Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Graeme Miller practically sobs into my shoulder, his rain and Earl Grey scent weak with fatigue.
“And you found this thanks to your affinity? It must be meant to be. A stroke of fate,” he says.
He releases me and scans the castle yard with a look of pure wonder on his face.
“We can defend this place even if the magic surrounding it should fail.”
I shake my head. “Sienna and Ian believe it won’t, and I’m inclined to agree.
Besides those you see here, no one has penetrated the magic in centuries.
I strongly doubt the Soldiers will be able to recreate the spell I saw in my vision.
My visions brought me here for a reason, and I think housing the omegas here is that reason.
I so desperately want to see them protected after all that’s happened to them. ”
Jack Rudolph takes a long drag from his ever-present thermos of strong black coffee. “Imagine a full night of sleep, Graeme. Hell, even two.”
“I can hardly imagine,” Graeme says, his voice weary but wry. “My safe houses were merely a sticking plaster. We had no long-term plans we felt confident in. This saves the omegas, and those who have cared for them and guarded them. Miss Rose, you have my eternal gratitude.”
I may have his gratitude, but it takes work to make the castle livable for the omegas—work I largely miss attending my classes.
In between classes, Cassian orders generators and blow-up mattresses, camp stoves and toilets, water purifiers and all things necessary to make the castle livable for its incoming residents, waving me off when I worry about the cost.
Simon has determined that no signals of any kind can make it in or out of the magic surrounding the castle, and that even the most advanced satellite imagery can’t detect anything or anyone through the magic.
We can walk the grounds undetected. There’s still the issue of moving in so many omegas, but Simon examines our vehicles from bumper to bumper for trackers, waving his scribe slowly over every mechanical part of each car.
While I attend my classes, Sienna takes a few days off from hers to catalog and crate some of the most delicate relics in the castle. She’s helped by Ian, Graeme, and Jack, who are as careful as can be with every single historical treasure after one resolute glare from Sienna.
While I miss the work of preparing the castle for its new residents, I’m treated to something new and fresh in my scholastic life: Professor McNamara, our newest casting professor.
He’s young, perhaps a few years older than Ian, and as live a wire as Professor Hayes.
When I spend my first class reading him, I find nothing but enthusiasm.
No errant thoughts of Soldiers in masks, no particular attention paid to me or Alyssa, his omega students.
He’s wholly wrapped up in the lesson and our success.
“You’ve all had a go of it,” he says by way of introduction.
“Your lessons have been disrupted, yet you have persevered. I have no doubt we’ll be caught up in weeks, and that you’ll all perform admirably on your final exams. Now,” he says, rubbing his hands together, his glittering scribe between them, “I believe you were working on transitive sigil alteration? Shall we begin?”
And we do. My classes slowly right themselves after the attack on the Hall of the Council of Nine.
We move on, but the attack is not forgotten.
Professors and students alike glance at the classroom doors, as if expecting an attack at any moment.
It wouldn’t be the Soldiers’ first attack on our campus, and if their numbers are growing as the whispered rumors suggest, another attack could have deadly consequences.
Marcus is on guard like never before, shielding me with his body as we cross campus.
Despite my tumultuous feelings about my bodyguard, I’m glad for his protection.
After facing off with Rad with only Blair to aid me, I’m more than happy to soak in the protection of Marcus and my men, even if I grumble about how overprotective they can be.
By the time the week is through, the castle is fully prepared for the omegas.
All that remains is to move them in.
We move the omegas into the castle in twos and threes, starting with the boldest volunteers.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Aimee is the first to volunteer, just as she was the first to volunteer to have her collar removed while the spell Ian devised remained untested.
We move at night to avoid the cars being seen, and take every precaution, often circling the city and the island if anything close to a tail is suspected.
It’s long and tiresome work and keeps me from sleep every night of the weekend, much to my pack’s protest.
But I’m right in thinking the omegas need me.
They need the safety and surety of another omega supporting this wild plan and passing through the castle’s forbidding protective magic.
They come with nothing but the clothes on their backs, hand-in-hand as they pass through the barriers.
They don’t even bring the small bags of clothes and other aid they’ve received—not after it was determined the safe house was found via a tracker buried in one of the aid shipments.
The warehouse the resistance was using is treated as wholly compromised, but still Graeme and Jack soldier on.
Cassian and his father donate more supplies, and they’re not the only ones.
Anonymous donations arrive at the Leclerc estate, where Simon and Cassian check them over carefully for trackers or any other suspicious materials.
By the end of the weekend, all the omegas are safely housed in the castle, even Cora, who was the last to be moved.
I know she wanted to run again, and it took begging and pleading with her to get her to join the other omegas at the castle.
She still believes her erratic magic is a threat to them.
After all, her temperamental magic led to her being kicked out of her house and onto the bitter, unforgiving streets as a girl.
It was only a matter of time before she was caught and sent to an Omega Rehabilitation Center.
It was a stroke of terrible luck that the Soldiers invaded the same center that housed her.
I can see the desire to run, to live on the streets again, beholden to no one, but protected by no one, either.
She won’t even take my hand for fear of sending me to my knees with the painful way her magic lashes out when she’s touched.
The omegas speak in hushed whispers as they examine the parts of the castle Sienna hasn’t cordoned off.
While a few are amused at the thought of living in a castle after surviving the horrors they have, fear and apprehension still sift through their quiet conversations and the timid way they make their way around the castle.
In some ways, I recognize that they’re trading one prison for another.
After being detained and experimented on in Rad’s facility, they can’t return to their homes and families.
They could be recaptured and experimented on again, this time, perhaps, by my father.
The world isn’t safe for them, not as the Soldiers of Saint Aldous grow in power by the day.
And they do.
I hear it in Cassian’s exhausted conversations with his father, and in Jack’s whispered conversations with Graeme.
New laws are being discussed in the Council that never would have been brought to the floor before the Soldiers installed councilors sympathetic to their aims within the Council of Nine.
So, no. The world isn’t safe for the omegas we freed from Rad’s torturous facility.
The castle may be, but it’s yet another place the omegas aren’t free to leave.
Most take it in stride, grateful for the protection, but I hear whispers as I help unwrap sleeping bags and inflate blow-up mattresses.
I look around at the omegas. They don’t look like they feel safer, even when Graeme and Jack explain about the magic once again.
They’re safe here for now in their newest prison, but it isn’t enough.
I hate that they can’t be free, that the world is too dangerous a place for them.
I vow in that moment, spreading a sleeping bag out on an air mattress, that I will protect them.
I will keep them safe however I can for now.
And in the future, I vow to make a world where they can live free from persecution.
Free of looking over their shoulders wherever they go.
A world free from experimentation, free from Omega Rehabilitation Centers and the Soldiers of Saint Aldous.
I’ll fight for them until my last breath.
If only I knew just how big that fight would be.
During the week, I spend my free hours and nights at the castle, helping the omegas settle into their new home. It isn’t without hiccups, but slowly they emerge from their shells. Their voices rise above whispers, and once in a while, an omega will even laugh, though the sound is scarce.
They’re curious about the Soldiers of Saint Aldous and their oppressors. As I tell them about the evils we’re up against, their faces grow grim. While some fall to tears, others harden.
“Fuck this,” Blair says from her position by Nathan, the wunderkind scientist who was forced to develop the collars. Though he’s an alpha and part of the means of the omegas’ oppression, most of them have taken to his quiet, friendly manner, and they see him as a victim—just as they are.
I look up to Blair from where I’m seated at the head table in the great hall. All the other tables have been pushed aside, and the room has become a gathering space once more. “Blair?”