“Keep your plans and your war. There is only one thing I want to know.” Edging closer, Jules let his voice drop to a terrible, grating hiss. “I want to know where Svana is hiding.”

Corday knew that name had been planted on purpose, and could not stop his reactive growl.

Jules did not miss a beat. “Do you love Claire?”

The Beta refused to answer, but his face contorted into an image of fury.

“Do you believe Claire loves you?” Jules pressed, growing more menacing with each word.

The air in the small room seemed to thicken, grow dense with the poisonous hate. The stink was coming from Corday

“Tick tock, Enforcer Corday.” Jules gestured towards the window, pointing to where a fragment of the Citadel could be seen in the distance. “The answers are there. Claire is in there. Are you going to let them die over one woman’s greed?”

Corday shook his head because it could not be true. It was all some trick so he would betray the rebels, too convenient a name to drop. “I have never heard of a Svana.”

“But she has been in this room with you. The very woman who hurt Claire, you have been indulging for months. A lovesick fool who pines after Shepherd’s mate is the exact kind of toy she would have enjoyed the most. Twisting your mind, your memories of so sweet an Omega to reflect what she desired, is Svana’s specialty. I suspect her victory wasn’t hard. You doubt your friend. You believed the woman who saved your life betrayed you, even if it was in a small, coerced fashion.”

Throat tight, Corday’s voice faltered. “Stop.”

“Begging already? But we’ve only just begun.”

A great pain growing behind his eyes, Corday said, “You cannot imagine I would believe a word from your mouth.”

“I’ll confess that you were not under surveillance when Claire must have told you about Svana, so I don’t know the details of what the Omega shared. But, I was with her after it happened, I found Claire lying on the floor. What did you call Svana, a sex-offender?”

There was no point in continuing to pretend that name had no effect on him. Jules had noticed it, and Corday was accomplishing nothing playing dumb. He ground out the words, “Enough! Svana is Shepherd’s lover.”

“Again you are wrong.” There was no hesitation on Jules’ part to share the secret. “Svana is Shepherd’s partner... or she was until Shepherd fell in love with an Omega. Now, she is his rival for power.”

Corday swallowed the sour taste growing on his tongue, sick with the possibility that the terrible man might be telling the truth. “You make him sound weak.”