“Princess,” Luca pleads. “I need you to get checked out. You nearly fainted. Please. For my sanity.”
I turn to Cass, who surely must understand the urgency of our situation, but he shakes his head. “Don’t ask me to put you in danger, love,” he says gently, and I swallow hard. “Not like this. Luca is right; you nearly fainted, and we don’t know why.”
But I do know why. Kel and my father forced me to use my affinity, bombarding my mind with their thoughts. Fool that I am, I fell right into their trap, played into their hands exactly as they wanted me to.
Cassian’s face is a thundercloud of emotion, and I reach for him through our bond. His worry washes over me, and I settle instantly in Luca’s arms as I meet my mates’ eyes, one by one. Finally, after a tight smile from Simon, I nod and bow my head.
The moment we’ve left the ballroom, Marcus tailing us tomake sure we’re not being followed, Cassian leans in close. “My father’s sending a tactical team. Graeme and Jack won’t be alone.”
I look up at him, wonder swelling in my chest. “Thank you, Cass.”
Cassian’s phone pings with a text message as we enter the infirmary, and he scans the screen of his phone, the light reflected in his dark eyes.
“What is it?”
“Jack and half of the tactical team are evacuating the omegas, but the Soldiers have Graeme and the others pinned down.” I open my mouth to say something, but he cuts me off with a severe look. “Don’t, Junes. Please don’t ask me to put you in the middle of a firefight. Some of my father’s best men are there. They’ll see to it that all the omegas make it out alive.”
“What’s this about a firefight?” Doc asks as Luca sets me down on the edge of the table in her exam room.
“The Soldiers of Saint Aldous are attempting to raid one of Graeme’s safe houses,” Cassian says.
“And you saw it,” Doc realizes, her voice barely above a whisper.
I nod while she listens to my heart, remaining quiet when she shines a light into my eyes. I feel useless here in the infirmary. We should all be out there fighting to keep the omegas we freed from the Soldiers’ diabolical clutches. Saints only know what they plan for them.
I startle, remembering the images my father forced into my mind just before I swooned.
Test subjects. My father is looking to reclaim the test subjects he granted Andrew Radcliffe and subsequently lost when we freed them from Rad’s facility.
“What I want to know is how Kel knew you had an affinity,”Cassian says, leaning against the wall in the exam room as Doc looks me over.
“Rad had his suspicions. He must have passed them along to Kel and my father. And I confirmed it for them tonight.” Like Rad, Kel and my father used my affinity against me.
“I don’t like those bastards knowing what you’re capable of,” Simon says, scowling while he flips through something on his phone.
Ian snorts. “They don’t know half of what our girl is capable of. They caught her in one regard, but her affinity is more than just mind reading.”
“It’s a shame they know,” I sigh. “I’m more concerned that Kel and my father are working together. I suspected my father was involved in Project Halcyon in some manner. He supplied Rad with test subjects, but for him to be working directly with the Soldiers of Saint Aldous… I wish I didn’t believe it so easily.”
“I’ve said it before,” Simon says, pocketing his phone. “Your father is villainous.”
“I think he’s experimenting again,” I admit. “And that’s why the Soldiers are raiding the safe house. He wants his precious test subjects back.”
“He made you see something, just like Kel did,” Ian realizes.
I nod. “I think that’s why I nearly fainted. The barrage of thoughts caught me off guard, and I couldn’t hold them at bay.”
“We’ll train,” Ian promises. “Can you tell us what you saw?”
My shoulders slump. “What you’d expect. A scalpel cutting skin. Serial numbers tattooed on shoulders of what had to be omegas. It was… gruesome. I’d rather not relive it.”
“Of course,” Luca says, sending Ian a sharp look.
“So, Kel and my father trapped me,” I mutter, “but how did Kel know about the safe house?”
“We’ve all been coming and going quite a bit,” Doc says quietly, snapping my chart shut.
Simon lets out a heavy sigh. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. We need to up our digital security. I’ve been making a new script to run on all our phones to disguise the cell towers we’re pinging from, but it’s slow going. If one of the houses has already been raided, it could be too late. Shit, we still had omegas in collars before Ian and Juniper could remove them all. Maybe they tracked them and just bided their time. I should have considered that before now. If the Soldiers tracked the collars to the safe house?—”
