Page 13 of Celestial Alphas

“Yeah, heard that one before, Tulip.” He opens the door to a warm room. “Don’t bother trying to get out. We both know your Nexus is on my side and she doesn’t want to go anywhere. If youdo escape or hurt any of my people, the first person I’ll kill is her.”

He gently puts me into the room, leaves me on the floor before shutting the door as I run for it, slamming into the door as I narrowly miss catching it. The handcuffs fade into green dust as I sense someone behind me. I turn and my eyes widen as Annie throws herself into my arms. “Annie?” I whisper. I realise that’s who he was threatening to kill. Horror sets into my bones. She’s here, literally in the home of the prince of our enemies, and in so much danger. I can handle all the pain, all the torture and horror he has thrown at me before, but sweet Annie. I won’t let him break her.

“Gwen!” she sobs into my shoulder. “You got caught too?”

I can only nod. “It’s complicated. Have they hurt you?”

She is crying so much it’s hard to understand her to begin with, but I get the answer is no in between sobs, and I relax a little. She isn’t hurt. That’s good, but why? “The bombing. It was my mate. It was all my mate. He’s on their side and we are never escaping.”

Chapter

Seven

Annie is alive and unharmed. Annie is sadly smiling at me, and I don’t know how anyone can smile in this hellhole. She looks as normal as the last time I saw her, except her clothes are messy and oversized, her strawberry-smelling perfume is faded, and now she smells like lemons. Her curly blonde hair is braided but far messier than I’ve ever seen it, and she looks tired. For a few moments, I struggle to process that her boyfriend, that happy, nice guy that I know, betrayed us all. I honestly didn’t think he had it in him. I rub my face as she watches me in the tiny room, where the beds nearly touch, and the only other thing is an old, rotten cabinet in the middle of them. The walls are painted-over wallpaper in a sickly green, and I’m not sure if there is more mould or cobwebs. “They haven’t hurt you, have they?”

“No, I mean, the house bombing did, and I have a few broken ribs and cuts on my back, but it’s nothing major.” She looks at her hands in her lap. “K—” She pauses, and I hear the pain in her voice. She doesn’t want to say his name, and I get it. “He tried to get me out, but we still got caught up in the explosion. When I woke up, they were coming for me, and I was scared. I thought it was the end, but he just stood up, and they stopped. Iknew right then he wasn’t on my side. I felt his emotions switch in a heartbeat. I felt my Nexus break alongside my own heart. Everything snapped, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I tried to fight him, but he’s stronger than me. He’s clearly been training in secret, and I don’t know…he is a stranger to me.”

“Annie.” I reach for her hands and hold them as tears fall down her cheeks, dropping between us.

Sitting on the creaky old floor, she pours her heart out. “My mate betrayed me, risked my life, and is working with the enemy.”

There isn’t much I can do to make her feel better. There is nothing to soothe this betrayal, and she doesn’t know the half of it yet. I have to break her heart more, and I don’t want to. “I’m sorry.”

She wipes her cheeks and straightens her shoulders. “You’re here, and together we have this. You need to tell me what’s going on in Starlight and if any of those very well-trained mates of yours are coming after you. What’s my father doing? He must be sending people out to search for us. Is that how you got captured?”

“Annie,” I whisper, and she freezes at my tone. “Your father and mother, they’re gone.”

“What?” The single word sounds haunted. She sits back, her eyes welling up. “That—” She chokes and shakes her head. “No. They can’t be—they?—”

I don’t really know how to be gentle with anyone. I don’t really know much about telling the truth either, but this is Annie. This is the girl who accepted me with open arms and never once treated me with anything but love. “It was the Vian. They’d been working with Onyx’s father.” He set all of it up, and it was with Severi, I guess now. “It was all designed so that he could become the Supreme Alpha. He is now.”

She’s silent for a long time, and I just hold her hand as she cries and cries. “I know what it’s like to lose your parents,” I whisper, looking down. “I was heartbroken, and I thought I’d never get past what you’re feeling now. The raw grief that consumes you. But I know they’re always with us. My father used to say that we’re connected in far more than just blood. It’s our ties to the stars that make us Nexus, and we all will be together again. I used to repeat his words any time I was mourning them. It gave me some hope that one day, one far off day, we would just be stars again. I’ll get to see them again, and so will you. But I am so sorry because this moment sucks.” She bursts into tears, throwing herself at me, and I hug her back. She cries on my shoulder, and I have no idea how much time passes before she calms.

