Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Despite protests from my pack that I still need to rest, that I’ve been burning the candle at both ends trying to keep up with schoolwork, I’m determined to visit the freed omegas.
With all the time spent catching up in my classes and my new tutoring every Friday morning, my weeks become untenable.
Still, I must see them. I have to show them they haven’t been abandoned.
I visit them on a Saturday with Ian in tow.
Cora rushes up to me, stopping just short of giving me a hug. She eyes me with apprehension. “You’re okay?”
I’m not, really. It’s almost as if I can still smell the smoke in the air from the initial attack, from hexes hitting home on innocent attendees.
I can’t get those days of solitary confinement out of my head, nor will I ever forget being forced to help my father with his experiments.
“I’m doing better,” I tell her, because it’s the best answer I have to give her.
Aimee shoves her way to the front of the group, deftly avoiding touching Cora.
She looks me over, but the marks of my mistreatment have faded.
The scars that remain are on my heart, not my skin.
She throws her arms around me, hugging me tightly, only letting go when I do.
It’s enough to make tears spring to my eyes, but I quickly wipe them away.
I haven’t gone through a fraction of what these omegas have.
Graeme enters the great hall, a cup of tea in hand. “You should tell them,” he says to me softly. “Whatever you feel you can. Spare no detail you’re comfortable giving. We need to know what we’re up against.”
I want to protest that these omegas are safe, that they’re not up against anything, but I know they will be.
It’s only a matter of time before the war comes to them.
Eventually, the castle’s protection won’t be enough.
If the Soldiers find out about the castle, there’d be a siege, and though the omegas are presently well stocked, it wouldn’t be long before their food ran out.
Before one of them, namely Cora, did something dangerous.
I sigh, sitting on top of one of the long dining tables we pushed aside to make room for practice space.
“I know I’ve been gone for a while,” I hedge.
“During most of that time, I was a hostage of the Soldiers of Saint Aldous. Many of you have met my mate, Cassian. We were at a convocation ball at the Saint Galen Consortium, where he was due to start the next day. More than one hundred Soldiers attacked and took those they didn’t kill hostage. ”
Gasps sound throughout the crowd, murmurs rushing through the omegas like waves.
“Hostage?” Aimee echoes weakly.
Saints, I shouldn’t be telling them any of this. They’re already traumatized from their own time in confinement, and that time was so much worse than mine. I was never forced to use my affinity or be put to death, was never tormented with a collar.
Graeme gives me a slow nod, and I get his message. As hard as this will be for the omegas to hear, they must. They need to know what we’re all facing.
“Hostage,” I confirm. “Everyone who wasn’t killed in the initial attack was taken hostage.
Both my pack and I were. I wasn’t harmed because I was of particular interest to a man they called ‘the butcher.’ A man I would later find out is my father.
They kept me hostage with other omegas for a time, before putting me into a treatment room on my own.
I was handcuffed and spent most of my days chained to the bed. ”
“Juniper,” Cora murmurs, reaching out as though she might take my hand. She thinks better of it and drops her hand.
“Eventually, my father came for me. For those who don’t know, my father is the CEO of a pharmaceutical company.
He has an extensive background in medicine—and a background in experimenting on omegas.
” I swallow hard and stare at my boot-clad toes for a moment before raising my head.
“I believe I was one of his first test subjects when I was sixteen. He locked my magic, something the Council is now threatening to do to any omega caught casting forbidden spells.”
I look to Graeme for confirmation, which comes quickly.
“Jack and I told them.”
I nod and force myself to continue. “I believe my father’s research in locking magic has emboldened the Council and the Soldiers of Saint Aldous.
But it’s his other research that truly scares me and should scare all of you.
Cora found an abandoned facility around the beginning of June, one I believed my father was using to conduct experiments on omegas.
He confirmed as much while I was being held hostage.
His experiments are gruesome. And fatal. ”
I beckon Aimee forward and turn so her back is facing the crowd of omegas. At my prompting, she gathers her blond curls to the side.
