. You're the best thing about this summer. I'm halfway in love with you.
Halfway in love with her.
I stand up so fast my chair crashes backward.
The sound echoes in the room but I barely hear it over the roaring in my ears. This Beta. This nothing. This insignificant fucking Beta thinks he's in love with our omega.
Our omega. When did I start thinking of her as "ours"?
But the possessive rage coursing through me doesn't care about semantics. Doesn't care about logic. Only cares that some Beta touched her, called her pet names, confessed feelings, made her smile in ways we never could.
I pace. My hands shake. This isn't me. I don't lose control like this. I analyze, I strategize, I solve problems with data and planning.
But there's no data that will solve the image now burned into my brain of Ben Rosen touching her face on a roof at sunset.
I force myself to breathe. To think.
Ben Rosen is a Beta. No biological claim. The fated bond supersedes any emotional attachment. He's irrelevant.
Except he's not irrelevant. Because she apologized to him. Because she was kind to him in ways she'll never be kind to us. Because he represents something normal and safe that we can never give her.
I need more information.
I access her phone's photo gallery. Scroll through with hands that won't quite steady.
There. Pictures from the Columbus program. Her on stage as Medea, fierce and brilliant. Her with other cast members. And then—
Her and Ben. His arm around her shoulders. Both of them laughing.
Another one. On a roof, sunset behind them. His hand touching her face.
Another. Closer. Intimate. Like he was about to kiss her or just finished kissing her.
My vision goes red. Actual red, blurring at the edges.
I slam the laptop shut before I do something stupid like throw it.
This is irrational. This level of reaction is completely disproportionate. Ben Rosen is in Texas. She's here. The bond ensures she'll never fully connect with a Beta anyway.
But the images won't leave my mind. His hand on her face. Her smiling at him. The easy intimacy between them that we'll never have because we kidnapped her and destroyed any chance of her ever looking at us that way.
I open a new browser window.
Type in "Ben Rosen Austin Texas."
I shouldn't do this. I know I shouldn't do this.
But I can't stop.
His social media is public. Amateur security. Theater headshots, rehearsal photos, posts about the Columbus program.
Posts about her.
Missing this brilliant human. Come back soon, evening star.
Posted two days ago. With one of the photos from the program.
The comments are full of people asking who she is, where she went, if she's okay.
He's making her public. Claiming her publicly.
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
I could ruin him. Easily. A few keystrokes and Ben Rosen's life becomes very complicated. Failed background checks. Flagged accounts. A misdemeanor charge that appears on his record—nothing major, nothing violent, just enough to cause problems.
I start typing.
Stop.
Start again.
Stop.
What the fuck am I doing?
I close the browser. Close the laptop. Sit in the dark and try to remember who I am.
Corvus Barclay. Analytical. Controlled. Rational.
Not this jealous, possessive creature who wants to destroy a Beta boy for the crime of being kind to a girl who needed kindness.
But maybe that's who I've always been. Maybe the control was always just a mask. And Vespera—brilliant, defiant, dying Vespera—has stripped it away and shown me the monster underneath.
I think about the data. The facts.
She's our fated mate. Triple compatibility. One in fifty million odds.
She's dying from rejecting us. Terminal rejection sickness.
She had a life in Columbus. Friends. Theater. A Beta boy who called her evening star.
We took all of it.
And now I'm sitting in the dark at 3 AM, hacking her phone and planning revenge against someone whose only crime was caring about her.
I am a monster.
Just a more analytical one than Dorian. A more calculated one than Oakley.
But still a monster.
The next morning, I find her by the pool.
She's swimming laps. Slow, deliberate strokes that shouldn't be possible given her condition. But she's always been stubborn. Always pushed past what biology said she could handle.
I watch from the terrace. Tell myself I'm monitoring her health. Ensuring she doesn't push too far.
But really, I'm just watching her. The way water streams off her skin. The grace in her movements despite the rejection sickness eating her alive.
