Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Sister.”
The alpha dominance in the hissed word sends a vicious chill down my spine, but it’s not Aspen that steals me away for my first dance, but Hawthorn. He sweeps me in close and whispers in my ear. “Look pissy and proper. Father’s watching.”
And he is. My alpha father, Redwood Rose, watches me like a hawk, like the calculating predator he is.
I send him a serene smile, though I feel anything but.
He may not be my legal guardian any longer, but I was foolish to think I’d cut all the puppet strings he wields over me.
I realize now, my stomach sinking in my belly, that I’m not free.
Though I toppled the first domino, taking out Andrew Radcliffe and avoiding a mating that would have resulted in my torture and death, mating for love instead, my father still has his claws in me—and his strings.
With just a few words from my brother, I slipped behind a demure mask of propriety, acting like the omega my father wants me to be.
I turn my attention back to my brother, frowning at the faint lines around his eyes.
Saints, my alpha brother is exhausted. He catches my grimace, always more perceptive than I think he is.
“Father is up to something,” he says, his tone low enough that only I can hear him.
“He recovered from his disappointment with Rad’s project far too quickly.
He’s been off… distracted. I don’t like it.
And I don’t like not knowing what’s going on.
” He frowns, chewing the inside of his cheek as he casts his gaze around the ballroom.
I follow his line of sight and land on Mai Huong, Fairhaven Academy’s chief healer, and a friend of both mine and Hawthorn’s. From her place beside her two alpha mates, she watches us—or, more specifically, Hawthorn—a look approaching wistfulness on her face.
I’m even more surprised when I see that same wistfulness mirrored in Hawthorn’s conflicted expression.
I know they’d been friends, but…
“I don’t know what he’s planning or what he’s involved himself in now,” my brother mutters, returning his attention to me with a deep frown, “but expect something big.”
Like me, Hawthorn hides behind a mask where our father is concerned. He’s been a loyal son, following in our father’s footsteps at Rose Pharmaceuticals, all with the aim of uncovering my father’s wicked deeds. No wonder he looks exhausted.
I duck my chin in a barely perceptible nod and then scan the room once more. “And where is my other brother?”
Hawthorn’s frown deepens. “Claire’s unwell. The flu, Father said. Aspen stayed home to care for her and the triplets.”
Now it’s my turn to frown. “That’s… unlike him.”
“Very,” Hawthorn mutters, and suddenly, the exhaustion around his eyes seems to overtake him, just for a second, before he can recover himself.
“What do you know about him?” I murmur.
He chews the inside of his cheek again, his jaw ticking. “More than I should and less than I’d like. His movements have been strange lately. He’s been flying between Fairhaven and New York, same as Father, but he hasn’t been coming into headquarters at all.”
I’m just about to ask what Aspen would be doing in Fairhaven, or what business he’d have in New York City outside of the Rose Pharmaceuticals headquarters when Hawthorn silences me with a severe look.
“I’ll have your next dance, Miss Rose,” Andrew Radcliffe’s father says, a sneer in his voice.
I stiffen immediately. This is my first time meeting the alpha, and the resemblance between him and his late son is enough to turn my stomach to ice.
Rad was classically handsome, though everything I knew about him, everything he did hidden behind his family name or his family’s magetech was enough to make him the ugliest alpha I’d ever met, but I never knew how much he took after his father.
Though the alpha standing before me offering me his arm is older, all I can think of is his son.
How Rad’s hands tightened around me like he owned me when we danced on New Year’s Eve.
How close he came to owning me the following Yule when he tried to break into my bedroom and mate me during the haze of my heat.
Though his father’s spiced wine and citrus scent is different, all I can pick out is oranges and anise.
It’s the same cloying scent that wrapped around me when Rad held his scribe to my neck, when he groped me and tried to make me submit to his savagery in the stand of trees beside the academy’s library.
I grimace and breathe through my mouth, trying to steel myself against the scent and the memories it brings with it, but I’m failing. Failing and falling into the paralyzing memories of Rad’s brutality.
It’s then that I feel it, an incandescent glow within me, an awareness somewhere beside my heart, as one by one, my mates turn their attention to me, ready to come to my aid if I need them.
I glance at Marcus on the outskirts of the ball and give a subtle shake of my head.
Just knowing my mates aren’t far is all I need to straighten my spine and my neck.
