Page 28

Della

“We’re hunting a killer,” Vincent says as I’m about to take a bite out of the toast and jam he placed in front of me moments before.

He stands on the other side of the kitchen island while Levi sips from a mug of coffee beside him. Levi pulled on a hoodie and sweatpants after I finish letting the ointment sink into my skin for ten minutes, approximately seven minutes longer than I thought I would stay in his room.

With all these secrets and fake names, I turn to Levi, who meets my gaze over the rim of his mug. “I take it you’re not a fencing instructor?”

“No.”

“The teachers called you Mr. Tomaz.”

“Old me. Haven’t been that in years. Now it’s Levi Madden. We’re Pack Madden.”

“Oh.” I should have figured that out back in school when they all ganged up on me and tried to bully me out. Except for Xavier, who tried to seduce me.

Xavier must still be pretending to be a gardener at Haven Academy.

“Is that why you were trying to get rid of me?” I ask.

Levi nods, looking guilty. “We were trying to stay under the radar. Hard to do when?—”

“I kept trying to blow up the school?” I finish.

He nods.

“I can see how that would be distracting.”

His lip quirks in a half-smile. “Sorry about that.”

I shrug. “If I hadn’t been there, Mercy would have been alone.”

“Hold her.”

I struggle, but it’s already too late.

Hands grip my wrists and pin them to the floor. Someone grabs my ankles, keeping me immobile. I can’t even kick out.

A crack in the air and fire blooms across my back.

A scream tears from my throat.

“Della?” Levi looks concerned.

With a faint smile, I brush aside the dark memories that haunt me. “So, you were hunting a killer?” My voice trembles slightly, betraying the turmoil within me.

“Yes.” Vincent's piercing gray gaze holds me captive, and a troubling thought lingers in my mind: how much of my pain does he see?

Why do I feel like it’s more than I want anyone to see? This vulnerable side of me isn’t just new; it’s terrifying, tearing me apart from the inside out, making me feel so exposed.

Dragging my gaze from his, I turn to Levi, who says, “A killer.”

“For fuck’s sake, that’s it? That’s all you’re telling me?” Scowling, I push my plate aside, no longer hungry. “I’d get more information out of a monk who’d sworn a vow of silence.”

“I don’t think you understand the meaning of a vow of silence.” Vincent’s expression is blank.

The corners of Levi’s mouth lift in a half-smile. “It’s a?—”

“Please don’t say a long story,” I interrupt, lifting my hand, palm to him to ward off that comment. “Vincent is already…” My voice trails off as Levi wipes all trace of expression from his face. “What?”

“Nothing.” Levi sets his mug down and turns to Vincent. “A word in your office.”

“Is this about me?”

“No,” Vincent denies as they walk out of the kitchen.

I’m off my stool and across the room, pressing my ear against his closed office door the moment it shuts after them.

I miss the first bit, but I definitely catch the next.

“—real name? Are you crazy ?”

Curious.

“I—” Vincent stops suddenly.

The door swings open, and I almost face-plant again as I stumble forward.

“Sorry, I had a question, but I’ve decided to wait until you’re through with whatever it is you need to discuss,” I lie to the two staring alphas. “Please continue. I’ll wait for you in the kitchen.”

And as I walk away, I feel their stares boring into my back.

The moment I hear the soft snick of a door shutting, I turn. A second later, it starts to open again. I hurry to my stool and sit down, pretending that I wasn’t waiting for another chance to eavesdrop.

Their expressions are impossible to decipher as they walk back into the kitchen.

I’m not hungry, but I pick up my toast and take a bite, eyeing them curiously.

“We’re hunting for a man who killed someone close to us,” Vincent says.

He couldn’t have delivered a more rehearsed speech if he tried.

“Strange place for a killer to hide out,” I say, watching them both closely. Vincent is a closed book. Levi is a little easier to read. From Levi, I’m sensing alarm.

The silence stretches out for a beat too long for it to be anything less than them coming up with a lie on the spot.

