“Silas—”
“Someone altered my memory, Helena. That’s not a theory. That’s a fact. And the only people with access to memory alteration are blood witches. Council-sanctioned blood witches who operate under direct orders from regional representatives or above. Our father is a regional representative. Our mother died, and I can’t remember how, and a blood witch erased the memory. Do the math.”
The room is silent. Helena’s breathing has gone shallow, her chest rising and falling too fast.
“You’re asking me to believe that our father killed our mother and then erased your memory of it.”
“I’m asking you to consider it.”
“That’s insane.”
“Is it? Victor Ash built hidden wards that fed a Rift for decades, and no one noticed. Bonds have been failing in Willowbrook for years, and no one really investigated. The Council has been pushing TrueBond on unbonded Omegas in a town where bonds physically can’t take, and no one asked why. The whole system is designed to produce a specific outcome—unbonded Omegas, unstable magic, a dependent population that needs the Council to fix a problem the Council created. None of that is insane. It’s just evil.”
Helena sits down heavily. She looks older than her thirty-four years. There are lines around her eyes that I don’t remember seeing before.
“You don’t understand,” she says quietly. “You don’t understand what you’re accusing people of.”
“Then help me understand.”
She’s quiet for a long time. The clock on the wall ticks. Outside, a siren wails somewhere in the distance.
“When Mom died,” Helena says slowly, “Dad changed. He became harder. More focused. He threw himself into Council work, and he brought us with him. You were young enough to adapt. I was old enough to see what was happening, but I didn’t have a choice. He was all we had.”
“Helena—”
“I’m an Omega, Silas.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. I stare at her, certain I’ve misheard.
“What?”
“An Omega. I’ve been on suppressants since I was sixteen. The day after Mom’s funeral, Dad put me on them and told me what would happen if anyone found out. An Omega on the Council was unthinkable. An unbonded Omega even more so. He said he was protecting me. He said the suppressants would let me have the career I wanted without the limitations of my biology.”
The room tilts. Every assumption I’ve held about my sister—about my family, about the trajectory that led us both to the Council—crumbles and reassembles into something unrecognizable.
“You’ve been hiding this for eighteen years.”
“I’ve been surviving for eighteen years. There’s a difference.”
“And the bonding failures in Willowbrook. The suppressants that aren’t working. The heats that are coming early?—”
“A side effect. I’ve been reading the reports. The same thing that’s breaking the bonds is degrading the suppressant formulas. Whatever is happening with the Rift is affecting all Omega biology, not just the unbonded ones. If it gets worse, I’ll be exposed. Every hidden Omega in Chicago will be exposed.”
She looks at me, and for the first time, I see it—the fear she’s been carrying, the exhaustion underneath the ambition, the cost of eighteen years of pretending to be something she’s not.
“The Rift isn’t just destabilizing Willowbrook,” I say, the pieces finally clicking into place. “It’s a power source. The magic that bleeds through—it doesn’t dissipate. It goes somewhere. It’s being collected.”
“Collected by whom?”
“Deveraux. The monitoring equipment he funded. It’s not monitoring. It’s harvesting. The Rift produces raw magical energy, and his sensors collect it, and that energy gets funneled into the Council’s infrastructure—the wards, the databases, the systems that keep the Alpha hierarchy in power. And Victor Ash figured it out years ago. He built those secondary wards to increase the output, to make the Rift produce more energy, to feed the system.”
Helena’s face has gone pale. “You’re saying the Council is draining a town to power itself.”
“I’m saying the Council created a farm and has been harvesting it for decades. The bonding failures, the unstable heats, the TrueBond pressure—all of it serves the same purpose. Keep the Omegas unbonded, keep the Rift active, keep the energy flowing. Willowbrook isn’t a town. It’s a battery.”
“Marcus Deveraux,” Helena whispers. “His family. The Deverauxs were one of the original keeper families. They were removed from the records in the forties.”
“Removed by who?”
