My heart was hammering, and I clamped my mouth shut against the renewed sense of roiling nausea that threatened to overwhelm me.
Warwick continued, “But you’re adragon. If we could plea you down to five or even ten years, that’snothingin the grand scheme of your lifetime.”
Five —orten— years in a cell like this one? My dragon caged deep in my soul, and separated from my mates and loved ones?
I couldn’t do it. I would go mad.
Gods, I’d barely survived threedayslike this…
And,fuck, how had Dexter managed an entire century of self-imposed exile without his dragon for comfort? I had a much greater understanding about how the past hundred years must have felt for him, too, and I swore that I would grovel at his feet when I was free again.
IfI was ever free again.
With my throat tight and eyes burning with unshed tears, I clenched my jaw shut. I couldn’t accept what Warwick was saying. I couldn’t do five years like this. Hell, I couldn’t even do another five days!
He spoke again into the tense silence, keeping his tone calm and gentle. “Just think it over, Sage. Five years is a better alternative to forty, especially when you still have hundreds of years ahead of you.”
But what good would those hundreds of years be if my mates moved on without me?
Still…he had a point. The same point that had hounded my waking hours and my restless nights as well.
I had no way to prove my innocence, and the evidence was stacked against me.
“Would they move me to a bigger cell?” I asked. “Obviously, they’d still use the spell that’s keeping my dragon trapped, but…” I gestured limply to my tiny space, “I’ll atrophy in here. I can’t even stretch out fully on the cot.”
“I’ll be working livable conditions into the deal,” he nodded.
“And,” I almost choked on the next words, “my m-mates? Would they be allowed to visit?”
“I’ll do what I can, Sage, I promise.”
I swallowed roughly, around the lump that now felt permanently stuck in my throat. “Okay,” I eventually agreed quietly. “Okay. I’ll…I’ll take a plea deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Having Sergio back went a long way to keeping me from breaking down again. I was still embarrassed for having done so at all, but I couldn't change that it had happened. Besides, Eric’s hypothesis was probably right: I’d been separated from my alpha for too long, even if we didn’t have a bond in place. Add to that my worries over Sage, especially knowing that he was being held in a cell where he couldn’t properly access his dragon, and it was all a recipe for disaster.
I think it was thinking of Sage alone, his dragon out of reach, which had properly set off my panic attack. Having lived without my own dragon for so long, it wasn’t a fate I would wish upon even my worst enemies, let alone one of the men I loved with all my heart. If I could take on that torment for him, I would. Especially considering his condition.
A condition he was unaware of.
It broke my heart a little more to realize that one of his deepest wishes was coming true, and he had no idea. Not only that, but he would be the last to know. He wouldn’t get to experience the excitement of discovering the secret first, of considering how to tell his mates and family, of enjoying those first few minutes (days, or even weeks) of private reflection and joy before letting others in on the news.
I knew that he would still be happy about the baby, and that he wouldn’t resent any of us for the circumstances by which we had come to know about it first, but it just seemed like one more injustice against a sweet omega who hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
In fact, the unfairness of it all rankled deeply.
As we all convened again in Beck’s meeting room, waiting to be put on a conference call with the lawyer Brandt had hired, my anxiety slowly began turning to a simmering rage. Not even Sergio’s hand in mine, squeezing reassuringly, seemed to quell it.
“We’re getting him out, dear-heart,” he assured me, “I promise.”
I didn’t know whether The Magic was telling him that, or if he just had that much faith in karma and fate, but I didn’t have it in me to ask. Not when a growing part of me resented him a little bit for his part in all this, too, which felt unfair. It was only the previous day where I’d tearfully told him it wasn’t his fault if it wasn’t mine…but with my growing anger, that felt like a lie. Like I had absolved us both too hastily. We’d both wronged our mate, and he was the one suffering for it, not us.
In response to his too-positive assertion, I muttered, “We’re both going to grovel at his feet when we do.”
Sergio was not a stupid man. Hearing the bite in my words and clearly feeling the tension radiating off me, he wisely chose to nod and keep his mouth shut. My omega felt as torn as I did about the whole exchange. On the one hand, projecting our rage onto our alpha seemed cruel and unfair, on the other…well, Serge had left us behind for too long and that really had played some part in Sage being frustrated and distracted when he had gone to that dealer’s place.
“Hello everyone,” the smooth voice coming from the speaker in the middle of the conference table jolted me from my spiraling musings. I’d missed the dial tone and whatever greetings Brandt and Eric had issued, but I was completely focused now. “Let’s get straight to business, shall we?”
