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The invitation took Bertram by surprise, but the burst of pleasure he got from it didn’t last for long. There were too many things he had to do, both for the council and for himself. There was no rest for the wicked, and of all the Drakes alive, he had to be the wickedest of them all.
“Perhaps,” he replied lamely, and said nothing more than that.
“It would give you another chance to bond with your brothers,” Grimbold said in a voice lighter than Bertram was accustomed to. It wasn’t the voice of a leader, but of a concerned father. “There are many things I regret, you know. A great deal too many, if I’m to be honest. But one of the things I regret the most is taking you from them when I did. The price you paid for our clan was steep, and for that, you have my apologies. But perhaps it is not too late for things to change. If you come home—”
“The clan comes first.” Bertram’s voice didn’t shake, but his hands were another story. He tightened his grip on his phone, but it didn’t help. “I show my love for my brothers through my service.”
“Merewin can step in. I’ll call him and Piers back from England.”
“Father,” Bertram said sternly as his heart threatened to break. “Please, just let me finish this. I need to know my family is safe.”
The conversation lapsed into silence.
“One day,” Grimbold said, “I will find a way to bring you home and make this right.”
Bertram closed his eyes and smiled, lips wobbling. “I know you will.”
The call ended not long after that.
The waves broke on the sandbar, and the ocean dragged them back in.
4
Sorin
Bertram’s plea fell on deaf ears—Grimbold did nothing, and the mating experiment continued as planned, leaving Sorin no choice but to take matters into his own hands.
He started by locking the Vanguard down.
Bertram was his mate, and had always been a valuable source of information, but now that the Vanguard was being forced out of the shadows in order to stop the experiment, he had to be cut off for his own good. If he was found to be aiding and abetting the enemy, he would be put to death, and even were Sorin to survive that sudden severing of their souls, he knew he wouldn’t survive the heartbreak that would follow.
He had lost too many loved ones already.
He would not live through losing another.
Next, he rallied the Vanguard’s operatives and switched their focus from the rescue and recuperation of abused and at-risk omegas to the collection of resources—if they were going to go to war with dragonkind and stop this scheme before it could begin, they would need manpower and weaponry. Magpie had already helped them amass a small stockpile of firearms, but they’d need more.
Lastly, and most importantly, he tasked the intelligence team with getting in touch with Magpie. Now that Bertram had been shut off from the Vanguard, they’d need a new way to find out what the council was planning, and while their current intelligence team was good, the dragons had Reynard Drake on their side, and Sorin knew him to be the very best. Only someone as talented at hacking as Magpie would be able to give him a run for his money.
But try as the intelligence team might, Magpie was nowhere to be found.
“He shut down his accounts,” Sandrine revealed during a private conversation with Sorin a few weeks into the investigation. They were in his bedroom, Sandrine standing by the bedside while he sat on the bed with his back to the wall. These days, it was about the only room he could tolerate being in for any length of time—everywhere else was too busy, too chaotic, too loud, and made the noise in his head much worse. “Our old methods of contacting him no longer work, and he’s no longer active on any of the dark web sites we use. We haven’t entirely given up hope we’ll be able to reach him, but right now it’s not looking good.”
“What are our next steps?”
Sandrine sucked in a noisy breath and sighed it out, shaking her head. “Well, the intelligence team plans to keep searching for another way to get through to him. Someone so heavily involved in the cybersphere never really disconnects… at least not permanently. If he has gone dark for now, it won’t last for long. He’ll be back with another pseudonym shortly—I’m sure of it.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“I wish I could say.”
“Weeks, months?” Sorin winced—the uncertainty was overwhelming. “We don’t have time to spare. There are nine omegas we need to save, and they’re scattered across the world. Every day counts. We need Magpie here, and we need him now.”
“I understand,” Sandrine said sympathetically. “I wish I could tell you the team was on the verge of a breakthrough, but right now they’re grasping at straws. You know how good Magpie is at what he does—he wanted to disappear, and he has. If he did leave a trace of himself behind, there’s no way to accurately predict how long it will take us to find it. It could happen this afternoon, or it could happen six months from now… and that’s provided there’s anything to find. We could very well be wasting our time.”
Sorin gritted his teeth, fighting through a spike of pain that shot up through the center of his skull. Was he making the right choice, trying to pursue Magpie like this? He would be a tremendous asset to the Vanguard, but they would be fine without him if only Sorin could get over himself and allow Bertram to risk himself for the cause.
What was more important, anyway—the life of his mate, or the lives of thousands of omegas?