“I don’t have any more family left.” She wipes her nose. “I’m alone.”

“Hey, I’ve always wanted a sibling. Sister sounds good if you want it,” I offer. But my heart is racing. I don’t have any family either, but something about Annie has always felt like family to me.

She wipes her face and smiles sadly at me. “Sister. You’re family now and you can’t get rid of me. So, bestie, how are we getting out of here?” She straightens her shoulders. “I need you to be that badass, fearless friend I love, because we are knee deep in Vian shit, and I’m not letting them kill me.”

Badass? Maybe. Fearless? Fuck, no. I’m terrified nearly all of the time. “You might want to throw me to them when I tell you the truth.”

“What truth?” She crosses her arms. “Please don’t say you’re working with the Vian, Gwen. I can’t take that.”

I snort. “I’m definitely not working with them. I would kill them all if I got a chance, but while I’m in this house, my Nexus is under control. There is something here that makes Nexuspowers dull, and I can’t use them unless Severi allows it. I’ve been here before. Maybe my Nexus wouldn’t help, anyway. She’s kind of been betraying me at the moment, and I really don’t know how to feel about that.”

“Your Nexus?” She leans forward. “I’ve been curious why you’ve hidden her away.”

I rub my arm. She has to hear this from me. “When I shifted for the first time, my Nexus…she’s different, dangerous, a monster. There’s no other way to really describe her than that. All she does is kill and destroy and take lives. Takes powers too. She’s so dangerous, and when we could no longer control her, my parents took me away because it was safer for me to not be around people, to train me privately, make sure no one ever knew who I was. I knew with five mates…it was five people who I would fall in love with, and five people who she might kill. I couldn’t risk them, and the spotlight would be on us all the time anyway because of such a big bonding. We’d never stay hidden. At the moment, I think they are still better without me. She’s obsessed, absolutely obsessed with all of them, and I don’t even know what mating would do. Would she get more powerful? Would she kill them anyway? Could their Nexus be tainted with what she is?” I shake my head. “I don’t have anyone to ask, and I don’t understand why I was cursed. Only that sometimes, when the shit hits the fan, she feels like she could murder an entire city. I can’t stay in Starlight or with them. I’m like a living bomb.”

She is speechless, her eyes wide as she watches me. I can’t stop blurting out so much. “It was me, well, my Nexus who killed those people in the city. She was clearly listening when Sara told us about her mate hurting her. She kind of was the one hunting in the city and killing those others. She likes blood and gore and, well, justice in a really fucked-up way. The Vian that just threw me in here? That’s Severi. He’s also my mate. I didn’t find thatout until years later, though.” Her mouth opens and closes a few times. I figure I might as well just continue on. “In the house, when it blew up, I lost Harry.” I still haven’t processed that yet. Harry is gone. Harry, who smiled at everything and had a crush on me. Harry, who deserved a good life. Why did he die and yet I get to live?

She covers her mouth with her hand. “I’m so sorry. I know he was like a brother to you.”

“He was, and I couldn’t save him. I got so angry, and all the warnings, all the training my parents gave me, just went out of the window. I kind of started killing Vian. When they touch me, they can’t drain me, so it makes us even. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t work for me. My father trained me every day for years, and he was the best fighter I knew. I got my Nex dagger from a friend of my father’s, a priest, who was breaking all the rules, but he did it anyway. I was trained, I should’ve known better, and I still lost control. I just killed them in anger and gave away that I was trained. Trained very well.” I clear my throat. “Signing up to the academy was my way of getting away from my mates, but also, I wanted to learn how my father was taught. I felt like maybe there was some part of him in the academy. But instead, I found you and you made me feel like I could have friends. Family again.”

She blows out a long breath. “I knew you were holding back at the academy!” She grins and I stare in confusion. She isn’t scared of me. “I absolutely knew it. There was no way you weren’t trained!” Annie tucks her hair behind her ear. “Carry on…I think I need to hear everything that happened after the bombing.”

I nod. “I was fighting and Severi had his people drug me. I got taken to a warehouse.”

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