“You’ll be mine and mine alone.”
“Yes, alpha.” Five sigils drawn.
“You’ll behave exactly as my omega should. Proper. Meek. You will always obey me.”
I duck my head, trying to appear penitent as I check my sigils. Saints, let this work. Let blood magic free me from Rad’s trap.
“Yes, alpha. I’ll obey,” I say, even as I draw the sixth sigil.
I don’t have to ask him how else he expects me to behave. His thoughts burst out of him, striking me like a whip. He wants me on my knees. He wants me bloody. He wants my head bowed as I offer myself up to him. He wants me to present the only part of me worth a saints damned thing.
And then he wants to destroy me.
I fight, thrashing against the thorny vines of the trap, wincing as they bite deeper into my hips. Fuck, I can’t let his thoughts distract me.
I force a tremble as he stalks closer, and when he’s finally looming over me, I draw the last sigil in my streaming blood, slam my palm down on the ground as hard as I can and shout out the word of power to release the spell.
“Dimittiere!”
The thorns burn away, releasing my hands and hips just in time for me to punch upward with all my might. I connect with his chin, hitting him hard enough—or surprising him enough—to knock him backwards.
He swings at me with a roar, rage pouring off of him.
His punch connects, cracking into my cheek and my head swims with the force, but I’m running on instinct now. I summon all of my magic, every scrap of power I can, and drive my affinity into his mind.
He crumples to the ground with a wail of pain, and Iseemy affinity for the first time, my magic like daggers stabbing into his skull, each piercing stab into his mind, like the thorns of his omega trap dug into my flesh. Tears stream down his reddened cheeks, his face a contortion of pain and fury.
I push my will into him, needing to know his plans. Needing to know how he got through the wards.
It all comes back to Radcliffe Industries.
He followed me using wearable magic tech that let him vanish into thin air, an invisibility spell so powerful, most mages can’t detect the magical signature of it. So powerful it’s invisible to even the strongest magical warding—like the warding around the omega residences. But he wasn’t alone in breaking through the wards. Not the first time. Before he had the tech, a shadowy figure helped dispel them, helped break open the safest spot on campus to sneak him into it.
“Who?” I demand.
I drive my magic into him, letting my fury loose, but his thoughts shift as he whimpers beneath me.
He’s terrified of me. Of my magic. I truly am the witch he thinks I am, a devil-sent temptress with dark magic beyond his wildest imaginings.
But he will destroy me.
You’ll be one more dead omega.
He knows about the shipping container—that it wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.
That Rose Pharmaceuticals will find the right cocktail of chemicals to pump into omegas to make us docile. That the blood magic the Soldiers of Saint Aldous use is just the beginning.
That every omega is a test subject.
Images flash through his mind, warehouses turned into clandestine medical facilities, hundreds of omegas crowded into each.
How they rave and howl and struggle, just as I did when my father tried to lock my magic.
Soon, soon omegas will have no magic, no will.
No trouble at all.
“How?” I demand. “How are you doing this? Where is this happening?”
