Page 5 of Vicious Kings
I know that tone. I've heard it used on captured supernaturals. On compromised hunters. On anyone who becomes a problem.
"Take her to the underground cells outside the wards," the Shepherd commands. "She will remain there until we decide what to do with her."
Thecells?
Where we keep supernaturals before execution. Where traitors rot until they stop making noise, and inconvenient problems simply disappear.
Two hunters step forward and take my arms. I could fight.Shouldfight. Twenty years of training is screaming at me to move, to strike, to show them that omega or not, I'm still dangerous.
But what's the point? Where would I go? My entire identity, my entire purpose, just got ripped out of my soul and replaced with something I neither understand nor want.
So I let them take my arms. I let them walk me away from the altar, away from my father who won't look at me, and the clan that no longer knows what to do with me.
As we pass through the crowd, I catch Vera's eye.
She looks sorry for me.
But when our eyes meet, she turns and looks away.
She's relieved it wasn't her.
She's already writing me off. I can see it. Already rewriting the last twenty years in her head. Maybe that's the smart play.
Maybe I'm already dead.
Two
BILLIE
The stone floor of my cell has become a map of my deteriorating sanity.
Five scratches for each day. Five groups of five. Twenty-five marks total. Or is it thirty? The perpetual darkness makes it impossible to tell when one day bleeds into the next.
My ceremonial gown, that midnight blue mockery of everything I thought I'd become, lies in tatters in the corner. I ripped it apart on day three. Or was it day four? The fabric made decent bandages for my knuckles after I spent hours pounding on the iron door.
The cell reeks of mold. They bring water twice a day and bread that tastes like it's made from sawdust. Just enough to keep me alive. Just enough to remind me I'm still breathing while they decide how to dispose of their inconvenient omega problem.
Footsteps echo in the corridor outside. My body tenses automatically, muscles coiling despite the weakness from minimal food. Someone's coming. The footsteps are measured and calm. Not the shuffling gait of the guard who brings my pitiful, moldy rations.
Hope flares in my chest before I can crush it.
Vera? Maybe she's finally come to?—
The lock grinds open, and torchlight floods my cell. I squint against the sudden brightness, making out a familiar silhouette.
"Father?"
The word escapes before I can stop it, raw with a vulnerability I thought I'd buried years ago. Rowan Moreau steps into my cell, and for the first time in eight years, he looks directly at me.
"We don't have much time," he says urgently.
I push myself up from the floor, every joint protesting. "Are you here to kill me?"
An emotion flickers across his face, so out of place that it takes me a second to realize it might be sadness. It's gone in an instant. "The Shepherd has been persuaded that there's another use for you."
"What—"
"Youmustaccept." His words come out in a rush, and I realize he's afraid. My father, who can tear supernatural beings apart with his bare hands, is afraid. "Whatever he proposes, you must?—"
