“We’ll need a new place to meet,” Ian says. “Alan will have revealed the location of the old church to the Soldiers.”
“Already on it,” Simon says, frowning at his laptop. Finally, he flips it around and shows it to Ian. “Abandoned warehouse by the docks. Can you ward it?”
“I just warded an entire lake. A warehouse should be, what did you say, child’s play?”
“I want to be there. At the meeting.”
Cassian and Luca both look up at me sharply, and I feel their apprehension skitter through our bonds.
I glower at them. “Don’t start, alphas. I’ve waited too long to bring Rad down, and I’m not missing a single moment of the planning—or the mission.”
“Oh, fuck no,” Luca swears, just as Cassian says, “Absolutely not.”
I look toward Ian, but he shakes his head. I turn to Marcus, and he ducks away from my gaze. Cowards.
“Alphas,” I say, my voice cool and calm. “I’m going. I can sense things that no one else can. Cassian, you once told me that you couldn’tletme do anything, and Luca, youjusttold me you’d stand by my side through anything. Nothing has changed. Going after Rad and freeing those omegas was always going to be dangerous.”
Luca grips my hand in his, and I feel his fear through our bond. Saints, itconsumeshim.
“We’re taking every precaution,” Cassian says flatly. He turns to Ian. “You’re making her the strongest shielding charm imaginable. And none of us, for any reason, are leaving her side while we’re in the facility or anywhere near it. If that’s too disruptive to whatever plans the resistance makes, it’s off. All of it. We find another way.”
“We make the plans,” I insist. “I’m the only one who’s been to the facility and I’m the only one in the resistance who we know has an affinity.” I take a deep breath. “And after what Rad did to me there, Ineedthis.”
It’s not just that I need to do this because of Rad, I feel called to do it. I don’t get a vision, but somehow, I know Ihaveto be there when we infiltrate the facility. It’s more than just my knowledge of the layout and the guards. There’s something I’ll need to do. I just don’t know what it is yet.
Cassian gives me a curt nod, but I can feel his fear and dissatisfaction through our bond. “I’ll get in touch with Graeme. Just getting everyone together will take time and planning, to say nothing of the mission itself. In the meantime, we prepare. All of us. For every possible threat we might face.”
He bows his head and I want to go to him, but I also don’t want to leave Luca’s side, not when he grasps my hand like it’s a lifeline.
As we break for bed, me and Luca heading up to my nest, I wonder again if my need to see Rad destroyed is selfish, if I should back down and let the rest of the resistance handle the facility.
Luca nuzzles against me as soon as we’re beneath the covers and presses kiss after kiss to my face. “I’m sorry, princess. You’re right, but I don’t have to like it. I made you a promise, and Iwantthis for you. I want you to be able to face your demons and destroy them. But I need you to promise me you’ll be careful. That you’ll let me protect you. Please, Junie?”
“I promise, but you have to let me protect you, too. I’m your hot badass princess, remember?”
“My hot badass princess,” he agrees, and like he did the first time we stripped each other bare, he punctuates each whisper of praise with a kiss. “My brave, beautiful omega. My amazing mate. Mine. Forever mine.”
* * *
We work hardin the week and a half it takes to organize a resistance meeting, but no one works harder than me and Simon. While I train in combat magic and shield spells, and practice with my affinity, he spends hours at his laptop, the bright screen reflected in his glasses late into the night most nights. Days after finding the facility, he slips past its firewalls.
“Child’s play,” he murmurs around a yawn, when I finally make him shut his laptop and join me in my nest, though I know it’s anything but. I didn’t realize it at first, but he’s doing everything he can to protect me. He’s a skilled mage and scrappy, but he’s not a fighter like Luca or a skilled combat mage like Cassian.
Instead, my genius beta hacks his way into every system in the facility, stealing blueprints, employee rosters and access data from every single swipe-card terminal at the facility’s interior doors. Any time an employee swipes to unlock a door to a lab or the omegas’ cells, he knows about it. He puts together intricate, detailed schedules of the guards, scientists and techs that staff the facility and then he finds the gaps: the days of the week and times of the day when the facility has the fewest guards.
What he can’t seem to find is a method of unlocking the collars. He manages to access the tablets the guards and scientists use to control the collared omegas, but the app doesn’t seem to have a means of unlocking the devices.
He sifts through servers and computers in the labs and turns up nothing. By the end of the week, he’s dispirited, but no less persistent.
“I may be able to reverse engineer an unlocking spell if we can get our hands on a collar,” Ian offers as he makes the three of us fresh coffees. “But I’m sure Graeme’s already thrown talented mages at the problem. As far as we know, all the omegas that attacked Fairhaven are still collared. No spells have been able to unlock them and any physical means of undoing them could trigger fail-safes.”
Meaning the collared omega might not survive the collar being cut off. Saints, even the person trying to remove the collar might not survive. I know Ian’s right because I know Rad, and it’s something he would do. Devious, unnecessarily cruel. It fits his modus operandi perfectly.
“Oh, hello,” Simon mutters. “I just got a ping off a scientist entering a lab.”
“It’s eleven o’clock!”
“Which is precisely why I haven’t been paying too much attention to scientists accessing the labs at this time of day, but…” He types a string of code into his laptop and times and dates flash on the screen. “Holy fuck. I know how we find out how to unlock the collars.”
