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“Aisling, you need to understand—“
“Understand?” I whirl on him, my anger a living thing between us. “You drugged me! You turned me into something else, something more twisted, with those ACB monsters whispering in your ear!”His expression hardens, jaw setting like concrete. “It was for your own good. For all our goods. We had to be strong.”
“Strong?” My laugh is bitter, sharp as shattered glass. “Is that what you call it? Making your daughter into a weapon?”
He grabs my arm, his grip iron-hard but not enough to hurt, never enough to hurt. “I did what I thought I had to do. To protect you. To protect us all from those who would see us fall.”
“Protect.” The word falls flat, dead before it even hits the air. “You mean control.”
“Enough!” His voice cracks like a whip. “Back to your room. Now.”
I tear my arm away, the fury in me blazing hotter than the sinking sun. “Go to hell,” I snap, though the bite is gone, dissolved by the sheer relief of having someone else here, someone not caught up in the madness of alpha rule and omegas’ suffering.
“Already there, darling,” he replies. “Already there with you.”
For a moment, I see him—the man before the cause, the father before the alpha.
But the moment passes, and he’s Jasper Faye again—the leader of New Eden, the man who let my world fall apart.
Chapter ten
Luka
Unfortunately, playing undercover cultist means I have to do the work.
That work? Livestock rotation.
The stench hits me like a brick wall as I step into the barn with Isaiah by my side. We’re in the thick of it now—muck, grunts, and the heavy air of inevitability that hangs around the pens.
“Keep up,” our shift boss, Markus barks, a no-nonsense kind of guy with hands like leather and a gaze that’s seen too much. He has an old, weathered Eclipse tattoo on his neck, covered over partially by a newer Tree of Life. He leads us through a maze of wooden buildings, each one looking like the last, pointing out the feed room, the vet station, and the tools needed to get the job done.
“Here,” he says, tossing me a pair of gloves that have been used more times than I can count. “You’ll need these.”
“Thanks,” I say, pulling them on and feeling the cracked texture against my skin.
“Where do we start?” Isaiah asks. His voice is steady, but I can tell he’s out of his depth. That’s fair; I am too. None of us city boys have ever even seen a cow, let alone milked it…or slaughtered it.
“Follow me,” Markus instructs, leading the way to the first stall. “We begin with feeding, then move on to the slaughterhouse later. You’ll learn to do it quick, clean.”
“Got it,” I reply, keeping my tone level.
“Here’s where we keep the feed,” Markus continues, gesturing to a stack of bags near the back wall. “Make sure they’re fed twice a day, water troughs full. The rest you’ll pick up as you go.”
“Seems straightforward enough,” I comment, eyeing the layout and memorizing the location of everything Markus points out.
“Let’s hope so,” he answers with a grunt before heading off to another task, leaving us to get our hands dirty.
Isaiah and I get to work, shoveling feed into buckets and hauling water to fill the troughs. The animals watch us with dull eyes, their lives reduced to waiting for the next meal or the final walk down to the slaughterhouse. It’s a grim business, but here, it’s just another day.
I grab a pitchfork and start turning hay, the scent earthy and raw. Isaiah’s beside me, silent for now, but I can tell he’s got stories itching under his skin.
“Never thought I’d end up shoveling shit,” he says with a half smirk, breaking the quiet between us. It’s an opening if I ever saw one.
“None of us did,” I reply, keeping my tone even. “So what dragged you to this paradise?”
“Was running with the Fates back in Vancouver,” Isaiah starts, tossing a forkful of soiled straw onto the pile we’re amassing. “But heat got cranked up way too high. Blew out of there before it scorched me alive.”
“Sounds like a smart move.” My muscles work on autopilot as I keep pace with him.
