Chapter Fifty-One
Saphyra
“ I was so stupid. How could I have trusted her?” I mumbled, and scrolled to the next screen on the gold datapad.
I barely heard Lex’s muttered agreement over the clip clop of the horses hooves. “It was right there in front of me the whole time.” Even though his words were soft the tick in his jaw screamed his frustration and anger.
“Why do you think that, little one?” Grey either didn’t hear Lex, or chose to ignore him, as we rode alongside one another up the dirt track to the hot springs we’d camped at the night before.
“Don’t worry about it. I was just thinking.” I swiped across the tablet screen again, bringing me to the next page. It was hard to believe that my whole world could change in a single day. After everything that had happened here in such a short period, it felt more like a lifetime.
“You’re not stupid. You want to see the best in people and that doesn’t make you any less intelligent, Saphyra.” Grey focused on my statement even though I’d brushed it off.
When I didn’t reply, he watched me for a few strides, our horses following behind the leaders quietly. “What are you reading?”
“I’m looking through my family history. My ancestors regularly had multiple mates, often Star-blessed, but that stopped a few generations ago.”
Lex looked over his shoulder from where he was leading his horse at the front of the group. “Does it say what changed?”
His velvet rumble startled me. I hadn’t realized he was still listening. “I don’t see anything in this section, but I’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“You might check what it says about the Altairan royal line,” Grey suggested. He’d told us about Altaira’s tragic history with multiple mates. It sounded like a logical place to start.
I was grateful my horse was so agreeable, finding his way through the falling twilight without my direction, while I navigated through the records, not paying attention to our shadowed path. “Found it. The lineage is similar to Verden, with multiple mates recorded in the past, but not recently. There’s a note about the last queen who had more than one bond, though. It’s in a different format, like it was added after the fact. It says, four generations ago, Aranka of Altaira had six Star-blessed mates, but…”
I paused, biting the inside of my cheek, unsure if I should go on. They needed to know just as much as I did. “But it says that the bond killed her. The issues started when she used her men’s political positions on their home planets to insinuate control, annexing Pyxis and Pyraxis and,” I swallowed hard, “had the Queens murdered to claim their crowns for herself.”
I didn’t want to believe it. How could anyone do something so awful?
Here I was, looking for the best in people when they didn’t deserve it again.
Despite my reluctance to accept the horrible possibility, the Imperatrix did control those planets. Which only made sense if the Queens were gone. Or dead. Or Murdered.
I shook off the heavy thoughts and continued reading. “Aranka used the bond to manipulate her mates. The misuse of their connection made them ill, but she didn’t stop. In pursuit of more power, their ties became unstable. She was an empty husk when they died at her feet. She succumbed to the poison she sowed into their union, leaving one frail, sickly daughter behind.” I filled my lungs with cool, moist air. What I’d read so far was bad enough, but I was only halfway through the entry.
“There’s more.” I shifted uncomfortably in my saddle, four sets of eyes suddenly heavy on me. “The daughter outlawed multiple mates, blaming the tragedy of her parents’ death on that, and attempted to destroy any record of the abuse.” My thoughts turned to the charred shelves in the library. The library that had been protected behind our shield until my mother was murdered.
“You don’t think the Imperatrix killed your mother just for the records, do you?” Grey asked softly.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m part of this somehow.” The longer I thought about it, the more it made sense, but there was something beyond just keeping their secret.
My fingers skittered across the touchpad, halting. “Search Edeth…”
Lex turned in his saddle, watching me as I sifted through the files. His mouth was drawn in a grim line, and his brows were furrowed in thought. He was always intense but this was even worse than usual. It seemed like he blamed himself for what had happened and was just as mad at himself for missing the clues as he was at Edeth for doing it.
The screen lit up with logs going back hundreds of years. The entries would have stopped updating near my mother’s death, so the Edeth I was looking for had to be a recent addition.
She was there. Right at the top.
Edeth Lochlan, citizen of Verden. I tapped the entry and blinked at the results. How did I not know this until now? Did no one think it was important enough to mention? Lex was too young, but Titus should have known. Was he covering for her?
I read out loud. “Edeth Lochlan, daughter of Lord and Lady Lochlan of Altaira. Assigned to Verden as a child companion to the heir, Esmeralda of Verden, along with her aunt as a chaperone.” My fingers were numb around the suddenly heavy weight of the tablet.
“That’s not her name anymore. It’s Edeth Knight now. Since she married the regent, she changed her surname. No doubt to flaunt her new position,” Lex spat, his normally smooth voice was rough with anger.
Surely, Edeth hadn’t been sent all the way from Altaira to keep a secret. That was such a minor reason to take a life. She could have stolen the records or burned the library herself at any point.
My horse came to a stop, and I looked up from the screen. Night had fallen while I’d been reading. The moon cast a diffused silver glow through the thin blanket of fog hugging the treetops. The sound of the burbling creek and the mist drifting from the hot springs just in sight up the hill alerted me to the fact that we’d arrived at camp.
Rainbow sparks flickered through the wisps of clouds overhead where the shroud broke apart, jarring me from thoughts of Edeth’s betrayal. Cascading hexagonal patterns shot across the sky in shimmering streaks.
A jolt of fear raced up my spine as I watched the ominous light show. “What’s that?”
It was Ghost who answered as he helped me from my perch. “It looks like the armada is testing the shield. Probably shooting at it to see if anything can get through. The lights would be the resulting interaction.”
“They’re here, then.” I wasn’t asking. I already knew.
