Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Simon combs through my freshly conditioned hair, undoing the knots and tangles as he works through my blond strands.
He’s done this since my winter heat, and I love the quiet moments with him as I recover.
My heat broke this morning, but I’m still exhausted.
I sag back in the chair at my vanity, letting out a sigh of pleasure.
I ache in the best ways possible, feeling very well loved—and very, very well fucked.
His phone chimes with a news alert, and he ignores it, continuing to comb through my hair.
“It could be important,” I tell him, turning in my chair. “You can check. I won’t mind.”
“It can’t be more important than you, kit-kat.”
“Just check it.”
He pulls his phone from his pocket and pauses before flicking his phone open to the live news feed.
He sets it in front of me so we can both see it, and I immediately wish he hadn’t.
While the anchors speculate, a damning line of text runs across the bottom of the small screen: Council of Nine member, Annette Claude, was killed coming out of the Hall of the Council of Nine this morning.
“Details are still coming in,” the anchor says, “but sources say that Baphomet’s Prince, the leader of the Soldiers of Saint Aldous, has claimed that his organization carried out the assassination.”
“Can you zoom in on the video?” I ask as a clip of shaky cellphone footage is shown beside the newscaster.
Simon pinches and zooms, then tilts his phone until the clip fills the screen.
In the clip, an alpha in black clothing puts his hands on the steps of the Hall of the Council of Nine, ice flowing from his hands.
He’s surrounded by a cold mist, so his features are hard to make out, but I can just see the curling horns of a Baphomet mask.
The steps are flooded with ice, despite the warm summer weather.
For just a glimpse, a body is shown, unrecognizable for all the frost covering it.
“Annette,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. “She was just talking to Gerard at the graduation party. Beth and I were eavesdropping, and now she’s… now she’s dead, frozen to death by an alpha?”
Simon clicks his phone off and pockets it. “You’ve seen too much already.”
Ice. The alpha must have had the power to summon and manipulate ice. I can think of only one person with such power—the ice affinitied omega whose hospital bracelet I found in the clandestine facility in New Jersey.
I understand now. I finally know what my father is doing, and it’s more gruesome than I could have conceived. My father is taking affinities from omegas and giving them to alphas. To the Soldiers of Saint Aldous.
The thought sobers me instantly, and I turn to Simon, tears in my eyes.
“My father is stealing affinities from omegas,” I whisper, a few tears spilling down my cheeks.
“And giving them to Soldiers. Saints, even the Prince could have an affinity by now.” How did I not realize this earlier?
I was thinking too small when I considered my father removing maginaluses from omegas.
I’d assumed what I thought was the worst then, that he was trying a more barbaric method of denying an omega her magic, but I was so very wrong.
What he’s doing is far, far worse. Had the goal only been to deprive omegas of their magic by taking their maginaluses, there would have been an attempt at keeping them alive.
But if all my father needs are their maginaluses, he’s surely killing all of them, butchering them for their unique magic.
Simon struggles to find the words to respond, but what is there to say?
Baphomet’s Prince had wanted to mobilize his armies by summer, and this is just the start. With my father at his side, giving alphas affinities, the Prince will be unstoppable.
“Pack a bag,” Cassian says, thundering up the stairs to my nest.
“You saw the news,” Simon surmises dully.
“It’s not safe in downtown Fairhaven right now. I need to get you and Junes to my parents’ estate where we’ll all be safer.”
“Cass,” I whisper. “My father is stealing affinities to give them to the Soldiers.”
Cassian jerks back as though he’s been slapped. “That’s what he’s doing?”
I nod, getting up and going to him, slipping into his strong arms. Simon surrounds me from behind, and they hold me between them as I shudder with tears.
“How could he do something so… so evil?” I weep.
“I don’t know, love,” Cassian says quietly. “He’s a bad man. I’ve always known it, but I never once suspected this.”
“We have to stop him,” Simon says, running his hands down my arms until he can take my hands in his. “We will stop him, kit-kat.”
“We don’t even know where he’ll pop up next now that the New Jersey facility has been abandoned,” I say, letting Cassian draw me closer. “We have nothing to go on. No way to track him.”
“The collars?” Cass asks, desperate.
