Page 2 of Celestial Alphas

“Would it?” Paavo asks. “I’ve seen what you are, Gwenieve, and I’d like to test what kills you. Should I begin with bullets orgo straight to filling this room with water and see how long you can hold your breath?”

My heart races and I shake my head, taking a step back as my body all but turns to ice. How did he know? “Why would you betray everyone? Betray the entire Nexus race and your son? Or does Onyx know?”

He laughs, and it’s a horrible sound that makes me want to itch all over. “Onyx knows everything. He always has done. Less about me, more about you. Aren’t you concerned about why your mates put you in here?” My heart seems to stop. Completely stops, but he doesn’t. “They gave you up. Your mates, knowing that the punishment for murder is having your Nexus ripped from your soul and painfully dying a slow death. I guess they took your rejection to heart.” He smirks, just like his son, shattering my heart further. “And not one of them has asked about you since. Your trial begins tomorrow, and I’m sure they will be on the opposing side, making sure everyone knows about their monster mate.”

They put me in here. Even my Nexus is quiet now, watching from my one eye. Her pain feels like mine, like our heart is being ripped apart and crushed. I don’t know why I expected more. They hate me. They hate me and they gave me up. Everyone hates me. I wasn’t born to be loved—only to be feared and eventually destroyed. My mother was right.

Finnegan promised me, though! My mate promised, and he lied…but worse, I believed him. I trusted someone for the first time since my parents. He kissed me and promised to keep me safe, and he gave me up for this. They all did, and they are going to let me die a painful death. Rhodes…was it all a lie? I’ve always been alone, always, but I foolishly let myself get close to them and believed they might not hate me. I believed I might not have to be alone anymore. My Nexus all but cries in my soul, and it’spainful, making my knees feel weak. I can’t let him see me fall apart.Not him.

“You’re not alone.” My Nexus rarely talks to me, and her voice reminds me of the bitter taste of lemons. Sometimes I imagine her as more than a being in my soul, more than the wolf I shift into and the person she can make me be…but as a wounded little wolf drowning in a lake. I can’t save either of us, or I always drown right there next to her. Sometimes I’m the one who pushes us both in.

I straighten my shoulders and lift my head. He doesn’t get to see me break. No one gets that. “The moment I’m in that trial, I’m going to scream the truth about you. I’m going to make sure everyone knows what a betraying piece of shit you are, and my mates can sink into your ship with you. I’m done with Starlight and the fucking Nexus race. All of you are not worth it. You’re a murdering bastard!”

“I know you’re a murderer, so this coming from you is rich, don’t you think?” He crosses his arms. “It doesn’t have to be like this between us, Gwenieve. Did I mention I knew your mother very well? We were childhood friends because she was an orphan, and my dear parents were investing in the local orphanage. I used to go with them, and I met her there. You have her features and the same bitterness.”

“My mother wasn’t bitter.” I defend her, even when he is right. She was bitter against the Nexus race and hated them. I knew she was an orphan. Father told me once, but she never spoke about it. “She had a hard life from the beginning and did the best she could, even with me.”

“Your parents took you from us, from your people, and from any help you could have received before you became a murderer. It might have been different if we had time to contain your Nexus, train you from a young age, and your mates could have helped with the bond. Your parents made a serious mistake andforced you into it.” He taps his fingers on his arm. “For that, I am sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity, and I don’t believe for a second I would have been accepted,” I snap. “Now get out. We don’t have anything to say to each other.”

“I’m the Supreme Alpha, and I can sway the trial for you. The evidence can disappear like this.” He clicks his fingers. “But we would need to come to an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” I blandly ask. Whatever it is, the answer is no.

“The way I see it, you’re a very powerful weapon. No one could stop you, right? You shift, you kill. I see you as being very useful to me, and now that I’m in charge of all of Starlight City and the entire Nexus world, having a monster in my back pocket, well, it seems like a good idea. You’d work for me, do exactly what I say, and I’ll make sure you’re free. You can go back to the academy, carry on with your life, and I’d only call on you occasionally.” He smiles like it’s a brilliant offer. He wants me to kill for him, to take out anyone who finds out what a pig he is.

