We talk with Bitsy until she falls asleep and stay with Ellie until Cassian knocks at the nest’s door.
“Junes? Detective Miller called and wants to ask you a few questions about the attack.”
I drop a kiss on Simon’s forehead as I stand. “Be right back.”
CHAPTER17
Marcus escorts me to Saint Briac’s Hall, where the royal detective inspector is examining Cadigan’s now-empty classroom. The walls are covered in hex marks, the wood and stone scorched. The smell of smoke still clings in the air. Graeme traces the tip of his scribe over one of the scorch marks with a frown.
“Senseless,” he mutters. “Violence for the sake of violence. The Soldiers have to be brought down. This madness cannot be allowed to continue. The omega who attacked your classroom is the only one not currently in critical care. I was hoping you might know why.”
“She has some kind of protective affinity. I saw her using it in the facility. Spells only struck her when she had reached her limits, and her affinity was flagging.”
“If only the others had been so lucky,” he sighs.
“The Soldiers didn’t intend for any of the others to survive,” I realize, my heart sinking as I pick up an overturned chair and drop into it.
“No, I suspect not,” Graeme says quietly. “The omega who attacked your class matches a missing persons report from about a year ago. A Maureen Richardson. Her family reported her missing around the same time Grace Cassidy disappeared.” He shakes his head. “But she won’t talk—or can’t.”
“It has to be the collar.”
“I agree. We’ve yet to find a way to safely remove them,” he admits.
“Cadigan might know. He helped?—”
Pain stabs behind my eyes, and my vision fuzzes, going dark around the edges.
Terror and pain flood my mind, and a cry cuts through my thoughts, making my blood run cold.
Ian.
He’s convulsing on the floor of what appears to be an office, pain wracking through his body. He stares up at… at, oh saints! Professor Cadigan takes one last look at him before disappearing.
I shoot up from the chair. “Go!” I shout at the detective inspector. “Find Cadigan!”
I shoulder the door open and sprint out of the room, nearly running straight into Marcus. “Call Doc! Cadigan is about to hex Ian.”
I don’t wait to see if he calls, or if Graeme follows us out. I fly down the stairs and sprint toward All Saints Hall, throw open the heavy doors of the old stone building and race down the hallway.
Earthy moss and vetiver still hang in the still air.
Cadigan was just here.
A pain-filled moan carries down the hall, and my heart leaps into my throat.
I throw open the door to Cadigan’s office and there is the alpha I gave my heart to, convulsing on the floor. Blood spills from his nose and the corner of his mouth, and his eyes are wide and wild. I know what happened to him, because it’s what could have happened to Marcus, had Rad’sagoniahex been any stronger.
His heart is giving out.
Drawing my scribe, I fall at my alpha’s side, cradling his head in my lap, stroking his hair with one hand while casting the spells Doc taught me with the other. I have to protect his heart, have to keep it beating until Doc can arrive. His fear and regret crash against my thoughts, frantic but fierce, and even as his heart struggles to beat… he thinks of me.
He regrets the life together we’ll never have, that we’ll never be mated if he dies here on the floor of Cadigan’s office. That I’ll never wear his bite on my neck. He regrets all the things we’ll never learn together, all the cups of coffee and late nights reading we’ll never get to share.
He fears for me. For what Rad, my father and the Soldiers will do if he’s not here to protect me.
His thoughts are wild, desperate, invading my mind until I can’t separate my own fear from his.
You control what you hear.