“The nature of the crime makes it the ideal place to hide where no one would think to look for them,” Levi eventually says.

I sit back in my seat and chew my toast as I think through everything they’ve told me, which isn’t much.

The nature of the crime…

Hmmm …

I have jam all over my fingers. As I suck them clean, I tell myself the alphas staring at me are disgusted by my behavior because that sure as hell isn’t heat in their gazes.

Alphas only want omegas.

I stroke my chin as I think.

“What are you doing?” Levi asks.

“Channeling a detective as I work out this mystery.”

“Name one detective who stroked their chin like that,” Vincent says.

I glare at him. “Stop distracting me.”

I return to stroking my chin as Levi flashes me a grin.

They’re hunting a killer. A killer who has chosen an omega-only school to hide out. No one would think to look for that killer there. Unless…

“What was the designation of the victim?” I ask.

Their silence tells me everything I need to know.

“ Omega .” Even as I say it, my mind is whirling.

Why would two—scratch that, three alphas—be at Haven Academy, hunting out a killer?

“ Your omega,” I say slowly. “Someone killed your omega, and they’re hiding out at the one place no one would think to look for an omega killer: a school for them, and you went in undercover, pretending to be teachers to track them down. Right? Right ?”

Vincent sighs, defeated, as he turns to Levi. “You see why I told you keeping things from her wouldn’t work? She’s bright.”

I bounce my gaze between them. “Why is it such a big deal for me to call him Vincent? He was Professor Vincent already.”

Silence.

Okay, so there’s more to this thing with names than I’m seeing.

Levi puts his coffee cup down. “Vincent told you something valuable. That information could mean his life if the wrong person found out.”

“I don’t care about his name. I just care what he can do for me.” Shit. Talk about cold-blooded. I clear my throat. “That, uh, didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. Who's on your shortlist?”

No one says a word.

I press my palms on the counter and scowl at them. “Look, this won’t work unless you tell me the stuff I need to know. Do you want my help or don’t you?”

Vincent leans against the counter and crosses his arms. I’m briefly distracted by his muscled forearms straining the white cotton of his shirt. “We’ve narrowed our suspect list to anyone over forty.”

“Why?” I shake my head. “Wait, how did you even know the killer was at the school?”

I leave the question of how their omega died alone.

I’m nosy, but some things are so personal that it’s wrong to demand answers, and this is definitely one of those situations.

“Learning about more dead omegas helped,” Vincent says flatly.

I push my toast farther away when I have another flashback of trying to breathe with my head held down in a toilet. “Were there a lot of them?”

“Twelve over the last ten years,” Levi says.

I rake a hand through my hair to hide how cold this conversation is making me. “So why didn’t you go to the cops?”

“We tried,” Vincent says. “They couldn’t find Aly’s killer. The murders afterward resembled accidents, so the cops dismissed them.”

“Each body was within a five-mile radius of the academy. All the murders except Aly’s. Guess what’s at the center of that radius?” Levi asks.

I don’t have to guess. “Haven Academy.”

“Aly…” Vincent’s voice almost immediately trails off. He looks at me, reminding me of the time we were in the kitchen when he was figuring out how much he would tell me.

“You don’t have to…” I start, but he shakes his head, and I fall silent.

“We’re from a small town. Nothing to see. Nothing to do. We’d all graduated from high school and were figuring out where we wanted to go when she went missing. Then cops found her body near the highway out of town, naked from the waist down.”

Her life had barely even started, and someone ended it.

I’ve never lost anyone before. My dad doesn’t count because I never knew him to lose him. And even when Lawrence took Everleigh, I knew she was still alive. But this? I can’t imagine how it would have felt to lose the equivalent of your soul mate so young, and so violently.

A wave of intense fury washes over me. “I’m sorry.”

Vincent shakes his head. “Nothing for you to apologize for.”

“It’s why he became Dexter Pieter,” Levi adds. “Cops were next to useless, and we didn’t have money to hire a private security company. He figured if he became the most powerful man in the city, it would open every door, and we’d easily find her killer.”

