Fuck.
I actually care if the bastard gets himself killed.
When didthathappen?
"None of this matters right now!" Azarel's snarl cuts through the chaos. "I don't give a shit about Surhiira's war. But if you want it to remain on the Reinmichian border instead of at your fucking doorstep, you'll find those fucking doctors for Cosima."
He storms out, slamming the door behind him with enough force to rattle the few remaining intact decorations.
The silence he leaves behind is suffocating.
"Man," Geo says with a low whistle. "You guys could use some family counseling, huh?"
Now it's his turn to be on the receiving end of one of Plague's signature icy glares, but Plague just stands, moving toward the door with rigid control. "Keep an eye on Cosima," he mutters, his hand on the doorknob. "So my men don't have to."
The door closes behind him with less fanfare than Azarel's slam, but it's somehow no less menacing.
We all look at each other, everything we just learned hanging over our heads like a guillotine blade. Knight makes a low rumbling sound of confusion or concern. Hard to tell with him, but I'm getting better at reading his moods through body language alone. Not as good as Cosima, but good enough that I'll be able to dodge out of the way if he suddenly gets a hankering for alpha meat.
Hopefully.
"So," I say, because someone has to address the elephant in the room, "are we going to tell her or not?"
About the chip.
About what her father did to her.
About the fact that she's basically a walking bomb that Arthur Maybrecht can detonate whenever he feels like it.
Geo scrubs a hand over his face, looking older than I've ever seen him. "You heard Azarel. Telling her would put her in danger."
"Not telling her is already putting her in danger," Nikolai counters.
"For now," Geo says slowly, like he's thinking it through as he speaks, "we wait to see what the doctors say. We tell them we can't keep shit from her. Period. Then..." He shrugs. "Then we figure out what the fuck to do."
It's not much of a plan. But right now, with everything spiraling out of control around us, it's all we've got.
Knight moves toward the door, clearly ready to return to our omega. To guard her from threats she doesn't even know exist. The rest of us follow, because what else can we do?
As we walk through the palace corridors, I can't shake the feeling that we're all balanced on the edge of a cliff. One wrong move, one piece of information delivered at the wrong time, and everything could shatter.
Cosima needs to know the truth.
But the truth might literally kill her.
And somewhere out there, Arthur Maybrecht is pulling strings we can't even see, orchestrating a war that could consume everything and everyone we've grown to care about.
No fucking pressure or anything.
Chapter 40
COSIMA
I stand at the window,staring out at the gardens below where Azarel tried to kidnap me less than two hours ago. The fountain where Knight slammed him into the marble is still cracked, water pooling around the broken stone like blood. Servants are already working to clean up the mess, their white robes ghosting through the greenery like spirits.
Everything I have done... everything I will do until my dying breath... is for you, Cosima.
Azarel's words echo in my skull, refusing to be silenced.
