“Junes? What’s wrong?”
“All in could be dangerous,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. “Saints, Rad may have set up Luca to take the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, just to hurt me. I don’t want the same to happen to you, especially since I’m pretty sure regularly hacking the Fairhaven PD isn’t exactly lawful.”
“I cover my tracks, kit-kat. Don’t worry about that.”
“He’ll do anything to have me. To hurt me.” Rad’s words echo in my mind
I’d much rather mate you than do what I did to Heather Lindstrom, sweetest.
I’m quiet for a moment. Tangled together with the both of them in a blanket fort nest, every beat of my heart tells me what I don’t dare believe: these men are my pack, bonds or no bonds. I can trust them. And yet, I thought I could trust my family, but the moment my impossible magic made itself known, my father nearly killed me to rid me of it. A fact the two men enveloping me with their warm bodies know better than most.
“I… there’s something wrong with my magic,” I start slowly. “I hear things I shouldn’t. Thoughts and emotions. Visions sometimes. Just flashes and I can’t control it. It started with the masks, but since then, I’ve been catching more and more. I don’t try to. At… at my family’s New Year’s gala, I heard Rad say ‘She squirms so beautifully.’”
“Saints above, I’m sorry you had to hear something so vile.” Simon laces his fingers with mine and rests his chin on my shoulder.
“You believe me?”
Luca presses the sweetest kiss to my forehead. My alpha, who I should have learned by now never to doubt. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“It’s impossible.”
“Improbable at best,” Simon scoffs. “Mages have all kinds of skills and you’re one of the strongest mages on record. It stands to reason you’d have abilities the rest of us do not. So, what else have you heard?”
I look up into Luca’s pale eyes through lashes clumped together by my tears. “When Luca was taken by the police, I felt his fear and I heard… I heard my name.”
My alpha strokes my cheek with the backs of his fingers and wipes my tears away with the gentlest touch. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
I lean forward and capture his lips in a kiss that I hope says everything I can’t put into words: how part of me feared that too, how relief so potent it makes me breathless courses through me now.
“What else?”
“My family were talking about me. My brother Hawthorn set me up to overhear and from what I heard, I think all of this was happening to me back when I was sixteen, too. Hawthorn said I read my brother Aspen two years ago. I don’t remember what it was about, only that whatever I learned put their plans at risk. They’re afraid I might do it again now.”
And if I do, my family will rid themselves of me in whatever way they must.
“It happened again on New Year’s Eve, when I was dancing with Rad, and my brother cut in. Saints, he was furious with me, and I was frightened. But so was he. He kept thinking about this code. It seemed like random letters and numbers, but he was terrified.
“Got the code on you? Maybe I can do some digging and find out what it could be about.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful?”
Simon presses a kiss to my bare shoulder. “If it’s as dire as your brother thinks it is, I imagine the world needs to know about it. At the very least, ifweknow about it, we’ll be a step ahead. We’ll be able to keep you safe this time.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Both of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
And I pray to the saints that I never have to find out.
CHAPTER22
Spring term looms, somehow more significant than before. If I’m to protect myself, I must excel as a mage. If I’m to bring down my father, I’ll need to learn everything I can. And if it comes down to keeping the men I want to one day call my pack safe, saints, I’ll work myself to the bone in pursuit of the skills I’ll need.
But there’s one ray of hope that shines like a beacon just before term starts.
I share my first Saturday with Luca in months, and we check one thing off our list and add a few photographs to our scrapbook, which he insists on being the one to write in.
* * *
That Saturday,I wake to a text that practically has me dancing from my nest to the shower, into a pair of fleece-lined leggings and an oversized sweater.
