I stiffen immediately. This is my first time meeting the alpha, and the resemblance between him and his late son is enough to turn my stomach to ice. Rad was classically handsome, though everything I knew about him, everything he did hidden behind his family name or his family’s magetech was enough to make him the ugliest alpha I’d ever met, but I never knew how much he took after his father. Though the alpha standing before me offering me his arm is older, all I can think of is his son. How Rad’s hands tightened around me like he owned me when we danced on New Year’s Eve. How close he came to owning me the following Yule when he tried to break into my bedroom and mate me during the haze of my heat.
Though his father’s spiced wine and citrus scent is different, all I can pick out is oranges and anise. It’s the same cloying scent that wrapped around me when Rad held his scribe to my neck, when he groped me and tried to make me submit to his savagery in the stand of trees beside the academy’s library.
I grimace and breathe through my mouth, trying to steel myself against the scent and the memories it brings with it, but I’m failing. Failing and falling into the paralyzing memories of Rad’s brutality.
It’s then that I feel it, an incandescent glow within me, anawareness somewhere beside my heart, as one by one, my mates turn their attention to me, ready to come to my aid if I need them. I glance at Marcus on the outskirts of the ball and give a subtle shake of my head. Just knowing my mates aren’t far is all I need to straighten my spine and my neck.
Saints above, I willnotbare my neck to this monster, to the very alpha who molded and shaped my former betrothed into something even worse.
Let him see just how well free will suits me.
“In another lifetime, Mr. Radcliffe, I would have felt beholden to dance with you. Tonight, I do not. I wish you a good evening.” I start away from him, intent on washing this interaction from my senses with a glass of punch, but the alpha is undeterred.
“You impudent littlewitchwhore.” He spits the slur at me, but I don’t flinch. I will not be this alpha’s prey. I refuse to freeze before him—or before any alpha. “Free will doesn’t suit an omega like you.”
I pause and look over my shoulder, my blue eyes flinty as I stare down the powerful alpha behind me. “Or any omega, in your estimation. Isn’t that right? Once again, good evening, Mr. Radcliffe.”
I stalk away from him, my head held high, the whispers of other partygoers filling Radcliffe’s silence behind me. Good. His shocked silence makes me feel bulletproof, like I could take on a dozen Soldiers of Saint Aldous with nothing but my wits, my affinity, and my scribe. I glide across the ballroom floor toward the refreshments table, feeling more than just my pack’s eyes on me, but it’s their attention that makes me brave in the face of cruelty. Ian shoots me a look, and I shake my head. I don’t need an escort. Not now, while I’m flying high over shutting down an impudent alpha.
My mates are like fire in my very soul, our mating bonds bright as they warm me from the inside out. I feel theirprotective instincts wash over me and know they’d be by my side in seconds if I needed them. But I don’t.
I dip the ladle into the punch bowl, but something—no,someone—stays my hand. I look up into the dark eyes of Kelvin Montrose, Rad’s only remaining lackey. His grip on my forearm is tight enough to bruise, and he pulls me forward until I bump the edge of the table with my thighs. He meets my eyes, and, for a moment, his dark curls are replaced by leather horns, and his smile turns to that of the wicked grin the Baphomet masks the Soldiers of Saint Aldous sport. The vision is gone in a blink, replaced by something far, far more sinister.
Kel bombards me with his thoughts.
I recognize Graeme’s safe house all too well, the one where Cora and Aimee are staying. The one where I’ve spent late nights drinking tea with my mates, Detective Inspector Miller, and reporter Jack Rudolph as we strategize how to strike back against the Soldiers. And in Kel’s mind, it’s on fire. Soldiers of Saint Aldous stream onto the safe house’s small lawn, their scribes raised, the horns of their masks sinister in the glow of the flames. Spells and hexes fly as omegas scream. Silver septagrams glitter under the light of the full moon.
Tonight. Saints above, there’s going to be an attacktonight.
I jerk back, stumbling in my towering heels, glass punch cups tinkling against each other when I bump the table, but Kel’s eyes never leave mine. A muscle in his jaw ticks from the effort, but I see it for only a second before being submerged in his thoughts once more. Of Aimee being dragged from the burning safe house, tears streaking her sooty face. She’s thrown to the ground, straight into an omega trap. Its vines twine around her as the Soldiers head back into the flames, pulling out omega after omega.
I finally wrench my hand free and turn away from Kel, his thoughts fleeing my mind like a tide pulled out to sea.
I gasp, searching his face, but for what? For answers? For more of the disturbing vision?
Saints, there isn’t the time. I must tell my mates and let Graeme and Jack know. If there’s any way to prevent the attack, I must try. I dart my eyes over to my pack, a frantic look on my face. Our mating bonds blaze to life in my chest, and I feel their concern washing through me.
Behind me, across the refreshments table, Kel Montrose croons, “Got you, witch.”
Luca steps up beside me, wrapping a protective arm around my waist, and I drag his wine-and-cherries scent into my nose, needing to banish the scent of smoke lingering in my thoughts.
“Is this alpha bothering you, princess? Would you like me to deal with him for you?”
“Would you, princess?” Kel sneers. “I could send your hood rat alpha back to prison in an instant. You know what happens to traitors.”
Those the Soldiers of Saint Aldous believe to be traitors die in prison, and not by their own hands or scribes.
“Mr. Montrose was just leaving, I’m sure,” I say, my voice weak and shaking, my bravado leeched from me by the disturbing images from Kel’s mind.
Kel’s smile sends ice down my spine as he turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd of guests.
Luca and I immediately rejoin my other men, who are talking idly with Cassian’s family. I quickly pull Cassian, Ian and Simon to the side, giving Bethany and Cassian’s fathers my apologies.
Marcus is with us in an instant. “I didn’t make it to you in time,” he says with a grimace.
“I had it in hand, as did Luca, but that’s not what this isabout.” I wave him off. My discomfort from Kel’s mental attack is nothing compared to what’s about to happen.
“The Soldiers are going to attack one of Graeme’s safe houses,” I hiss. “Kel grabbed me and thought about it.” And I fell right into his trap. Saints above, is this all just a ploy to catch me out? To validate that my affinity is what they must think it is? No, it doesn’t matter. Not when ten omega lives are on the line. “They’re after the omegas. You have to tell Graeme and Jack, and we have to stop them.”
