“She’s been through too much lately. To add this onto her plate…” His summery scent turns bitter, and I go still in Luca’s arms. He tightens his arms around me, not to hold me back, but to offer me comfort, yet even his feelings through our bond are fraught and frayed.
“Tell me what?” I ask, an edge to my voice. My pack hassworn not to keep secrets from me. I sit up enough to look over the back of the couch. I find my mate and my beta sitting at the kitchen table staring down at Simon’s laptop.
Cassian sighs. “It can wait, Junes. Please just let it wait. You can’t even tell us about the vision you had yet, and this…”
I push up from the couch, leaving the safety of Luca’s arms. “What is it?”
“The New Jersey state sheriff is investigating a body,” Simon says in a rush, wincing when Cassian shoots him a glare. He continues quickly before Cass can protest. “An omega body washed up on shore, probably late last night. They’ve already buried the report.”
I freeze, staring at Simon. He’s lit by the screen of his computer, its light reflecting in his glasses. I can’t make out anything in the reflection, but maybe that’s for the best. “Has she been identified?”
Simon shakes his head. “No, but there was a serial number on her shoulder. Junes, that’s not the worst part.”
My heart leaps into my throat, and I don’t need my affinity to know what he’s going to say next. “Her maginalus was missing.”
Cassian ducks his head, rubbing his temples, before looking up at me, his smoke-and-whiskey eyes shining. “Yes, it was.”
He grabs me as I sway, easing me into a chair at the kitchen table as Simon snaps his laptop shut.
Scribes and scalpels, blood welling beneath a cut made with surgical precision. Blue nitrite gloves. Tattooed serial numbers on omega shoulders. Glowing maginal tissue at the end of forceps. Bodies burning in incinerators.
Why was this body found washed up on shore? What was different about this omega?
Unless my father is sending me a message.
He truly is experimenting again.
I dash to the bathroom and lose my meager breakfast into the toilet, heaving and sobbing all at once.
Sigils and IV tubes snaking under skin. A padded room. Poison in my veins. My magic locked away.
I collapse beside the toilet, resting my head against the tile wall. It cools my heated cheek as I lean against it, squeezing my eyes shut.
Cassian strokes my hair away from my face and blots my skin with a cool cloth, concern swimming in his dark eyes.
“Another vision?”
“A memory,” I croak out, my voice hoarse. “My father is experimenting again. And he wanted me to know it.”
Days passand I still can’t speak of the vision I had in the infirmary nest. Nor can I piece together what my father’s aim is—outside of scaring me, which he has. Why take maginaluses from omegas? To what end is he experimenting? I remember Professor Hayes’ lecture on experimentation on omegas, how few survived having their maginaluses removed, and those that did went mad from losing their magic in such a brutal way. We’ve always been test subjects for alpha researchers. Always. No matter that laws were finally put in place to protect us. My father and Rad skirted those laws without issue. The only thing that’s changed since those brutal experiments is how far we’ve advanced in surgical procedures, in setting scalpel to skin to remove what makes us who we are: mages.
My father must be stopped. I know the resistance is stretched thin. I know protecting the omegas from being captured and turned into test subjects once more is theresistance’s top priority right now, but if my father truly is experimenting again, he’ll want for test subjects.
The omegas are safe at Marmora Castle for now, but they’re fifty out of… I don’t even know how many test subjects have been trafficked around the country by my father and his peers.
Saints above, he must be stopped.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cassian stalks in front of the couch, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Love, you ask too much of me. You ask me to risk your life and your freedom. Meeting with the resistance is treason, and you’ve seen what happens to those charged with treason.”
They don’t make it out of prison alive.
The resistance has lost three members to treason charges since the start of the year, and they’ve all been slain in prison by the Soldiers of Saint Aldous and their allies.
“The world already knows who I am, Cass. My father knows my affinity, the Soldiers of Saint Aldous know my affinity, and I’m sure they’ve already guessed that I’m with the resistance. That I helped take down Rad’s facility. Like it or not, I’m a known entity. I’ve seen what happens if I don’t stop them. And it’s far worse than me dying in prison.”
“What could be worse than that, my darling?” Ian murmurs, pulling me into his side on the couch and nuzzling my temple, marking me with his scent.