“All mages have an organ called a maginalus, right about here, along the spine,” I say, pointing out the spot on Aimee’s back.
“It’s what allows us to do magic. It’s also what gives us the power of our affinities.
I don’t know why only omegas have affinities, but my father is trying to change that.
He’s been removing maginaluses from omegas with affinities and somehow giving those powers to alphas.
I’m a bit fuzzy on that part, but I nearly saw an omega have her maginalus removed up close. ”
“And tried to kill her father in the process,” Ian puts in in a proud mutter.
I straighten my spine. “It’s true. There are at least thirty more affinitied omegas confined at the consortium now. Test subjects for my father. No omegas have survived the removal of their maginalus in my father’s experiments, nor is it a priority of his. My father must be stopped.”
“So how do we stop him?” a soft-spoken omega named Holly pipes up from the middle of the crowd.
“And how do we free all those omegas? Saints, I can’t imagine how scared they must be,” Aimee says, whirling back around to face the other omegas, as if asking them for solutions.
“We want to help,” Cora says. “We all worked hard on our magic and affinities in you and your mate’s absence.” She whips out her scribe, calls her magic, and a shield immediately sizzles into place in front of her.
My eyes go wide. Saints, her casting is coming so easily to her now. “Cora…” I beam with pride. “That’s exceptional casting.”
“And we can all do it,” Holly says. “Graeme and Jack have been relentless in our training. But they don’t let us do the really fun magic. The ‘fight back’ kind of magic.”
“Combat magic is a death sentence for omegas,” I say, hesitation in my voice.
“Pft,” Blair says. “What isn’t? Jack told us omegas are being grabbed off the street, mated or not. Make no mistake,” she tells the other omegas. “This is a war. Who wants to fight it with me? With us,” she says, coming to my side.
The crowd bursts into excited chatter as, one by one, omegas raise and light their scribes, pledging their magic, their affinities and their lives to the same cause I’ve been fighting for.
I want to tell them it’s too dangerous, that they could be caught again, put to death, but they’re right.
This is a war being waged against us. How could I deny them the right to fight back for themselves and their kind?
Their wills have been taken from them time after time throughout their lives. Who am I to do the same?
“Then we all have to train,” Blair tells the omegas.
Ian rubs his hands together. “And we’re starting with the really fun stuff. One of Juniper’s other alphas is an accomplished combat mage. I’m sure he’ll consent to teaching you the ‘fight back’ kind of magic.”
Aimee whoops. “I’m so going to hex every Soldier I see in the balls. Fuckers.”
Fuckers, indeed.
But just as the omegas have to train, so do I.
In the time I don’t spend with the omegas or catching up in my classes, I train.
The Leclercs have a training room even nicer than the one back at the pack house, and I notice Cassian making mental notes about what ours needs.
They also have an in-home gym in the next room over, where I often find Marcus after my lessons.
He’s irresistible after a workout, sweat slicking his shirt to his muscular chest, his scent deep and heady.
We steal kisses on the work bench, our hands roving over each other’s skin.
It’s one of my newest favorite parts of training—the reward of time with my alpha.
While Cassian is working with the omegas on combat magic, he works on my command with me. I’m steadily making improvements. I’ve learned, like all of my skills, my command works best when my affinity is flowing through me.
“All right,” I muse. It’s becoming more and more challenging to figure out what to command my alpha to do.
I’ve sent him from room to room, had him make me a coffee, had him go surprise Simon with a kiss, and had him run a lap around the estate.
I’m running out of ideas. I huff out a sigh. “Make a silly face.”
His look of betrayal lasts for a split second before he pulls a funny face.
I giggle. “Another!”
He makes another silly face for me.
When my command has worn off, he groans. “I think I preferred running laps.”
“Wave your hands over your head,” I command.
He does with a long-suffering sigh.
“Now shake your ass.”
I laugh, a deep belly laugh, at his disjointed dance.
“Dance around the room!”
I feel his faint annoyance through our bond, but it’s better than the tension that’s taken up place between us since he promised to stop locking his feelings away.