She surfaces at the shallow end. Sees me.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then: "Did you have fun reading my messages?"
My blood goes cold. "How did you—"
"Remote access leaves traces if you know what to look for." She pulls herself out of the pool, water sheeting off her. "You're good, Corvus. But you're not as subtle as you think."
I should deny it. Deflect. But something in her eyes—sharp, knowing, furious—makes lying seem pointless.
"I needed to understand the situation," I say instead.
"The situation." She laughs, bitter and sharp. "Is that what we're calling your jealous stalking now?"
The accusation hits too close. "I was gathering information."
"About Ben." Not a question.
"Among others."
"Did you find what you were looking for?" She wraps a towel around herself. "Did the data satisfy your curiosity?"
"No." The honesty surprises me. "It raised more questions."
"Such as?"
"What happened on the roof."
She goes very still. "That's none of your business."
"Everything about you is my business. You're my fated mate."
"I'm your prisoner." Her voice is flat. Cold. "There's a difference."
"Vespera—"
"He told me he was falling for me." She says it like a challenge.
Like she wants to hurt me. "On the roof.
The night before you took me. He said I was brilliant and beautiful and he wanted to see where things could go.
And I—" She stops. Swallows hard. "I was going to say yes.
Going to try. Because he was kind and normal and everything you're not. "
Each word is a knife. I feel them slide between my ribs, precise and devastating.
"But then I never got the chance," she continues. "Because you kidnapped me. Because biology decided I belonged to you. Because my choices don't matter when genetics are involved."
I have no defense. No data that will make this better. No analysis that will undo what we've done.
"I'm sorry," I say. It's inadequate. Pathetic. But it's all I have.
"Are you?" She tilts her head. "Are you sorry you did it? Or just sorry I'm not grateful?"
"Both. Neither. I don't know anymore."
The honesty seems to surprise her. She studies me with those sharp green eyes that see too much.
"What were you planning to do to him?" she asks quietly. "To Ben. I know you were thinking about it."
I could lie. Should lie. But something about the way she's looking at me—like she already knows, like she's just waiting to see if I'll be honest—makes deception impossible.
"I was going to ruin him." The words taste like ash. "Background checks. Credit issues. Small enough to be plausible, big enough to derail his career. Make sure he never forgot the cost of touching what's mine."
"What's yours." She laughs, sharp and broken. "You don't own me, Corvus."
"The bond says otherwise."
"Fuck the bond." She steps closer. "You want to know what the bond actually says? It says my body needs you to survive. That's it. Not my heart. Not my mind. Not my choice. Just my stupid, traitorous biology that would rather kill me than let me be free."
"I know." And I do. The data supports it. Triple fated bonds have never been rejected successfully. The mortality rate is—
She slaps me.
The crack echoes across the terrace. My cheek burns.
"Stop thinking," she says. "Stop analyzing and cataloging and solving me like I'm a problem to be fixed. I'm a person, Corvus. A person whose life you destroyed because you couldn't control your biology."
My cheek throbs. She's breathing hard, eyes bright with unshed tears.
And I've never wanted her more.
Which is fucked up. Which proves everything she just said. Which makes me exactly the monster I know I am.
"I won't hurt Ben," I hear myself say. "I'll try not to. I can't promise. But I'll try."
"Why?"
"Because you asked." I touch my burning cheek. "Because you're right. About all of it. And because—" I stop. Force the words out. "Because making you hate me more won't make you mine. It'll just prove I never deserved you in the first place."
She stares at me for a long moment.
Then she turns and walks away.
I watch her go. Watch the door close behind her. Stand there with my burning cheek and my racing heart and the knowledge that I just confessed something I didn't even know I felt.
I pull out my phone. Delete the files I'd been compiling on Ben. Close the browser tabs. Erase the plans I'd been making.
It doesn't make me good.
But maybe it makes me slightly less of a monster.
And right now, with Vespera's handprint still burning on my face, that's the best I can hope for.