Chapter 29
JUDGE
"It looks like someone dragged this place out of a fucking crypt," Drake says as she sits next to me while they get some tables ready. “And now we have a whole ass ham.”
Titan is as weird as he is sadistic; his grandiosity always eases someone’s defenses. Except that he’ll flip like a fucking light switch, and I’ve seen him rip someone’s heart out and place it right on the table to eat it raw in front of the family of the fucking now deceased.
We’ve turned a massive green area in this industrial cemetery into a meeting hall, folding tables and chairs brought out from Titan’s people.
It’s only meant for the top dozen or so of each side, and I refuse to use any of his and instead have our own brought out from one of the trailers.
An approving gleam in his eyes tells me I’m more than fucking right to not trust even a chair of his.
“Is uh, Rooster always this clownish?” Drake asks as we sit in our own chairs, using his code name.
“He’s being tame right now. I don’t think he knows what to make of us... or he knows more than he’s leading in.”
Drake grunts beside me, her hand resting casually near her hip where I know she keeps her blade. “Well, we’re prepared for it all.”
Diana is always in the back of my mind as I take in Titan’s men, knowing I have to ensure that Titan dies today.
I bite my lip, staring around, purposely not glancing at the sky.
The drones will be out there somewhere, circling in holding patterns, waiting for the signal.
A vulture is perched nearby, another of our echoes able to see through it, just not with the same precision as Beast. But it’ll do.
It’ll give the signal we need.
I have to assume that Titan has his own shit lined up, or his own echoes with abnormal ‘talents.’ We’ve been killing any living creature that gets near us, in case it’s from Titan. It’s actually what we cooked last night on the road—sticks of rats.
A feast is put out on tables. Roasted meat slick with fat, the juices pooling on platters, loaves of bread torn open by hand as Titan and his men already dig in while mine sit on our end, not touching the food.
It looks like a king's feast dropped into the middle of a graveyard. Abundance surrounded by decay.
The omegas stand there, all staring down at the dirt.
They don’t wear anything overly revealing.
The primary objective was making sure they were washed and cleaned, then dressed in neutral layers meant to show skin without saying it out loud—collarbones exposed, wrists bare, the fabric thin enough to hint at curves without being overtly provocative.
"You think I poisoned it?" Titan asks, tearing into a leg of lamb with both hands. Grease runs down his fingers, catching in the creases of his knuckles, dripping onto the table.
“Yeah, I’m not a fucking idiot.”
He raises a brow, something flickering in his eyes—annoyance, maybe, or amusement at my caution—and then bellows out a laugh.
Drake raises her hand as our own food is brought out, because I figured we could all use a nice, final meal if this is to be our last. We took a pig with us and slaughtered it last night so it could be roasted in one of the trailers today.
Titan tears into his own meat with both hands, chewing with his mouth open so I can see every masticated bite. There's something medieval about this. I do indulge a bit in our own food, tasting what’s mine as I periodically glance at the black rose tattoo on the back of my hand.
Titan continues to smack his lips, gestures with a stripped bone still clutched in his fist. “When’s the last time we had a feast together, Judge?”
“We haven’t.”
His brows rise slightly, something dark in his gaze. “No, that’s right. We never got a chance, did we?”
My heart races beneath the stillness, adrenaline pumping through my veins, every sense heightened to painful clarity. I can hear the whisper of wind through the broken windows. The creak of a guard shifting his weight.
“That's your problem, Judge. Always so serious,” Titan adds. He looks me over slowly, deliberately, taking in every detail the way a butcher sizes up meat. “We should be celebrating that we’ve managed to strike a deal together.” He leans back in his chair, spreading his legs wide.
“Remember when you still believed men like us were gods? Tell me, Judge—what changed? You used to be so brutal.”
It’s the change in his tone that makes me think he might genuinely believe this is a real deal. There’s a hint of mockery in there, which means he plans to humiliate me on top of everything else.
Is it that easy? Is he that delusional? Something is missing.
I think of Diana's hands shaking around a mug. Her voice when she begged me not to go, the words catching in her throat like she couldn't quite let them out.
“And you used to have thicker hair,” I quip.
His eyes widen for a moment before he laughs hard.
