Chapter 18
Vaelenor
“Drive faster,” Daxen’s voice is full of anxiety. His words are clipped like he’s biting each one off with his teeth.
I don’t point out that I’m already doing ninety on a back road meant for forty, the SUV weaving through half-paved roads and winding turns.
Instead, I remind myself to cut him some slack.
Right now, Dax is getting slammed with emotions from both sides and we’re both doing our best to push down the pain, anger, and fear thrumming through the pack Bond.
Two minutes later, when he snarls at me again, I change my mind about cutting him some slack. Instead, I decide that he can go fuck himself.
“I’m driving as fast as I fucking can, Dax. I can’t go any faster. Not unless you want to end up roadkill, or wrapped around the trunk of a tree—”
“He’s dying, Vaelenor!”
Trapped in this tiny SUV with nowhere for the weight of his pheromones to go, his fear slams into me. It’s like getting hit with a fucking baseball bat to the gut and I grunt at the pressure. My hands tighten around the steering wheel.
I don’t snap at him for cutting me off. I can feel how bad it is. The Bond is screaming with Caelan’s pain—white-hot agony that has me struggling to breathe.
The rage pummeling into me is almost worse than the fear. It’s not just Caelan’s. It’s coming from both sides—pounding down the Bond like a Fatesdamned battering ram. It’s relentless. Impossible to ignore.
A dark haze starts creeps over my vision, making it impossible to concentrate.
“Mute your side of the Bond,” I grit through clenched teeth. “I can’t handle the raging emotions from both of you.”
“My side is muted.” Dax snaps. “You’re getting that from Caelan. He must be hurt worse than we thought.”
Fuck!
My foot presses harder on the gas. I send waves of love and reassurance through the Bond, hating the way he’s alone right now.
Hang on, brother. We’re coming. Just hold on for us.
“Try reaching out to him again,” I suggest, attempt to give Dax something to focus on. Right now, he’s an unmoored boat in a storm. He needs a task. Something to give him a sense of control.
“It’s fucking pointless, Vae. The comms are down.”
The tires spin and skid through loose gravel as turn the SUV down a dirt path a few miles from the Varenthrall estate
My driving is chaotic, lacking my normal stealth. But honestly, subterfuge can get fucked—that ship sailed the second we realized Caelan was caught in a trap. Even if Varenthrall never found Caelan’s comm, I’m sure he’s discovered who he is by now.
There’s no reason to pretend we’re we aren’t about to fuck up his life.
I shoot Dax another worried glance. Normally, Dax is calm and controlled.
He’s not the kind of male who needlessly fidgets.
But right now, his legs are bouncing in a frenzied rhythm, he’s got one hand curled into a fist on his thigh and the other gripping the handle above the door so hard his knuckles are white.
His fingers flex like he knows where I’m looking and it’s pissing him off. I wince as the plastic cracks under the strength of his grip.
“Dax…” I murmur, trying to keep my voice soft so I don’t set him off again.
It’s like he doesn’t even hear me. He spins to the side in his seat and pins me with grey eyes filled with fear
“She set him up,” he snarls. His voice is raw, ravaged with guilt. “I heard it. I heard that bastard thank her. Heard Varenthrall tell Caelan that she played her part beautifully.”
“We don’t know for sure that’s what—”
“I DO FUCKING KNOW!”
Dax’s shout is so loud the windows shake. My head whips to him in shock.
Fucking hell. He never loses his shit like that. Never.
This is so much worse than I thought.
“She was a fucking setup, Vae,” he insists. His tone drops dangerously. “I told him. For Fate’s sake, I told him before he even walked onto the property tonight that it was a trap. He didn’t listen. He walked right into it because he couldn’t stay away from the Fatesdamned Omega!”
He slams his hand against the dashboard, cracking the plastic there, too.
“Look where that got him. Shot with silver and fuck knows what else. I have no idea what we’re walking into because I lost my last link to him outside of the Bond.”
“What about your drones?”
“Don’t fucking work. Whatever’s going on with those wards was dialed up to a hundred about thirty minutes ago. It makes no sense. They dropped completely before the mission tonight. That should have been my first clue that something wasn’t right.”
He glares over his shoulder at the controls he tossed into the backseat shortly after we left.
“Useless,” he mutters, facing forward with a huff. “All my tech is fucking useless right now. The most it did was give me about thirty seconds of warning once Varenthrall and his men showed up, and Caelan was too far into the house to get out.”
