Page 144 of Eclipse Sector

There are land mines afoot, Stars. Land mines that will alert our enemy that we’re coming.

Be careful. Tread softly.

And remember…

Don’t. Make. A. Sound.

I hope… I hope that’s enough. I can’t provide any more. We’re at a crossroads, Stars. I… I see two ways this could end.

Maybe you’ll find a third route.

Goodbye for now,

Ashlyn

PS: Congratulations on the little one. I send my blessing from the grave.

PPS: Our pasts make us stronger, not weaker. Remember that. Remember where you came from. And understand once and for all—you are not him. But sometimes you have to think like him to find the truth. To find… me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CILLIAN

It tookphysical restraint to remain quiet and let Cael talk. His abrupt arrival had set off every alarm in my head.

Power.

Obscenepower.

On par with Kieran. Me. And Lorcan.

A clear rival.

A potential threat.

But as he continued to speak, my sense of alarm shifted away from Cael’s unexpected presence and toward the situation he spoke about now.

“That operation you and the X-Clan wolves took down in Bariloche Sector was just one of many,” he was saying, shocking the hell out of me.

He’d just casually mentioned our involvement in the destruction of Bariloche Sector as though it were common knowledge, when in reality, we hadn’t breathed a word of that outside of our very small circle.

We’d only been there for Quinnlynn, something Kieran, Lorcan, and I had definitely not told anyone else about.

“It was also taken down prematurely,” Cael went on. “We had an in, someone working his way through the system, but then you all stormed in and burned the sector to the ground.”

Grey grunted, his arms folded across his broad chest. He’d remained mostly silent since his abrupt arrival. However, his mind had whirred with strands of information. Internal comments regarding theOmega slave tradethat he and Cael had apparently been researching for years.

“Working the system, meaning what exactly?” Kieran asked, his mind lethally quiet as he focused entirely on Grey and Cael.

“The Omega auction network,” Cael clarified, his terminology differing slightly from Grey’s internal monologue referring to it as a slave trade.

“What Omega auctions?” Kieran demanded. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Because it’s run by a secretive collective of Alphas. We’ve been trying to infiltrate their network for years.” Cael heaved a sigh and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “We were trying to entice Tadhg into reaching out to our contact in Bariloche Sector so we could expose him.”

“To prove he’s one of the collective’s members,” Grey added in a rumble, his mind telling me it went far deeper than just establishing proof of Tadhg’s involvement in the Omega auctions.

There was some other piece of this puzzle. Something he was trying to prove Tadhg had done. But before I could discern that piece, he shut me out, his glacial gaze cutting to me.