“Right on time.” Ghost kissed the top of my head and pulled my horse’s saddle off, taking it to stow with the others.
“Will they be able to get through?” I wondered out loud, trying to keep the concern from my voice.
Ghost traded the datapad for my horse’s lead rope and a brush. “Not tonight.”
The unspoken ‘Not while you live’ was a silent weight hanging over my head.
My fingers trembled as I brushed my gelding down. The repetitive motion soothed my worries, and my mind drifted back to Edeth and what else she was doing. “If Edeth came here as a child, why would she wait so long to do what she did?”
Grey set a kettle of water over the fire Shadow had built while the rest of us were tending the horses. His voice drifted through the fog across the clearing. “It does seem strange that she waited, if that’s all she was here to do. Maybe she didn’t know at first, and hesitated when she found out what was expected of her. If Maddox and his father are to be believed, the shield would’ve warded off any direct threat. Assassination wouldn’t work. The only way to get through might have been the innocence of a child.”
Ghost took my horse from me and handed back the tablet. “That still doesn’t explain what they were waiting for? If she hesitated at first, what changed?”
Memories of her handing me to the soldier were stark in my mind. The deal was done when she delivered me. But why?
Lex’s gaze was like a physical thing when it landed on me.
I narrowed my eyes at him, curious. “What are you thinking?”
He stopped laying out the bedding pallets on the dry ground. “Was there more in Altaira’s record?”
My heart stuttered, not wanting to open the datapad again. “Yes.”
His brows rose as if saying, ‘Well, get on with it then.’
I scanned my thumb and plopped down on the log next to Shadow by the fire. “I’m not sure what to look for. It just says that the sickly daughter was a beta and had no mate. She did have one child, another beta girl, who took the crown after her mother’s death. That would be the current Imperatrix. During that time, they built The Hive. They entered into an agreement with Pharanax after Pharanax’s queen was… lost, and their planet’s core destabilized. Altaira was in bad shape by then, too. Mass extinction of plants and animals, pollution, and the thinning of their atmosphere drove their population into climate-controlled buildings.”
I dreaded reading further, but something near the bottom of the screen stopped me, and I felt the warmth leach from my face. “Without the omega bloodline, the planet was dying. They rounded up every omega they could find, searching for one that could save them. One that carried the blood of their last omega queen. Soon, they realized that no living omega could accomplish what they needed. Over the following fifty years, they resorted to breeding, cloning, and genetic manipulation, with little success.”
That was what The Hive was for. They weren’t only breeding an army of alphas. They were trying to save themselves. Even if it meant destroying everyone else.
“Wait.” I flipped back to Verden’s record to confirm what I’d seen in the tomb. Eran, Prince of Altaira, mated to Queen Opal of Verden. My family definitely carried Altairan royal blood. It was a long time ago, but maybe someone thought it was enough. There could be more recent ties buried in the records that I missed as well. But it had to be an omega. An unmated omega that was pliable enough to cooperate with their plans. “They were waiting for me.”
Grey sat down on my other side and handed me a nutrition bar. “That’s a possibility. They were very interested in your genetics. What brought you to that conclusion?”
I took it, but my mouth was too dry to eat. “Tests can tell what designation a child is likely to mature into, right?” I ducked his question momentarily, remembering Robin’s baby tested as likely to be an omega, but wanted to confirm it. My theory could be wrong, but I didn’t think so.
“Even a newborn will show markers for potential designations, but for accurate results, the older the subject, the better. There’s no way to be sure until they emerge at puberty.” Grey was studying me, probably wondering where I was going with this.
“But say you just wanted to be reasonably certain.” I nibbled the corner of the tasteless meal bar, waiting for his reply.
“Well, like I said, the older the better, but between the age of seven and nine, the accuracy of the indicators increase significantly.”
“So at eight, tests would give a pretty good idea if a child would emerge as an omega?” My skin prickled with dread.
Grey bowed his head, realization dawning. “There’s no way to be positive, but there is better than seventy-five percent certainty with blood tests over the age of eight.”
The timeline made sense once I considered that. They had to be reasonably sure. They couldn’t risk making a move until there was a high certainty of my designation.
“I have a theory.” I thought through my words before I continued. “First, Altaira sent Edeth to befriend my mother when she was a child and no malicious intent would be perceived. That’s how they fooled the shield. Yes, They wanted to destroy the records or steal them, but that was secondary to what they really needed.” I glanced around and they were all watching me intently.
“They needed an unmated omega with royal Altairan genetics. My mother mated young, and maybe Edeth couldn’t bring herself to go through with it before then, or maybe my father’s family had Altairan blood ties from previous generations and they hoped that would make the difference they needed.” I’d have to look more deeply into that later.
“Once I was born, they had what they’d been waiting for. And Edeth had more incentive. By then, she coveted the crown. With Titus in the picture, that was within reach. All she had to do was murder the queen, burn the library, and send me to the Hive. Along with all the other omegas they could find, just in case. It would be an easy thing to remove Lex’s mother from the picture then, too. I think I know what the Imperatrix is doing. She’s trying to breed their bloodline back into existence.”
The intent faces of my mates had morphed into scowls. Lex shot to his feet, throwing the nutrition bar he’d been eating into the woods with so much force that when it hit the trunk of a nearby tree, the whole canopy shuddered, and stalked into the darkness. I flinched at his anger, but I understood. He’d lost nearly as much as I had that day, and then grown up in the same house as the monster who’d done it.