He rolls his head back and forth, cracking his neck. “It’s all that Omega’s fault. She did this to him, I fucking know it.”
“Explain to me again what you heard.”
It’s not lost on me that I’m speaking to a grown-ass male the same way I’d speak to a toddler in the middle of a tantrum.
That’s exactly what Dax is right now, though.
There’s a reason he keeps such a tight leash on his control.
His temper, when he losses it, flares fast and hot.
Matching his energy won’t do shit except make him double down defensively.
That’s not the only reason I’m keeping as calm as I can, though. There’s also a part of me that needs to know the answer. I need to understand why Dax is so sure this Omega’s at fault.
“Varenthrall had Caelan surrounded, and he said—”
Dax’s lips press into a thin line and he looks away. I keep my eyes on the road, giving him some time to wrangle his emotions. When he continues, his voice is raw with emotion.
“He said, ‘Thank you for making sure this Alpha was brought to my attention.’”
My stomach drops, but he’s not finished.
“Then he called for her. Told her to come downstairs and said, ‘I’m sure this Alpha would love to see the Omega he so stupidly threw his life away for.’”
Fuck.
“And… did she come down?” I swallow thickly, waiting anxiously for his answer.
Dax’s jaw ticks. He stares straight ahead, fisting his hands on his knees.
“She came down. Didn’t say a fucking word. Didn’t deny anything.”
“She could have been scared,” I suggest, but it’s a weak excuse. We both know it.
Furious eyes snap to me. “Then why didn’t she say anything, Vae? Caelan tried to shout something, but the connection cut out. I don’t know what happened, but I’ll bet Varenthrall found the comm.”
I wince. Dax still isn’t finished.
“Right before the feed died, his exact words to Caelan were, ‘She played her part beautifully. I told her what would happen, and she followed every direction.’”
His exhale is shaky. Anger thrums off him in waves so thick it’s hard to breathe.
“She played him. She played our brother. Now he’s in that house, hurt and trapped and possibly dying because of her.”
For reasons I don’t understand, my instinct is to push back. I want to tell him he might’ve misheard. Tell him he might’ve misunderstood the conversation. The words are right there, on the tip of my tongue.
I swallow them down.
It doesn’t matter if I want this female to be innocent, there’s no arguing that what he heard is bad. Really bad. No matter how I try, I can’t rearrange the words in a way that doesn’t point to the Omega being guilty as hell.
What Dax heard… It’s damning. And it’s not like he heard one off-the cuff moment. He heard three separate statements, each of them damning in their own right. Each enough proof to be sure. All three together?
Fuck.
Dax has more than enough proof to validate his fears.
I want to groan, but I stop myself before I do.
This is just great. He’s going to be such a pain in the ass once this is all over. He’ll literally never let us hear the end of it.
I haven’t said so, but I’ve been ‘Team Dax is Overreacting’ since the start. Maybe that makes me naive, but I just couldn’t imagine condemning an Omega without proof. I definitely didn’t want to believe an Omega was capable of doing something to deliberately put one of us in danger.
And yeah, some of it’s biology fucking with me. Omega’s are small. Delicate. They’re meant to be protected, coddled, and loved.
As a designation, Omegas are soft. Quiet. Submissive as hell.
Where idiots go wrong is assuming their temperament makes them weak. Only absolute twits believe that. Some of the strongest females I’ve met were Omegas. Their strength is a different kind of strength than that of an Alpha or Beta—but no less formidable.
It’s just… an Omega going out of her way to plan, manipulate, and execute something as heinous as what happened tonight?
It doesn’t compute. Like a fucking glitch in the matrix.
I mean, for fucks sake— to do something like that an Omega would have to fight with her instincts every step of the way.
It wouldn’t just be uncomfortable, it’d be fucking painful.
Biologically, Omegas crave love, safety, and validation from Alphas. They don’t manipulate and lie and hurt them because it goes against every single biological need they have. And trust me, after five centuries, I can tell you with certainty that biology will win every single time.
I guess that’s why the idea of this female as some kind of master manipulator who’s even now gleefully torturing Caelan just doesn’t sit right.
And yet… I can’t deny the truth of what’s happening. Caelan’s dying. Against all odds, he’s been shot with silver after being ambushed in the home of an Omega who—according to her own father—was instrumental in setting it all up.