The gathered omegas are dead silent, waiting for him to strike back, for him to admonish and punish me for striking him. They expect his fury; what they don’t expect is his pride and the broad smile he gives me. “Well done, my darling. Your combat training is truly paying off.” He captures me in a hug that lifts my feet from the stone floor and whirls me around once before setting me down and pressing a light kissto my lips. Cassian angles past him to kiss me, too, and a few of the omegas gasp.
Saints, I hadn’t realized. Many of the omegas here haven’t seen a loving relationship between an omega and her alphas. They’ve only seen and endured punishments, not pride, castigation not kisses. The world has been far crueler to them than it’s been to me, but maybe we all heal, just a little, when my mates take me into their arms, their compliments quick to come and genuine.
My workwith the omegas goes slower than Ian’s does since I can only spend the weekends and a few evenings a week with them. All the English-speaking omegas gather in the castle’s great room whenever I’m there to teach them, though one in particular lingers at the back of the room: Cora. Cora, with her erratic magic, magic so strong it sent my alpha to his knees when we rescued her from the collar facility. Cora with magic so strong she doesn’t dare get close to any of the other omegas, let alone the alphas guarding the castle. Cora, with a history so bleak and magic that has only ever hurt people.
While she skulks at the back of the room, I have plenty of volunteers to test and hone their affinities.
Aimee steps into one of the safety chambers Ian spun and shakes out her dirty- blond curls, squaring her shoulders.
“Start by taking a deep breath and centering yourself, just like you would when calling your magic.”
I watch as she breathes deeply, her eyes fluttering shut.
“Feel for your affinity. It’ll feel more instinctual than your magic. At least, mine does. Once you can feel it, release it slowly, guiding it like you’d guide any spell.” It’s only my best guess as to how other affinities work. I only know howmy own truly operates, and even then, mine often surprises me.
It starts with a subtle crackle of magic, and then, suddenly, Aimee’s curls fly around her head as a breeze kicks up in the safety chamber. She opens her eyes and stares in awe at her crackling palms, then releases a little more magic. The crackle turns to lightning, and it strikes Ian’s protective warding with a shower of sparks. Dark clouds churn over her head and unleash a torrent of rain down on her. She slips on the wet stone and wheels her arms to catch her balance, stepping over the line of wards and out of the safety chamber.
She hits me with a gust of wind so powerful it knocks me off my feet. I fall hard on the stone floor, letting out an “oof!” of surprise. Aimee drops her hands immediately, her affinity fizzling out, and runs to me, half sliding in her wet shoes.
“Oh, saints! Juniper, I’m so sorry!”
I can’t help but let out a joyous laugh. Seeing her storm magic so proudly displayed, so strong already, was a triumph. If it took being knocked on my ass to see it, well then so be it.
It takes a moment, but soon Aimee laughs with me. Another moment passes and the shy omegas watching us begin to titter as well. They’re still so meek. So wounded. I wonder if there’s time enough in the world for them to heal.
The affinities shown are as diverse as the omegas we rescued, and I walk around the four safety chambers watching one omega float and turn somersaults in the air, pause at the edge of the wards as another’s skin turns to stone.
While others wait to test their affinities inside Ian’s wards, they practice the sigils he’s taught them. I walk amongst them, correcting a few as they learn the new magic, but more than that, I marvel. They’ve learned so much insuch a short time—far more than we learned in our first few weeks of casting classes as freshmen. It shows on their faces. Those that haven’t smiled in months, even years, break out into small, hesitant smiles, pride shining in their eyes.
I look up as Ian walks into the great hall and catch his easy grin, returning it with one of my own. My mate is one of the best things that could have ever happened to these freed omegas. He’s giving them something I hope I can give them too.
Hope.
CHAPTER NINE
Despite my fumbling tutelage, the omegas thrive as they begin working with their affinities. Some are further along than I would have guessed, already demonstrating fine control of their affinities. Not all of them present as boldly as Aimee’s. Some are quieter, but no less lethal, especially for omegas who want to fight back. Many of them are too powerful to train safely. One omega can poison anyone she touches. Her poisons range from making the victim fall asleep to driving her victim mad. To killing. She’s killed before, she says, but there’s no regret in her eyes. Not when she slid her hand beneath the mask of a Soldier of Saint Aldous as they tried to capture her and touched his skin.
“They got me in an omega trap,” Camilla says, “but I took one of them down with me. Drove another mad when he gripped my wrist.”
However she learned to wield her affinity, her control is absolute. Since her earliest struggles when her affinity first emerged, she hasn’t harmed a soul she didn’t intend to. Allthe other omegas feel perfectly safe around the poisonous young mage.
If only I could control my affinity as well as she can control hers.
I hide in my nest when the others are gone or busy and push myself to my limits. I try to call visions, forcing my affinity to the brink until my head aches, and my eyes burn from the effort. I hide all this from my alphas and Simon. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen and can’t imagine what drives me. To protect the omegas and prevent a devastating future, I have to be better. So, I hide like I did when trying to learn to call my magic my freshman year before Ian unwound the spell locking it away. I secret myself away when my mates are busy or with the omegas, hiding just like I did from Marcus.
Saints, so much has changed since then. I may only be about to finish my sophomore year, but my first term at Fairhaven Academy seems like a lifetime ago. Back when Cassian and Ian were cruel, and Luca lied to me, when Simon was a friend with a secret. When I didn’t know Marcus was harboring perhaps the biggest secret of all. What might my visions have shown me then, when my magic was new? A betrothal to Rad? A kiss with Cassian under the bell tower as spring blossoms fell down around us like snow? That was the kiss that changed everything, the kiss that led me to mating Cassian and building my pack. And mating Cassian… that brought about even more change. It was the first of the puppet strings my father wielded over me that I cut. When I mated Cassian, I became something other than my father’s property to do with as he wished, to mate off to a cruel alpha like Rad to further his own devious agenda. Even in the past few months, my life has changed immeasurably. Luca mated me not long after Cassian did, after treating me to a night spent skating at Big Meadow Lake. Ian lost his job because of me but mated me all the same. He’s happier now, teaching the omegas, perhaps happier than I’ve ever seen him outside of the quiet moments we share together.
So much has changed, but even more stands to change if my vision comes true.
I meditate, trying to capture that grim vision once more. I need more information. Something big is coming, and soon. I can feel it in my gut. I don’t know if it’s instinct or my affinity, but I need to be prepared. I do what I did when first working on my affinity with Ian: I dig into my emotions and my memories. Then, I dig into my tormented past, into the vitriol Rad spewed at me, but this time I focus on the details of the vision, details that make me so sick my stomach roils.
Suddenly, I’m sucked into part of the vision. Just a snippet, but the details are as clear as a sunny summer day. If only the vision were so idyllic.
An omega fights against an omega trap, crying out. Blood runs in rivulets down her hands and her hips. “Take me, not them!” she shouts in a voice hoarse from screaming. The trap winds around her, wrapping tighter to her body, vicious thorns digging into her flesh, but her tears aren’t from the trap, but from what she’s forced to bear witness to. An alpha, struck down by the Ever Ember hex before her very eyes.
He isn’t as lucky as those Ian has saved. The ember sears through his skin toward his heart as he roars in pain.
“Mercy!” the omega cries, but there’s no mercy on the mask that stares down at her. No mercy in the vicious rictus of the Baphomet mask worn by the Soldier murdering her husband.
