by P. Jameson
“He was alive when they took him away, right?” My heart thudded to a stop in my chest and I refused to consider the absolute worst.
“Yeah. Oh!” She brought her hand to her mouth. “He had a message for you.”
“He did? What? Who? Jacoby or Cassian?”
“Cassian.”
I grasped her. “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“Because I forgot. Geez. He said, I’ll come back for you.” She tipped her head, studying me. “You care about him.”
“Of course I do. He’s Weren—”
“He’s alpha. You don’t do alpha. You care about him.” Rielle was wavering between her normal self and this weird human keep version of herself. But right now, she was shooting as straight as she ever had.
“Maybe a little bit.” I charged down the hallway, into the unknown. Now wasn’t the time to admit any weakness. “Let’s not make a big deal out of it.”
“Good, we won’t. Because he didn’t elaborate whether he was coming back with an army to save us or imprison us. It’s hard to be clear when you’re full of silver bullets. Oh gods, Char. What if he dies here? Even Zelene won’t be able to save our asses. It could start another Division.”
I didn’t even want to think about it. The possibility haunted me. And it had nothing to do with the massive consequences. It didn’t matter who the king was married to, if I was responsible for the death of one of his generals, His Majesty would make sure I met the same fate. I’d been flirting with that outcome my whole life. It didn’t scare me as much as it should have.
But I really didn’t want anything to happen to Cassian. Rielle nailed it. I cared about him. I kept thinking about him in his cozy little bunker with all the books of maps. The soft flannel and his broad shoulders. His salt and pepper hair and his strong jaw that ticked every time I challenged him.
Maybe I more than just cared about him. All I knew was I wasn’t ready to lose him.
Rielle and I skidded to a stop when we reached a large room that looked like a cafeteria. A group of omegas sat around half-eaten plates of food, and more on platters in the middle of the table. My stomach rumbled at the sight and smell.
Jacoby turned around. “Charolet! You shifted. Come join us.”
I glanced at Rielle. Something wasn’t right. He was acting like he hadn’t shot at us just hours before. Or was it days? I didn’t ask how long I’d been out. Maybe it was me that was off and the rest of them were normal.
“Please,” Rielle whispered. “I’m starving.”
I approached the table, aware of how Jacoby’s friends were sizing us up. A couple of them were familiar, but I was ashamed to say I didn’t know who most of the omegas were. It was possible the keep had made them unrecognizable, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Last time I saw you, you pointed a gun at me,” I reminded him.
A murmur rolled through the table. I couldn’t tell if it was shock or disapproval. I really didn’t care which it was. I had come to make friends, but after the reception we’d received, I’d be lucky to get out of here alive.
“You showed up unannounced with an alpha.” Jacoby clearly wasn’t feeling remorse over what he’d done. “We’ve worked hard for what we have in the keep, and we will work hard to protect it.”
“Last time I paid you a visit, you practically begged Tavia and me to stay.”
“That’s not how I remember it. I told you and Tavia how well we were treated here and didn’t understand why you were slumming with alphas.” His red rimmed gaze didn’t waver. “Where is Tavia?”
“She’s rebuilding the Badlands.” I puffed with pride for my friend. But I was infuriated when the assholes around the table had the nerve to laugh. “What’s so funny?”
Jacoby shook his head. I convinced myself he was trying to show me he wasn’t a scared omega anymore. We’d grown up in the trenches together, fighting for scraps of survival. Had I just met him for the first time, I wouldn’t consider him a friend. Our history was the only reason I was giving him a chance now.
“Under alpha surveillance, I’m sure,” he said, giving a satisfied nod when I didn’t dispute his claim. “Just how the alphas want it. Just how they want us.”
“It’s progress,” Rielle snapped, and I was glad for the backup. “I don’t see your humans doing anything to improve the Badlands.”
More laughter. Wow. Omegas could be real pricks.
“We left because it’s better here, and I notice you’re back.” Jacoby softened, but that red eye thing hadn’t faded. “Why don’t you two sit down, have a meal, and tell me what you’re up to.”
I eyed the food. These weren’t leftovers or scraps. This was as good as any meal I’d served at the castle. Prime rib, chicken, and ham. More vegetables than I’d seen together in one place.
“I don’t think so.”
Rielle grasped my arm. “Char,” she whispered urgently.
Jacoby steeled himself. “You need to keep your strength up, Charolet.”
“For what?”
He relaxed, realizing his pseudo alpha routine wasn’t going to work on me. “When was the last time you had a feast like this?”
“Every night, at the castle.”
Rielle’s stomach rumbled loudly enough to betray me.
“Fine.” I pulled out a seat. Rielle breathed a sigh of relief when she sat next to me. Was she going into heat?
That was the last thing we needed.
Plates of food were passed, and a pitcher of drink. Its yellow color surprised me.
“What is this?” I took a tiny sip. It was thick, syrupy, and sweet with a little kick on the back end.
“It’s mead.” Rielle smiled from behind her glass after she’d taken a big sip of it. She must have had some when I was out. And she was starving again. How much time did I lose?
The color in her eyes intensified. “It’s delicious,” she added.
