What other omega?
She turns away from me to focus on the woman in front of her. “Do it.”
Panic drives me forward.
Kylian, the man who knocked Torin out cold, blocks me, his eyes threatening death if I take another step forward. “The only reason you’re here is because you have to be. You’re not stopping this.”
The door beside Torin swings open, and three men wearing white t-shirts and pants walk in. Each one grabs me, Archer, and Torin by the arm and pulls us toward the sunken pools of water. Juniper steps into the first pool with the petite brunette without hesitation, shivering slightly as the water reaches her waist.
Garrison frowns as he says, “Three scent matches mean three broken bonds. That’s going to leave scars.”
Juniper lifts her chin. “I don’t care.”
Torin steps forward, one black eye completely sealed shut. “June,please. We got things wrong. We?—”
She looks at him, her eyes so cold, it’s clear she hates him. “Mynameis Juniper. Do not call me June. That is not who I am to you.” She turns away from Torin, back to the woman conducting the bond breaking. “Do it. I don’t care what happens, any scars or effects it will have. I just want the bonds gone.”
“You could die,” the woman warns her softly.
“I'd rather die than stay tied to them a second longer.” Juniper nods firmly. “I’m ready.”
“Juniper,” Archer attempts.
She looks at him. “You ruined this. All of you poisoned it so badly that there is no coming back, no forgiveness, no making amends. Just regret. Better a cold, society mating than whatever this was.” She looks at us one by one. “If I survive this, so be it. But I never want to see any of you ever again. You are all dead to me.”
I flinch at each word.
There is so much Juniper doesn’t know. So much I thought she knew already, but it’s too late. The men in white are dragging us into the neighboring pools of water, and the bond breaking is starting. It’s freezing, and the water smells of sage and lemon.
“You will always feel a piece of you is missing,” the woman says, her voice echoing in the low-ceilinged room.
Juniper holds her palm to the woman. “I don’t want the piece missing. I want it dead.”
The woman runs the blade across Juniper’s palm. She hisses, then wraps her hand in a tight fist as the first drops of blood hit the water’s surface.
“What was bound, let us unbind.”
A man steps forward, seizes my wrist and yanks it toward him, dragging the knife over my palm as another does the same to Archer, and yet another to Torin.
“Juniper!” I shout at her, willing her to stop this.
Juniper steps deeper into the water. It comes to the middle of her chest, and I can barely smell her scent now. It’s slowly fading.
A man grabs my wrist and yanks me forward. I plunge deeper into the water.
As does Archer.
And so does Torin.
The bond can fade in time if there’s enough distance between an alpha and an omega—years rather than weeks or months. An alpha can reject their omega, walk away, and the omega is too submissive to hold on to that bond. It snaps. That’s not what this is.Thisis a forced bond breaking. Scrubbing away the past to emerge whole, unbonded in the eyes of the world, even if Juniper will always wear our bites on her throat.
Council staff thrust a paper, forms for us to sign when we entered the building—warnings of what could go wrong. I refused to sign anything.
The papers soon disappeared, but Juniper would have signed them. I saw the look in her eyes before she walked away from us. If she could have wiped all traces of us from her memory, she would have.
I will never walk away from Juniper. I’m too dominant to let my scent match go, and this is the result.
Juniper’s breathing is ragged, her clothes waterlogged, and her skin pink. She sways in the water, held up by the woman.
