Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
While my days and evenings are filled with more purpose than ever before, my darkest nights are plagued with nightmares.
I dream of my father, and the images in my dreams tangle with my memories.
In some, I see a scalpel slicing down the skin of an omega’s spine.
In others, I see an IV in my arm, poison leaking into my veins.
I feel the tightness of a straitjacket around me as I’m granted a brief reprieve in a padded cell.
I remember the way the drugs muddled my thoughts.
I see him extract shimmering tissue from an omega’s back, hear her scream until she’s too hoarse to scream anymore.
They chase me into my waking world, echoing through my mind until I’m exhausted and distracted in all my classes.
It comes to a head the following Monday in Intermediate Casting.
I slide into my seat beside Alyssa, Marcus taking the seat behind mine, and dig through my backpack for my notebook, just as Kelvin Montrose saunters down the aisle between worktables.
He pushes thoughts into my mind, just as he did during the Lunar Ball, devastating thoughts that bring tears to my eyes.
In the vision, a too-familiar spell strikes me, trapping me in an omega trap.
Vines claw around me, thorns digging into my wrists and hips as I’m pulled to the ground.
The Soldiers start with Luca, who fights back with fists and scribe.
He’s the first to fall, but not the last. One by one, I watch as my men are brutally murdered by the Soldiers of Saint Aldous—just as omegas did during the Saint Jasper slayings.
The thoughts leave me reeling, my head spinning, but my arm shoots out, not trapped by the thorns of an omega trap at all, and I grab Kel’s wrist.
“Rad trapped me in an omega trap once,” I growl. “Ask him how I got out. Oh, right. You can’t. Because he’s fucking dead.”
He yanks his hand back from mine as all the fight goes out of me. A searing headache cuts through me, and I swoon.
Marcus just catches me before I fall into a dead faint. My last thoughts are of towering pines and winter winds and all the regrets I have for things left unsaid.
I wake in the infirmary’s nest, my men around me, my mates purring low in their chests. Luca and Simon surround me, with Cassian on Simon’s other side. Marcus, as he’s done so many times before, sits vigil by the door.
Magic pulses through my veins as I struggle to sit. Luca and Simon help me immediately, despite Cass’ protest.
Ian’s low purr subsides as he looks up, weary. “You need to rest longer, my darling.” He slumps against the side of the nest, long legs stretched out before him on the cool stone floor.
“How did you—” My words come out slurred, and my head spins. Ian was supposed to be with the omegas today, trapped without cell service behind the veil of magic surrounding Marmora Castle. Too far from me to feel me through our bond. That he’s here must mean my condition was dire.
“Mai sent Daniel for him, love,” Cassian says quietly, his voice shaking with pain. “We weren’t sure when you’d wake. If you’d wake. It’s nearly midnight.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It was just Kel. Thoughts he forced on me.” I don’t tell them what he made me see.
They’re already too agitated at the state of me, and I don’t want to relive it any time soon.
A headache thuds behind my eyes, and though Kel’s stunt should have tapped me out, I feel my affinity coursing through me, more powerful than ever.
“We need to find out how you can protect yourself from invasions to your mind like that,” Ian says sharply, just as another vision overtakes me.
I hear my men shout for me, begging me to resist. I hear Mai burst into the room, but it’s all to no avail. My mind burns with pain as I fall under the spell of the vision, sinking like a stone beneath the surface of awareness.
Baphomet’s Prince stands before a horde of alphas in masks, his own black leather mask shining like an oil slick in the silvery light of the moon.
A faint smile decorates the front of his mask, while the other Soldiers’ masks bear vicious grins.
The effect chills me to my core, but it’s nothing I haven’t already seen.
I saw the Prince in Rad’s mind when he captured me and took me to his facility.
My former betrothed knew nothing else about him.
But I see him now, the slim horns of his mask reaching toward the moonlit sky.
He barks a command, but it’s like I’m underwater, and I can’t make out the words.
