Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
“ Y ou look like I’m about to die, but I literally don’t die forever; I just come back,” I tell Rhodes, who is staring at my face like he needs to memorise it, and at the same time, he looks like he wants to grab me and run out of the arena. I’d run with him if I thought it would be that easy. “You know I’ve thought about running away from Starlight City from the second I said the words. I thought, hey, can’t I run away like I did before and just keep hiding? I have money, places to go, and a million odd escape plans my parents taught me. I know my Nexus would be angry, but I could do it…and then I didn’t. I didn’t because the truth is, I like being here with my mates because this is the first time I felt…felt like I have a home. A home where I’m not a monster, not a burden but wanted. Actually wanted.” I blow out a long breath. Being vulnerable is more difficult than I ever knew. “And I’m going to fight for us. For my home.”
Rhodes curls his hand around my waist, tipping my chin up. “I will always be your home, Gwen. Always, but fuck I want to run with you from this. You think I like seeing you die, even knowing you will come back? I can’t see and feel you die again; it cuts me apart.” He pulls me to his side and leans down. “I thought if I found something, some kind of way to help you by studying the libraries, I might be useful, but I found nothing to tell me what will happen today.”
“I never expected you to find anything.” I sadly smile at him. I hate seeing him like this, feeling helpless. “You have to let me do this.”
“I know, but at the same time, your last choice was to reject us and run.” He kisses me softly. “Would you change it? Rejecting us and running away?”
His question takes me by surprise. “Yes. Maybe, I don’t know. I think I did the best I could at fifteen, and I was so scared of hurting you. Do you still hate me for it?”
He looks right into my eyes, but he might as well punch me straight through the heart and take it for his own. “No, and for the record, as much as it hurt me, I wouldn’t ask you to change a damn thing that leads us to this. I would want you to make every single mistake, every single death and every bad thing you think you have done, because it means we are here together.”
“Rhodes.” I sigh, touching his chest. “I am sorry I hurt you, but I have no intention of leaving any of you. The fact I’m here should tell you that I’m fighting for us. I’m about to face the Gods’ trials for a chance at a life here with you. We can be normal, well, as normal as it gets for us.”
“If it ends with me and you, that’s more than normal.” He kisses me softly and my entire body bursts to life under his touch. “Are you ready? Do you need anything?”
“Me? No, I’m totally cool and not at all nervous to walk out into that amphitheatre with everyone screaming and shouting at me and face the trial that most people have died doing. No. But I know I have to do this.” I look down at my clothes. I chose skin-tight jeans, easy to move around in, and a simple top. Casual, but I’m not wearing my ranger clothes in here despite my mates arguing it would be smart. I’m facing this as me, not as a ranger. It doesn’t matter what I wear when it’s likely magic is going to be more important. At least I’m comfortable and feel like me.
“Come here, you’re shaking.” He leads me out one of the side doors, onto a small balcony that shows off a Starlight City encased in the dark, the city sparkling, the moon hanging above us. He gets something out of his inner jacket, an old iPod. I haven’t seen those in years.
“Retro. I like it.” I’m surprised when it turns on.
“It was my mother’s,” he softly explains. “She always kept the best music on it, and I just charge it. It makes me feel better.” He gives me one of the earbuds, and he puts the other in his ear, pulling me close to him as the song starts playing. “When they died, I listened to this for days and days. Then I put it away and I couldn’t bring myself to listen to her music until the other day, when it fell out of my chest of draws. I think my mother wanted me to play it with you.” I close my eyes, listening to the entire song his mother wrote and sang, with Rhodes close to me. The songs are about love and sacrifice, about longing and fear, too. About wanting someone you can’t have and being burnt.
“What happened to your parents? I know they died, but how?” I softly question. These songs make me want to know more.
He clears his throat and looks away from me. “My father died when I was a kid, but my mother was drained by Vian in the centre of Liverpool. She took us there for a weekend away, and even with guards, even when she was strong and powerful, she was still drained like an animal and dropped on the concrete like nothing afterwards. Hollis and I found her when we came out of a cafe. She just stepped outside to find a table for us while we queued.”
My heart drops in my chest. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to see your mother die and be powerless to help her.”
I nearly jump when the door opens and Beta Francis steps out. I don’t know him very well, but he is younger than the other betas, a head full of bushy grey hair and matching eyebrows. “It’s time, Miss Autumn.” Rhodes steps forward with me as I hand him the earbud back, but Beta Francis holds up his hand. “You are to stand alone and walk with me. You must stay, Mr Asura.”
