Chapter 46
brYLEE
In war, the person who chooses the time and place of a battle is often the victor. But how many of those battles have been an omega preparing to face an alpha? A daughter preparing to face a mother?
Killing strangers seems easier than confronting the evil infecting your own family.
My heart feels shrunken, compressed to the size of a grain of salt, tight and tiny within my chest—so small that I can hardly feel a thing.
Part of me wonders if that's my body protecting me from what I know I have to do, but I don't prod too deeply, don't question it, because I don't think I could bear to feel everything I should be right now.
Insulation is good. Necessary.
And so, when I find Mother's assistant and look through her schedule on the pretense of penning in a meeting, I'm able to keep my voice steady and a soft smile on my face.
My finger glides down the electronic calendar on her tablet as I try to select the best time and place for the war I'm about to wage on the woman who created me.
"I'm so sorry she's so busy this week." Erica, a middle-aged omega, blushes as she lies politely.
"Understandable. She has so much going on. I'll just get a slot next week," I respond as I secretly note the queen's locations this evening and schedule a meeting for later that I won't show up for.
Erica curtsies. "Thank you for your understanding, Princess Brylee. Everyone else today has been so impatient."
"Of course." I pat her on the shoulder. "I know those alpha tempers can't be easy to handle. You're an angel for putting up with them. I know my mother always says she'd be lost without you."
Erica waves me off with a dismissive hand but a bright smile. In contrast, my smile fades the second I pivot away from her—the second I can drop the mask of dutiful daughter.
Anticipation starts to swirl in my gut, and I'm sorely tempted to burst in on Mother's current meeting with several mayors and shove her sins down her throat publicly.
She deserves slicing shame and corrosive condemnation.
But that won't serve my long-term goals.
I need her to agree to a truce.
For that I need leverage.
My teeth grind together. Leverage equates to blackmail, but I don't think the blackhearted woman would surrender her precious war for anything less. Which means I need to await the right moment.
Tonight there's the perfect opportunity.
It offers privacy but also the potential for emotional leverage.
And so I dig up every ounce of patience I possess. And I wait.
Evening has fallen, and the moon is full, casting gleaming blue stripes upon my marble floor in my dressing room as I stare at myself in the mirror and don pearl earrings with the same sort of care I've seen soldiers use to strap omega scent grenades to their chests.
My white dress floats around my calves, and my hair has been pulled into a French twist. Simple, elegant, modest—visually, I'm all the things an alpha wants an omega to be. My outfit is designed to disarm.
My tongue, on the other hand, will be as sharp as a sword.
Ridge stands behind me in black jeans and a black collared shirt, leaning against the door frame, watching me with a steady, solemn gaze.
My men pushed their meetings out until tomorrow in order to stay with me through the horrid revelation and the fallout of Sam and Caran's betrayal. I don't know what excuses they made, and frankly, I don't care. I just appreciate that they've shoved everything aside to stay at my side today.
Even though I won't talk about it. Can't.
Their presence alone is the balm I need.
They banished Caran to a guest room in our wing and told the coward not to emerge because I can only take on so many soul-shattering prospects in a single day, and his reckoning will have to wait.
After that exile, I did take solace in Alpha Team X for several quiet hours. Simply sitting on their laps, thinking, planning, absorbing their attention. I tucked my face near the crooks of their necks and inhaled their scents one by one.
Each man gave me a different sort of strength to draw on: Colter was unwavering, Kylian buzzed with eagerness, Luka was thoughtful, Ridge was bold. In my head, I imagined weaving all their energies together as if I could forge a shield from it.
And I'd needed that shield when Luka pulled up video proof of the princes' claims.
Noth news reports showcased the devastation of a mysterious airborne illness and advised people to stay indoors while footage panned over shopping-mall floors coated in glass and blood.
Later broadcasts showed smoke rising as people burned the dead in mass pyres because there were too many for burial to be an option.
A half-singed teddy bear had fallen out from one burning mass to the ground—causing me to weep until my throat was flayed open and raw.
My men had wanted to stop research then.
But, once I'd quelled my sobbing, once the ache in my ribs was more manageable, I'd pushed. "More, Luka. I need to see it. I need it branded into my brain."
