Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“—he’d leave you a message in that old treehouse.”
He nodded. “And that’s exactly what he did. In the treehouse, under a loose floorboard, was a letter explaining everything you told me. About Dagem, the wolfsbane, the shadow, and Project Destiny. All of it laid out in his weird, loopy, unintelligible scrawl. After I read that, I made a plan.”
“A plan that you didn’t bother to let me in on.”
“Yeah.” He gave me a look. “How’s it feel?”
I snatched up a pillow and flung it at his head.
He easily ducked it, chuckling.
Orion came over from his seat at my desk. “After he read the letter, he came to visit me in prison.” Orion knelt beside the bed and took my hand.
I let him.
“All that rage that I felt toward you then just vanished,” Orion said softly. “I was making everything about me and my daddy issues, while you were fighting to protect our kid and her future. I didn’t know and I still hate myself for getting in the way.
“I deserved you putting me in prison,” he gritted. “I didn’t trust you. I didn’t trust Luame. I didn’t trust anyone after my father, and it made me into everything I didn’t want to be—a cold, hateful loner destroying everyone around him.
“It made me into him.”
“Don’t say that,” I cried, grabbed our linked hands with my other one. “It wasn’t your fault. Of course you thought I was your enemy, I did everything in my power to make you think I was.”
“So did I when I came back.” He winced, scrunching his regal nose beneath his glasses. “I hated saying those things to you, and sabotaging the forums. Even to keep up the act, that was a new low.”
“Yeah, why did you have to act like total, rotting assholes?” I swung to Badr. “You turned all the alphas against me, kicked off a riot, and tried to murder me!”
His face was grave. “We had to. That was the plan.”
“Getting students killed was the plan?”
Badr didn’t drop his gaze. “No, getting you to lead us to the vocal cord killer was.”
I rocked back, falling quiet.
“I knew you did something to my father the day Orion was arrested,” he continued. “There was just no way he’d stand there like an idiot, nodding and smiling over everything you said, unless something was wrong.
“After I heard he was out of work sick, I tracked him down immediately. That fucker never takes off work. His only goal in life was to die at his desk. If he was gone, he was either in some dark hole licking his wounds, plotting revenge, or both.
“Unsurprisingly, it was both,” he said. “He was raging about you taking his voice, and even though he was supposed to be working for you to get it back, the whole time he was communicating with the rest of the alpha council to take you down.” Badr gave me a wry look. “You know the secret police were never sent here to investigate Dagem’s murder, right? The whole time, they’ve been waiting for orders to strike.”
“I did know,” I admitted. “They made it too obvious. The whole time, the bastards didn’t even pretend to gather evidence or interrogate people. The truth is the alpha council didn’t want them or anyone near Dagem’s murder, because if they did enough digging, they’d find the trail to Castor’s murder... and them.”
“Yeah,” he whispered, fists crumpling the sheets.
We were quiet for a moment.
“There’s more,” I spoke up. “There has to be, because so far, you haven’t explained why you kicked off a riot.”
“We didn’t want to,” Orion replied. “Cygnus’s plan was to have the secret police drag you, the epsilons, and everyone on your side off the grounds by their tails. They were going to lock you up in some secret prison, and torture you for the vocal cord killer, your allies, everything. And then when he was done breaking you, he was going to force us to bond.”
“We couldn’t let that happen,” Badr said, picking up the thread of the conversation. “We couldn’t let him bring you somewhere we couldn’t control or that you couldn’t escape from. We couldn’t let him hurt you, or kill the omega scourge festering in the academy. Because that was his first and last plan, Daze. To kill every omega in the school and throw you in a hole where you’d never be found.”
He sighed. “I convinced him there was a better, easier way. Let you keep playing pretend queen while we secretly sabotage you. Then all of Wolf Nation would see you and your little uprising implode, and they’d never question alpha dominance again. While you’re failing, I’d search for the cord killer, destroy every last bit of it, and then I’d bring you in for the bonding.
“He agreed,” Badr forced out. “The shit even praised me for my wickedness, but it all hinged on destroying the voice killer. The rest of the alpha council refused to set foot in the same room with you until it was gone, and we needed them in the same room if we were going to challenge them all, and end this fight once and for all.”