Chapter 14 #2
The leader of the Riftward Shield, a tall, muscular guy with dark eyes, stepped up beside her.
He didn’t gently touch her lower back or offer his hand.
He clamped his heavy fingers over her shoulder, his grip visibly tight, possessive in a way that made my stomach churn.
I wanted to punch his damn lights out. Instantly, the mask slammed back into place.
Eliza’s spine straightened, the terror vanishing behind a wall of cold, aristocratic indifference.
“Is there a problem here?” the Riftward leader asked, his gaze raking over me with blatant disdain.
“No, Kael,” Eliza said, devoid of any identifiable emotion. She didn’t look at me. “I was just offering the new girl some friendly advice on how things work at Imperium.”
I swallowed the lump of sympathy forming in my throat. I had to play along. If I showed even an ounce of pity, if I hinted that she had just exposed herself, I would be putting a target on her back.
“And I was just telling her I don’t fucking need it.” I adjusted my posture, letting my Ophis energy simmer just visibly enough to make Kael take a half-step back. “See you around, Eliza.”
I didn’t wait for a response, just turned and jogged away, keeping my pace steady until I rounded the far side of the amphitheater and was completely out of their sight. Only then did I stop, leaning my hands on my knees as I sucked in the crisp morning air.
Noodle hissed softly, uncoiling from my neck to rest his head against my cheek. ‘A bird in a very small cage.’
“This is why women should run the world, not men. We aren’t even human and yet we’re still beholden to every fucking one of their whims.”
I finished my run in a daze, wondering if Eliza was telling the truth, or just trying to justify what she did.
The powerful families weren’t just politicians and socialites.
They were a mafia in their own way. They controlled their children with an iron fist, dictating their bonds, their shields, their entire futures.
Melissa had done what she did to me because her father ordered her to secure the Callahan connection.
Eliza had abandoned Stardust because Mr. Reece demanded a more socially and powerfully advantageous alliance with Riftward.
And Aiden... Aiden was still under that man’s thumb.
A fresh wave of grief washed over me, but I forced it down. I couldn’t fix Dominion from London, but I knew five men who were carrying deep, festering wounds because they believed they hadn’t been good enough for the woman they loved.
I headed straight for the dining hall. The room was bustling with the morning rush, smelling of roasted coffee, fresh pastries, and cold fire from the sconces. I spotted the Stardust Shield at their usual table near the arched stained-glass windows.
Rowan was laughing at something Theo said, while Phoenix quietly buttered a piece of toast. Lucas sat at the head of the table, reading a tablet, and Jamie was staring down at his tea, eyes far away.
“Morning,” I said, sliding into the empty chair between Jamie and Phoenix.
“Morning, love,” Rowan said, gaze eyes dropping to my workout gear with a distinctly appreciative gleam before snapping back up to my face. “Good run?”
“Enlightening,” I muttered, grabbing an apple from the center bowl.
Jamie shifted beside me. I felt the subtle brush of his knee against mine under the table, a touch so light it might have been an accident, but the sudden intake of his breath told me otherwise. He slowly turned his head to look at me, his green eyes luminous and cat-like.
“You’re upset,” Jamie muttered, scanning me carefully. I wondered if he was reading my emotions or just my face. I was never as good at a poker face and wore my emotions on my sleeve.
“I ran into Eliza on my run.”
The entire table went dead silent. Rowan’s fork clattered against his plate. Lucas slowly lowered his tablet, eyes hardening into chips of frozen glass. Phoenix’s jaw clenched, and Theo sat back, crossing his arms.
“Did she threaten you?” Lucas asked, deadly calm. “Because if she did, I will personally have a word with her.”
“No,” I said quickly. “No, she didn’t threaten me. We just, uh, talked.”
“Eliza doesn’t ‘just talk’,” Theo pointed out dryly. “She strategizes. She undermines. What did she say?”
I looked around the table at these incredible, powerful men.
They were so fiercely protective, so deeply loyal, and they’d been so thoroughly broken by a lie.
I couldn’t betray Eliza’s secret—not when it could put her in actual danger from her father—but I couldn’t let them keep believing they were the problem, either.
