Chapter 3 #2
“I want to teach the omegas how to escape from omega traps,” I murmur as I nuzzle into Luca’s neck, breathing him in. “I’ll have to get better at doing it myself first.”
“Which means you’ll want me to cast them on you,” Ian surmises with a frown. “You want me to knowingly hurt you.”
“I have to help them somehow, and I have to get stronger to do that. I have to train in escaping omega traps. I need to train in shielding my mind from attacks like Kel’s. I need to get better.”
Cassian goes to protest, but his phone chimes from the coffee table. He picks it up to a text from Graeme and then flashes Simon the photo on the screen.
“Tracker?” Cass asks.
“Sure fucking looks like it,” Simon growls, snapping his laptop closed. “Where was it?”
“Graeme said a resistance member found it at the safe house that was raided. It was in with a shipment of clothes for the freed omegas.”
“Then the warehouse is compromised, too,” Ian says quietly, bending forward to inspect the image on Cassian’s phone. “What now?”
“That’s exactly what we need to determine,” Cassian replies. “What we need to determine tomorrow. It’s late, and Junes had a taxing evening. I think we should all get some rest.”
I begrudgingly nod and let Ian help me up from Luca’s arms. The headache that started at Kel’s attack and worsened with my father’s still pounds behind my eyes.
We head up to the nest, all of us but Marcus. I turn back at the top of the stairs to see him gazing up at me. Whatever I see in his eyes, it’s gone in a flash as he bids me good night and goes into his room.
Just as he helped me into my dress, Ian helps me out of it, then into pajamas. I disappear into the attached bathroom to take my hair down and scrub off my makeup. When I return to my nest, there’s a space for me between Ian and Luca that I gladly crawl into.
For a while, sleep is elusive.
But when I sleep, I dream.
I dream of a castle on a cliff, far above the crashing, storm-swept sea. Dark, ominous clouds blot out the sky above the castle, lightning flashing against the stormy night. The cloudburst seems frozen in time, branches of lightning bright then dim as I look from cloud to cloud.
I can’t feel it in my dream, but somehow, I know the castle and the storm clouds above it are suffused with powerful magic.
I fight my way toward the castle through a cold, needling rain, desperate to see what secrets it holds, what the tempest around its towers and spires conceals.
I want to feel the buzz of all that powerful magic raising the fine hairs at the nape of my neck, but every step I take brings me no closer to the castle.
I break into a run, the storm streaking around me, but the castle remains out of my reach.
There’s something my mind wants me to see or to know, that this is as close to a waking vision as my sleeping mind can dream up. Despite the way my jogging footsteps churn up the mud beneath my sneakers, the castle remains distant and full of secrets.
I wake to Luca stroking the backs of his fingers along the inside of my arm where I have it slung around his chest. The haze of my dream still tangling in my senses, I let wine and cherries overtake me as I sink deeper into his arms.
“Bad dream, princess?” His low voice is a warm rumble in the dark of my nest, and I can just make out his profile in the low light.
I frown. It wasn’t a bad dream, not really, but a dream of many secrets and wonders I desperately want to uncover and crack open.
“I was dreaming about a castle, and part of me knows it’s close.
On Deer Island or maybe one of the other islands nearby?
I’m sure I sound crazy right now, but it felt like a vision. ”
“You never sound crazy to me, Junie. Could it have been Marmora Castle?”
I prop myself up on an elbow, my brow creasing as I stare down at him. “Marmora Castle? It wasn’t on your list of places to explore.”
“It’s impossible to reach. It’s surrounded by a storm of magic. No one’s been able to enter it in hundreds of years.”
“Historians believe it’s where a great battle took place between Pack Marmora and the forces of Mage King George,” Ian murmurs in the dark, rubbing a hand down my spine.
“A castle on the cliffs, surrounded by a storm?”
Luca nods and takes my hand and kisses the back of it. “I’ll take you as close as I can tomorrow morning.”
“My darling, you should rest before you go off chasing visions. You had a trying night tonight.”
“It means something, Ian. I need to see it.” I don’t know what my affinity is trying to tell me, but I won’t be able to rest without dreaming of the castle again until I find out. Even now, I can almost feel the magical buzz of power I sought in my strange dream.
He presses against me, nuzzling my neck. “The magic surrounding the castle is dangerous. It’s not something to be taken lightly. At least let me accompany you tomorrow. Curse breakers far more expert than I have tried to infiltrate the castle and failed, but if I can keep you out of harm’s way…”
“Of course, man,” Luca says.
“Then we’ll leave at first light,” I decide, a familiar magic tingling in my fingertips. My magic, the very magic my father locked away from me, the very magic Ian gave back to me after slowly unwinding sigil after sigil of the complex spell locking my magic.
“First light?” Ian groans, wrapping a possessive hand around my hip. “I don’t suppose I can distract you out of that? Wear you out so well you’ll let us sleep until midmorning?”
I smirk, arching back into his touch. “You can try.”