The word echoes in my skull with every step.Yet, yet, yet.
My jaw clenches hard enough to make my teeth ache. Later. I can beat myself bloody later. Right now, she needs me present, focused, not drowning in guilt that serves nobody.
If she lives, I'll spend the rest of my existence making this up to her. I'll listen to Raven remind me he was right until my ears bleed. I'll grovel. I'll beg. I'll do whatever it fucking takes.
And if she dies?—
No.
That thought leads to a void I can't look into. A black hole where any conceivable future should be. The idea of existing in a world without her fierce spirit, without her cutting remarks and unexpected laughter, without the way she looks at me like I'm more than just a fucked-up thug with blood on my hands...
How the fuck did this omega burrow so deep into my cold stone heart in such a short time?
Doesn't matter. She's there now, roots dug in so deep that tearing them out would kill me just as surely as whatever's happening to her right now.
"Almost there," Plague says, his voice tight with some fraction of the shame I feel for being so fucking wrong.
The dungeon entrance looms ahead, a descending staircase that disappears into torchlit darkness. My knee screams in protest as I start down, but I ignore it. Pain is just information, and right now the only information that matters is the steady rhythm of Cosima's heartbeat against my chest.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Still alive. Still fighting.
She's so strong. Stronger even than she probably gives herself credit for. This stubborn little omega who looked at a prince and decided to poison him, who faced hell and survived, who somehow found it in her to trust us despite every reason not to.
She deserves better than this.
Better thanus.
Better than me second-guessing my instincts because I was too focused on logic to listen to the warnings Knight and Azarel were screaming.
Azarel.
The thought of him makes my chest twist. Azarel was right. Knight was right. And we didn't listen.
And the fuckingworstpart?
Cosima doesn't even know.
She thinks her mate abandoned her because he's a selfish prick, not because telling her the truth about what her father did to her brain could literally trigger a kill switch.
How the fuck was he supposed to explain that? "Hey, sweetheart, your dad put a bomb in your head but I can't tell you about it because knowing might blow it up"?
I hate the fuckin' guy, but that's not why.
We reach the bottom of the stairs and round the corner into the main corridor.
And freeze.
Azarel stands in the center of carnage, chains dangling from his wrists, blood splattered across his plain black clothes. Behind him, Knight sways on his feet, looking like death warmed over.
The bodies of guards litter the stone floor. At least six that I can count, maybe more. The walls are streaked with blood, and the stench of fresh death hangs heavy in the confined space.
They broke out.
These two alphas who fought like devils to stop the scan are standing here surrounded by the bodies of men who tried to contain them.
And they were both fucking right.
