Pain sears through my skull, and I just manage to tell my pack I’m sinking into a vision before it pulls me under.
I’ve only had a vision like this once before, back in the conservatory at Rose Manor. Instead of playing like a movie clip, it’s like I’m there, seeing the surgical theater through my own eyes. Three Soldiers force an omega onto the bed. She shrieks and bucks against them, fighting like a wild thing. Until my father sticks a needle in her neck and she goes slack, sedated. He reads out her serial number and her affinity: she can turn anything she can touch to stone and make it crumble with nothing more than a second touch.
“Scalpel,” my father says, and somehow, in some impossible way, I feel the weight of the instrument in my hand, see my arm passing it to him over the omega’s prone body. “I’m now making the first incision?—”
I jerk back to the present moment to Luca’s purr as he holds me close, rubbing my back through my tee shirt.
“What was it, my darling?”
I shake my head. How can I tell him when I hardly know? Why did this vision suddenly shift? Was I seeing a part of my own future? I’ve seen those futures before, me being trapped in an omega trap and forced to watch my mates die, but it’s always been like watching from the outside.
This vision felt far too real.
Like I was there with my father, aiding him in his wicked experiments.
I managea few fitful hours of sleep that night, waking midmorning with a pounding headache. Ian and Luca are still with me, one on either side of me. Ian strokes his knuckles down my back as I stir, my nose pressed into Luca’s neck. I breathe in wine and cherries and turn in Ian’s arms toscent him too. I nuzzle Ian, layering my scent with his, then turn back to Luca to scent mark him too. In the chaos the world has been thrown into with Councilor Claude’s assassination, I need to be their peace and for them to be mine.
“Get some more sleep, princess,” Luca begs. “You were tossing and turning all night last night.”
“Sorry if I kept you up,” I say in a small voice.
Luca nuzzles my cheek. “Not at all, Junie. But you should rest.”
Simon skids into my nest at the Leclerc estate, socks sliding on the polished wooden floors.
“Baphomet’s Prince has taken over the airwaves of the Fairhaven News Network,” he says, gulping in a few breaths.
I scramble out of my nest and dress quickly, Luca and Ian following. We dash to the family room where Cassian and his family are gathered around the large TV.
The mask Baphomet’s Prince wears is more refined than the ones worn by the Soldiers of Saint Aldous, but no less horrific for its relative refinement. Thin horns twist over the head of the mask, the leather glinting in the light of wherever he’s broadcasting from.
“I claim full responsibility for the murder of Councilor Claude. She was a scourge, a stain on our society, who had to be removed.”
Gerard swears, clenching his fists.
“But today is a bright new day,” the Prince says, and I can just make out the taunt in his voice. Hisfamiliarvoice. Saints, who is he? I can’t place his voice from behind the mask, but there’s something deeply familiar about it. “Yesterday,” he continues, “you bore witness to the rise of my master race.”
His master race, affinitied alphas. It’s all falling into place in my mind now. My horrific visions, the facility in New Jersey, the dead councilor, the alpha with the ice affinity who disappeared from the scene of the crime in a cloud of darksmoke. Saints, my visions are coming true, one by one. Helplessness and hopelessness lash through me, and my mates must feel it through our bonds because they crowd around me, wrapping me up in their arms.
They hold me up as I fall apart, as I remember the visions that stole my sleep for nights after the Lunar Ball and beyond. Affinitied alphas leading armies of Soldiers. Omegas forced to watch their mates being slain, all before being forced into internment camps.
Saints, I have to getstronger. I’m too weak, too powerless in the face of this fight.
“The alpha master race will rise by the day,” Baphomet’s Prince continues, “and those who stand in its way will be dispatched ruthlessly, and without mercy. My master race will be built on the blood and bones of those who dare oppose me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
My visions have been coming true. From the joyous ones of celebrating at Promontory Point to my vision of flying along the coastal roads on Luca’s bike, just like we did on our way to Northwest Harbor, to the grim. To the alpha with the ice affinity. If my visions are true, what can I do to change them?
I wallow in my nest at the Leclerc estate, alone for the first time in a long time. I told my pack I needed time to think, that I wanted to be alone, but really, all I’m doing is going back over my visions again and again, trying to think of ways to change them, to bring about a different future. The last vision truly spooked me. I’m not used to participating in my visions; I’ve only had a vision like that in the conservatory at Rose Manor. Normally, I watch the visions like they’re movie clips, but I swear I could feel the balanced weight of a scalpel in my hand as I passed it to my father over a prone omega’s back. Guilt roils in my gut. At some point, I’ll be beside my father in whatever clandestine facility he pops up in next, aiding in his experiments. I couldn’t feel the weight of a collar around my neck, which makes me feeleven sicker. Why would I ever help my father of my own volition? I know, deep in my gut, that I won’t be able to escape it, like it’s already set in stone, into the warp and weft of time itself.
I can’t change the future.
“My darling?”
“Sweet-tart?”
“We thought you might want to get on your feet and train,” Ian says gently.
