“Let’s get on with it,” Willow says sharply. “We’re due to fly out this afternoon, and I don’t want to delay.”
Rad escorts me into the facility and through security. My scribe and phone are taken, and I pass through the metal and magic detectors, my movements stiff, automatic.
I’m given a hospital gown to change into, and I’m not sure if it’s protocol or Rad trying to make me more vulnerable than I already am. When I tie the straps behind my neck, my fingers shake. A beta woman—a nurse or a tech—joins me in the dressing room a moment later and sticks sensors to my skin over my heart, at my temples, over my maginalus and along my spine. She doesn’t say a word to me, even when she leads me to the testing room.
I nearly bolt when I see the interior of the affinity testing room, but Rad is behind me, blocking the doorway.
An operating table takes up the center of the room, thick leather restraints built into it, and it’s so familiar that terror rises inside me like a tidal wave. I know this isn’t the same facility where my father locked my magic, and aside from the operating table, it doesn’t even look similar. It’s the restraints at the neck, the ankles and wrists, banded across the hips that send a fear so instinctual through me that I turn and fight against Rad, clawing at him as I try to escape.
Willow grabs my shoulder tightly and yanks me back from Rad, but he only smiles down at me, delighting in my terror. I twist out of Willow’s grip and duck under her arm, but she’s alpha-fast and grabs my wrist. I stumble, and she wraps her arms around mine, pinning them against my sides, holding me until I still. “Don’t draw this out, sister. Struggling will only make it worse for you.”
But I can think of few things worse than being strapped to an operating table again.
My memories return in a flurry. I remember fighting against the restraints as my father’s newest serum dripped through my IV line, as he growled threats in my ear, watching as my magic was stolen from me.
Tears flow freely down my cheeks, and I beg, a desperate, wild creature. “Don’t make me do it. Please, please, don’t make me do it,” I cry, but it’s to no avail. I cannot melt my sister’s icy heart. I cannot appeal to any sense of mercy or decency she might have. A scientist in a lab coat joins her and they wrestle me onto the table. I fight even harder when the small of my back, bared when I struggled in Willow’s arms, touches cold, surgical steel.
“Willow, please!” I sob.
“Juniper!” she snaps. “Enough.”
Restraints tighten around my ankles, stilling my kicks, then around my wrists, binding my clawing, scratching hands. The straps are tightened until I can’t fight anymore, though I continue to thrash against them. I flail, uselessly, and I sob as wires are clipped to the sensor stickers and hooked up to some sort of machine. For a moment, I hope, desperately, foolishly hope, that it will be like the test I took to assess my magic before attending Fairhaven Academy: the prick of a probe and current surging through my limbs. A unique torture, but far kinder than what I saw in Willow’s mind. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps the affinity tests are conducted differently here.
My hope dissipates the moment Rad approaches me, his scribe raised, and I know I’m in for the exact same fate the omegas in Rose Pharmaceuticals labs have suffered. That sobering, horrifying thought is what finally makes me still.
“As Miss Rose is my future mate, I believe I should be the one to do the honors.”
Willow spares me one final pitying glance, just as Rad sets the tip of the scribe over my heart.
He says a single word of power, and magic wraps around my heart. Pain flares, erupting everywhere within my body, as Rad’s spell squeezes my heart. Saints, it feels like it’s being crushed in a strong, alpha fist.
I thrash in the restraints, my back bowing as waves of pain course through me. Tears flood from my eyes, spilling down my cheeks as I scream in agony.
Through the watery blur of my tears, I see Rad’s smile, the glint in his eyes. He’s enjoying every moment of my torment, and somehow that makes it even worse.
Magic swells inside me, my affinity rising against Rad’s attack, but I hold it back, fighting to keep it contained. Smoke billows from the monitor I’m hooked up to, and I cough as I cry, the acrid scent stinging my nose. But piercing through the smoke is Rad’s scent, sharp and thick in his pleasure. I choke on anise and orange, his scent unleashing my most primal fears.
Rad digs the tip of his scribe into my skin and says the word of power again. The tips of his scribe burns, and the pressure around my heart increases until every beat is torturous, like my heart is trying to pump blood through wet cement.
My heartbeat slows, each pounding pulse further and further apart until my vision begins to go dark.
Until I’m sure I’ll die on this table, trapped in these restraints.
Sparks fly from the machine—or is it my magic?—and the scientist shouts something to Rad, but I’m lost to my agony as my heart is crushed.
I take what I’m sure will be my last final, and on my exhale, my affinity escapes me.
It spears into Rad’s mind as he forces more magic into my broken, exhausted body.
He winces, the vein in his temple pulsing as my magic drives into him, deep like daggers, but he doesn’t cease.
I hear Willow shouting. “Enough! You’re killing her!” Her words are swallowed up by the roar in my ears, but Rad doesn’t stop.
Blood runs from his nose, but he digs his scribe deeper until the point pierces my skin, my blood sizzling when it meets the red-hot metal of the thin wand.
With a final cry, I release my hold on my affinity.
“Stop! Stop!” I beg, my affinity turning my words into a command.
