The sound of his slap rings out in the video, louder than his words in volume and action.
When a reporter catches Rad leaving his home and asks him about the clip, his mask all but crumbles to dust.
“Do you have any fucking idea who I am?” he demands, a frenzied edge to his voice. He lunges at the beta woman and wraps his hands around her neck, shouting for Blair to blow her fucking head up. But his omega bodyguard is stunned by the cameraman before she can even register Rad’s order, just as the camera crashes to the pavement and the video cuts out.
But it was enough. Enough to show the world exactly the kind of alpha he is.
The alpha I always knew him to be.
For my men, seeing the clip of the slap is worse than having seen Rad’s handprint on my face.
And they’re helpless. Cassian wasn’t my mate then and has no legal recourse against Rad, and if anything happens to the loathsome alpha, my pack is the first place the police will turn for suspects.
My alphas’ instincts ride them hard, and I see the mental war they wage each day: put an end to the man who hurt me or remain by my side so he can’t hurt me again.
They stay with me, though I see how it galls them to do so little. Cassian files a protective order against Rad on my behalf, but we both know the law has never stopped him before.
It’s not that I don’t want them to hurt Rad. If I had my way, the bastard would suffer on earth and then burn in hell.
But I know what Rad will do if one of my men lashes out. He’ll do to me what he did to all those omegas who lost their mates in the Saint Jasper slayings.
He already knows an omega trap can’t hold me, but he also knows it wouldn’t need to hold me for long. Only long enough to see my mates massacred.
“Don’t make me live through that,” I beg them, and they assure me with their words and their touches.
The world can deal with Andrew Radcliffe as he brings about his own destruction, every second of it caught on camera.
* * *
But there’sone thing thatisn’tcaught on camera, and it’s the thing that threatens to break me.
I’m curled up with Simon on the couch, and we’re trying to distract ourselves with a movie on his laptop when a notification pops up in the corner of his screen.
Unknown number: I will tear down everything in this world that has ever brought you joy, beloved.
Simon scrambles to close the pop-up window, but I’ve already seen what he didn’t want me to see. A text from Rad.
Another appears an instant later.
Unknown number: I know the professor you spread your legs for was the one to unlock the collars, so perhaps I’ll ruin him first.
“Fuck,” Simon mutters, slamming his laptop closed.
“Simon,” I say slowly. “How is Rad texting you?”
He looks away, working his lower lip between his teeth. “He’s not. He’s texting your old number. I kept it active so I could monitor it for shit like this. You… you weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Since the start of Yule break?” I ask, my voice faint with disbelief.
“Since I found your phone in pieces, yeah. But I didn’t pry into anything else, I swear. You got some texts from Alyssa, Bitsy and Ellie, but I never read them.”
“How many times has he texted?”
Simon sighs. “He texts a few times a week.”
I run a hand through my hair as I stand, pacing before the couch where Simon sits helplessly. He reaches for me, but I duck out of his grasp. “I want to see them. All of them.”
“Saints, Junes. Why? What good will it do?”
