18. The Secret in the Orchard
The Secret in the Orchard
Andie
I’d always liked apples. Growing up, it had never been something I’d questioned. The year I’d first presented, my mother had fed an apple to me every morning, and I’d loved it.
Age had changed my perspective. And when I opened my eyes to a canopy of green and gold, I felt no fondness or warmth. All I felt was nausea.
Branches heavy with fruit swayed above me. The grass beneath my back was impossibly soft, cushioning me like hands holding me up from below. White and purple flowers grew in patterns too deliberate to be wild, spiraling outward from where I lay.
This was the Adyton. The deepest part of Hera’s garden. I’d somehow managed to avoid coming here throughout my time in Samos. Apparently, I’d run out of luck.
“Andromeda.”
My mother’s face swam into focus as she leaned over me.
Helena’s silver-streaked hair hung loose around her shoulders instead of in its usual severe arrangement.
She looked older than I remembered, worn down in a way that went deeper than simple exhaustion.
Her hand found my forehead, cool and careful. I was too weak to flinch away from it.
“You’re awake.” She lifted a cup to my lips before I could try to speak.
It was water, cold and sweet. My body drank without consulting my mind about whether I wanted anything from her.
“You’ve been unconscious for a week. The garden has been healing you, but it takes time to recover from what you went through. ”
A week. I had lost an entire week to darkness and dreams I couldn’t remember.
I tried to push myself upright, but my arms trembled and gave out. When I fell back, the grass caught me, soft as a mother’s embrace. I hated it for that tenderness.
“Don’t push yourself,” a familiar voice advised me. “Your body needs more time.”
Danae moved into my line of sight. The shadows under her eyes told me she hadn’t slept properly since I’d last seen her. Her dark hair was escaping from a knot that looked at least five days old. She kept fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve the way she always did when she was trying not to cry.
“Danae,” I croaked out. “What happened?”
She flinched at the question. The guilt that flooded her face was so raw that I almost felt sorry for her. Almost, but not quite. I was starting to remember the reason I was lying in my mother’s sacred garden, missing an entire week of my life.
“The collar failed.” Danae couldn’t hold my gaze, her eyes dropping to the flowers by my shoulder instead.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and took a shuddering breath.
“I’m so sorry, Andie. I thought I could fix this.
I thought science could beat a curse that’s survived for millennia.
I was arrogant, and you almost died because of me. ”
The collar.
Images crashed through my mind in jagged fragments.
The metal settling against my throat, cool at first and then burning hot.
The sensation of my body turning itself inside out, heat and need and rage all tangled together.
Alexander’s face, pale with terror, as I screamed his name and clawed at his chest.
I remembered begging him to stay and trying to tear his throat out. I remembered wanting him inside me so badly I thought I would die from the emptiness. Most of all, I remembered hating him so viciously I wanted to watch him bleed.
My hand flew to my throat and found only smooth skin beneath my fingertips. No metal, no heat, no pain.
“We removed it while you were unconscious.” Helena’s hand covered mine, guiding it back down to my side. “You’re perfectly safe now.”
Safe. What a joke. The collar was gone. Another solution destroyed, another door slammed shut, another failure to add to the growing list of things that couldn’t save me.
I waited for despair to crush me the way it always did. When it came, the feeling settled over my chest like a familiar weight I had grown too exhausted to fight. But underneath that suffocating darkness, something else stirred, small and shameful and impossible to ignore.
Relief.
I hadn’t wanted the collar. I’d agreed to it because I was out of options and too exhausted to keep fighting.
Everyone around me kept insisting it would help, because the alternative was waiting until the curse consumed me.
But the thought of wearing Argos Stormwright’s aura like a leash had made my stomach turn.
Now it was gone, and I couldn’t make myself mourn its loss the way I was supposed to.
I said nothing, because there was nothing I could say that would make things better. Danae was still talking. Words tumbled out of her in a rush of apologies and technical explanations that I let wash over me.
She was blaming herself, cataloguing all the ways her calculations might have been wrong. I didn’t have the energy to comfort her or the cruelty to tell her I was glad she’d failed.
