“Were you two alone?”
I grit my teeth. “We were.”
Mattis lets out a derisive huff of a laugh. “What do you think your father would say if he knew you’d been spending time in a degenerate alpha’s dorm room?”
“You would have to ask him that. If you don’t have his contact information, I can provide it for you?”
He doesn’t call my bluff. He waves me off with a surly snarl. “Can anyone corroborate your whereabouts that afternoon?”
“I can,” Marcus says, speaking for the first time since Mattis showed us into the headmaster’s office. He draws his phone from his pocket and then nods to the charm that sits between my collarbones on a glittering chain. “Like many omegas under an honor guard’s protection, Miss Rose wears a tracker at all times. Her whereabouts are tracked down to the minute in an app that only I have access to. Certainly, Senior Mage Inspector, you could demand the release of her location data, but you’ll need a warrant.”
I look up sharply. There’s a hardness in Marcus’ voice I’ve never heard before, but he isn’t finished. “I think we both know what can happen when an omega’s location isn’t safely guarded. If you want this data, return with a warrant and go through her family’s lawyers.”
Mattis scowls at Marcus and I can’t help the quiet thrill that sends a warm flush rising in my cheeks.
The mage inspector scoffs and snaps the photographs back into an envelope, then scribbles down a few details in his leather folio.
“You may be able to prove your whereabouts with the app data, but that doesn’t confirm that Mr. Anders was with you.”
I purse my lips and then do the scariest thing I can think to do: I smile up at the mage inspector. “Are you calling me a liar, Mister Mattis?”
He smiles back. “You’re an omega, Miss Rose. Manipulation is in your very nature.”
“You’d never say the same about an alpha, and you would never accuse an upstanding alpha of lying, so write this down,” Marcus cuts in, his voice stony. “I saw them both enter his dorm room at 2:17. Juniper came out at 4:43, alone. I did not see Mr. Anders leave the room, so unless he rappelled down from a third-floor window, I can confirm that he was with my client in his dorm room for most of the afternoon.”
My honor guard stares down the mage inspector until Mattis grudgingly takes down the details in a hasty scrawl.
“I may not like your kind, Miss Rose, and I may find you a particularly unpleasant specimen—the very worst kind of omega—but might I offer you some advice?”
“Can I stop you?”
Mattis rolls his watery blue eyes. “Pick the company you keep with greater care. The so-calledfriendof yours I have behind bars isn’t an alpha you should associate with, and not just for your reputation. For your safety.”
“As if you’ve ever cared about an omega’s safety,” I spit out. This… this is the very mage inspector who told me I should take greater precautions when I was caught up in an omega trap—a spell that had been banned hundreds of years ago. The very alpha who accused me of inviting the advances of the alpha who tried to rape me, who was ready to see charges brought against me for defending myself with magic I didn’t even have. “If you don’t have any other questions, I have classes to attend. May I be excused?” I don’t duck my head or bare my neck like a good omega would, because the mage inspector has already decided I’m anything but. But better alphas have thought worse about me. Senior Mage Inspector Mattis? He can go straight to hell.
I snatch up my things without waiting for his permission and stride from the headmaster’s office with my head held high, and I don’t crumble, not even when the headmaster gives me a soft squeeze on the shoulder, accompanied by a knowing frown.
Just what does he think he knows?
He can’t possibly know that an alpha I thought I loved deceived me in the worst way, that he isn’t the first alpha to do so. That every alpha I think I love ends up betraying me.
* * *
Whatever bravado gotme through my interview with the mage inspector abandons me as I enter the stream of students making their way from morning classes to All Saints’ Hall for lunch. I duck into the small alcove around the statue of Saint Briac and scrub my hands over my face, wishing I was anywhere else.
“What happened with Luca, sweet-tart?” Marcus asks softly.
I’ve been expecting the question since I fled from Luca’s dorm room, tears and fear in my blue eyes. And still I can’t voice what I saw in Luca’s dorm room. I can’t tell Marcus that I found a mask buried in the trunk of the alpha I love.
Loved.
Saints, even now, with Luca behind bars, part of me hopes there’s another explanation for what I found buried beneath old band tee shirts. That someone planted the mask in his trunk to get him in trouble. That he didn’t even know it was in there.
“He lied to me,” I manage, my voice raw and raspy.
“And the mage inspector?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.” Someone could have found out about the mask, just as I did. Saints, it could even be somethingworse. What if the mage inspectors found evidence that ties him to one of the scenes of the Soldiers’ crimes? I sit down heavily at the base of the statue. “But if whatever they think he did happened Sunday afternoon, well, he couldn’t have done it.”
