“You don’t… you don’t know what I’ve seen.”
“Because you haven’t told us,” Simon says gently. “You’re carrying the burden all by yourself.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. I still can’t. Trust me when I say this is all so much bigger than me. My father is up to something diabolical, and I have to stop him. Everything hinges on this. I haven’t seen why, but I know it’s true. If you don’t trust me, trust my affinity. Trust my magic.”
“Of course we trust you,” Luca growls, taking my other side and lacing his fingers with mine. “But this is risky. Cass is right. Your life is too precious.”
“My life isn’t the only life in the balance. It hasn’t been for a long time. I have to save these omegas. I have to saveallomegas. I know I have to.”
“Why does it have to be you?” Simon asks, a pleading note in his voice.
“Because I’m the only one who can stop my father.”
If I’m going to make the world safe for the omegas I’ve taken into my heart and care—them and countless others I’ll never meet—I have to destroy the monsters that would do them harm, starting with my father.
Since the warehouse was compromised,the resistance has been meeting in an old, abandoned lodge on the mainland. Ian and Simon have spent their few free moments warding it both magically and technologically. Despite the wards and other protections, my pack is on edge when I step to the front of the lodge. From my vantage point, I can make out what remains of the resistance after the slayings. I feel the missing members like a hit in my stomach. Between the slayings and recent treason charges, we’re down nearly twenty members, including the resistance’s previous leader, Franklin Carmichael. Graeme and Jack have taken up his mantle, but Isee their strain in the new lines around their brows, around their mouths. Frank was slain on the Feast of Saint Jasper, along with thirteen others. Killed right in front of his omega mate.
Michelle Carmichael sits in the front row, the surviving members of her pack around her, leaving a seat empty in honor of Frank. I don’t have to imagine the horrors she’s seen: I’ve seen them in my visions. I wonder if she still bears the faint scars left behind by the omega trap that held her as the Soldiers slayed her mate right before her eyes. She’s not the only omega in attendance who lost a mate in the slayings. They dot the crowd, beacons of courage and strength. Of sorrow and loss. I can only vow to be as brave as they are in the face of our enemies. I’ve seen the future, seen packs torn apart before their omegas’ eyes, all carried out in the sadistic manner the Soldiers are most fond of.
Can the future be changed? Or is the fight I wage against my father a hopeless struggle that won’t stop the tide of evil threatening to drown us all? Saints, I feel like I know less and less for sure every day, but I have to try to change what I’ve seen. For the omegas safely hidden away in Marmora Castle. For the omegas my father is experimenting on.
I shift from foot to foot in front of the fifty or so gathered resistance members and finally gather my courage. “My father has a history of experimenting on omegas, and not just within the confines of Rose Pharmaceuticals clinical trials. In addition to his own experiments, he provided test subjects for the facility we infiltrated a few weeks ago. His history of trafficking omega test subjects goes back much further than that, as does his history of experimenting on omegas. I don’t think I was his first test subject, but at sixteen, he kidnapped me and took me to a clandestine facility where he tried trial after trial to lock my magic. Eventually, he was successful.”
Images flash before my eyes. A tattooed serial number on an omega shoulder, a scalpel shining in the bright light of a makeshift operating theater. IV tubes snaking under my skin and polluting my body with poison. I can’t separate the thoughts he forced into my head from my own traumatic memories. When I see blood welling up along omega spines, I remember leather restraints holding me down to a cold metal table, my father’s scribe poised above me.
Someone in the crowd clears their throat, and I jolt back to the present, taking a deep breath before I continue. “If not for Ian, my magic would still be locked, and I wouldn’t be standing before you today with dire news and an even more dire warning: an omega body has washed up on a New Jersey beach with her maginalus removed. I have every reason to believe my father is sending me a message; he’s experimenting again. He must be stopped.”
A gasp goes up through the crowd, followed by a sea of murmurs.
Alena, a beta with a proclivity for explosives, cuts in. “Junie, you know I'm all for making trouble, but what do we have to go on? Do you have a location? Some evidence? We wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“We’re still trying to find out specifics. His movements suggest he may be working out of a facility in New Jersey.” I look to Simon, who’s been doing his best to track my father, and he nods.
Jack sighs. “Find the information we need, Juniper, and we’ll do what we can. But I agree with Alena. We don’t have enough to go on yet, and we’re spread so thin.”
I know I’m asking the resistance to do the impossible, but I can’t help the frustration that bubbles up inside me, burning like bile in the back of my throat. “The omegas in the safe house that was attacked were meant to be taken alive. Affinitied omegas who have already served as testsubjects. If they fall into my father’s hands, who’s to say what would happen?”
“Find us a plan, Junie, and we’ll act on it,” Graeme says quietly from his seat in the front row.
I grit my teeth, but nod. I may not be able to help the omegas I’m sure my father is experimenting on yet, but Icanhelp the omegas we’ve already freed. I have to. And I have to get stronger myself. When I’m not in class or with the omegas, I need to train.
Forty omegas have optedto train in their affinities, and Marmora Castle’s great hall is more than large enough to fit them all, plus space for Ian to ward four safety chambers not unlike the practice rooms in Aldric’s Hall—safe places for the omegas to practice their affinities without risking their fellows.
I stand in front of them, just as I stood in front of the resistance, about to bare my soul again. These omegas need to know what I’m capable of if they’re to trust me. I pace, gathering my thoughts, before finally turning to face them. “I think you all know me by now, but I’m Juniper, and I have an affinity just like all of you. I can read minds and have visions of the future. But don’t worry, I’m not here to read your minds. I’m also able to sense the near future and react quickly. It saved me and my mates when we infiltrated the facility. I’d like to give you a demonstration with my mates, Ian, who you should all know by now, and Cassian, an advanced combat mage.”
A few omegas murmur in the audience as Ian steps forward from the side of the room, joining me before them.
“What we’re going to show you is a form of combat magic.”
“But combat magic is banned for omegas,” a small voice says from in the crowd.
I grimace. “We no longer have the luxury of following the rules. We need to be armed with every tool we can that’ll keep us safe and let us fight back. The Soldiers of Saint Aldous aren’t playing by the rules. The hex for the omega trap has been banned for hundreds of years, yet many of us have been trapped in them. If they’re not going to play by the rules, we can’t afford to either. Now, my two mates are going to fire sparks at me, not hexes. I’m going to show you how my affinity lets me shield myself from multiple attacks by allowing me to predict them before they strike. Ian, Cass, shall we?”
They both grumble, but they know the omegas need to see another affinity.
I take my space between them at the front of the room, bending my knees slightly so I can react quickly. They give me a moment to get my bearings, to activate my affinity until it flows through me, and then they strike, fast and relentless. I throw up a shield before I can be hit, whirling to block a barrage of attacks from Cassian, angling to block a shower of sparks from Ian. And when I feel confident, my affinity at the forefront of my mind, I fire back. Cassian blocks my attacks easily, his long, hard hours of training showing as he gracefully deflects my sparks.
We continue like this until I’m breathless—until I strike Ian with a spark, and he hisses in pain.