“I think we all know why you’ve gone soft,” he says, that deadening gleam in his eyes something I know means he’s nearing a jugular.
“It’s your little omega, isn’t it?” He leans forward on his table.
“What if… let’s just hypothesize… what if she’s what I need to make a deal on? ”
There it is.
I’m almost relieved that this is where he thinks he’s going to triumph over me. He has no idea I’ve come here to die before letting him near Diana. “I thought you might bring her up,” I say, picturing her clearly in my mind. “I did bring something as an offering for that, too.”
He slowly inhales, jutting his jaw to the side before nodding, like he wants to see it. Drake gets up from her chair to a bag near the caravan.
The vulture flies off.
One of Titan’s men has to inspect her first, and then makes a gross face as he sees what’s inside. Drake brings it to our table and opens it up, pulling out a head.
Jack’s head.
Drake ensures that it faces Titan, eyes clouded, skin gray, expression frozen in the surprise of his final moment. I glance down at the table, at the head of the man who betrayed me, then back up at Titan.
Titan's face goes still. For the first time since this began, I see something in his eyes that might be concern.
“I heard you made a deal to bring my head to Ridgeline… let’s be so fucking honest, Titan, we were never going to live while the other does.
” I inhale deeply and slowly, scratching my chin as another signal.
"You know that. I know that. So let’s cut the bullshit, you ugly fuck.
” I lean over. “Your undoing was always your threat to my omega.”
It happens fast.
Drones descend in a swarm, their engines whining as they drop altitude. Some fly extra low, dropping goggles that I snatch from the air. My people do the same, practiced, ready, moving with the coordination of soldiers who've drilled this a thousand times.
Other canisters hit the ground and burst.
Smoke erupts in thick, choking waves, red-tinged and acrid, swallowing the table, the feast, the men. It crawls along the dirt like a living thing, clinging to boots and ankles, rising in columns that block out the sky.
I pull the heat goggles down over my eyes.
The world transforms as bodies glow in shades of orange and red, heat signatures flaring bright against the grey nothing. Those still with the caravans should be getting our artillery out.
The bloodbath begins.
"Confirm your kill before striking!" I shout, my voice cutting through the chaos.
A few shots are fired off from someone who smuggled in a gun, then the clashing of weapons and someone screams—a wet, gurgling sound that cuts off abruptly.
A vulture flies through and drops something onto the ground, poking and prodding at it with its beak until a screeching sound erupts. A sonic pulse hits like a knife behind my eyes.
It's not a sound, exactly. It's a pressure that crawls into my skull and tries to shake my brain loose from its moorings, a screech in the distance like a dying banshee. My vision doubles, and my stomach lurches.
Fuck. I forgot how much these things hurt.
Through the haze of smoke, disorientation, and men dropping to their knees or covering their ears, I see one figure still moving among the heat signatures, where five omegas stand against a wall, one of them moving with the plastic key hidden in her hair, like a pin.
Alisha.
She may feel the pressure, but she can’t hear the screech that makes this unbearable. Good. She’ll get them unchained. The priority was always to ensure they could escape immediately, and then Drake would get them out.
Every single one of them signed up for this in exchange for utter freedom and suppressants for life if they desired.
A figure staggers toward Alisha, hands pressed to ears.
Alisha’s figure turns around and grabs the blade from the man’s hand, and it looks like she stabs him back.
He drops quickly, and she steps over his body without breaking stride as I watch to ensure the omegas are freed while keeping my scent focused entirely on Titan.
By the time Drake reaches them, half the omegas are already free and moving.
Now it’s time for me to focus.
The sonic pulse is already fading, its effect temporary, but the job is done—to give the omegas a head start.
I focus back on searching for Titan, who roars somewhere to my right. His heat signature is massive, unmistakable, a furnace of rage and fear pacing through the smoke like a caged animal looking for something to destroy.
I move so he has to follow me, and when I see he’s close enough that I can make him out in the smoke, I remove the goggles and toss them to another, so I can stare at his ugly fucking face.
Sounds of more rapid gunfire ring out in the distance, and I know it’s from those who didn’t get near. I can’t worry about them now.
Titan is mine.