An alpha in a mask joins him at the front of the horde, fire trailing from his hands. No scribe in sight.
A victorious roar goes up from the crowd.
The vision changes.
A masked alpha shoots ice from his hands, narrowly missing an innocent omega.
Another Soldier traps her in an omega trap until he can get to her, only undoing the trap to drag her into his arms and bind her wrists as she writhes.
He forces her into the back of a waiting truck.
Eight pale, scared omega faces stare back at me as I watch the vision unfold.
I shout, but I’m not in the world I see, even though it surrounds me.
Even though I can taste the acrid tang of hexes on the wind and hear the low whimpers of another omega succumbing to an omega trap.
The vision changes again.
The truck arrives at a low set of buildings surrounded by fences topped with razor wire.
Omegas are forced from the trucks and shoved through a break in the fence, pushed along by Soldiers.
One struggles, the last I saw trapped before my vision changed, and the Soldier with ice at his fingertips sets a hand on her shoulder.
She freezes solid in an instant, breaking to icy shards when he kicks her corpse to the ground.
None of the other omegas struggle as they’re forced into the camp—because I see now that’s what it is. An internment camp.
The vision changes again, this time to all-out war.
Packs fight against the Soldiers, desperate to save their omegas, and the omegas meet the same fate I did in Kel’s forced vision. They’re trapped in omega traps, just like the omegas of the Saint Jasper slayings, unable to do anything but watch while their mates are slaughtered.
And then I see myself, broken and bloody, my clothes ripped and dirtied, a scribe still in my hand, even as the omega trap hex sends me to my knees.
This time, it’s Cassian who’s slain first. The alpha whose fingers trailed flames sets his hands to my mate’s heart and burns him from the inside out.
The last thing I hear is Cassian’s scream mingling with my own when the flames are turned on me.
I snap out of the vision, a scream caught in my throat, tears streaming down my face.
My pack surrounds me, and I reach blindly for Cassian’s hand, needing to feel his solid strength after the horrors I just witnessed.
Even Ian has climbed into the nest now, hugging me around the waist as Luca holds me in his arms. They all touch me, hands stroking down my arms, along my hair.
They whisper soothing words, but it’s not enough. I need all of my men around me.
“Marcus,” I croak, and then he’s there, silhouetted in moonlight as he approaches the infirmary nest. He drops down to sit at the very edge and takes my hand into his, rubbing his thumb along mine until my racing heart slows.
Until I can finally relax into the arms of my men.
Luca presses a fierce kiss to my forehead, and I reach for him to find his eyes shut tight against the threat of tears.
He hugs me to him, drawing in my scent just as I draw in his, needing the comfort of red wine and juicy cherries. Of cedar and citrus, and summer sunshine and salty sea air. Of great pine trees and winter on the wind.
I lose track of time as they calm me. Finally, Mai steps forward, her stethoscope around her neck and a penlight in her hand.
Luca lets out a low growl, but I set a hand on his knee until he stops and finally lets the young healer approach me. She shines the light in my eyes, tracking the movement of my pupils. There’s a sour, concerned expression on her face.
“Tell me,” Ian murmurs, insistence in the two simple words.
I shake my head as Doc listens to my heart and takes my pulse.
“It was too much,” I whisper. “I saw too much. The future. It could be weeks from now. Months. Years. I have no idea. It was horrific. I can’t… I can’t…”
Simon takes my other hand, holding it to his heart. “Don’t, Junes. You don’t have to.”
Mai sighs and pronounces me healthy for now, but her concern is as clear as the wave of fear that races through my pack.
“You’re weak, Juniper. Rest,” she pleads, though I know I won’t sleep again tonight. “I’ll be right next door if you need me.”
“Simon is right,” Ian says quietly. “Don’t relive it.”
But that’s what none of them can understand. I saw the future. I may have no choice but to relive it.
