Page 4 of Celestial Alphas

I tense, knowing his frustration will be taken out on my mother over this. “She’s my mate, and she’s obviously not in control. I know her and she isn’t a bad person. Rejecting us, running away, it was clearly all a way to protect her mates and the Nexus race. Doesn’t that show her as a good person to you?” I move closer. “You can’t kill her.” It kills me to beg this man, but I will for her. “Please, I will do anything you want. You wanted me to take a wife, that rich girl that would get you whatever the fuck you wanted from her parents?” I can’t remember her name. “Fine, I will do it. I will do anything, but let her out. Let her have a life in Starlight, trained at the academy. I know her Nexus is different, but I think she can be controlled by Gwenieve. With training that we can all provide.”

“You’d really marry someone else for her? You’d commit your life, be my slave and do anything I command of you to get her out?” he asks. I grit my teeth and nod. He laughs and laughs. Each laugh cuts through me. “I can’t do that…not yet anyway.”

“Why not?” I demand, slamming my fists on the table. “You can’t just leave her in here, father!”

“Are you in love with that monster?” he asks, still chuckling. My immediate answer actually terrifies me. I haven’t said it to her, but I am absolutely fucking deeply obsessed with my mate.And now I know the truth. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. There’s no way in hell I’m telling my father I love her before I tell her it first when she is free. When I know I’ve done everything possible to make sure she has a free life and a real chance. I don’t think she has ever been given one before.

“Does it matter? You kill her, you kill me. I’m your son.” I wave my hands out. “Make a deal with me. You finally get to control me, just like you’ve always wanted.”

“Sit down,” he commands and I do. “There’s much here you need to know and understand about Starlight City, about the Nexus race. There are so many things that you can’t possibly comprehend, but it’s okay because I do now and always have done. There are ways that we can work around Gwenieve’s problem with her Nexus, but it will take time. We can discuss an option for you, something a family friend has been working on for years. It will make sure you stay true to your word, and in exchange, I will consider letting her have some freedoms.”

“What option?” I ask.

“It will be painful, and you will need the others.” he warns me. That’s a problem. Hollis is never going to agree to do anything to help Gwen. Rhodes is in a fucking coma. But it’s the best I have for now. “The trial takes two weeks from beginning to end. You have until the end to make your choice.”

“Then she will be free?” I whisper, feeling like I’m verbally signing a contract I cannot get out of.

He smirks, leaning back in his seat. “Gwenieve will be free of everything.”

Then there isn’t a line I won’t cross, and I’ll make the others cross it with me. She deserves freedom; she deserves so much better than us.

Chapter

Three

“Hey, dad.”

“Hey there, Tulip.” He sits down next to me on the bench, and I smile at him. It’s hard not to smile at my father, even when I’m a chaotic mess inside. He has a kind face, always has done, but he never fails to make me smile even on my worst day. My mum always says I’m a daddy’s girl like it’s an insult, but knowing my dad, it’s a compliment. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for me, and every day, he proves it. Even with that nickname he knows I’m not too fond of. I’m nothing like an innocent flower. They don’t compare monsters like me with pretty flowers.

He sits down next to me on the cliff, his long brown jacket hanging off his big shoulders. His brown hair is messy tonight, and he looks so tired. His blue eyes seem almost faded. Dad rubs his beard before frowning at me and turning to look at London at night, with a million stars high in the sky, hidden from human sight with the bright lights of their cities. I can see them, and the longer I stare, the deeper a shiver travels down my spine until I can’t watch anymore. The stars always feel like they are watchingme right back. Waiting. Judging. “How are you feeling? You didn’t eat much of your dinner.”

Feeling? I don’t think I ever know how I’m feeling, because I try hard not to feel anything at all. Surely, it’s easier not to feel the shattering heartbreak in my chest, to feel the lingering pull back to my mates and the need to beg my Nexus to stop feeling all this with me. It’s too much and I’m drowning with it. It’s been two months since I rejected them and ran with my parents. Two months of running and sleeping on the floor in dingy hotel rooms. Two weeks spent in a camper van when the heating didn’t work, and my fingertips were blue when I woke up. This is it; this is my endless life. It will never stop. I love my parents for being there with me, for doing this for me, but… “Dad, what if this is all a mistake? I know mum said that this is the only way, that it had to be this way, but what if, what if I just went and told them about everything? They might understand and?—”

“They won’t,” he firmly interrupts and picks up my hand. I glance at the black tulip marking on his pale hand. “It takes a special person to love what you are. I hate how your mother calls you a monster. That Nexus inside you does not make you a monster, Gwenieve.” He pauses. “You’re different and different is not accepted in our world. Never has been, never will be. They would kill you for being different, and I can’t have that happen. I promised the moment I knew about your existence that I’d spend my entire life fighting to protect you, to make sure you had a free life because this has never been your fault. Your mates, no matter how strong they are, if they’re strong at all, they will try to kill you because they are Nexus. The Nexus…I hate them all, and you should, too.”

My shoulders drop. “You’ve never told me why you hate them, though.”

He sighs. “They…” He pauses. “One day I will tell you everything with your mum, and it will make sense. You’ll hatethem too. Until then, you need to learn to control it.” I feel like my Nexus is watching him from one eye with full attention now. I always get the feeling she doesn’t like my parents as much as I do. She didn’t have the same bond to them, perhaps. It scares me that one day I’ll wake up, and she will have killed them. I beg her daily not to kill them. Maybe she just hates them because they took us away and made me reject what she feels is hers. “Is she watching me now?”

I nod. “Always through my one eye. She rarely sleeps at the moment.”

He grips my chin and looks into my one eye. “I don’t know what kind of being you are that chose my daughter and ripped her entire life apart just to exist. But you and her are one and the same now. Born together, live forever together, and you have to protect her, okay? We will get her ready for all battles, but you, Nexus, need to be on her side.” My Nexus doesn’t respond, only stills and watches him like prey. Sweat trickles down my neck as I feel her wanting to push to the surface to take over. He smiles as he lets go. I know he’s looking at me now, and my Nexus stops. She slithers away into my mind, into the deep parts that feel like an endless pool where it hides, ready to snap out whenever needed. “Your mother, she thinks we need to begin training.”

I’m confused. “What kind of training? You already trained me to fight.”

“Training for your Nexus. We know you can’t die. How far does that go?” he wonders, but I get the feeling he doesn’t want to know. This is all my mother’s doing.

“What do you mean?” I whisper. I’ve only died once so far, the very first time my Nexus came out, and I don’t like to think about that memory. Death, it was horrible. It was more horrible coming back, too.

He can’t look at me. “Maybe training your Nexus by dying would give you more control. It’s your mother’s theory, and she is usually right. It’s a Vian method we are going to use.”

A Vian method? Something our enemies do? “That doesn’t make sense. Can Vian die and come back like me, then?”

“No, they can’t,” he answers, linking his hands in his lap. “But they edge their stronger warriors close to death and then bring them back as part of the ceremony to increase their natural powers. They do it when they’re young, and it makes them stronger.”

Sickness rises in my throat. The Vian are vile. Who would do that to their child? “How would mum know so much about Vian culture?”

He leans over and kisses the side of my forehead. “I’ll tell you about that one day, not yet. You need to be brave for me now, and remember, we love you. We don’t want to do this. When you know, I only ask that you don’t hate me.”

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