Rhodes breathes in deep. They only let him come in here to wait earlier too, and I was certain Finnegan or Aleksander might have lost it if I chose either of them to come with me. Rhodes understands I don’t need more hassle than is necessary, and he will let me go in there. I don’t think the others could. “I’ll be in the crowds with the others, okay? We’re all there. We will step in if the Gods even try to take you from us.”
“Overprotective.” I kiss his cheek.
“Trouble,” he replies, right before letting me go. Beta Francis is silent as we go through the large brick room and to the stairs that lead outside. Before I take the first step, he reaches for my arm and stops me. “I’d like to talk to you about your father sometime. Alone. Come to my apartment, it’s on Fifty-First Street, penthouse, and make sure no one sees you come in.”
“Why?” I lean back and move my arm away. “So you can kill me privately? Did your race-betraying alpha come up with this shit plan?”
“There are things you don’t know.” He whispers so quietly that I can barely hear him. “The alpha is nothing compared to what is coming. Do you still have the box from your mother?”
What is coming? Why does he sound like Severi? “Yes. How do you even know about that?”
“It’s complicated, but I’ll try to find a moment for us to be alone. I can talk to you about it all because I was tasked with giving you information on the box and other”—he stops and looks around before back to me—“things that your father told me and your mother told me about the box. Make sure it’s safe and make sure you don’t give it to anyone you can’t trust.”
He begins to walk up the stairs, and I chase after him. “Wait, how did you know my parents?”
“Once, a long time ago. Where do you think they got all the money from? Millions of pounds don’t just turn up out of nowhere.” He sighs and stops. “I’m on your side, Gwenieve. This should prove it.” He pulls out a wooden figure, and my world stops. It’s a little girl with a red cloak, holding a black tulip…and my father made this. He carved so many black tulips for me, made me silver tulip earrings, and I’d know his style anywhere. This is me, and he never carved me before. “He said this would be enough for you to trust me. I have letters they left you, but it’s risky for me to approach you. I’m watched everywhere, except for now. Find me, Gwenieve.” He waves ahead. “And good luck.”
“I’ll find a way to get to you.” I nod, slipping the figure into the pocket of my jeans and hoping it doesn’t get broken. I don’t have anywhere else to hide it. I wipe my tears away and begin the hike up the last part of the steep stairs.
My ears ring the second I step out, which looks like stepping straight into stars. Cameras flashing from their phones, almost as bright as the lights blaring down from above, and it’s distracting, blinding and the only way I know my mates are here is by feeling them through my Nexus. I move to the star with the Mortal God’s mark on it. The same mark on my arm. Apparently, that’s going to stay forever, which is great, just what I wanted, a random star tattoo. Although, I do like the rune from Onyx, and if I was going to have a tattoo of anything, it was likely going to be Harry Potter themed due to my addiction to those movies. I never quite liked stars. The feeling that they’re watching never goes away, and right now, I can feel them staring down at me like a million judging eyes.
The second I step on the star, it glows. The edges of it light up, vibrant bright green, the light spreading into the air as I watch. I spin around, admiring it as the light grows higher and higher, blocking out everything until it suddenly blasts across the sky. The air and everything are the darkest shade of blinding green light. When it goes and my eyes focus, I’m in a forest. The middle of the arena is now a massive forest with trees as tall as the sky, and moss covers the ground at my feet. It’s hot, and I regret my jeans as they stick to me. I glance around the forest floor for the star, but it’s gone.
What the hell am I meant to do? I’m almost scared to walk anywhere, but I look around for a path, finding none. So instead, I begin to walk and climb over the fallen logs, the piles of leaves, and everything else that has fallen off the trees above. There are coconuts, oddly enough, lying on the ground, and I hear the echo of bees buzzing.
Something cracks nearby and I spin around, looking through the tree line but seeing nothing. “Hello?” I don’t know why I’m shouting like the Mortal God might be lurking in the forest. He didn’t have a shift, he never shifted into anything. He was never an animal. I have no idea what I’m looking for, and the research only said they faced their fear in the first test. The other people, they had to fight the animal version of their Nexus, but no one said anything about a giant forest growing. I’m not scared of trees. Hell, my mates are all as tall as trees, and I want to regularly climb them.
The seconds tick on as I look around. Instantaneously, there are people in the forest, and they stand as still as statues. Not just one or two, dozens of them. They keep appearing before my eyes, and one by one they lift their hand, and in it, a sharp dagger glitters in the moonlight. My heart races as I look at all the people, and I don’t recognise them. I don’t know who these people are.
“Flip a coin, make a choice,” a voice echoes in my mind. “A happy face will make them cut their throats and flood this forest with blood. A sad face will save them that fate.”