He'd reached out and covered my hand with his own. "Love, you don't—"
"I do. Someone needs to mourn them. Someone needs to take responsibility. Someone has to stop this. But I need to know the details in order to do that. It doesn't matter how much they hurt."
He'd bitten his lip and glanced at Ridge and then Colter, almost as if he was looking for someone else to speak up against my plan. But all of them had been surprisingly stoic, even Kylian.
My psychopath had stared out the window with a furrowed brow and muttered, "I wonder if I collected the wrong sets of teeth…"
The same queasiness seemed to hit us all as we finished off what we could find in the news and moved on to social media posts.
They were even worse. People hiding, recording final goodbyes in strained whispers.
Pleading for help. Some were found as they held their phones.
I couldn't bear to watch, even with blurred-out images, because the screams alone were enough to strip my bones to nothing.
Project Harpax is a nightmare.
And I have to stop it.
I stare at my moon-dipped reflection and see how pale and bloodless my cheeks are. That won't do. I can't walk into the room looking like a ghost. I inhale slowly, trying to center myself as I add more blush to my cheeks with soft, steady swipes.
"We can help," Ridge states as I spritz on the slightest hint of perfume, hoping to hide any nervous sweat that might betray me.
I gaze at him in the mirror, trying to pour all my gratitude into my expression. "You're amazing. But you can't help with this."
His brows lower in consternation. "I don't think—"
"The bigger the audience, the more she'll feel the need to prove herself. And if other alphas are there?" I pause, letting the message sink in because Ridge knows I'm right.
My mother will never allow herself to look weak in front of other alphas.
Never.
"This is a battle I need to fight alone," I say softly as I spin and walk toward him.
He grits his teeth but merely pulls me into a tight hug, kissing the top of my head. "You're infuriating, you know."
I smile, my cheek pressed to his chest, to that firm heartbeat I love more than my own. "You're infuriated because I'm right."
"Yes," he admits with a growl as he clutches me closer.
I let him hold me for a second because he needs to...and maybe a little because I need him to.
But I pull away sooner than I want to because I can't let myself sink into comfort. I have to remain vigilant and sharp. Just as I did when I walked up to the gates of Eros, I'm going to have to dig deeper than I ever have in order to pull off the impossible.
Candles flicker on the dining table, a huge bouquet of red roses perfuming the space as I stride in, interrupting what was clearly a romantic dinner in for my parents wedged between meetings and an evening press conference.
They're tucked around a small round table in a dining room that contains more windows than walls, starlight gleaming down from all directions.
Dad’s eyes widen at the interruption, but my mother's narrow, immediately censuring. There was a time when her rebuke would have made me wilt.
Not now. Now there's a snarling energy swimming through me, and I'm very close to snapping.
Slow. Slow, Brylee.
I stop before I reach the table, standing firm and formal, just close enough to speak without being overheard by the guards posted outside the doors.
Because I'm about to commit treason.
I'm about to undermine the alpha to whom I should owe unquestioning loyalty, not just because she's my mother, but because she's my monarch. But how could I be loyal to the embodiment of evil? To selfish cruelty made flesh?
Knowing that I'm blood-tied to such a monster is the worst feeling in the world, and shame stains my cheeks.
Staring at the tiny lines around the edges of her eyes, I wonder how long ago she sold her sense of morality. I wonder if she ever had one.
Tears start to well in my eyes, though I don't want them there because I know she'll pounce on them as a sign of weakness.
Dad notes my wet eyes first, and he sets his cloth napkin onto the table and stands. "What's wrong, Brylee?"
He makes a move to come toward me, but Mom holds up her hand, and he freezes.
I swallow around the rocks suddenly crowding my throat.
My gaze finds my mother's and holds until she senses the challenge in it and rises from her seat.
"Why did you create Project Harpax?" I ask, tone low and surprisingly even given the fact that I feel as if my chest might explode.
Her head tilts, and one of her perfectly arranged spiral curls falls out of place. "Where did you hear that name?"
I keep my inhales slow and even, though I have to remind myself to do so because the alpha pheromones that waft in my direction are aggressive and angry in contrast to her placid face, and my instinct is to drop my gaze. But I will not.
"A little birdie told me."
"You're fucking childish," she states dismissively.