“She’s their leverage. Blair’s why he’s here. Is Blair your mate?”
He shakes his head, but a flurry of images and feelings flash through his mind. Blair isn’t his mate—yet. A barrage of happy memories passes through his mind: Blair, chasing the surf at Mission Beach, skipping through the shallow water; Blair, wrapped in all of her favorite nesting materials as they shared movie nights in her nest; Blair, straightening his tie before every academic presentation he had to give, teasing him for his nerves before kissing them away. Before she was taken by the Soldiers of Saint Aldous, they were very much in love.
“Have you ever done something loathsome to protect someone you love?” he asks. It’s just indirect enough of a question not to trigger the punishment built into the spell keeping him silent about Blair. About his work.
More memories surface, all of them about the omega that was stolen from him. He came willingly when Rad approached him and told him he had his omega, and for a while, he did as he was told. But as soon as he could, he cast befuddling spells on his guards and snuck to the cell block in the middle of the night just to see her—to touch her hand through the glass. They planned an escape as well as they could without him being able to speak freely, but they never got the chance to make their escape attempt.
When Rad found out that Nathan had been sneaking in to see Blair, my villainous ex-mate-to-be put Blair through an utterly unnecessary affinity test, right before her alpha’s eyes.
When Rad figured out that Nathan had been stalling in his work, he made Blair kill for the first time.
When Nathan still wasn’t progressing fast enough in the development of the collars, Rad made Blair his own personal bodyguard.
Tears stream down my cheeks, and I swipe them away with the back of my hand.
“I promise I’ll destroy him for what he’s done to you and Blair,” I vow. “I will bring that sick son of a bitch to his knees.”
A ghost of a smile flickers over the engineer’s haggard face, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came.
I step toward him and set my fingertips to his temples. “I’m going to take what you can’t give me,” I say gently. “Please, don’t fight it. It’ll only hurt you.”
He takes a deep breath and nods, and then I ease my affinity into his mind, doing something I’ve never done before. I take away his agony, his panic, lulling him into a state of numb calm. His hunched shoulders fall, and his face goes slack, but his eyes are alert with understanding.
Affinity?
I nod.
He makes it easy for me. He may not be able tosayanything about the unlocking spell, but he can think about it. I recite each sigil I see in his mind out loud and Simon takes them down in his phone.
We’re halfway through the spell when an explosion sounds from the other side of the facility.
Nathan looks up at me sharply, relief flooding through him.
All of his work, the machines that made his hellish creation, are being destroyed. And he couldn’t be happier.
“Woo!” Alena shouts and I pull the earpiece out as she cheers directly in my ear.
“Nathan, the rest of the spell. Please.”
He shakes his head, and it takes me sifting through his thoughts to figure out that he’s only ever had half of the spell that unlocks the collars, just like he wasn’t granted full access to the spell that made the collars work. Only Alan Cadigan knows those.
“He doesn’t have it,” I tell my men, frustration spiking through me. “Rad kept it secret from him. The only person who knows the other half of the spell is Alan Cadigan.”
Cassian swears, but I can already see Ian’s mind working. Half of the spell may be enough.
I look down at Nathan, who sags in his seat. “We have to get him out of here. He’ll be dead within days if he’s put in prison.”
Cassian gives me a tight look, but nods. “All right, Wickman. We don’t know what kind of spells you’re under, so our best bet is knocking you out so you can’t fight back while we get you out of here.”
“Free,” is all the engineer says before bowing his head.
“We’ve got trouble!” Graeme says into our comms. “Juniper, I need your help in the cell block.”
Luca and Marcus join us in the lab, and my men look between each other, and I can tell they’re mentally drawing straws, trying to stare the others down, all of them reluctant to leave my side.
Finally, Ian sighs. “Fine, I’ll deal with Wickman. Promise me you’ll keep her safe, or saints help me…”
I spring forward as my other men murmur their promises, and I kiss my alpha quickly. “I’ll see you soon. I love you.”
