“And you can’t make sense of the actions of a madman.”
“He’s not crazy. All of this is… it’s too cold. Too calculated.”
Marcus winds the string tie of the envelope shut and tucks the envelope into his bag. “Call Luca or Cassian to escort you. We’re taking these to the headmaster.”
I shakily pull my phone out to see a text from an unknown number flash across the screen.
>
I shove the phone into his hands, and he grips it so tightly I fear the screen will crack.
“That son of a bitch.”
Instead of passing me back the phone, Marcus punches in Cassian’s number.
“Omega residences, now. We need to see the headmaster immediately.”
Marcus jabs the button to end the call and sets my phone on the table between us before sitting down beside me.
“He staked them to my fucking door,” I choke out, my voice hoarse.
“I know, sweet-tart,” he says, rubbing slow circles on my back.
“And nothing will come of it.”
“No,” he agrees. “But the wardsmustbe fixed. I’ll make Reinhardt see to it.”
“He will,” I whisper, trying to remember what Ian’s adoration feels like.
But all I can feel is terror.
The omega residences have always been safe. Always.
But three times now, Andrew Radcliffe has crossed the wards. Three times now, he’s sent a message impossible to misunderstand: you’ll be mine through any means necessary.
He wants to scare me? He has. I’m properly terrified.
Marcus carefully wraps Trinity’s scribe in a kitchen towel and sets it in his bag beside the packet of photos, and my first, harrowing thought is that her family should have it back. Marcus treats it like evidence, but it’s a case that will never be investigated, let alone solved. A case whose outcome doesn’t matter.
* * *
Cassian meetsus just outside the wards with a hard stare. Marcus wordlessly passes the envelope to the other alpha and Cassian flips through the photographs with a detachment I wish I could feel.
But Cassian will never know what it feels like to see a fellow omega bloodied, tortured.
“That could have been me,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
He looks up sharply. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think that isn’t my first thought when I wake and what keeps me up half the night? The headmaster needs to know about this. Haley, you made the right call.”
We make our somber way to All Saints’ Hall, but we’re not alone. I feelhisattention on me, making the hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end. I huddle deeper into my winter coat, letting the hood engulf my head until all I can see is the path before us. I don’t dare look up. But that doesn’t stop the current of his thoughts from reaching me.
And Andrew Radcliffe is deeply, darkly satisfied by my terror, by the way I make myself small—just as I should as an omega.
“Are you seeing him now?” Cassian demands in a harsh undertone.
“Feeling,” I murmur.
“That son of a fucking bitch,” he grits out.
