Chapter 265

Agnes

After Lena left us, Thea and I returned to our cell to wait. The minutes crawled by like hours as I paced the small room. Every once in a while, I glanced up at the security camera in the corner, wondering if someone was watching us. If my stepmother was watching us.

The thought made my skin crawl.

“Mommy?” Thea’s small voice broke through my spiraling thoughts. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands/ “Are you scared?”

I paused my pacing and sat down beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Yes,” I admitted. There was no point in lying to her. She was too perceptive for that, and after everything she’d been through, she deserved honesty. “I am scared.”

“Me too,” she whispered, leaning against me. “But it’s okay to be scared, right? That’s what you always tell me.”

A lump formed in my throat. “That’s right. It’s okay to be scared. Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. It means you do what needs to be done even when you are afraid.”

She nodded solemnly. Then, “What if Miss Lena’s plan doesn’t work?”

The question hit me like a punch to the gut. I’d been trying not to think about that possibility, but I couldn’t ignore it. Lena’s plan was risky, to say the least. If it failed, if my stepmother realized what we were doing before we could destroy the stone...

I pulled Thea closer and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Thea, I need you to listen to me very carefully. If anything goes wrong tonight, if something happens and I tell you to run, I want you to find a vent like the one in this room.” I nodded toward the ceiling. “Find one close to the floor that you can reach, and crawl inside. Then keep crawling until you can’t anymore, and wait for Daddy to come find you. Can you do that?”

“But what about you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said firmly. “I’ll be right behind you. But no matter what happens, you keep going, okay? You don’t stop for anything.”

“I promise,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist. “But I don’t want to leave you.”

I hugged her tightly, fighting back tears. “I know, sweetheart. I don’t want to leave you either. But sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do to keep the people we love safe.”

Suddenly, a harsh knock on the door made us both jump. The door slid open to reveal a guard—a different one from earlier, not Lena in disguise. This one was a man, broad-shouldered and stern-faced.

“Come with me,” he said gruffly. “Both of you.”

I stood, pulling Thea up with me. “Where are we going?”

“The Director has requested your presence.”

Without fuss, we followed the guard through the maze of corridors once more, this time heading to a different section of the facility. Eventually, we reached a room that looked like some kind of changing area, with lockers and benches.

The guard gestured to two piles of clothing on one of the benches. “You’ll wear these. Be quick about it.”

I picked up one of the piles, shaking it out to reveal a simple white dress. There was a smaller version for Thea. White. Like lambs to the slaughter. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me, and I had to swallow back a bitter laugh. My stepmother always did have a flair for the dramatic.

“Turn around,” I said to the guard, who complied with a grunt.

I helped Thea change first, leaving her clothes and shoes on underneath in case she needed to run, then quickly slipped my own dress over my clothes. Once we were finished, we followed the guard through another series of corridors before getting into an elevator and descending several levels.

Finally, we emerged from the elevator, revealing a vast chamber beyond. It was cold and damp, the stone walls of the cavern looming dark and ominous all around us. I could see the other “buildings” better now that we weren’t in my stepmother’s office, and I realized they weren’t buildings at all, but rather cells built into the very walls of the cavern, up and up and up until I couldn’t even see anymore.

Cells that were completely filled.

Goddess, how many of us had she captured and bred here?

The guard led us down a central aisle, through the crowd of higher-ups and toward the front of the room. As we got closer, I could see my stepmother standing near a strange stone altar, dressed in an elaborate white gown with an even more elaborate headdress.

Lena was standing beside her, holding a small velvet cushion with the stone sitting on it.

Even from a distance, I could feel its power—a prickling sensation on my skin, like static electricity. It hadn’t felt like this before. Lena had been right; my stepmother had been… charging it.

Finally, the guard gave us one last shove to the front of the thong. From this position, I had a clear view of the altar and everyone around it.

My stepmother’s eyes met mine, and the malicious gleam in them made my blood run cold. She knew what she was about to do to us—to her own granddaughter by marriage—and she was fucking enjoying it.

Then my gaze shifted slightly, and I spotted my father standing off to one side. My breath caught in my throat when I saw his face. His left eye was swollen and discolored, the skin around it purple and puffy.

My stepmother had hurt him, probably when she found out he’d helped us during our last meeting. Despite everything he’d done, everything he’d failed to do, seeing him injured made me sick.

And then my eyes found Ava standing a few yards away. Unlike my father, she was practically beaming with excitement, her chin lifted haughtily as she surveyed the room. She looked like she was at her own coronation, not witnessing the beginning of something terrible.

The sight of her made fury rise in my throat like bile.

Suddenly, I felt something else. A tug in my chest, like the twang of a single violin string.

“Don’t react.”

My body went rigid as Elijah’s voice filled my mind. He was close—somewhere in this room. I wanted to look around and see where he was hiding, but I knew it would be too risky.

“How did you get here?”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I’m here.”

I swallowed hard, both horrified and grateful for his presence. The last thing I wanted was for my mate to be in danger too, but I hadn’t realized how terrified I was without him close by.

“Welcome, everyone,” my stepmother’s voice rang out, silencing the crowd. In this cavern, she didn’t even need a microphone to project her voice; likely even the cells all the way toward the top of the enormous space could hear her echoes clearly. “Today marks the beginning of a new era. Today, we change the course of history.”

The room fell completely silent as she continued her speech, talking about power and destiny and the future of the world under her oh-so-expert “guidance”. I tuned most of it out, even tuned out Elijah’s presence, instead focusing my attention on Lena.

“For too long, our world has run amok,” my stepmother was saying. “We have too many packs, too many territories, too many voices to clash together. Nothing ever gets done because our Alphas—the men who make all of our decisions for us, refusing to let women’s voices be heard—cannot agree on anything. But no more. With the Lunaris Stone, we will finally unite the world under one ruler.”

Her eyes flickered to me, and her lips curved into a cold smile. “Some of you may be wondering why my stepdaughter and her child are here tonight. Let me assure you, they play a very special role in our ceremony. They will be the first to experience the Stone’s power. The first to join our ranks as true believers.”

Murmurs broke out amongst the crowd, and I tightened my grip on Thea’s hand. Elijah’s presence thrummed through me again, a wave of calming energy.

“It’s time,” my stepmother announced, turning to Lena. “Bring forth the Lunaris Stone.”

Lena stepped forward, carrying the cushion with the stone toward the altar. In the center of the altar was a small platform, lined with what looked like crystals or some kind of conductor. Lena carefully placed the Stone on this platform, then stepped back.

My stepmother raised her hands. “Let the ceremony begin.”

She began to chant in a language I didn’t recognize. The Stone began to glow brighter, the blue veins within it pulsing with increasing intensity. I could feel its power growing, reaching out, searching, probing… pleading.

My skin prickled, and I felt a tugging sensation deep inside my chest, deeper even than the mate bond, as if something was trying to latch onto my very soul. Something wild and finally awake after a century of sleep and angry that someone was trying to control it.

It hit me, then, why I felt so compelled to come here.

It wasn’t fate. It was the stone pulling me here, begging for release. It wanted to die, wanted to break, and because I was the one who had pulled it out of that cave, it had chosen me for the task.

Suppressing a chill, I glanced at Lena, trying to catch her eye. She wasn’t looking at me, and for a heart-stopping moment, I thought she’d betrayed us again, that this had all been a trap. But then her gaze met mine, and she gave an almost imperceptible nod.

It was time.

I pushed Thea behind me, and in an instant, the first embers began to form on my palm.