I eyed Jacoby. “Don’t you have access to clean drinking water?”
We had a similar substance available to us in the Badlands because our water supply was so unreliable.
“Why drink water when you can have something better?” His question was met by more annoying laughter as he clinked his glass against mine. “Loosen up, Char. Not everything has to be a struggle.”
It was hard to loosen up when I wasn’t sure if these omegas meant to finish the job they started when we arrived. But he was right. We needed to stay strong.
The food was delicious, but the drink weirded me out. I didn’t touch it again. Rielle had no problem with it, and refilled her glass.
“Curious about the keep?” An omega named Sam raised an eyebrow at me from the other side of the table. We hadn’t exactly been friends in the Badlands. More like acquaintances that shared a smile and wave when we were working in the castle. The sad thing was, I hadn’t even noticed he left. I’d been a little preoccupied lately, but that didn’t account for how long he’d actually been gone. How many others had slipped under the radar? A chill blossomed over my skin. He took a bite of food while I considered my answer. “Or are you pissed that your friends are shacking up at the castle and you’re looking to one up them?”
Jacoby laughed. “Charolet, your reputation precedes you.”
It was incredibly hard to keep my cool, especially with Rielle closing her eyes for long blinks, her head bobbing like she was falling asleep at the table. I might have been shot, but something happened to her while I was unconscious. Or that mead packed a punch after two glasses. I pinched her leg to startle her awake. “You know the rumors in the Badlands. We believed that the humans were stealing omegas to turn them into horrible mutant beasts. When Tavia brought me here, we planned to liberate the omegas” –I braced myself for more laughter—“but Jacoby told us about a completely different reality. I couldn’t get it out of my head. What if life was really better for the omegas in the keep? So, I came to find out for myself.”
Jacoby tipped his head, raising an eyebro
w as to call bullshit on my story. “And you brought an alpha to show him too?”
“How else would I get here? And if things are so good, what do you have to hide from Cassian?” I hadn’t worked up the guts to ask what they did with him, because I needed to get more information before I wore my heart on my sleeve. But the very mention of his name made my heart constrict. I swallowed hard to get his name off the tip of my tongue. “What’s so great about this place anyway?”
“How long do you plan on staying?” Jacoby asked.
I shrugged. “Depends on how Cassian’s doing.” It was the perfect time to mention him. “He is our ride, after all.”
Jacoby’s face paled. Not good. Not good at all. “I’m more concerned with you and Rielle.”
Rielle grasped my arm, putting too much weight on it. I wasn’t feeling quite right, either. It was an all too familiar feeling that I had to ignore in hopes it could at least wait until we found Cassian.
My heat.
He could get me back to a bunker. What had Jacoby said about bunkers in the Keep the last time I was here?
“Cassian’s not dead, right?” she asked.
My heartbeat thrummed in my ears. Jacoby didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t think so.”
“If he is, there will be hell to pay,” I said.
“If he is, it means you’ll probably need our protection.” Jacoby stood and the others followed his lead. Looked like my so-called friend was in charge of things around here. If I’d learned anything from my time in Luxoria, it was that it was good to have friends in high places. “So you should probably get acquainted with the place.”
Chapter Seventeen
Cassian
Pulling up to the armory without the females felt like the biggest failure of my life. I had to remember that this was the right thing. The right choice.
That remains to be seen, my wolf snarled in my mind.
I didn’t have long to mull it over because guards surrounded me the moment I stepped from the vehicle.
“The king wishes to see you immediately.”
“Good, because the feeling’s mutual.”
There was no time to change out of the clothes I’d been given at the keep, and the walk into the castle felt even stranger to me than it always had. The abrupt change of going from the rundown keep to the lush decadence of the palace turned my stomach.
My female was there, not here.
Everything felt wrong.
Do your duty and get back.
I strode quickly to the king’s office where I assumed the other generals were gathered, ignoring the scent of breakfast floating in the air, and the way it made my stomach growl. How long since I’d eaten?
I raised my fist to knock on the office door, but it opened before I had the chance, and I was met with the queen’s furious expression.
“Where. Are. My. Girls?” Zelene’s dark hair was twisted back in a ponytail and she was dressed in the fine attire that her court wore these days, her pregnant belly rounding with the future of the kingdom growing there. She was prim and queenly. The picture of Luxorian royalty.
But if looks could kill was a valid concern at the moment.
She looked like her wolf would burst free and eat me alive if I said the wrong thing.
Careful, careful…
“I’ll explain everything if you’ll just let me in.”
“Talk, wolf. Before I make it so you can’t anymore.”
I was aware of the other generals, seated at the table beyond her, and I sensed Tavia and Ashla nearby as well.
“My rose,” Adalai crooned, “let him pass. We’ll never know the truth if you don’t.”
“I don’t need him in order to find my friends.”
Suddenly, the king was hovering over her shoulder to glare at me. He said nothing, but I could read that look. You’d better have a damned good excuse.
There’s never an excuse to break the law, my father’s words came back to me. The law keeps us safe. The law keeps us sane.
