My magic slips from my mental grasp at the force of his feelings for me, loose and wild. Ian crashes to his knees with a snarl of pain, grabbing his head between his hands.
“Fuck,” he gasps.
I call my magic back, imagining cutting the magical links that connect us and he looks up at me through squinted eyes.
“Saints,” he says, his voice ragged from the pain. “You have no idea how brilliant you are.”
It’s the last thing I hear before I sway on my feet, darkness crowding into my vision, numbness prickling at my fingertips. I fall, slipping into a sea of black, and feel, just as it claims me, his strong arms around me.
I come to on the sagging sofa in his office, his thigh pressed into my hip as he sits beside me. My head swims, but the comforting weight of him beside me is grounding, drawing me slowly back to reality. His scent is sharp with worry, cedar and bergamot spicier and more tart than normal.
He takes my hand in his and sets his fingers to my pulse point just as my eyes flutter open. I try to sit, but my world tilts sideways.
“Take your time.” he murmurs, his voice strained. With fear, I realize. Fear that I’d overexerted myself, that I’d done myself harm. I curl my fingers against his, and saints, he’s so warm, so fond and tender as emotions slip through the weak bond between us.
“My brave, brilliant darling,” he sighs.
Saints, is this what a mating bond will feel like? A flow of emotions between alpha and omega?
I sit up slowly, bringing us so achingly close. His eyes dip to my lips and I feel his need crash into me, a tidal wave of desire and adoration. I stare up into his blue eyes, wishing I could make him feel the way I do.
At his sharp intake of breath, I realize I have.
“You feel that?”
“I do.” He brushes his nose against mine and then tucks a lock of hair back from my face, his touch lingering on my cheek. “But I can’t. Juniper,wecan’t. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“I don’t care,” I whisper. “This is… we’re…”
“Inevitable,” he says, his voice hoarse, strained with need. It’s like he snatched the word from my mind, like the desire and need and love. “I can’t be your alpha, Juniper. Not while I’m your professor. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you.” He swallows hard and presses a fervent kiss to my forehead.
I can’t help my whimper as my dream of this alpha’s love comes crashing down around me.
CHAPTER29
On the morning of my nineteenth birthday, I wake to a packet staked to my door by a silver scribe with a sapphire handle.
Trinity’s.
“Don’t touch it,” Marcus growls, but I’ve already yanked the manilla envelope down from the door.Happiest of birthdays, belovedis scrawled across the envelope in thick black marker.
I pull the door shut behind us and drift numbly over to the sofa, my hands trembling as I grip the heavy envelope, my knuckles white. I unwind the string closure and carefully open the envelope.
I already know what it’ll contain.
I spread the photographs out on the coffee table, nearly two dozen pictures of Trinity Wells, beaten and bloody, her emaciated body covered in bite scars and purple-black bruises. A scribe to her throat, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Her eye red with burst blood vessels, the flesh around it blackened and bruised.
More bite scars. Saints, she’s covered in them.
“Saints, are all of those marks from mating bites?” Marcus rumbles, rubbing at his jaw. “They tortured her with them. There have to be at least a dozen!”
My stomach heaves and I squeeze my eyes shut against the barrage of images, but they’re seared into my mind now.
I hear Marcus shove them back into the envelope and finally open my eyes again when the shuffling has stopped.
“You need to take these to Reinhardt or the headmaster.”
“Marcus, this is all my fault! Fairhaven would expel the other omega students to save her if not for me. I saw what he would do to her and… and…”
