Page 158 of Psycho Pack

Plague takes a deep breath, his fingers drumming an agitated rhythm on the pristine tablecloth. "The Council... they're not what we thought they were. What any of us thought they were."

"No surprise there," Revi says tersely.

The queen leans forward. "Explain."

"They've been... collecting omegas," Plague says, his voice tight. "Kidnapping them, really. From all over. Anywhere they can get their hands on them. Using them for whatever they like." His gaze hardens. "I'm sure you can use your imaginations."

I swallow hard.

"But why?" Revi asks, his earlier easy charm replaced by a sharp intensity that reminds me of Plague. "Omegas are treasured. Protected. The most precious thing on this planet."

A bitter laugh escapes me before I can stop it. All eyes turn to me, and I feel my face flush. But I've come too far to back down now.

"Protected," I echo, unable to keep the edge from my voice. "Is that what you call it? Locked away in gilded cages, treated like property to be bartered and sold?"

The queen's eyes widen.

I can feel the weight of their stares, a mixture of horror and pity that makes my skin crawl. I lift my chin, meeting their gazes defiantly. I won't be cowed by their shock or their sympathy.

"I was given to this pack by the Council. They pulled me from the Refinement Center," I say, my voice steadier than I feel. "A place to 'civilize' us. To turn us into perfect, obedient little dolls for alphas to play with."

Revi's face pales. "That's barbaric."

"If Azarel is our informant," Plague bites out, "why didn't he tell you what was happening?"

Revi doesn't seem to have an answer for that. When he finally speaks, his voice is far from confident like it was before. "I don't know." He pauses, glancing over at the queen.

"Perhaps because he didn'twantyou to know," Plague says pointedly.

The queen's delicate hand tightens around the stem of her glass. "Hamsa…"

"It's the truth," he says, his brusque tone gentling. "Revi may be the eldest, but Azarel has always been the most like our father. Perhaps he wants Surhiira to stay exactly the way it is. We all know how he feels about tradition."

There's no mistaking the bitterness in those words. The silence that falls across the table is so loud I become painfully aware of my own pulse whooshing in my ears.

"Do you have proof of all this?" Revi asks carefully. "It changes everything. And I do meaneverything." He lookspointedly at the rest of us, his gaze landing on Thane. "You're the leader of this pack, aren't you? What do you have to say about all this?"

Thane straightens, his dark eyes meeting Revi's gaze steadily. There's a tension in his shoulders I've rarely seen, like he's bracing for impact.

"What I have to say," Thane begins, his deep voice carrying easily through the opulent dining hall, "is that my father—Wraith's father, too—is at the head of it all." He pauses, jaw clenching. "We have a contact, and before we were…distracted," he says, pausing to give a pointed glance at Valek, "we were about to finally get the proof we need that the Council is compromised. That it's been infiltrated by omega traffickers."

For once, Valek looks sincerely guilty—an emotion I didn't even think he was capable of. I'm learning new things about all my alphas.

Silence falls over the dining hall like a heavy blanket. The queen's face goes pale, her fingers tightening on her napkin until her knuckles turn white. Revi's easy charm has been replaced by a tightness around his eyes that looks a hell of a lot like Plague's expression when he's stressed out and doesn't know what to say.

Finally, Whiskey breaks the tension, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife. "What? What the fuck is going on?"

I wince at his bluntness, but someone had to say it.

Might as well be Whiskey.

Again.

He's carrying this whole dinner on his broad shoulders.

Revi clears his throat, his eyes flicking to his mother before he speaks. "Well... we may have lost touch with Azarel," he says, his voice strained. "But we still have other infiltrators in the region. The Council has issued a kill-on-sight bounty for the Ghosts. For all of you."

I feel the blood drain from my face.