“You should rest,” Helena finally said. “The garden will continue healing you while you sleep, and by tomorrow you should be strong enough to walk on your own.”
I closed my eyes because I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore.
My mother with her careful concern, hovering over me like I was something fragile that might shatter.
My best friend with her guilt and her apologies, still trying to fix a problem that had no solution.
If the garden had been able to heal me, I wouldn’t have needed a collar at all.
But I didn’t have the strength to say that either.
I let my breathing slow into the rhythm of sleep, pretending I had drifted back into unconsciousness. It wasn’t hard. Exhaustion pressed down on me like a physical weight. The garden’s magic hummed through my bones with a warmth that wanted to pull me under.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
“Is she asleep?” Danae finally asked.
“I think so.” Helena shifted beside me, fabric rustling as she settled into a different position. “The healing takes a great deal out of her. She’ll drift in and out for the next few days.”
“Good. That’s good.” Danae hesitated, as if she was bracing herself for something difficult. “Helena, we need to talk about this arrangement with House Hades.”
My heart stuttered against my ribs, but I kept my breathing even.
“The arrangement is settled,” Helena shot back. “There’s nothing left to discuss.”
“Nothing to discuss?” Danae repeated. “You’re handing her over to Damon Blackwood. The same man who kidnapped Cora Ellis and held her prisoner until she bonded with him. You can’t possibly think this is the right way.”
“He’s offering to help her, Danae. His cousin has agreed to a guardian arrangement that will give House Hades the legal standing to—”
“A fake arrangement.” Danae cut her off.
“Political theater. And this ability he supposedly has, this power to dampen her Omega nature, has anyone actually tested it? Has anyone verified that it works the way he claims, that it’s even real?
Or are we just taking the word of a man who has every reason to want revenge against House Zeus? ”
“Damon demonstrated the ability to Alexander directly.” Helena’s voice stayed calm and measured. “Alexander was satisfied that the power is genuine.”
“Alexander.” Danae spat his name like it tasted bitter. “Alexander, who agreed to step back and give up any claim on her. Alexander, who’s so drowning in guilt that he’d agree to anything that lets him feel like he’s helping instead of hurting. That’s your verification?”
I lay perfectly still while something cold spread through my chest.
Alexander had given up his claim on me. He’d stepped back and agreed to hand me over to House Hades like cargo being transferred between ships.
Of course he had. That was what Alphas did, wasn’t it? They made decisions about Omegas without consulting the Omegas themselves. They moved us around like pieces on a game board and negotiated our futures while we lay unconscious.
My autonomy had never mattered to Alexander, not really. He’d proven it by signing me away to another House the moment things got too complicated for him to handle.
The small, pathetic part of me that still remembered the warmth of his arms tried to feel grief at his abandonment. But I was too angry to mourn him, too furious at all of them to feel anything softer than rage.
“Danae.” Helena’s composure hardened into something colder. “I understand your concerns. But you should understand that I know Damon. He is many things, but he is not a liar. He may want revenge, but he wouldn’t harm Andie to accomplish it.
“Most importantly, we are out of options. The collar failed, and we both saw what that failure did to her. Alexander’s presence triggers the curse.
Every treatment we’ve attempted has made things worse instead of better.
Andromeda is running out of time, and House Hades is offering something no one else can. ”
“So the solution is to suppress everything that makes her an Omega? To hand her over to strangers who will turn her into something she’s not?”
“The solution is to keep her alive long enough to find a real cure.” Helena’s breath caught, and when she spoke again, something had cracked in her voice.
“You were there when the collar failed, Danae. You saw her screaming, clawing at Alexander, begging for him and trying to tear him apart at the same time. You saw how close we came to losing her.”
Danae said nothing, but I heard her breathing change, becoming shaky and uneven.
“I have watched my daughter suffer for months,” Helena continued.
“I have watched every solution fail. I have watched her push away everyone who tries to help, including me, including her fathers, including you. If House Hades can give her peace, even temporary peace, even artificial peace, I will take it.”
