The horn sounds again, closer this time, and the chamber erupts into motion before I can even finish processing what the woman just told me.
“Move,” Jodan snaps, already pulling me toward the stairs we came down.
“Now, April.”
“Wait, Jax—”
“I’ve got him.” Riven is already at the chains, and this time he doesn’t bother testing the iron first.
He simply tears it from the post with a sound like the earth splitting, hauling Jax up by the arm.
Jax staggers, barely able to stand, but he doesn’t argue.
The woman, my aunt, if that word means anything at all yet, is already retreating into the shadows at the chamber’s edge, her cloak swallowing her outline until she’s barely more than a shape.
“You’re leaving,” I say, disbelief sharpening my voice.
“After everything you just told me.”
“I have nowhere else to be that keeps either of us alive,” she says.
“The Council doesn’t know I exist.
I intend to keep it that way a little longer.
Trust the ring, April.
Trust nothing else down here.”
Then she’s gone, folded into darkness like she was never there at all.
“April.” Eryx’s hand closes around mine, grounding, urgent.
“We need to go.”
We run.
The stairs feel steeper going up than they did coming down, my bare feet slipping on stone worn smooth by centuries, the bond thundering in my chest with five heartbeats now instead of four, mine included, all of them out of rhythm with fear.
Lucien takes the rear, glancing back every few steps like he expects something to be gaining on us.
Nothing is.
That almost feels worse.
“They knew we were down here the whole time,” Lucien says between breaths.
“That horn wasn’t a discovery.
It was a countdown.”
“Meaning what?” I ask.
“Meaning someone gave them the timing,” Jodan says grimly.
“Someone who knew exactly how long to let us stay before pulling the alarm.”
The words land heavy between us, but there’s no time to chase the implication.
We burst back into the holding cell, torchlight blinding after the dark of the tunnel, and the door beyond it, the one leading to the east dormitory corridor, is already crowded with shapes. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Not guards.
Not yet.
A single figure stands framed in the doorway, backlit by torchlight from the hall beyond, small and familiar and utterly still.
“Selene.” My chest floods with relief so fast it nearly buckles my knees.
“Selene, you’re alive—”
I take a step toward her.
She doesn’t move to meet me.
“April.” Her voice comes out steady.
Too steady.
Nothing like the anxious, rambling girl who talked too much on our first day, who braided her hair three times out of nerves before the ceremony.
“You shouldn’t have come down here.”
“They took you,” I say slowly, the relief in my chest curdling into something colder with every word.
“I came to get you out.”
“I know.” She doesn’t smile.
She doesn’t cry.
She just watches me with an expression I’ve never once seen on her face, calm, assessing, entirely unlike the roommate I thought I knew.
“That was rather the point.”
Behind her, more shapes resolve out of the corridor’s shadow.
Guards.
A full contingent, armor gleaming, weapons already drawn, filling the space where the doorway opens into the hall.
“Selene.” Eryx’s voice has gone very quiet.
“What did you do?”
“What I was asked to do.” For the first time, something flickers behind her calm, not guilt exactly, but close to it.
“I’ve reported to the Council since before either of you arrived at Mooncrest.
It was supposed to be simple.
Watch the omega roommate assignment, report anything unusual, nothing more.
I didn’t ask to care about you, April.
That part wasn’t in the instructions.”
“You let them take you,” I whisper.
“You staged it.”
“I didn’t stage anything,” she says, and there’s real heat in it now, the first crack in her composure.
“I was taken exactly the way it looked.
The rebellion moved faster than the Council expected, and faster than I expected.
My freedom, in exchange for leading them here, tonight, to you.”
Riven’s growl rolls low and dangerous through the cell, but Jodan lifts a hand, and for once Riven holds his ground instead of lunging.
“You could have refused,” Jodan says.
“Could I?” Selene’s eyes glisten, but her voice doesn’t break.
“You don’t know what they showed me down there.
What they promised would happen to my family if I said no.
You have four alphas and an ancient bond protecting you, April.
I have a mother and two little brothers who’ve never even heard the word omega used as a threat before this year.
Forgive me for not being brave enough to gamble their lives on your bond holding.”
The guards behind her shift, weapons rising in unison, the sound of drawn steel filling the small cell like a held breath.
“Selene.” My voice cracks on her name, all the anger draining out of me and leaving only something raw and betrayed in its place.
“You were my friend.”
“I still am,” she says quietly.
“That’s the part they didn’t count on.”
She raises her hand, and for one wild, hopeful second I think she’s about to call the guards off, to buy us the moment we need to run.
Instead, she reaches up and unclasps something from around her throat, a thin silver chain I never once noticed her wearing, and holds it out toward me across the space between us.
Dangling from the chain is a small crescent pendant.
Split clean down the middle.
The same mark from the note.
The same mark carved into the tunnel walls.
The same mark burned into my aunt’s wrist.
“I’m sorry,” Selene says, her voice finally breaking on the words, “that I couldn’t tell you the truth before it mattered this much.”
Behind her, the lead guard steps forward, silver Council insignia gleaming on his breastplate, and his eyes lock onto me with the flat, practiced calm of someone who has done this exact thing before.
“April Moonvale,” he says, voice ringing off the stone.
“By order of Queen Maerwen, you are to be taken into custody, along with anyone who stands in the way of that order.”
Jodan’s hand tightens around mine.
“That,” he says quietly, “is not going to happen.”
The guard’s mouth curls, not quite a smile.
“Then it’s a good thing,” he says, “that the Queen never expected it to be this simple.”
He raises two fingers.
And every torch in the cell goes out at once.