Why haven’t they activated it yet? It would lock me in my mind. It would make me docile.
But that’s not what my father wants. Hewantsme to fight because crushing me will be so much sweeter if I do. Hewants to see me suffer, just like the Soldier does. Except my father doesn’t want to kill me. Not yet.
Not until his success rate improves.
The Soldier reaches out with his hand again, as if going for my neck once more, and I recoil, letting out a whimper of fear.
He laughs, his whole body shaking with his mirth, then leaves me, locking and warding the door behind him.
I collapse against the bed and curl in on myself, trying to protect myself from all the threats bombarding me. Saints, I haven’t had a scribe held to my throat since my first day at Fairhaven Academy when Rad, hidden behind a Baphomet mask, held me to him, forced his scent into my lungs, his scribe into my skin. Two of my men fell that day, struck by the Ever Ember hex, then Ian took their embers into his own body. Cassian, Ian and Marcus suffered the effects of the ember until Ian finally figured out how to remove them.
Am I thinking of Marcus as mine now? I was just as relieved to see him alive as I was the rest of my pack. Hot tears leak from my eyes, tracking trails down my cheeks. He’s alive. They’re all alive. And like me, they’ll be kept alive as long as I comply. They’re leverage intended to make me behave. I know the Soldiers would have no compunctions about killing them, but for now, they’re useful.
They’re alive. They’re alive. They’re alive.
My breath finally evens out.
They may be alive, but they feel further away from me than ever before. Close enough to sense, but only just. Somehow the distance between the rooms we’re held in feels worse than the distance between Connecticut and Fairhaven did during the summer I was forced to court Rad.
It feels insurmountable. Impossible to cross. I pray for them to rescue me. I pray for them not to. I pray for them to live.
The next timeI wake is to my womb contracting, sending familiar pain shooting through my abdomen.
My heat.
It has to be at least a week early, no doubt caused by the stress my mind and body are under.
No. Not now. Not when my pack feels miles and miles away. Not when I’m left on my own. Not when I’m already vulnerable.
It hits hard and fast, dragging me into the usual haze faster than it ever has before. But I don’t even feel desire or need; all I feel is pain lashing through me.
Heats without a pack are particularly hard on mated omegas, and I’m about to find out just how hard they are. When I was younger, still in my father’s care, a nurse would help me through my heat with spells and sedatives. When I came to Fairhaven, Marcus applied the spells that saw me through my first heat on campus.
I thrash against the cuffs, trying to alleviate the pain, but it only worsens as I move. It envelops me, drowning out what thoughts aren’t lost to the haze.
The pain heightens, like white-hot needles in my veins, digging into every soft part of me, every tender inch of my flesh. I scream out my agony, curling in on myself, trying to contain the torturous throbbing. I scream myself hoarse, but the pain doesn’t abate.
Still, I scream, my voice ragged, my throat feeling sliced to tatters.
I get flashes of my guards’ thoughts as I slip in and out of my heat haze. They delight in my pain. They wish it would kill me.
They relish my screams.
But my screams are quieted when my father comes intothe room, a syringe in one hand. Panic dashes the haze of my heat away as my father approaches me. I feel the prick of the needle in my arm, and I can’t even fight it as I curl tighter in on myself.
I start to slip into unconsciousness, my final thoughts full of despair and horror.
Is it finally my time to die?
CHAPTER THIRTY
The sedative makes me drift in the haze of my heat, keeping me somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. Pain still flares in my belly, but it feels distant, just a far-off buzz. My body feels heavy, and I sink into the sweat-stained sheets as they stick to my skin. I’m still feverish, despite the eternity that seems to have passed. My gown clings to my body, soaked in sweat from my fever, and I wish I had the strength to rip it off. It feels stifling, too tight, too tangled up in my legs.
But I’m alive. I didn’t meet my end from the sedative my father jabbed into my arm. I wasn’t taken to an operating theater to have my maginalus removed. It’s too early for him to steal away my magic once more, this time in a far deadlier fashion. His success rate has to improve, which means more omega test subjects.
I weep, not from pain, but from the agony of knowing I won’t be able to prevent their deaths. Did the omega with the fire affinity survive after I lashed out at my father, or did he return to her and perform the brutal operation?
My thoughts drift away, stolen by my heat and the sedative.