“I haven’t been able to break down whatever they’re using to jam the signal, be it magetech or wards,” Simon says, his voice pained. “I don’t even know where to start looking now that they’ve fled New Jersey. I can speculate, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Cassian swallows hard. “We’ll figure it out. My father can help. But you both need to pack. Ian, Marcus and Luca already are. Actually, Junes, stay right here with Simon. I’ll pack for both of you.”
Simon cuddles me deeper into his arms, guiding me down to the floor of my nest. Saints, it still smells like sex and slick and pack.
I was going to do the laundry today, but now it seems I won’t be.
Simon pulls a blanket around my shoulders before taking me back into his arms while I watch Cassian go through my dresser.
I feel a million miles away from the pack house, drowning in my sorrow and fear.
By the time Cassian has packed for me, Ian emerges at the top of the stairs, lingering at the door to my nest. I open my arms for him, and he comes to me immediately, sinking to my cushy nest and accepting me from Simon’s arms.
“He’s stealing omega affinities for alphas,” I say, closing my eyes against further tears. They won’t do anything, won’t change anything, and they won’t help.
“I know, my darling.”
“You figured it out.”
“I thought I had. You confirmed it.”
My brilliant mate, as sharp as ever.
“Come on, Juniper. Let’s get you someplace safer. I think we’ll all feel a bit saner once we do. It’s too dangerous for you to be downtown if there’s an affinitied alpha running loose.”
“He hasn’t been apprehended?”
“He disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The police have swept a ten-block radius and come up empty handed.”
I nod against him and stand, my movements stiff. Somewhere safer, I remind myself. Because downtown Fairhaven, the city I’ve been happy to call home, is no longer safe for me.
When we reach the estate, Bethany opens the door and immediately pulls me, Cass, and Simon into her arms, pressing kisses to all of our cheeks.
“You’re safe,” she murmurs, relief rolling off of her. “I’m so glad.” As soon as she can bear to release us, she gathers Ian, Luca, and Marcus in her arms, doing the same. “Come in, come in. We’re all in the kitchen but Gerard.”
“Where’s Dad? He’s not at the Hall, is he?”
Bethany shakes her head. “He’s in his study, trying to run damage control. His security team is refusing to let him leave the house. So am I. And I’m scarier. Whatever work he can even do in a crisis like this, he can do it from here.”
We make our way into the kitchen where Roman, Douglas, and Colin are all sitting around the table, talking in hushed tones.
“Juniper, boys,” Douglas says with a weary smile. “It’s good to see you safe.”
“Any updates?” Cass asks.
“Gerard’s been locked in his office since the attack,” Roman says with a shake of his head. “And nothing new has shown up on the news. They’re running a profile on Annette in between repeating what they know about her assassination, but it’s the same story, over and over.”
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Colin admits.
“Nor could I,” Bethany says quietly. “I can’t believe they got Annette. She was the sweetest alpha, and she cared about her work, truly. She cared about omegas. She was a hero.”
And now she’s dead, all thanks to my father’s devious experiments and the Prince’s cruel orders.
“My father did this,” I say quietly. “You all know I have visions. I saw him in the New Jersey facility we found abandoned. He was experimenting on omegas. One of our sources who was early on the scene suggested he may have up to fifty test subjects in captivity.” I pause for a moment, pressing my lips together.
“And this isn’t the first time my father’s conducted experiments on omegas.
I think… I think I was his first test subject. ”
Bethany drops the empty milk frothing pitcher, and it clangs to the floor.
“You what?” she asks, aghast, as Cassian stoops to retrieve the small metal pitcher. He washes it for his mother and then gently shoos her away from the espresso machine.
“I can’t be certain. He may have experimented on omegas before me, but when I was sixteen, I was confined to a facility not unlike the one we saw in New Jersey. A clandestine medical suite, hidden in some nondescript industrial zone.”
“What did he do to you, Juniper?” Bethany asks, trying hard to keep her voice level.
“He locked my magic,” I say quietly. “With spells and some kind of magical or pharmaceutical infusion.”
“That monster!”
“I wouldn’t have my magic if not for Ian’s brilliant spellwork.”
The alpha in question takes my hand and gently tugs me down to his lap, wrapping his arms around me.