Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The detective inspector carries Cora onto the jet and lays her down on one of the fold-down seats, immediately examining her for wounds. He gingerly lifts the hem of her shirt, revealing the radiating, spiky lines of a combat hex.
I release Marcus’ hand and immediately go for the first-aid kit, pulling out my scribe as I take it to Cora’s side.
The first-aid kit is stocked with ointments and enchanted bandages, plus a small handbook of healing spells.
I thumb through it quickly, looking for a spell to stop a combat hex from spreading.
When I’ve finally found it, I kneel beside Cora.
It’s no more complex than the healing magic I’ve already learned.
It takes just five glowing sigils for the spidery black lines to stop growing out from Cora’s left side.
I dig through the handbook again, looking for a spell to reverse the damage the hex has already done, and cast the one I find.
Beneath my scribe, the black lines slowly disappear, and I let out a sigh of relief.
She’s still bruised, and I can tell she has soft tissue damage, perhaps even deeper than I can guess, but I cast a strength spell on her, apply the magical ointments and then, with Graeme helping to sit her up, wrap her abdomen in the enchanted bandages.
The rest will be up to Doc, who Cassian has already phoned; she’ll be waiting for us at the castle when we arrive back in Fairhaven.
Finally, the adrenaline from the facility and healing Cora floods from my body, and I slouch.
Marcus opens his arms to me from one of the jet’s seats, and I go to him, needing the same comfort he gave me inside my father’s clandestine surgical suite.
I wish we could place the seat down or take the bedroom so I could curl up against his side, but the flight is crowded as it is.
Instead, he shifts me onto his lap where I curl in on myself.
With the utmost gentleness and care, he strokes my back in slow circles.
Not even questioning my need for him, forgetting that I should still be mad at him for lying to me, I press my nose into his neck, seeking his scent.
I calm as it washes over me, lulling me and pulling me under until I’m comfortably numb in his arms.
In the seat across the narrow aisle, Simon prods at a few pieces of damaged tech he took from the facility with his scribe. Unsatisfied, he draws out his laptop and a toolkit and lets out a disgusted sigh at the condition of whatever it is he’s working on.
Cassian stands behind his seat, peering over our lover’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“It used to be a hard drive. Now it’s little more than slag, but I’m sure I can get something off it.
” He sighs. “Not as much as I would like, though. They really did a number on their tech when vacating the facility. If any of it was linked to a cloud server for back up, there’s no chance of tracing it now. Not with the condition it’s in.”
“What are you hoping to find?”
“MRI scans, or even partials. We have to know what was being done at the facility if we have any chance of stopping it in the future.” He looks up to me, a frown knitting his brow. “And we will stop it, Junes. You have my word.”
“And mine,” Ian says quietly.
“Mine,” Luca chimes in from in front of me.
“Mine as well, of course,” Cassian says.
“And mine,” Marcus says softly in my ear, lacing his fingers with mine and giving my hand a gentle squeeze. I curl closer against him, soothed by the heat radiating from his strong body.
After some time, Simon finally lets out a whoop of satisfaction, and disjointed, tinny words stream from the small speakers on his laptop.
They’re broken up, barely intelligible, and warped, as though the speaker had whispered them through water, but there’s no mistaking the sound of my father’s voice.
He reads out the serial number I saw in my vision and on the hospital bracelet, and a series of glitchy-sounding words follow, the recording clearly fragmented.
“Ice… test subject…. sedated... first incision... maginalus.”
Surgical notes, dictated by my father. He always did love to hear himself talk, especially during his darkest deeds. That he dictated his actions throughout his experiments shouldn’t surprise me, but hearing his words did.
Simon slams his laptop shut. “I think that’s enough Redwood Rose bullshit for now, don’t you agree?”
“I certainly do,” Cassian mutters.
Maginaluses from affinitied omegas… What could my father’s horrible intent be?
Locking magic doesn’t require incisions, only spells and serums, and he can’t be removing maginaluses to take away the omegas’ magic as was done to omega and beta mages historically—often taking their lives along with their maginaluses.
In Foundations in Magic, Professor Hayes taught us that it was virtually impossible to remove a mage’s maginalus without killing the subject, even with the newest guided robotic surgery techniques.
