I took the bag from her, leaving her holding the scarf. I peered inside. It looked like a go-bag, packed with granolabars and expired bottles of electrolyte water. Scent blockers and a change of clothes. Even some cash tucked inside.
I glanced up at Jade again, who sniffed. She snatched the bag out of my hand and shoved the scarf back inside. “C’mon babe,” she said, nodding up to the hangout space. “I’ll tell you what I found.”
I climbed to the platform and settled outside the main area. Jade sat down next to me, shoving the backpack into the corner.
“So,” she said, dangling her feet over the ledge. “The hunt for Jule. My friend got access to the trafficking records. The police have like, years worth of them.”
“And?”
“It’s really weird. He looked up the records from the date you gave me—the times he was put in the cages. And there is an entry of a male being sold from the Crimson Palace.”
“So it could be him?”
Jade frowned. “No. This is the weird part. It was for a male omega.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
She showed me the picture of the document on her phone.
I’d given her a list of names my family used for shell companies, gathered from the conversations I’d recorded over the years. Red Horizons, showing a transaction dated for when Jule had been in the cells. I frowned at the number on the tag line as she explained the way the ring had coded their sales and that this was a male omega.
“What if he’d bonded this omega?” I asked slowly. Jade’s face shuttered, her mouth drawing into a thin line. I winced. “Sorry. It just…it makes sense. Father had him dragged to the cages for a reason. A bond’s permanent, and Father would have lost it on Jule.”
“Sure,” Jade muttered, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. She was still just staring out into the darkness in front of us.
“So, my father found out and sold this omega.”
“Then whoever bought him killed him. It’d explain Jule’s suicide,” she said.
My heart squeezed painfully. “If Jule actually committed suicide, why would my father have a fake body?” I insisted.
“Fine,” Jade said. “So he ran away. Ditched us to go rescue his mate. Now they’re living happily ever after in Canada or some shit.”
“He wouldn’t just abandon me like that,” I said. “You know he wouldn’t.”
“Do I?” Jade’s voice wobbled, and she gave a small laugh. “Did he ever tell you why I left?”
“He wasn’t really talking to me much, after he presented,” I said tentatively. “You just left me that note. I figured you guys had a fight.”
I blinked as I remembered it. The note itself was long gone, but the words were burned into my memory.
Jade reached out a hand to squeeze mine. “Sorry babe,” she said. “I—we slept together. It was right before he claimed his aura.”
I was silent. I’d always figured it would be inevitable; they were obsessed with each other. But the way Jade said it, it didn’t sound like a good thing.
“I thought…that he cared about me, y’know? I was so happy.”
The misery was pouring off her in waves, so palpable, even in her beta scent, that it drew a whine from my lips. Imoved closer, holding her hand in my lap. Thick tears were rolling down her face.
“He stayed the next morning. He…was nice. He said he’d completely deny it if I tried to tell anyone, though.”
I snorted, and she gave a wet laugh, wiping her face on her sleeve. She rested her head on her knees, sniffing.
“Then he left, and he just…ghosted me. I thought maybe his phone was broken or something, but he was gonna take me to a movie the next day and he never showed. When I finally tracked him down, it was like he was a different person. I knew he was an alpha, his scent was so strong. And I thought maybe he was off because of your dad, because he’d never wanted to become one. But he brushed me off when I tried to talk to him. Mocked me for thinking he was serious about the movie. We ended up in this screaming match, and he made it pretty clear he’d just wanted a quick fuck but he couldn’t ‘waste any more time with a beta.’”
She wiped her face again, more aggressively this time. “Sorry. I should be over it by now. I just…I thought I knew him, but I was so wrong. So I don’t think we should rule out the possibility he just fucked off and left us.”