I laugh, literally just start laughing. “If you think, for one second, I can control my Nexus enough to be a trained weapon for you…” I keep laughing even as he goes red faced. “If I could control my Nexus, you’d already be dead. So would everybody that I don’t like, and I’d be out of this jail. I have no control. I’m not a weapon you can just use. And even if I could—” I lift my head to see he is right in front of me, anger flashing in his eyes. “My Nexus is in my chest, watching you right now, and she’s sayingfuck you. Whatever is making her not able to come out in this room isn’t going to last. She wants you dead.”

For a moment, he pales. I look at the grey leaching onto the tiles and smirk at him. Time’s ticking. He slaps me, hard enough to send me crashing to the floor, and I’m shocked enough to just lie there, tasting my blood in my mouth. I spit out my bloodon his shiny shoes as he reaches down, grabbing my arm and pulling up my sleeve before I can think about fighting back. The lasers hover over my chest, and I know if I fight him, it’s going to hurt for me. His hand glows where he lays it on my wrist, and I scream as I feel my skin being cut. After a second, he drops me and I lift my arm, looking at a massive rune on my arm from my wrist to my elbow. It looks like an arrow bent in half. “A torture rune. Let’s see how much you talk back after a day of that.”

“A what—” I pause as I feel it. Pain. The pain spreads through my veins from the rune, like pure fire, until I feel it everywhere. I scream and I barely hear him over it, in pain as he laughs and says goodbye, shutting the door behind him. I sob, scream and claw at the floor as my blood feels like it’s on fire. Sobs echo out of my throat as my Nexus screams in my head, as we both do, but we know that no one is ever coming for us. We are alone.

I shouldn’t have trusted them. They hate me, and now…well, I hate them too. If we weren’t enemies before, if I didn’t want to hate them as much before, them giving me up for this fate seals the deal between us. Screw them. I’m going to get myself out of here on my own. Like I’ve done everything. It’s always just been me. Because I won’t be used as a weapon by anybody.

Chapter

Two

OYNX

Itug at my tie, wanting to rip the damn thing off, undo the buttons of my shirt, and throw it all the fuck away. I don’t care anymore. None of it matters while Gwen is locked up and I can’t fucking get to her like I thought I could. The fucked-up truth is, when I convinced Finn to give her up, a rune on my leg was burning. A rune my father put there when I was a kid, and it makes me take his side. I can’t get it off me, and it won’t fade unless he is dead. I was screaming inside that trusting my father was a mistake. I fucked up. I fucked up so badly, and it will be Gwen who pays for it.

“Last chance, Onyx.” Finn sits on a chair opposite me in the waiting area and speaks right into my mind. I can’t speak back to him unless Gwen is nearby. It’s their power somehow bouncing off on me, but apparently, Finn can easily communicate to me. With threats. That’s all that has left his mouth since they took Gwen.

I was wrong to give her up to my father, but we were surrounded, and my father didn’t come with just the seven odd rangers in the house. There were hundreds outside, and we would have fought to our deaths. For her, I would have evenfought my father, but the choice is out of my hands now while I can’t find her. We continue to wait outside my father’s office, with Finn stretched out across a small leather chair, a look of pure violence on his face. “You have a day.”

I’m getting fucking pissed off with his attitude. “Until what?” I counter.

He cracks his knuckles. “Until I deal with the problem my fucking self, and you can watch. She’s not staying there. You said one night. It’s been one night. Where the fuck is she, Onyx?”

How do I tell him I don’t know? How do I say I was under my father’s influence when they took her and not thinking straight? How the fuck do I explain my father has been marking me with runes since I was a kid to control me, and I don’t know which way is up or down anymore…only that I want her safe. I knew that from the second I saw her. She fought me like a hellcat and kept me awake all night, tapping the rune…but the tapping just told me she was alive and fighting. She gave me exactly what I wanted. Now the rune is gone with her, and I miss it. I miss her.

“I don’t know where she is,” I snap. “That’s why I’m here. The only man that does is here.”

Finnegan rests his hand on his thigh, where there is no doubt a hidden weapon. “I could find a way to her.”

“Great plan, dickhead. Go and get yourself locked up as well, and then I’d have to fight for both of you to get out of prison. The Supreme Council betas would take my defence of you both perfectly, I’m sure.” I rub my face. “At the moment, she’s safe, and that’s all that really matters, right? All defendants under our law are kept safe and unharmed until they have a fair trial.”

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