None of which my father seemed to be using, which leads me to believe that my father’s doing a hack job of it.
To hell with the sanctity of omega lives; he’s butchering omegas for their maginaluses.
But to what end?
I peer around the jet as though I’ll find any sort of answers. There are a few fragmented images pulled up on Simon’s computer, MRI scans from what I can tell, but the file quality is so bad, so broken, that I can’t make out much else. Cassian leaves his side to talk to Graeme, and I watch him go.
I can’t make out their conversation at the front of the plane. Until my affinity lets me overhear them perfectly. I don’t know if I’m reading Cassian’s mind or Graeme’s, but it doesn’t matter, I can hear their conversation as clearly as if I were sitting right beside them.
“There was more to the facility than I originally thought,” Cassian tells the detective inspector, who was in pursuit of Cora while we did the walkthrough.
“They had to have been holding as many omegas as Cora said. There were cages for fifty, but we don’t know how many were filled.
There were MRI machines, all kinds of tech, and a surgical theater, complete with a table and surgical instruments.
The tray had been knocked to the floor, but there was no mistaking it. Forceps. A scalpel. Nothing good.”
“To what end?” Graeme asks.
I see Cassian shake his head. “From the clip Simon played, it sounds like the extraction of maginaluses from the omega test subjects—affinitied omegas. But I can’t fathom the purpose of doing so. We’ll need to investigate further.”
Investigate further? Aside from picking at the tech Simon took from the facility, what can we possibly do now?
My worst suspicions about my father are coming true, and we were too late to stop him.
I don’t blame Cora for triggering the warding, especially because the facility was revelatory.
But my father’s gone. Now that he’s fled the facility, he’s in the wind.
We have no way of stopping him now. I’m certain he’ll build a new surgical suite, that he’ll continue his research, but we have no leads to go on.
We have no idea where he’ll pop up next.
Near Fairhaven, since he’ll be teaching there this autumn? Or somewhere else?
The only thing I know for sure is that he won’t stop.
Mai and her pack are waiting for us at the castle when we arrive, and the young healer immediately takes Cora into her care, performing what magic I couldn’t. Still, the moment she’s done seeing to the other omega, she finds me in the kitchen with my pack.
“You did phenomenal work with Cora, Juniper. Graeme told me she’d been hexed pretty badly.”
I offer her a tired smile. “I just followed the instructions in the first aid kit.”
“Well, you did a great job. Cora’s going to be just fine. The soft tissue damage was, thankfully, not very deep. She’ll have some soreness for a few days, but nothing a few spells can’t treat. Thank you, Juniper. You may have saved her life.”
When Doc and her pack are gone, my pack crowds around the table in the makeshift kitchen, all of us exhausted. Marcus comes in from the small room where Cora and I have been practicing magic that’s been turned into a small nest for the healing omega.
“Someone has to do something about Jack and Graeme,” he rumbles. “I don’t think they’ve slept at all since Cora disappeared.”
I heave myself up from the table and nod. “I’ll handle it. And I can watch over Cora while they get some sleep.”
I head for Cora’s room and sigh when I see the two alphas clustered together on a threadbare sofa, leaning forward, elbows on their knees, watching for any sign of movement from Cora’s nest. A camping lantern lights the small space, throwing their shadows on the castle’s stone walls.
“Jack, Graeme,” I say, not bothering to hide the fatigue in my voice. If I’m tired from the past few days, they’re bound to be exhausted. “She’s safe, and she’s healing. You should go get some sleep while you can. I’ll come and get you when she wakes.”
Graeme mutters something unintelligible while Jack grumbles.
“Shoo,” I tell them. “I’ve got this.”
“You’ve had a difficult day,” Graeme protests.
“We all have, but you two haven’t been sleeping. I promise you’ll be the first to know if anything happens, all right? If she so much as stirs, I’ll come wake you. You’re useless to her if you don’t rest.”
My words do the trick. After kneeling by Cora’s side and stroking her hair away from her face, Graeme heads to the door, watching Jack take his spot beside the unconscious omega. He takes her hand and squeezes it lightly and murmurs something I don’t catch.