Saints above, I will not bare my neck to this monster, to the very alpha who molded and shaped my former betrothed into something even worse.
Let him see just how well free will suits me.
“In another lifetime, Mr. Radcliffe, I would have felt beholden to dance with you. Tonight, I do not. I wish you a good evening.” I start away from him, intent on washing this interaction from my senses with a glass of punch, but the alpha is undeterred.
“You impudent little witch whore.” He spits the slur at me, but I don’t flinch. I will not be this alpha’s prey. I refuse to freeze before him—or before any alpha. “Free will doesn’t suit an omega like you.”
I pause and look over my shoulder, my blue eyes flinty as I stare down the powerful alpha behind me. “Or any omega, in your estimation. Isn’t that right? Once again, good evening, Mr. Radcliffe.”
I stalk away from him, my head held high, the whispers of other partygoers filling Radcliffe’s silence behind me.
Good. His shocked silence makes me feel bulletproof, like I could take on a dozen Soldiers of Saint Aldous with nothing but my wits, my affinity, and my scribe.
I glide across the ballroom floor toward the refreshments table, feeling more than just my pack’s eyes on me, but it’s their attention that makes me brave in the face of cruelty.
Ian shoots me a look, and I shake my head.
I don’t need an escort. Not now, while I’m flying high over shutting down an impudent alpha.
My mates are like fire in my very soul, our mating bonds bright as they warm me from the inside out. I feel their protective instincts wash over me and know they’d be by my side in seconds if I needed them. But I don’t.
I dip the ladle into the punch bowl, but something—no, someone—stays my hand.
I look up into the dark eyes of Kelvin Montrose, Rad’s only remaining lackey.
His grip on my forearm is tight enough to bruise, and he pulls me forward until I bump the edge of the table with my thighs.
He meets my eyes, and, for a moment, his dark curls are replaced by leather horns, and his smile turns to that of the wicked grin the Baphomet masks the Soldiers of Saint Aldous sport.
The vision is gone in a blink, replaced by something far, far more sinister.
Kel bombards me with his thoughts.
I recognize Graeme’s safe house all too well, the one where Cora and Aimee are staying.
The one where I’ve spent late nights drinking tea with my mates, Detective Inspector Miller, and reporter Jack Rudolph as we strategize how to strike back against the Soldiers.
And in Kel’s mind, it’s on fire. Soldiers of Saint Aldous stream onto the safe house’s small lawn, their scribes raised, the horns of their masks sinister in the glow of the flames.
Spells and hexes fly as omegas scream. Silver septagrams glitter under the light of the full moon.
Tonight. Saints above, there’s going to be an attack tonight.
I jerk back, stumbling in my towering heels, glass punch cups tinkling against each other when I bump the table, but Kel’s eyes never leave mine.
A muscle in his jaw ticks from the effort, but I see it for only a second before being submerged in his thoughts once more.
Of Aimee being dragged from the burning safe house, tears streaking her sooty face.
She’s thrown to the ground, straight into an omega trap.
Its vines twine around her as the Soldiers head back into the flames, pulling out omega after omega.
I finally wrench my hand free and turn away from Kel, his thoughts fleeing my mind like a tide pulled out to sea.
I gasp, searching his face, but for what? For answers? For more of the disturbing vision?
Saints, there isn’t the time. I must tell my mates and let Graeme and Jack know. If there’s any way to prevent the attack, I must try. I dart my eyes over to my pack, a frantic look on my face. Our mating bonds blaze to life in my chest, and I feel their concern washing through me.
Behind me, across the refreshments table, Kel Montrose croons, “Got you, witch.”
Luca steps up beside me, wrapping a protective arm around my waist, and I drag his wine-and-cherries scent into my nose, needing to banish the scent of smoke lingering in my thoughts.
“Is this alpha bothering you, princess? Would you like me to deal with him for you?”
“Would you, princess?” Kel sneers. “I could send your hood rat alpha back to prison in an instant. You know what happens to traitors.”
Those the Soldiers of Saint Aldous believe to be traitors die in prison, and not by their own hands or scribes.
“Mr. Montrose was just leaving, I’m sure,” I say, my voice weak and shaking, my bravado leeched from me by the disturbing images from Kel’s mind.
Kel’s smile sends ice down my spine as he turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd of guests.