He wipes the tears from my cheeks with his calloused thumbs. “I knew you were special the first time I ever laid eyes on you, princess. And you prove it to me every day. Unlike you, I can’t predict the future, but I do know one thing for certain. You won’t be alone. Wherever your affinity takes you, wherever the war you want to wage on your father takes you, I’ll be by your side. Whatever you need from me, advice, support, or just a shoulder to cry on, you’ll have it. Always. Provided I’m not locked out of the wards again.”
“The wards don’t matter much if Rad can get in and out of them at will,” I mutter, turning over in his arms to stare up at the twinkle lights over my nest.
“I really want to smash his face in,” Luca mutters and that’s what finally dries my tears. My alpha, who thinks he’s too brutal, too unrestrained, wanting to smash in the face of my tormenter.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Luca. Wield this rare, powerful magic.”
“Juniper, the only person whose opinion is worth a damn is… you. Be who your heart tells you you’re meant to be.” He taps at the center of my chest right above where my heart beats out a steady rhythm. “Your own approval is the only one that matters.”
“I’m not strong enough to face down Rad or my father,” I protest.
“Do youwantto face them down?”
Do I? “I… I want to stop my father and the Soldiers from hurting innocent omegas.”
“Then do that.”
“But I’m nowhere near ready.”
“Then train, princess, and learn and grow. We’re all works in progress—even a genius mage like yourself. Even a hunk of pure male beauty like me.”
“You’re a pretty wise hunk of pure male beauty,” I admit.
“And you’re stuck with me and all my sage advice. We train, we learn, and we grow. Together.”
* * *
“These were nailed to your door?”Ian demands, holding up the manilla folder.
“With Trinity’s scribe,” I say, dully. I’ve barely slept since I found the photos.
“You didn’t study them closely, I take it.”
I shake my head. “Rad sent me them as a present. To scare me. To terrorize me. Saints, in his twisted mind, maybe he truly does think he’s courting me.”
Ian lets out a low growl and I touch his hand absently, an omega calming a raging alpha. He stills beneath my touch, his ragged breathing calming.
“But no,” I say. “I didn’t study them. Should I have?”
“An impossible question to answer. I wouldn’t want you looking at them at all, but Rad may have shown us more than he intended to.”
Ian flips a single photo over, the image showing Trinity’s neck where once, before she disappeared, there was a mating bite. But Jaime’s bite is gone, replaced by an ember, purple-black where it burns within her skin, surrounded by the bite of another alpha.
“Her mating bite from Jaime is gone!”
Oh, Saints. I can’t imagine the agony Trinity and Jaime must both be feeling. There is no torture greater than the severing of a mating bond—usually something that only happens through the death of the alpha or omega. But the Soldiers, they burned the sacred mark of love from Trinity’s neck, destroying their mating bond.
Ian startles. “That’s where her bite was?”
I shake my head and hold up a hand for silence, trying to puzzle through it, but saints, I’m missing something… I hold out my hand for the photos and flip through them as quickly as I can, slapping one down in front of Ian.
“These bear traces of the same dark magic. When I first saw them, I thought they were bruises, but they’re not. They’re embers—or something like them. Brands? I don’t know. But I think the mark on her neck with the ember is a… a fresh version of the bites that cover her body.”
“You think they’re using the ember with mating bites?”
“I think… I think they’re burning mating bites away with the ember.”
Ian sits back in his chair, blinking at me, his mouth agape. “There’s never been a way to destroy a mating bite before—nothing less than the death of the giver of the bite. But the ember…”
