Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Icried the moment I left the others.
This was supposed to be the first night of a new beginning, a moment to celebrate. But the past caught up with me when I stood alone in the dark by the window, prizing the blinds open slightly, watching the moonlight paint the surface of the river.
Memories ravaged my mind, my heart, the horror as raw as it’d been from the first death I’d witnessed to the second and the third and the rest of them.
Tonight, I recalled the mother and her child from the early days of this nightmare. Humans. Not yet touched by Dawn. I came across them in a particularly chaotic street behind the Royal Academy. Frozen with fear, the little girl covering her ears as the zombies tore into the living around her.
I tried to help them, but the mother wouldn’t move, the child never taking her hands off her ears.
I begged them to move, fought off slowies as best I could, sobbing, terrified out of my mind.
But a zombie tore into the mother before I had the chance to stop it.
Bit out a chunk of her neck. She fell forward, crushing her daughter beneath her.
Drew the attention of more slowies. Too many.
With no other choice but to run for my life, I left them to their fate.
My stomach twinged with guilt at my failure to help.
I backed away from the window, short of breath, silent tears streaming down my face.
“I’m sorry, Mama. Papa.”
Stars, I missed them so much. They’d begged me not to go on vacation, suggesting so many other places in Faery. Better places. But I’d been iron-headed and stubborn.
My emotions had been a bit messy after a brief fling with another fae called Basil. Only, I hadn’t seen it as a fling, more like us being at an early stage of our relationship.
Well, I’d been wrong. Knew it for sure after I went to his house with flowers and candy, coming across the ten-man orgy I hadn’t been invited to.
I’d run, dropping the gifts, devastated.
“Wait, Orion!” Basil’s calls echoed in my head. “Let me explain!”
I never let him. Explain what exactly? Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw my legs in the air and let those penises skewer me.
So, I’d made up my mind to get away. Do something new. Do someone new. Have some fun and try not to be so hurt over a guy.
If he’d established the conditions of our relationship from the outset, I would’ve been fine with it.
I’d have known my place. But Basil didn’t matter now, a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things.
Nothing mattered but the present. I couldn’t change the past or save the fallen.
I prayed to the stars for their souls to be at peace.
Being alive mattered. Being thankful to these werewolves and to Trev for plucking me out of the lonely rut mattered.
I wiped my eyes, taking a deep breath. Moments of weakness were a given, and I would always let them in. The trick was to ride those chaotic peaks and valleys until I reached the other side. Let myself feel it, let myself cry, then return to the Orion of now.
The zombies hadn’t beaten me.
Neither would the sorrow of my memories.
Survival.
It was all about survival.
Tears spent, fatigue taking hold of me, I said my usual words of thanksgiving to the stars, then went to bed.
I slept the deepest I had in a long, long time.