Mai excuses me from my classes the next day, despite my protests, which sound weak even to my ears. In truth, I’m exhausted. Between moving the omegas, my classes and my recent visions, I feel rundown, like I could sleep for weeks and feel no better.
My pack stays home with me that day, Cassian, Simon and Luca skipping out on classes while Ian stays home from teaching the freed omegas.
I’m curled up with Luca on the couch, halfway to sleep when I feel a spike of fear from Cassian.
“We have to tell her, Cass,” Simon mutters.
“She’s been through too much lately. To add this onto her plate…” His summery scent turns bitter, and I go still in Luca’s arms. He tightens his arms around me, not to hold me back, but to offer me comfort, yet even his feelings through our bond are fraught and frayed.
“Tell me what?” I ask, an edge to my voice. My pack has sworn not to keep secrets from me. I sit up enough to look over the back of the couch. I find my mate and my beta sitting at the kitchen table staring down at Simon’s laptop.
Cassian sighs. “It can wait, Junes. Please just let it wait. You can’t even tell us about the vision you had yet, and this…”
I push up from the couch, leaving the safety of Luca’s arms. “What is it?”
“The New Jersey state sheriff is investigating a body,” Simon says in a rush, wincing when Cassian shoots him a glare. He continues quickly before Cass can protest. “An omega body washed up on shore, probably late last night. They’ve already buried the report.”
I freeze, staring at Simon. He’s lit by the screen of his computer, its light reflecting in his glasses. I can’t make out anything in the reflection, but maybe that’s for the best. “Has she been identified?”
Simon shakes his head. “No, but there was a serial number on her shoulder. Junes, that’s not the worst part.”
My heart leaps into my throat, and I don’t need my affinity to know what he’s going to say next. “Her maginalus was missing.”
Cassian ducks his head, rubbing his temples, before looking up at me, his smoke-and-whiskey eyes shining. “Yes, it was.”
He grabs me as I sway, easing me into a chair at the kitchen table as Simon snaps his laptop shut.
Scribes and scalpels, blood welling beneath a cut made with surgical precision. Blue nitrite gloves. Tattooed serial numbers on omega shoulders. Glowing maginal tissue at the end of forceps. Bodies burning in incinerators.
Why was this body found washed up on shore? What was different about this omega?
Unless my father is sending me a message.
He truly is experimenting again.
I dash to the bathroom and lose my meager breakfast into the toilet, heaving and sobbing all at once.
Sigils and IV tubes snaking under skin. A padded room. Poison in my veins. My magic locked away.
I collapse beside the toilet, resting my head against the tile wall. It cools my heated cheek as I lean against it, squeezing my eyes shut.
Cassian strokes my hair away from my face and blots my skin with a cool cloth, concern swimming in his dark eyes.
“Another vision?”
“A memory,” I croak out, my voice hoarse. “My father is experimenting again. And he wanted me to know it.”
Days pass and I still can’t speak of the vision I had in the infirmary nest. Nor can I piece together what my father’s aim is—outside of scaring me, which he has.
Why take maginaluses from omegas? To what end is he experimenting?
I remember Professor Hayes’ lecture on experimentation on omegas, how few survived having their maginaluses removed, and those that did went mad from losing their magic in such a brutal way.
We’ve always been test subjects for alpha researchers.
Always. No matter that laws were finally put in place to protect us.
My father and Rad skirted those laws without issue.
The only thing that’s changed since those brutal experiments is how far we’ve advanced in surgical procedures, in setting scalpel to skin to remove what makes us who we are: mages.
My father must be stopped. I know the resistance is stretched thin. I know protecting the omegas from being captured and turned into test subjects once more is the resistance’s top priority right now, but if my father truly is experimenting again, he’ll want for test subjects.
The omegas are safe at Marmora Castle for now, but they’re fifty out of… I don’t even know how many test subjects have been trafficked around the country by my father and his peers.
Saints above, he must be stopped.