“Princess,” he breathes, his pale green eyes wide with concern. With love.
My tears come faster, and my alphas let me weep. When I’ve finally cried all the tears I think I can cry, Ian helps me to my feet and washes me gently. His touch is impersonal and caring all at once and I let him care for me, sagging against the wall of the shower as he cleans me. Luca lathers descenting shampoo in my hair, combing it through my long strands with his fingers and massaging my scalp until Ian has finished cleaning my body. He gently tips me under the spray, tattooed hands cradling my head as he rinses all the suds away. They hold me, pressed against me, Luca getting drenched, for a few moments more, before Ian finally shuts off the water.
Stepping from the shower into the waiting warm, bespelled towel is like being reborn. I’ve cried every tear I have to cry and now I need the arms of my men around me.
Ian dries me off, speaking only to cast a quick spell to dry my hair. He finds pajamas for me and helps me into them and then guides me downstairs as Luca dries himself.
Ian guides me into the makeshift nest, passing me into Simon’s waiting arms, and I go.
Slowly, I shake off the numbness. My throat aches from sobbing, but I tell them about everything I saw, about the facility, the omegas.
The collars.
I purge every horrifying thing I saw from my mind with my shaky words.
Simon strokes my hair softly, murmuring comfort in my ear as Ian clasps my hands between his. They touch and stroke until I’m calmed, until I finally feel like myself again.
“I have to stop him,” I murmur.
“Wehave to stop him,” Cassian corrects me. “And we need to find that facility.”
“We’ll leave no stone unturned,” Luca promises. “I’ll drive down every road in Maine and New Brunswick if I have to.”
“I’ll start a scanning algorithm tomorrow morning,” Simon says, his mind already working through the details.
“He won’t get away with this,” Ian swears, but he can’t promise me that. None of them can.
Not when Rad already is getting away with everything he’s doing in the clandestine facility, hidden away in the woods.
He’s succeeding. Showing results.
All I can think of as my men make plans is the omega, Blair, convulsing on the concrete floor after being forced to demonstrate her affinity for Rad and Willow’s approval. How she fought and fought, despite the voltage arcing through her body.
How I don’t have even half the fight in me that she does, and not even a fraction of her courage.
* * *
We waste no time.
While the rest of campus sleeps off two nights of partying for the Feast of Marmora, Luca bundles me up in my wool jacket, makes me a thermos full of sweet, milky coffee, and we set out in his pickup truck, Marcus following in the SUV.
We stop at a gas station, pick up a paper map of the surrounding area and start our slow, methodical search. Luca drives the winding stretches of two-lane highway through acres and acres of pine forest. We follow curving roads to their ends, and old logging trails until they fade into the forest.
When I’m not marking off every road we take on the paper map, I try to study, my Casting textbook open on my lap, my notebook on the seat beside me. I stare out the window into the trees more than I study, worrying the tip of my thumb over the ring Luca made me for Yule last year. I can’t get the test subjects out of my mind. Those omegas, hidden in a secret facility, forced into compliance, shocked and tortured into it when they don’t go willingly.
And they’re all there because of my family.
Saints, we have to find the facility. We have to free the omegas Rose Pharmaceuticals have trafficked around the world to be used in Radcliffe Industries’ foul experiments.
We drive the whole day, covering hundreds of miles of back roads, but we find nothing.
When the sun sinks behind the trees, we admit defeat for the day and head back to the pack house.
We trudge up the stairs from the garage to find Simon and Ian arguing over Simon’s laptop.
“Mage tech couldn’t hide a facility of that size,” Ian protests.
“I’m not putting anything past Radcliffe Industries. Rad hid himself in mage tech for half a school year and bypassed even your strongest wards to get into the omega residences. They’ve successfully developed fuckingcollarsthey can control omegas with. Face it. Mage tech has progressed to a point where we can’t discount them hiding a whole fucking facility.”
