I can’t look away.
The diminutive woman rages against the guard in her cell, shouting and kicking as he grabs for her and tries to subdue her. Magic buzzes along the omega’s skin, dancing from fingertip to fingertip, just like mine once did.
A scientist comes up behind her and wraps something around her neck.
I catch one final plea, caught in a silent scream as the device closes around her neck. She goes utterly limp, every spark of magic disappearing as sigils light around her throat. Her hands go to the metal and magic device, and she tugs, but there’s no escaping it.
A collar.
A saints-forsakencollar.
In bygone eras,depravederas, omegas were collared as a sign of an alpha’s control over them. To show an alpha’s ownership. Collars were heavy and painful. Punishing. But they were a symbol of our oppression, not the means of it. What I’ve just seen… It’s something else entirely. Something new. Something far more dangerous than I can even begin to imagine.
Just like that, all the voices crying out around me, bombarding my affinity, are snuffed, leaving a yawning chasm of silence in my mind.
I whirl on Andrew Radcliffe, tears stinging in my eyes.
A slow, sickening smile spreads across his face. “You see now, don’t you, beloved? Obeying isn’t a choice.”
He turns to Willow, but I can tell he’s still watching me as I drift to the glass. I stare at the omega in the cell as he talks to my alpha sister about results. About progress.
About a bright new future.
CHAPTER12
Itry to call my affinity, needing to hear the omega’s thoughts, but no magic responds to my call. Being bombarded by so many thoughts, by so much pain, by the trauma of seeing an omega’s magic stolen from her, has tapped me out.
To my surprise, the omega on the other side of the glass doesn’t beg or plead. Her expression is demure but otherwise blank, her thoughts quieted along with her screams, locked away with her magic.
All the fight goes out of me, just like it went out of her, and I sag against the glass, pressing my forehead to it.
She looks past me, as if she doesn’t even see me, and doesn’t protest as the guard sits her down on the bed in the cell. The scientist records something on a tablet, a satisfied smile on his lips.
I’m too numb to even feel sick, too shocked to protest when Rad offers me his arm again.
“You surely don’t think that’s all, do you, beloved? Come, I have more results that will surely interest you—and your father.”
I follow, barely feeling the steps, as he takes me into an observation room that overlooks a large room with concrete walls. A scientist stands at an instrument panel, watching the scene below with vague interest—as though he’s seen the same thing a thousand times before.
An omega fights against two guards, scratching at them like a wild thing. Rad hits a button on the instrument panel and her screams flood the observation room. She shouts herself hoarse, cursing them, but even at her most desperate, she’s only an omega, and no match for their alpha strength. It’s no feat for the two guards in the room to wrap a collar around her neck and click it into place. Sigils light along the shiny metal, and she goes still.
One of the guards wheels a cart into the center of the room. A concrete block sits atop the cart, and I can’t fathom its purpose.
The scientist taps something on his tablet and the omega’s eyes flash with life. She looks up at us through the observation room window and bares her teeth at the scientist in a primal snarl, but he ignores her show of dominance.
“You’ll like this, beloved. Blair used to be a fighter, just like you.”
The guards join us in the observation room, leaving the omega—Blair—alone in the room.
“Blow up the block, omega,” the scientist says into the intercom. There’s no alpha command in his voice, but the sigils on the metal collar flash.
I see the battle that takes place within the omega in the room below. She wants to resist, but the magic pumping through the collar makes her unable to.
She turns to the block and focuses, squints at it, and it explodes, showering the warded glass in front of us with chunks of concrete. Magic flashes as the pieces strike, but we’re safe behind the glass and the wards.
The omega turns on the scientist and squints, intending to use her affinity again, but the scientist presses a button, and she jolts as if electrocuted. When she stops convulsing, she glares up at us and squints again. Another shock goes through her, but she won’t stop. The collar shocks her again and again until she falls to the floor, her whole body shaking and writhing as electric currents whip through her.
She falls still, and I race toward the glass, pressing my face against it, trying to reach out with my affinity to catch anything from her. To make sure she’s still alive. But I can’t even call my magic, can’t even do the most basic thing mages should be able to do. My magic is entirely spent, just like it was after my showdown with Rad in May.