Finally, the two of them leave, only for Marcus to join me, cups of tea and coffee in his hands.
“I can stay with you, if you’d like?” he offers hesitantly.
Like me, he’s probably wondering where we stand after I spent the whole plane ride home clinging to him.
In truth, I wonder the same. He says he loves me, and I know he cares, but did he only hold me because I needed it?
Or did he want me curled up in his arms?
“I’d like you to stay,” I say quietly, taking a seat on the sofa.
Marcus walks over and sets his coffee down on the floor before taking the seat beside me.
Carefully, so as not to spill my tea, he gently tugs me into his lap, tucking my head beneath his chin.
I settle against him, letting out a long breath.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes. It’s perfect. I… I need this.”
“I need it too,” he admits, nuzzling my temple before pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Saints know I’ve needed this for a long time. I ache for you, Juniper. Never doubt that I want you in my arms.”
His kiss fills me with the warm glow of early summer sunshine, as it did back in the cottage, but his words fill me with something even more precious: hope. I nuzzle his jaw, and he tightens his hold on me, sighing with the same contentment I feel.
We stay cuddled up like that while Cora sleeps and heals, and by dawn, our tea and coffee long gone, I’m yawning heavily.
“Sleep for a bit, sweet-tart. You need it.”
“You need it, too,” I grumble.
“Yes, but I’m more stubborn than you are.”
“Want to bet on that?”
He presses another kiss to my forehead. “No, I want you to rest.”
How can I not when he holds me so sweetly, when I feel so relaxed I’m practically boneless? I’ve longed to fall asleep in this alpha’s arms for so long, so I do, knowing he’ll watch over both me and Cora.
I stir when Cora does. Marcus gently shifts me from his arms onto one of the worn old couch cushions and goes to get Graeme and Jack.
Cora sits up, shielding her eyes against the light of the camping lantern. “I’m back in the castle?” she croaks.
I nod and grab her a bottle of water, holding it to her lips. “We flew back this afternoon. You’ve been asleep ever since we found you. You were badly hexed. Doc left a few hours ago. How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” the other omega admits.
“I’ve got a spell for that, if you’d like.”
She nods vigorously and pulls up her shirt just high enough to reveal the bruising. I cast a spell I’ve cast a hundred times since Doc taught it to me in Restorative Magic.
The moment Graeme and Jack burst into the room, Graeme drops to his knees beside Cora and takes her hand in his, not zapped by her out-of-control magic. Either her control has drastically improved, or she’s fond of the two alphas who crowd around her.
“Give her some air,” I admonish them. “She just woke up, and she’s still healing.”
“I need to explain and apologize,” Cora insists, sitting up with Jack’s help.
“Juniper, I spied on you and your beta. I found the coordinates, got a map at a gas station and made for them. I knew I could search the area faster than Simon could do whatever it is he does with his computer. I found the facility and laid low. I saw people in masks coming and going from it, and then I saw your father, Juniper. I recognized him from an old TV interview. Like an idiot, I triggered the alarm after finding out it was a medical facility, so I can’t tell you what was going on in there, only that they had omegas in cages.
They’ve taken them now,” she says quietly.
“I know,” I say softly. “But we’re going to find them. I promise you.”
“They had them collared, and the collars were active. None of them could escape or use their affinities when they were loaded into vans. I… I wanted to follow the van, but the hex… And I didn’t dare come back to the castle for fear that I’d be followed somehow.”
“You did the right thing,” Jack assures her. “You stayed safe until we could find you.”
“I knew you would,” Cora admits, ducking her head. “I knew you’d do whatever it took.”
Jack strokes her cheek, and she looks up into his eyes, the smallest smile gracing her lips.
“Thank you, Jack. Graeme. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Marcus and I take that as our cue to leave. We gather my pack from the kitchen where they’d been taking turns catching a few minutes of sleep and make for the pack house.
When we finally get back to the pack house, I pause on the stairs up to my nest, looking down at Marcus. Should I invite him up with the pack? Would that be weird?
Ultimately, I bid him goodnight and disappear into my nest, going immediately into Luca’s arms, layering his scent over Marcus’ pine and winter winds.