A coin? I look down in my hand. There’s a single green coin. It’s metal, glittering in the moonlight. Two faces, one on each side, one smiling and one frowning. I can’t make that choice. I look around at all the people and shake my head. “I won’t do that.”
“Life or death is a power you’ve been granted. You cannot hide from it, Gwenieve.” The man’s voice echoes around. The voice is older, familiar, and I realise he sounds like my father. Almost. The Mortal God is using his voice, but he is lacking the thing that made it my father—the love he had for me. I could always hear it when he spoke to me, and this voice is nothing but a cruel trick. “Death. By my hand you will flip the coin or you will die a thousand deaths for their lives, and your soul bonded mates will join.”
No. I lift my head and look right up at the single star I can see through the tree line. “Touch them and I will drag what is left of you from the stars and destroy you.”
“Death cannot threaten me.” The voice laughs. “Make your choice.”
“Flip it,” my Nexus speaks into my mind, “and run.”
I have to trust her and trust she doesn’t want all these people dead. It has to be a test, right? I flip the coin into the air. Time slows as it flips in the air and then lands straight in my palm. The frowning face is up. I grin and fist pump the air. “They are free now, right?”
The ground shakes for an answer, and I look back, my eyes widening as I see a tidal wave of water appear out of nowhere. Fear like I’ve never felt it locks into every bit of my body, into my very blood, until I can taste it like ash in my mouth. The tidal wave is filled with bugs and snakes, everything that I fear. It’s as tall as the trees. “RUN, GWEN!” I hear Aleksander’s scream for me, even as far away as he is. No, I heard it in my mind. I run, just like my Nexus somehow knew I’d have to. “Shift into the wolf, please,” I ask her, seeing the forest floor and knowing I’m going to trip on something. “Just don’t kill them. Don’t send the grey magic far.” We shift and the grey magic seeps into the ground, but it stays close. She can control it?
We run as fast as we can, straight through the forest, jumping over log after log, and soon I realise the people around us are washed up in the wave. They will be okay. He said they wouldn’t suffer the cut throat fate…I can’t look at them. I can’t listen to their screams of fear and them begging the Gods to save them.
I don’t know where I’m going until I see the end of the forest. The water just touches the back of my tail as I crash straight over the edge and shift back, looking up from a crouch as the water stops at the edge of the forest and disappears like it wasn’t here. The forest disappears too, but as I stand, I realise what’s wrong. An echo of bodies hitting the floor, dozens of them, hundreds of them—soaking wet, dead, drowned bodies—fills the silence.
My eyes widen and I feel a burn, knowing I’ve been marked for the next trial, but I can’t stop looking in horror at the bodies piling up.
“It’s my son!” a scream echoes out from the crowd.
Followed by another shout and another. “And my daughter, my dad.”
I stand up as I realise these people have been taken from the crowd, and they’re all dead. It’s my fault. The Mortal God tricked me…and I didn’t see it coming. Screams echo around as I take a step back as people start sliding down the barricades and run for their family. I look for my mates, who are already down the barricade, running my way. I need them. Aleksander gets to me first, picking me up and holding me to his chest. “Don’t look.”
It doesn’t matter if I look. The wailing of people finding their dead family is going to haunt me forever. “How could the Mortal God do this?”
“Because the Gods are cruel,” Aleksander whispers back. “Walk between Rhodes and me. We will get you out. Finnegan and Hollis are going to stay and help.” I can barely nod, unable to look at anything but the puddles on the floor as they lead me through the grieving people, the dead bodies, and to the staircase. The second that we’re down at the bottom, I turn around and throw up. I keep being sick until there is nothing left. Alek holds my hair back, and Rhodes has a glass of water waiting for me when I collapse back on the bottom step. “That wasn’t your fault.”
I drink the water as Rhodes kneels in front of me. “Aleksander is right. You survived and we are proud of you. We couldn’t see everything. What happened in the forest?”
As I calm down, I explain the coin, what the Mortal God said to me, and everything that happened. “I didn’t expect… I don’t know what I expected, but that really wasn’t it.”
“Breathe. You’re alive and with us.” Rhodes touches my cheek.
“Okay,” I whisper. “All of those people are dead.”
He doesn’t know what to say. I barely know what to think about it all, but he is right. I’m alive and it’s over. “We need to get outside and get some fresh air.” Rhodes offers me his hand. “I’ll drive you back. We’ll grab Nibbles and go for a walk on the beach.”
Aleksander touches my arm where the new mark is, frowning. “I’m sorry I’ve been distant. Can we talk soon?”
“I’d like that.” I nod. “Thanks for turning me away up there and coming for me.”