“But this isn’t your decision to make,” Danae tried to insist. “It’s Andie’s decision. Her life, her body, her choice. And you’re making it for her while she sleeps, just like you’ve made every other decision about her since you brought her to this island.”
“Because she would refuse.” Helena didn’t deny the accusation.
“You know her as well as I do, Danae. If I presented this option to her while she was conscious, she would reject it out of pure stubbornness. She would rather die than accept help from another Alpha House, and I am not prepared to let her make that choice.”
“Then maybe you should respect her enough to let her make it anyway.”
“And watch her die?” Helena laughed, and the sound held no humor at all. “You’re asking me to stand by while the curse destroys her from the inside. I’m her mother, Danae. I can’t do that. I won’t.”
I lay beneath the apple trees with fury building behind my eyes like a storm waiting to break.
They were doing it again. Deciding my fate without me, talking about what was best for me like I was a child or a patient.
House Hades was coming for me, and Alexander had agreed to let them take me.
My mother thought she was saving my life by handing me over to strangers who wanted to hollow me out.
None of them had asked me what I wanted. None of them had even considered that I might have an opinion worth hearing. Danae was trying, but she had no real say in the matter.
“The transfer will happen at the end of the week.” Helena’s voice had steadied again, the matriarch back in control. “Elara Blackwood will file the guardian claim tomorrow, and by this time next week, Andromeda will be in House Hades custody.”
“Helena, please—”
“This discussion is over,” Helena snapped. “I have made my decision. You may disagree with it, but you will not interfere.”
“She’s my best friend,” Danae whispered.
“And she is my daughter,” Helena said coldly. “I think you should leave, Danae. Go back to your workshop. Continue your research. Perhaps one day you’ll find a solution that doesn’t require these compromises.”
“You’re sending me away.” The disbelief in Danae’s voice was raw and wounded.
“I’m suggesting that your presence may not be helpful right now.
You care about her, I know you do, but caring is not enough.
” Helena paused, and when she continued, some of the hardness had left her tone.
“Sometimes we must make difficult choices for the people we love, even when they would hate us for making them.”
I heard Danae stand, heard her footsteps crush the grass as she moved away from where I lay.
She stopped a few feet away. I could picture her standing there with her fists clenched and her jaw tight.
She was torn between her loyalty to me and the reality that she had no power here, no standing, no way to fight a matriarch’s decision.
“If she wakes up and asks for me, you tell her the truth.” Danae’s words came out brittle and sharp. “You tell her exactly what you’ve done and why I’m not here. Don’t you dare pretend I abandoned her.”
“I’ll tell her you had to return to your work. She’ll understand.”
Danae’s footsteps receded across the grass, growing fainter with each step. Finally, they disappeared entirely, and I was alone with my mother in the sacred garden.
My mother’s hand brushed across my hair with a gentleness that made my skin crawl.
“I’m sorry, Andromeda.” Her whisper was so soft I barely caught it.
“I’m sorry for all of it. I wish I could have protected you better.
I wish I could have kept you away from this world entirely.
But you’re my daughter, and I will do whatever I must to keep you alive, even if you hate me for it forever. ”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. The only thing I could do was stay silent and pretend.
My last ally was gone. Helena had sent Danae away, and even my best friend hadn’t been able to stop what was coming.
I had no plan. I had no allies. I had a body still weak from a week of healing—and a fury that burned so hot it felt like it might consume me from the inside out.
But I also had something none of them had counted on.
I had spent my entire life hating what I was. Fighting against my nature, refusing to submit to the instincts that made other Omegas compliant and agreeable. They thought suppressing that nature was a gift they could give me. They thought I would be grateful to feel like a Beta, dampened and safe.
They were wrong.
I didn’t want to be suppressed. I didn’t want to be contained or controlled or fixed. I wanted to be free, actually free, making my own choices and living with their consequences. If no one would give me that freedom, I would take it for myself.
I closed my eyes again and let the garden’s warmth seep into my tired bones. My mother planned to transfer me to House Hades at the end of the week. Everyone who claimed to love me had agreed that this was the best possible outcome.
I intended to be gone long before they could make good on that plan. I didn’t know how, not yet, but somehow, I would escape.