Maybe that last part was true, but the rest, I was coming to realize, was bullshit.
“Zelene…” Adalai’s hand landed on the back of her neck and some of the fury left her body instantly. “Come sit. Let Cassian talk.”
She scowled over her shoulder.
“On your lap?”
“Yes. On my lap, mate.”
She gave him a irritated look. “Fine. But he better say the right things.”
“Agreed.” Adalai looked at me, eyebrows raised. “You’d better say the right things.”
I followed them to the table and took my seat next to Solen. “Remember when these meetings were only generals?” he muttered.
Zelene heard and narrowed her glare on him. “Remember when a third of the Weren population were oppressed and dying slow deaths in the desert while you sat back and did nothing?”
Solen frowned, but at least had the decency to look mildly ashamed. He was the least sympathetic to the omega plight, but I didn’t miss the way his gaze kept touching on Ashla where she sat demurely at the queen’s side.
I took a deep breath, not sure where to start. If I told them about the beta threat first, they might not hear what I had to say about the omegas. Both were equally important in my mind.
“When Charolet crashed the Humvee, it was because she intended to return to the Human Keep.”
“No,” Zelene exclaimed standing from the king’s lap. “She knows the humans are dangerous.”
“The last excursion there, didn’t prove that,” Tavia reminded.
Zelene shook her head. “Char wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave us.” Her gaze went back and forth between Tavia and Ashla. “Ash, what happened?”
Ashla dipped her head, wringing her hands in her lap. “She asked me and Rielle to help her, so we did. We got the vehicle and… well… she crashed it and we were caught. But it’s true. She wanted to go to the keep. She thought there was something better for omegas there. Something the alphas couldn’t offer.”
Solen snorted. “Ridiculous.”
Zelene shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it, and Adalai guided her back to his lap. The king nodded. “Continue, Cassian.”
“I decided to see her there myself, and perhaps gain a better understanding of how things were playing out in the keep.”
“You were spying?” Dagger asked.
Spying. Was that what I’d been meaning to do? It was the excuse I’d given her and Rielle, but I realized I hadn’t thought it through. My only intent was to keep my mate out of trouble, and worry about the consequences later.
I sidestepped the question. “As your mate already noted, our last trip there didn’t clear anything up. I couldn’t let mine go back without knowing—”
“Yours,” Tavia interrupted. She turned to Dagger and pushed his shoulder in a playful manner. “I fucking knew it. I told you. Charolet is his mate. Am I right?”
Shit. Having my business all laid out in front of everyone was uncomfortable as fuck.
“I’m right,” she said, not waiting for me to answer. Turning back to Dagger, she whispered, “I win.”
Win. What the fuck, was this a game now? Who will be the next alpha general to eat crow. I glanced at Solen, then Evander. They both looked uncomfortable.
I blinked, shaking the thought from my mind.
“Charolet insisted we include Rielle, so I had one of my men bring her to the Badlands. He was acting under my command, Your Majesties.”
Adalai nodded but Zelene pressed her lips together stubbornly.
“When we arrived at the keep, we took the back way in, and snuck in through a hole in the fence so Charolet could find the omegas without human influence. Except instead of welcoming her with open arms… they attacked.”
“No,” Ashla gasped.
“I don’t believe it,” Tavia breathed.
“Jacoby, the one you visited with. He shot at Charolet and when she shifted, he shot me. Six times, in
the chest. He was aiming to kill. Thought his gun was loaded with silver bullets. Lucky for me, another omega had switched them out with regular hollow points and my wolf was able to heal me.”
“Rielle?” Zelene asked, her voice shaking.
I stared across the table where Evander’s clenched fist turned his knuckles white.
“She is… she is alive.”
As I suspected, his grip relaxed even though this careful facial expression remained unchanged. Evander was my key to getting through to the king if things went sideways from here.
“Where are they now?” Adalai asked.
“We were separated. I was taken by a faction of omegas to a facility to heal.”
“You left them?” Zelene snarled.
“I was shot, picked up and put on a fucking gurney, and wheeled away while a madman waved a gun around. I didn’t leave them.”
“Omegas overpowered you,” Solen sniffed, taking the queen’s side.
Zelene shook her head. “You left them in the keep, clearly in danger. How could you?”
Fuck this. My mate was alone in the enemy’s keep so I could be here, saving all of our people. I wasn’t here to argue.
I stood from my seat, the force of the movement knocking my chair over with a resounding thud.
“What is my queen accusing me of? Treason? Betrayal?”
“That’s exactly what I’m accusing you of,” she said, her voice shaking. “If anything happens to them… I’ll have your head.”
The king’s gaze jerked to her. As did Evander’s and Solen’s.
“We have to do something. Have to help them,” she said. “Where are they being held? Is it just Jacoby, or mutants too?”
I slammed my fist on the table. “You waste my time with your questions, but I’m through being patient.” I leaned across the space finding my king’s eyes. “I won’t apologize for my actions. I won’t regret them. What I’m about to tell you will speak to my motives. It is defense enough, if you are to require one.”
I shook with fury, but also with another feeling. One I didn’t truly know or understand until this moment.