“I can’t put my finger on why, but I think she’s terrified of something. Something isn’t right.”
Rowan scoffed bitterly. “Terrified that her makeup was smudged, maybe.”
“No. I mean I think she’s like, genuinely afraid of something.” I turned to Lucas. “You know the Reece family. You know the politics. Is it possible she didn’t have a choice?”
Lucas frowned as he considered. “Charles Reece is a ruthless bastard. He’s been angling for Director Orion’s position for a decade. The Riftward Shield’s families possess significant voting power. We’re traditionalists. We have influence, but we don’t play the Assembly’s political games.”
“So, if she’d stayed with you, it wouldn’t have helped her father’s ambitions.”
“It probably would’ve hindered them if anything,” Phoenix added quietly, his copper eyes thoughtful. “We actively oppose many of Charles Reece’s proposals regarding the deployment of younger zodiacs as well as predetermined axis pairings.”
I shivered at the thought of the Assembly playing matchmaker rather than leaving it up to the people. It’s exactly the kind of bullshit Nightfall thought I was up to.
“Still. I think her father might have threatened her, or threatened you, to make her walk away. It’s just a theory though so please don’t take it as gospel.”
The silence that followed was deafening. I watched the realization ripple through them. Jamie let out a ragged breath beside me. He didn’t say a word, but he reached under the table, his long, calloused fingers finding my hand. His thumb stroked a slow, soothing circle across my knuckles.
Rowan was the first to break the silence.
He let out a humorless breath, dragging a hand down his face.
“You have a kind heart, Jupiter. And maybe there’s a grain of truth in what you’re saying.
Charles Reece is a monster. But even if that were the case, even if she was forced, if she actually wanted to be with us, we could have made it work. ”
Lucas leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the heavy oak table.
“We don’t bow to Assembly politics, and we certainly don’t cower before men like Charles Reece.
If she’d come to us, if she’d said she was in danger, or that her father was threatening her, we would have torn down the Assembly itself to protect her.
We have the power and the standing to shield her from him. ”
“Instead, she chose the path of maximum destruction,” Theo murmured, his attention fixed on the grain of the wood.
“If she had to leave us, fine. But she could have at least given us the dignity and respect of being honest about it. She could have looked us in the eyes and ended it like a person with a bloody soul.”
I frowned. “Fear makes people do terrible things. Maybe she thought telling you the truth would put a target on your backs. Maybe she was trying to protect you the only way she knew how, by making you hate her.”
I didn’t know why I was even pushing this. If they were to suddenly decide they were in love with Eliza still, I would punch myself in my stupid face. But still, I was on the other side of a bad faith assumption once, and I didn’t want to see another woman suffer the same.
Jamie’s hand tightened around mine, his grip almost painful for a fraction of a second before he relaxed it.
Phoenix looked away, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek.
Rowan swore under his breath, picking up his fork only to toss it back onto his plate with a loud clatter, deciding he was no longer interested in eating.
Theo let out a long sigh, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms defensively over his chest. “We noticed she was pulling away, making excuses to miss training, avoiding our quarters. We thought she was just stressed about the upcoming bonding ceremony. So, we decided to surprise her.”
“We bought her a gift,” Rowan sneered. “A pendant with all of our names inscribed on the back as a way to commemorate our bond. One evening she said she was feeling too tired to come down for dinner, so we went to her room to give it to her.”
Jamie’s thumb stopped moving against my knuckles. “The door wasn’t locked. We just walked in.”
“And we found her in bed,” Lucas finished, his voice turning to absolute ice.
“She was fucking Kael and Ivan from the Riftward Shield. We stood in the doorway and watched our future axis—the woman we’d spent years courting, the woman who’d sworn she loved us—screaming Kael’s name while he took her from behind. ”
All the air vanished from my lungs. I sat there, utterly paralyzed by the sheer cruelty of it.
It was one thing to be forced into a political arrangement by a tyrannical father.
It was one thing to break up with a shield to protect them.
But to enthusiastically betray every ounce of trust you once had in them? That was cruel humiliation.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”