Page 137 of Bonds of Pain
“You’re having them tortured,” I growl, my voice barely recognizable even to my own ears. My hands find his throat, fingers digging into royal flesh. “My Omegas. Mine.”
My father struggles against my grip, his eyes bulging as he claws at my hands. There is fear in his gaze now, genuine terror as he realizes I might actually kill him. The great King Leopold, who unified warring cities through bloodshed and cunning, now fighting for breath beneath his son’s hands.
“You…won’t... make it out...” he gasps, face purpling as I tighten my hold. “Kill me...and you’re...dead before...reaching the…palace gates.”
His words penetrate the red haze of my fury. He’s right. The palace guard is loyal to the crown, not to me. If I kill him here, I’ll never make it out alive.
But neither will Maya and Cillian if I don’t act now.
I ease my grip just enough to let him draw a ragged breath. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” he gasps. “Thane keeps his lab hidden.”
“Where are Ares and Poe being held?” I demand, pressing my forearm against his windpipe. Maya still has a tracking device embedded in her body and I pray it hasn’t removed. Poe will be able to locate her within a few feet if she is still in the city. “Tell me now.”
“North...tower...detention level,” he wheezes, survival instinct overriding his pride. “But you’re giving up everything. The throne...your birthright...all of it.”
I release him suddenly, watching with cold satisfaction as he slides down the wall, clutching his throat and coughing violently.
“If my mates are dead and I survive it,” I say, my voice deadly calm now, “there won’t be a throne left for me to sit on. I’ll burn the cursed thing to the ground.”
My father looks up at me, recognition dawning in his eyes. Not of me as his son, but of something else—the same ruthless determination he’s always cultivated in me, now turned against him.
“You really would,” he whispers, more to himself than to me. “For Omegas. For a pack?”
I straighten my blood-stained uniform, already calculating the fastest route to the north tower. Every second counts now.
“Not just any Omegas or any pack,” I correct him, turning toward the door. “Mine.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
MAYA
Cillian screams, the sound splintering through the too-white walls of the lab like breaking glass.
I close my eyes against the fluorescent lights burning overhead—the kind that turn skin sallow and make the rust spots on the concrete floor look like old blood. My cage is too small to pace, barely big enough to fold myself into a crouch, but I move anyway. Side to side like a caged wolf, watching the Inquisitor through the bars.
Thane hadn’t bothered to blindfold me for the trip here, even though his drug wore off during the trip. He had us hogtied in the back of a truck. But no hoods, no pretense of discretion, just the cold confidence of a man who doesn’t expect their victims to walk out.
The lab smells like antiseptic and something faintly sweet beneath it, something cloying. It clings to the back of my throat, making every breath taste like medicine.
Across the room, Cillian convulses against the restraints on the gurney. Straps bite into his wrists, ankles, his pale hairdarkened with sweat against his forehead. His pupils are blown wide, barely a ring of blue left around them, tracking nothing as the Inquisitor leans over him.
“Fascinating,” the Inquisitor murmurs, adjusting a tool that glints silver under the lights. “The bond is resisting severance more aggressively than anticipated. We’ll need to remove the glands entirely to break it.”
Cillian screams again, a raw, broken noise that sets my teeth on edge.
Through the bond, I reach for him. Or try to.
But there’s... nothing.
No pain. No fear. No searing agony as the Inquisitor peels him apart. Just silence, like a phone line gone dead in the middle of a call.
Even Logan is silent now. After that brief flare of rage, he’d vanished from the bond entirely, as if a door slammed shut between us.
The Inquisitor glances at me, flat-eyed, clinical. Like I’m a specimen under glass. “You should count yourself lucky, little Omega. Normally, we’d have started with you.” His lips quirk in the parody of a smile. “But your genetics make you far too valuable to risk. His?” He nods at Cillian’s writhing form. “Different story. But he’ll serve as a perfect guinea pig for the bond severing procedure. Then I’ll have to decide which pieces of him to save as lab samples.”
I grip the bars until my knuckles whiten.
