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I bark out a shocked laugh. “You never told me about that.”
Dax shrugs, looking sheepish. “Took us two days to find a guy who would take the thing because some asshole spread a rumor that it was cursed. Caelan kept forgetting it was silver and palming it like an actual blade. Burned the shit out of himself.”
Shaking my head, I try to think back. “Why don’t I remember that?”
Dax smirks. “He used the money to enroll in an online course for stage magic. Terrorized Silas by following him around HQ, pulling random shit out of his ear and pockets. Told him his ‘aura was leaking.’”
I can’t help it. I laugh. I laugh so hard that tears spring to my eyes. The sound echoes through the silent room, out of place but somehow completely appropriate at the same time.
“Oh, damn, that’s right. Wasn’t that the month Silas spent $700 on crystals and kept asking Ford if he would ‘check his chakra alignment’?”
Dax snorts, swiping a tear from under his eye. “Shit… I still find those damn crystals in the most random places.”
Our laughter shifts into companionable silence as we bask in the shared memory.
He’ll be okay. He has to be.
Eventually, I sigh, knowing I need to ask the question, but hating to bring it up right now. “What are we going to do about the Omega?”
It’s like a switch is flipped.
Dax’s eyes blaze with fury. His head snaps to me, nostrils flaring.
He looks like a predator scenting prey.
“We fucking ruin her,” he snarls.
“We need to be sure, Daxen.” I raise a hand when he starts to argue. “We can’t just assume anything. You didn’t see her.”
The image flashes in my mind. When they brought her in, the Omega was soaking wet, shivering from the cold, and covered in bruises. She looked malnourished, sick, and so damn small in Silas’s arms.
“She looked like a victim, Dax. Not a villain.”
“Victims don’t set traps,” Dax snaps. “They don’t stand by silently while their father brags about how she played Caelan for a fool.”
The door opens, and Gav and Silas walk in, joining our vigil around Caelan’s bed. I’m not going to have it out with an audience, so I keep my mouth shut. A heavy silence settles into a tension that wasn’t here ten minutes ago. It feels ominous.
Silas is the first to speak, clearly having heard the end of our conversation about the Omega.
“You don’t need to go out of your way to be sure,” he says, glancing at Dax. “About her being guilty or not.”
I frown. “What are you talking about?”
He doesn’t answer right away, staring down at his hands like there’s something on them.
“Silas,” Dax prompts, voice sharp.
“She fucking confessed.” Silas’s voice sounds empty, so different from his usual upbeat tone.
“When we found her—Gav and I—she confessed.”
Dax leans in, scenting blood in the water. “What. Did. She. Say?”
Silas finally looks up. My stomach rolls at the look on his face.
Silas is younger than us, having just hit his second century, but he’s solid. I’ve seen him in battle. I’ve seen him covered in blood and laughing about it with that chaotic energy that radiates from his pores. I’ve seen him take injuries that would kill a lesser Alpha and shrug them off with a smile on his face.
But I’ve never seen him look the way he does right now.
