“What you’re about to witness is exactly what will happen to you once my success rate improves,” he says, his voice sly. “I’ll give your affinity to Baphomet’s Prince, and he’ll use it to take over this pathetic world. I’ll do it just like you’re going to see. Maybe I’ll succeed; either way, you won’t live to see what happens, to witness the world the Prince envisions. You should know, taking your maginaluswillkill you.”
Saints, I’ll only live until my father has butchered more omegas, until he’s mastered the procedure of removing an omega’s maginalus without destroying it in the process. I ball my hands into fists, wishing I could dig my nails into my palms to jolt me out of this horror, but it’s of no use in the gloves. He’s so sure he’ll take my affinity. He’s so sure the Prince will win this war. It would be so easy to root out traitors and dissenters with an affinity like mine… No. I can’t think about that now. I have to pull it together. I can’t let this all be for naught. If I am rescued, I need to be armed with every last detail needed to take my father down. That thought sobers me, pushing my fears to the back of my mind.
“And just how many omegas have died so far?” I ask, my voice hard.
“Enough. They died for the noblest of causes, giving worth to their otherwise worthless lives. I’ll butcher as many of your kind as I need to. You’ll see. You’ll see itall, daughter, as I claw my way up to an acceptable success rate. All for you. For that affinity hiding in your unworthy body. It’s a flaw in nature that such powers were given to omegas, not alphas, and I intend to rectify that.”
He picks up a tray of surgical instruments and rips off the plastic covering before setting it down on a small rolling cart beside the operating table.
“Funny how you’re missing my class at that precious academy you hold so dear, but you’ll be part of something far more important. Your life is pitiful, your goals, your desires, all of it. You cling to your schooling like it’ll ever meansomething, but it won’t. Not in the future Baphomet’s Prince is building.”
I exhale sharply through my nose but stay silent. If I’m to give my life, I’ll go out fighting against that future, against what I’ve seen in my grim visions.
My father clears his throat and begins to dictate. He reads off the omega’s serial number, then states her affinity: fire. I’m jolted back to the vision where I saw an alpha Soldier wielding fire leading an army, all for the glory of Baphomet’s Prince.
“The scalpel, Juniper.”
Like it did in my vision, the scalpel weighs heavily in my hand, the weight of it more symbolic than physical. Handing my father this scalpel means admitting defeat, and I won’t do that. Not when I can still fight. Not when my pack truly believes I can change the future.
I slash out at him, aiming for his neck, for the artery there that’ll surely kill him if I cut it just right. But I don’t have my father’s surgical precision, nor do I have his alpha reaction time. He dodges, and the scalpel cuts his cheek instead, drawing blood, but not enough to end his life. Not nearly enough.
I clutch the scalpel in my fist and make a run for it as the two Soldiers close in on me.
“I’ll handle this,” my father barks.
He catches me around the waist, slamming me down onto the cold linoleum floor. He yanks the scalpel from my hand and tosses it aside. His blood drips down onto my bare neck as he binds my wrists with a muttered spell. He whirls me around and drags me up to my knees.
There’s fury in his pale blue eyes, the very last thing I see before he backhands me hard across the face and stuns me into the dark oblivion of unconsciousness.
I floatbetween sleep and wakefulness, drifting between one and the other. The vision comes on slowly, like a dream. A nightmare. I’m in the operating theater again, seeing through my own eyes like I have in my recent visions. There’s a telltale weight around my neck—a collar. I fight against the Soldiers who have me in their grasp until the collar activates. I sag, trapped in my mind by the spell in the collar, able only to shuffle toward the operating table…
A Soldier shakes me awake, and the vision dissipates like smoke. I wake to a collar around my neck and a scribe held to the fluttering, racing pulse point in my neck. I startle, jerking away from the Soldier, but he follows, digging the cool metal of his scribe deeper into my skin.
Then he does something unexpected. He takes out a phone and starts a video call, capturing both of us in the shot.
On the other end? My bruised and battered pack, each of them flanked by two Soldiers holding their arms
I surge up in bed, and the Soldier twists my arm until I yelp. Saints, they’realive. All of them. Cassian. Luca. Ian. Simon. Marcus. They’re all alive. Worse for wear, clearly beaten, but alive.
I want to burst into tears at the sight of them, but I know we’ll only have this one chance to speak.
The Soldier with his scribe to my throat digs the tip deeper once more. “Comply, or we kill her.”
They cry out for me, my name, every sweet thing they call me, warnings, promises. Warning the Soldiers that there will be retribution for blackening my eye, for collaring me. Promising they’ll rescue me. They fight against the Soldiers holding them, their instincts riding them, spurring them to come to my side. The Soldier holding the phone on their endwhips out his scribe, and the video goes wild, bouncing around and showing me the floor, then the ceiling as the Soldier shouts out a hex. I can hear it sizzle even from here, can hear it strike. Luca’s bellow of pain sounds, and I cry out.
“Stop,” I plead with them. “Stop. Please, I beg you. They aren’t going to kill me. I’m too important to?—”
The call cuts out on the other end, ended by the Soldier who hexed Luca.
The Soldier draws his scribe away and sets his hand against my neck in its place, squeezing. I gasp out a breath, but it only drains my lungs of air. I try to draw in a breath and can’t. I fight against the Soldier, desperate for air. Saints, he’ll kill me if he squeezes much longer.
“We have ways of making you comply, too, witch. The butcher wants you alive, but we can still make you suffer. We cantormentyou.” He doesn’t have to say it. I know what he means by the way he cocks his head, the dull light of the hospital room shining off his vicious mask. They’ll hurt or kill my pack to make me behave. He releases me and shoves me back against the bed.
I cough and gasp, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs. As much as I want to, I don’t lash out with my affinity, but I do reach out with it as I struggle to breathe. The Soldier wanted to kill me but knows he’ll be slain by the Prince if he does. The last thing he wants to do is disappoint the Prince. Still, he thinks of the light leaving my eyes, my body going limp.
I withdraw my affinity in the space of a heartbeat, recoiling from him.
“Behave, you stupid bitch, or we activate the collar.”
