AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It had been hours since the fight. I was alone, sitting in the hallway outside her room. Vex’s notebook was still clutched in my hand, but I didn’t open it. I wouldn’t do anything without speaking to her. The command was clear that I had to eventually, but she couldn’t write in it if I had it.
She was with Drake. Safe.
As the hours ticked by, my mind began to spiral.
Drake was with her in there, asleep too, but I wouldn’t sleep until I knew there were no more surprises waiting for us. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I wasn’t tired, but there was no way my mind would calm enough to allow it anyway.
Get her back for five seconds, and you’re already fucking this up.
The words in the book were true. We’d screwed up, and the possibilities of her commands were endless. If we all went to sleep, and she left or got hurt… what kind of mates would that make us?
But… what if it wasn’t enough that I had the book with me? What if they changed the command? What if there were more we didn’t know about?
How would they change it, anyway?
Last time… I frowned. Last time, she’d been given a phone—one she had left with us. But aside from the videos we’d been sent after she was taken, everything else—the contacts, the texts, they were wiped clean. All but for a few photos she’d taken at the Gala. We’d determined either the phone was programmed that way, or Vex had been deleting all correspondence after it was complete.
Either way, they had kept ongoing communication with her before. Now we knew about them, they would surely be more careful, but they wouldn’t risk not speaking to her at all, would they?
I frowned, shooting a text off to Ebony and then getting to my feet. Ever so slowly, I cracked the door to her room. I wouldn’t see her, not until she was ready. But this… this was different. And she wouldn’t have to know.
I peered in and spotted her asleep first, tucked into Drake’s arms. I tried not to linger on them, and my eyes fell, instead, on a phone on the bedside. I recognised it as Drake’s from the case.
Maybe she hadn’t been given one?
I scanned the rest of the room. I’d been through it a dozen times while she was gone, setting things up and making sure it was perfect. My eyes were immediately drawn to the pile of clothing on the bathroom floor that hadn’t been there before.
I crossed toward the bathroom silently. My heart was thundering in my chest, and I wondered if this was a good idea at all. I searched the discarded clothing until I found it—the same kind of phone as she’d been given before. Nothing in it mattered, Leighton hadn’t been able to trace the numbers on the last one, but… was there a way to protect her, anyway?
When I slipped back out of the room, Ebony was already waiting for me, arms folded. He was alert, though there were dark shadows beneath his eyes. He’d been catching naps over the last few days, but nothing substantial. I doubted his lack of sleep had anything to do with anxiety, more likely it was the pure vicious fury and drive we’d been feeling through the bond from him. That was why I’d texted. Aspissedas his decision earlier had made me, if there was anyone who could figure this out, it was him.
I shut the door, then turned to him, holding the phone up. “What happens if we take it from her?” I asked. “They won’t be able to give her any more commands, right?”
Ebony frowned, running his tongue along his teeth, eyes darting between me and the phone as he worked through that. “Could be risky. I doubt they haven’t thought about that. We don’t know what commands it might trigger if she can’t access it.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I read a case where an omega was forced to rip her own nails off for every day she wasn’t able to access the computer she was being commanded to use for a job.”
I winced, but I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea. “What if… she didn’t know it was gone?”
“What do you mean?” Ebony asked, head cocked, and I could see his brain already working a million miles an hour on the question.
“Can we copy it?” I asked, but Ebony was already snatching the phone from my hand, examining it.
“If… she doesn’t know then nothing will trigger. This… this could be what we need.”
“Okay…” That was good. That was something. “Do you think she might guess what we’ve done if no commands are coming through?”
Ebony glanced back up at me. “Why wouldn’t they come through?”
I frowned. “Because… the whole point is to protect her from them?”
Ebony scowled like I was an idiot. “The point is to protect her. Period. And we can’t do that because they’re always one step ahead. If I keep her phone and relay the texts to the new one, neither will ever know. I can set up call forwarding, but I’ll need to find out if there’s a way to record the conversations somehow. That way they’ll speak like there’s no one else there. We won’t get a better chance at information.”
“Wait. If they send a fucked up command, you want to forward it to her?” I asked. “After what you did earlier—”
“You don’t have to like it.Shedoesn’t have to like it, but I intend to free her of that bond.”