He kisses the side of my head before going back up the stairs, and I watch him go. He pauses and looks to Rhodes. He speaks into Rhodes’s mind, but I hear it. “Tell her about the event.”
Rhodes holds my hand as we leave together and finds his car parked up around the back of the building after a short walk. He throws a blanket over my legs before starting the car and driving us to the shelter, with songs playing on the radio and a quietness. “The water, the bugs…that was because I’m scared of both of those things. I’m also scared of people hating me because my Nexus killed their family. Basically, all three of my fears just came to life, and he threatened to bring you in there. That’s my worst fear—that I will cause your deaths and I won’t be able to die to join you.”
He looks at me, his eyes widening slightly, and I know it’s because I don’t open up much. “I’m sorry you had to face that alone. My greatest fear is you looking at me and hating me. I don’t fear death because I’d never let it truly take you from me.”
I can’t face him as I say it, so I focus on the fields outside the city as we pass them. “When I was captured by the Vian, one of the people who worked for the king has a power that he used often on me. The power could make me feel like a thousand bugs were crawling all over my skin.” I shiver even thinking about it. “I know it’s a bit irrational because the bugs weren’t real with him, but I can’t see a bug without being thrown back there to that room.”
“It’s not irrational.” His voice is firm. “Your fear is not irrational, because someone used things against you and you grew to hate them.”
We pull up at the sanctuary. He gets out, running in to get Nibbles. I take the moment to get out the statue from my pocket and stare at it. What would my father think after today? He never called me a monster; he never was scared of me. I wish I could ask him what to do next…but I can’t. Nibbles soars into the car the second Rhodes opens the door, and she proudly sits in the middle after licking my cheek and making me laugh. Rhodes looks at the statue. “Where did you get that?”
“It was my father’s…good luck charm, I guess.” I don’t tell him about Beta Francis yet because he said to come alone, and I’m not sure my protective mates will agree with that. I need to think about it more. Rhodes hums and helps me tie up Nibbles to the seat with her lead before driving off. He drives for twenty minutes down the coast and to a small bay. I’m not comfortable being this close to the sea at any point, but Nibbles loves to run in the sand and sit like a duck in the holes filled with seawater—and likely crabs. Rhodes takes his hoodie off the second I step out of his car and tugs it over my head. “You will get cold.”
He is right and I’m glad for the hoodie as I let Nibbles off her lead and she runs off. “I know you don’t like the beach, but I needed us to go somewhere there would be no listening ears.”
“Sounds ominous,” I mutter, but it’s Rhodes and he would never hurt me.
He links our fingers as we step onto the sand. Nibbles is already sitting in a puddle of water. “Onyx is working to get information on his father, proof that he’s working with the Vian, so we can get him off the Supreme Alpha throne. He wanted me to tell you he never gave up on you. He’s never stopped fighting. He hates his father and his father is going to pay for ever laying a finger on you. We are fighting for you too, because we’re on your side and you come first. Onyx just can’t show that publicly yet because it risks every plan we have, and his father is too dangerous.”
I’m shocked silent, and Rhodes continues. “And we need your help. We didn’t want to involve you, not when so many people are watching you. Alpha Paavo no doubt has spies throughout the academy watching your every move. But there’s an event tomorrow at his private building. It wasn’t the home Onyx grew up in, and he doesn’t have a way in. Every time he tries to visit his father there, he’s heavily watched by guards. Tomorrow night, there is a private event, a party that he’s throwing to celebrate his alpha title. Annie’s invited, and she has a plus one—she’s going to take you. Annie knows about everything too, and she’s going to help you find some evidence. Onyx will be there, but none of us are invited, and he won’t be alone for even a moment. Even if you go and make a distraction so that Annie can search around, that’d be great. I trust you to figure it out while you’re there.”
I barely know what to say or think or feel as I face Rhodes. It’s all been too much today. “You’re trusting me and working to help me? After everything, after me being a nightmare?”
“You’re not a nightmare.” He tugs me to him. “You’ve never been a nightmare. We want you free and happy, with a thousand golden retrievers, if that’s what you want. I see you, I always have done, and you’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of.” He kisses me softly, like I’m a broken thing he can repair with sweet words and soft kisses. Maybe part of me is. “My entire life goal is to make sure that you stay alive and happy at the end of all of this. Remember that, okay?”
I nod, cuddling to his chest, breathing in his scent. “Will death ever stop chasing me, Rhodes? Everywhere I go, people die.”
He rests his head on top of mine. “It’s not your fault. It never has been.”
It doesn’t make it better though, and if this never stops…will one of them be next?