AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kyler huffed out a dark laugh. "Any sign of it on your hands, and that'll be enough evidence to easily end this little fiasco."
"How could it not be on our hands?" Avi bit out. "Dark Magic is like a virus. It wraps around whatever surface it touches. Breaking the seal on the door alone would have been enough. We walked in here and tried to detect what happened."
"Is that an admission of guilt?" Romus asked.
Avi laughed, but it held no humor. "It seems corruption is destined to win today." Our beta was the laid back sort until you pissed him off, and these elders had crossed that line.
"Learn your place, beta!" Arius snapped, his voice echoing around the wide room. Avi rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, his attitude at full force in the face of their utter stupidity.
"My place was protecting the Arch Mage during daylight hours, but this happened overnight. Our team doesn’t have access after those hours. You were wrong on that.Wearenotthe ones who failed," he challenged. The board members didn't flinch or react outside of the disgust that twisted their faces. Archaic views had no place in our society, yet our leadership always seemed full of men just like them. These men, in particular, were firmly in the mindset of ‘how dare a beta have a voice!’.
"This is insanity. We have spentyearsprotecting him," Levi argued. "Why would we change that now?" His voice cracked as his hysterics rose. I fell back to stand beside him, and his shaking calmed a fraction as my hand took his. We’d kept our relationship as secret as we could here, but that didn’t matter now.
Romus laughed like he knew an inside joke we weren’t privy to, his hands clapping delightedly. "Because he was planning on replacing you, of course!" We all froze at that.
"That's news to us," I stated, not believing him for a second. “He wouldn't do that. He put too much into our training.”
The Arch Mage relied on us for far too much to simply cut us out of his life. We knew his routines, his schedules, hell, we were trained directly by him to follow his every whim. Why put in that effort and ten years of a business relationship to fire us?
"You're too focused on us. What about him?" Kane accused, gesturing to the Arch Mage. They glanced up, not a single one bothering to counter his argument. Even at their ages and level of power, they should have been angry or worried, yet they gave away no ounce of feeling. They were practically robots, with their monotone tones and blank stares. “It seems you’re looking a lot more guilty than we are.”
We all knew that it would be their word against ours. Between the Arch Mage’s supposed plan to replace us and the board’s determination to look no further than my coven, tonight's revelations were startling, to say the least. There was nothing to squash the anger building in my chest, and my magic was beginning to spiral with that raw heat, ready to lash out. Kane was our expert in battle magic, but I could hold my own. As their gazes shifted back to us again, another bad feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, weighing me down further.
Without a single doubt, I knew we were heading for the prison below the tower. It was a place we'd spent a lot of time overseeing, but this time we’d bebehindthe bars—likely permanently. Whoever the Arch Mage sent down... Well, they didn't generally come back. Unless it was for a public show. The Arch Mage had always been a fan of flaunting his power, executing 'traitors' in some kind of public fucking spectacle.
Despite not agreeing with the practice, I hadn’t been ready to fight the Arch Mage about it during our service to him. But that was all about to change. I might not be able to save my family from a sentence in the prison, but I would do whatever I could to keep us from an execution, public or otherwise. Alive, we had a fighting chance, even if we only found hope in glimpses of the world between the bars. And all we needed was a chance. Their magic was old, seasoned, but ours was just as potent.
Without much effort, I could blow this place up, knock them out, then take the guys and run for our lives. But that would be an admission of guilt, and I refused to give them that satisfaction. Nor was I going to spend my life on the run, not if I could avoid it. We’d be named fugitives, our pictures passed from coven to coven until we had nowhere to hide.
Fury continued to rise in me, volatile and thick, until it took everything to not act on it. Kane was our fiery one, quick to anger and kick ass, so this was unlike me. But that was what happened when an alpha’s coven was in the eyes of a predator.
"We demand a trial, one you do not oversee," I ordered with alpha command in my tone. It had no effect on them, but weakness was something only allowed behind closed doors with my coven. I had to maintain a strong front as a shield.
Romus laughed, the sound full and boisterous and completely out of place for the circumstances. "You do not get to make demands of us."
"Hands. Out." Phyros' order brokered no arguments this time. No matter what we said or did, it was irrelevant to them. We would get no trial, no justice. He scanned our hands and nodded with a sick satisfaction as a purple glow lit up on our palms. It was the same purple that had sealed the door; I recognized it the moment I saw it.
Arius spoke next, stopping my self-deprecating inner monologue. "Now, you can come quietly, or we can do this the hard way. We don't have time to dedicate to you since, as you stated, we have to focus on saving our dear Arch Mage." His cloudy eyes flickered upward, white eyebrows rising even though his expression remained impassive.
"You're assuming he’ll even live through this. You'd rather waste time on this farce than let us help," Kane bit out. His magic started to rise, matching mine to the point the board stepped back. Avi moved closer, putting him and Levi between us until it calmed. Outing our levels would do us no favors now, and Avi was intuitive enough to know that.
"This is an injustice," Levi said, his voice rising several octaves until it cracked. Generally, my omega kept his feelings under wraps, but at the moment he was barely keeping it together. The disapproving look the board sent his way had me wanting to lunge forward, but Avi once again kept us in place.
"I'll get us out of this," I quietly promised Levi. Small chuckles rose from the board, each one of them finding this amusing.
As they led us from the tower, we followed willingly. We knew the prison like the back of our hands. If anyone had a chance to escape, it would be us. We were far more powerful than we'd ever let anyone see, and I wouldn't go down without a fight. It just had to be a well-timed one.
Not to mention, we had a wild card on our side, something a few well-placed charms and spells concealed from the average supernatural’s senses—ancient magic. Even the Arch Mage had remained oblivious, and it would be our saving grace now. That was the only hope that I had, and I was going to cling to it with every ounce of my being.
The walk across campus was like a death march. Word had clearly spread. Everyone stared, watching us walk between the board members like men on their way to the gallows.
Even the beauty of the university did nothing to detract from the moment. It was the place that I'd called home for the ten years I'd been a guard for the Arch Mage and the four years prior when I'd attended as a student. The ivy-covered stone buildings loomed over us, and I wondered if we would ever take in the sight again. Hell, we might never even see sunlight again. Ignoring the lingering fog, I soaked up the sight with every step we took.
I was torn between hope and a screaming need to be practical, cynical, but I couldn't let despair win. We'd find a way out of this.We had to. I refused to be defeated. Not by small-minded, jaded old men who clearly had something else up their sleeves. We were a scapegoat... I just wish I knew for what.Or for whom, my mind whispered.
The moment we were shoved into a large cell together, the door solemnly locked in place, I turned to the others. "We will get out of this." My vow was returned by Kane's determination, Avi's look of worry, and Levi's wide-eyed panic. The two men who generally kept us alphas in our place were falling apart, and I hated that more than anything. They deserved so much better than this. We all did. We’d given our lives to this university and these men. But where did it get us?
Likely death.