“Instead, I wind up drowning in bureaucracy when the killer is hiding in a school for omegas.” Vincent snorts.

I wince as guilt twists my gut. “You spent all that time looking for her killer, and an idiot beta derails your hunt?”

“You’re no idiot,” Vincent says softly.

He’s wrong.

Because of me, they aren’t at the school hunting for a killer. I was so focused on me that I never stopped to look around. “The killer is smart.”

Vincent cocks his head. “What makes you think that?”

“Where better for an omega killer to hide themselves than in a school for them?” They could never kill at Haven. All it would take is one murder to shine a spotlight on them. “And they have incredible self-restraint to surround themselves with omegas and not slip up once.”

Vincent smiles slightly. “Smart.”

I scrunch my nose. “The killer?”

He shakes his head. “ You . It took us months to realize how perfect a hiding place it was.”

I dip my head, hiding my pleasure until a thought strikes me. “How do you know you’re on the right track?” I ask.

“Someone tried to kill Levi,” Vincent says.

I look at Levi. “How?”

“The sauna.”

“The sauna ?” I stare at him. “Weird.”

He nods, smiling slightly. “I thought so.”

I try to figure out how, then I give up and ask him. He tells me about the towels stuffed into sweatpants in the corner of the sauna to lure him in.

“So, they know you’re onto them?” I ask.

Levi shrugs. “Not sure. Ms. Arkwright fired me right after. It could have been her or someone else.”

“Why would anyone want to kill your omega?” I pose the question that’s been repeating in my mind.

Omegas are rare. Too rare for someone to kill for no reason.

“None of us knows,” Vincent says.

“It’s rare for a pack to form so young,” I say, picking up my mug but not drinking from it. Vincent said they’d graduated from high school and were getting ready to build a life together. I’ve never heard of a pack forming in school before.

Vincent continues, “Xavier and I knew Aly was ours since we were kids. Our parents died when we were in high school, but we had each other. Then Levi came to town and we just fit.”

I nod as if I understand, but there’s a lot that I don’t think I will ever truly grasp.

I’m a beta. Some betas are part of a pack, but we will never be its heart in the way an omega is.

A beta provides a balance between a dominant, strong-willed alpha and a submissive omega, but even then, I’m not sure.

“What will you do when you find the killer?” I ask.

“Kill them.” Vincent doesn’t even hesitate.

“Good.” I sit up in my seat, determined to get justice for a girl who died way too young. “I need a notebook or a piece of paper.”

Vincent and Levi stare at me.

“There are a bunch of teachers at that school. Maybe you can keep them straight in your head, but I can’t.

I need paper, your suspect list, and time to think about everything strange I heard about them.

” I frown. “The science teacher hates kids, so he’s at the top of my list. What the hell is he doing at a school?

There must be easier ways to earn a buck. ”

“Mr. Irwin is already on the list,” Levi explains as Vincent disappears into his office and returns with a piece of paper and a pen.

I start a list.

Being a newer student doesn’t help. Being nosy does.

Fifteen minutes later, we have ten names on the list when a muffled vibration pulls Vincent’s gaze downward.

He fishes a silver cell phone from his pocket, glances at the screen, and straightens.

“What is it?” Levi asks.

Vincent returns his cell phone to his pocket. “I have to deal with something. Stay with Della.”

“What’s wrong?” Levi asks, frowning.

“A minor inconvenience.”

Levi and I watch him leave.

I cock my head, still studying the front door as the sound of a car engine starts up outside. “Why did I think he was hiding something?”

“You’re not the only one,” Levi mutters. He walks over to the TV on the wall and finds a news channel.

A reporter stands outside the downtown council building, a white stone structure with columns and a staircase leading to double doors.

“There have been whispers that a vote of no confidence is on the table, and it will decide the future of our city. Can Dexter Pieter survive this, or will his leadership end now?”

“A minor inconvenience,” I mutter. “Yeah right.”