Page 15

“Well?” Lilah asked impatiently.

“A…camp,” he choked out. “A camp in the mountains. West of New Grove, above the fallout containment.”

“Well done,” Horris cooed. “Now the child. Will he become a traitor?”

His veins still hummed with the high from his feed. Tingling spread through his limbs. Usually, he would sleep and let his body absorb the nutrients properly. But sleep wasn’t an option right now. Saren glanced at the child who whimpered and soiled himself. The smell of urine permeated the air.

A thought occurred to him.

Scrambling over to the child, he brushed his index finger over the six-year-old’s arm and experimented with one of his current fixations. Telex were known for their ability to take and seek, but they could give. Mustering every ounce of calmness into his finger, he pushed it into the son of those traitors. Every fleeting moment of his youth where he felt safe and cared for, however few, he channeled those emotions until the child before him stopped whimpering and shaking.

“Enough of that,” Matthias growled, leaning forward with his hands gripping the armrests. “Get on with it.”

Saren nodded fast and hoped he truly was the Maven. Wetting his lips, he closed his eyes and focused on what would be and not what is. It was hard to distinguish the two, and this boy was full of promises and light. His name was Hugo, and he loved his parents more than anything in the entire world. He also loved the bugs in the garden, the smell of bread, the way the sun lit up the sky in the morning. Dreams of adventure and paradise.

Sweat gathered on Saren’s brow. No. No. That’s not it. Who would Hugo become? Where would he be? Doing what? When? Why?

A jolt crashed through his psyche, white-hot, scorching through his body from the inside out. He wanted to sever the connection but couldn’t. Now he was the one whimpering and trembling, scared to death as images flashed before his mind’s eye. An enormous shadow blocked out all that light, the darkness bleeding into a promising future.

Blood splattered over Hugo’s grown-up face. His parents were murdered by his enemy. Dead Telex eyes—pale and no longer vibrantly purple—aimed right at him. Fire and smoke. Screams. Gunshots peppering through a dusk sky. Chaos erupting in a scene so tangible it felt like he was there. As if he was in command of the rebellion army. Orders being barked to infiltrate. To kill every Telex in sight. Kill them all.

Saren cried for them. Cried for the dead. Cried for what this would mean for poor Hugo.

A traitor.

“I can’t—Patryn!” Saren wailed, unable to stop seeing it. He smelled charred corpses and felt boots thudding on earth. His muscles spasmed and contorted over the bones. Explosions sounded off in his ears, swarms of black-clad militia charging into battle. Hugo screamed at the top of his lungs that this was for his family.

Just when he was sure he’d die from the force of it, rough hands shoved him back, and he crashed to the floor. The connection broke, and he sobbed into his palms.

“Judging by this emotional reaction, I’d say we have our answer,” Horris said in a dry voice, sneering down at Saren. “Stand up, boy,” he barked when Saren kept crying.

Unable to ignore an elder alpha's command, he pulled himself to his feet, sniveling and hiccuping. “B-but it m-might not be t-true,” he argued. “Precognition isn’t always right. His p-parents aren’t d-d-dead.”

“Silence,” Matthias cut in, on his feet and marching over to Saren. He gripped him by the chin, and spittle hit his cheeks when he snarled, “Put them down.”

“W-what?”

“Put them down, boy.”

Saren hadn’t expected this. He wasn’t so naive as to think he didn’t know traitors…didn’t last long in New Grove, but this? Him? Why did he have to? What would that prove?

“Use your telekinesis,” Matthias ordered.

“I can’t do that. I’ve only ever moved small things. Rocks. Books.” Saren couldn’t possibly kill someone like that. “I can’t!”

“You can and will.”

“Please,” he begged, wide eyes full of fresh tears.

The alpha lowered, shoved his nose into Saren’s face, his breath something foul, and whispered, “We should’ve killed you the moment you were born, just like your whore father and vile sire.”

“Where is Patryn?” Saren demanded, fueled by the mention of his long-dead parents. He knew what the council all thought—that he would one day become just like them. But Saren wasn’t a traitor. Patryn taught him right from wrong. He wasn’t evil. “Where is he?!”

A hard slap landed on his cheek, splitting the inside of his mouth. Blood filled his mouth as Matthias scruffed him and shoved him to his knees. “Put them down or join them. Decide!”

Where is Patryn? Where IS HE!?

“Patryn was wrong,” Eran mused while Vyctor nodded in agreement. “A traitor.”