Betrayal. It consumed me.
Betrayal from Julian. Who died.
Betrayal from James. Betrayal from Stephen.
The three men I had trusted from the start of this whole magi-adventure—those who I had thought to be on my side. As it turned out, all they’d ever done was lie to me. I was nothing more than a pawn in their game, not someone they cared about. Just a pawn. And damn, it hurt so much it was hard tobreathe.
There was no way to know how long I’d been sitting there, lost in the whirlwind of my own thoughts. James had been silent since our break up, a suffocating stillness settling between us.
I fought to keep the tears at bay, my eyes dry but stinging from the emotional strain. I dry-heaved a few times again, trying to quell the nausea constantly threatening to overtake me.
I couldn’t look at him—couldn’t bear to face him. Every instinct urged me to leave, to put as much distance between us as possible. But I had to stay. I had to be part of whatever thesemen planned next. I couldn’t risk being left in the dark again, not after everything.
And most of all, I needed to know what they’d say about my son.
With that pain, a whole lot of anger gnawed at me with brutal intensity. Each time my gaze landed on James, a fresh surge of fury blazed within, clawing for release. I wanted to see himsuffer, not just a punch to the face but something deeper, something that would leave him as broken as I felt. I wanted him to go through the same pain he’d inflicted. He’d hurt me deeply—and I wanted him to feel every ounce of it.
When the other two men finally returned, the tension in the room was so thick it could have been sliced with a wet paper towel. They looked at us—James and me—sitting on opposite sides of the room, a chasm of hurt and rage between us.
James glanced at me, his eyes searching mine for anything—an opening, a chance to explain, to mend what was already broken. But I didn’t give him that. I couldn’t. My heart had been torn open, and no amount of words or apologies could close the wound.
Caden and Stephen sat down at the table, and I reluctantly returned to them, though I couldn’t sit near James, the closeness unbearable. With one swift motion, I grabbed my chair and moved it to the other side, next to Caden’s instead.
Caden’s lips twitched in silent amusement, but he wisely chose not to comment. Lucky for him, because if he had, I would’ve made a eunuch out of him.
Stephen’s silver haze turned up quickly as he manipulated the room’s arrangement. With a swift gesture, he transformed the square table into a round one, placing all of us in a direct line of sight, which to me felt like yet another layer of intrusion.
Asshole.
“I’d like to begin by informing you that while you were processing, Caden and I took another trip into the future,” he said softly. “We found your son still fighting the Trackers. Which means?—”
“Julian wasn’t the father,” I cut in, finishing his thought.
Our Specialist nodded solemnly. “Exactly. So that’s a relief. Now, what we need is a solid plan for the coming months. We need to make sure no one finds out the Elder’s gone, nor that we had anything to do with it.”
He dragged in a lungful of air, holding it for a moment before exhaling. “And more importantly, we are about to face a war against Radicals on one side, and a daunting future on the other.”
“We must find the Radicals first and destroy their Amplifier once and for all. Additionally, we need to eliminate the LiaPrisms on every continent. The Great Exposure is nearing, and while we’ve managed to slow it down, the future still shows it’s coming.”
Stephen’s words sank in, but I shoved the emotion aside and focused on the next step. “If you’re behind the Resistants but not the Radicals, does that mean you had no part in threatening Collectives to reverse their consensus?” I was finally starting to process the flood of information.
Caden’s deep voice cut through my spinning thoughts. “We were trying to slow down the Great Exposure by having Resistants stand up against the consensus. But we would never use or even threaten to use a nuclear weapon on anyone. That shit is sole Radical territory.”
“I thought you found the label laughable?” I shot back, my tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Only when it refers to me,” Caden replied dryly.
I rolled my eyes, the familiar hatred of him briefly pushing through the fog of betrayal and confusion.
“The Radicals are now threatening Coastal, Sisu, and Alliance with an Amplifier to revoke their consensus,” Stephen said, all calm but also grim. “As much as I want to see every consensus rescinded, I don’t want to resort to nuclear weapons to achieve that.”
“Glad to know there are still some boundaries you’re willing to respect,” I muttered, bitterness threading through every word. It would be a cold day in hell before I showed any respect to any of my current tablemates.
But, despite my overwhelming urge to walk out and never look back, I couldn’t abandon my son—Alek—or stand by doing nothing while innocent people suffered. The magnitude of the situation anchored me in place, though every fiber of my being screamed at me to flee.
I let out a sudden, unsettling giggle, the kind that bubbles up when you're standing on the edge of madness. “So every time anyone said, ‘Stone is on his consensus tour,’ you were actually sabotaging it.” The sheer absurdity of it hit me like a wave, and I giggled again, the sound almost manic. My sanity felt like it was slipping further with each breath, the situation spiraling into something almost too surreal to grasp.
The gray haired man smiled faintly, resignation flickering in his features. “I’m glad you find that amusing. And yes, that’s absolutely what I was doing.”
