Chapter 44 – RAVEN
RAVEN
What the fuck just happened?
The guards drag Knight's unconscious body toward the door, his metal armor scraping against the pristine floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Six alphas strain against his dead weight, their muscles trembling with the effort.
He spoke.
Knight spoke.
His first word torn from a throat that shouldn't be able to form words at all, and it was our goddess's name.
Cosima.
Screamed with such desperate, broken devotion that my hands won't stop shaking.
I can still see it. Knight attacking that chrome equipment, roaring at his own reflection like it was another threat. He didn't recognize himself. Didn't understand that the destroyed face staring back through all that blood was his own.
Gods, I've never seen him without the mask before. I knew it was bad, but knowing and seeing are different things, even drenched in blood so I couldn't make out any specific features other than exposed sharp teeth and muscle and torn eyelids and shredded flesh.
Blood everywhere. So much blood.
And through it all, her name.
His first word, for her.
My throat feels tight. I've seen a lot of horrible shit in my life, but watching Knight claw himself apart, so desperate to protect Cosima yet so fucking lost—
That might haunt me for the rest of my life.
"Put him in the dungeon," Plague orders, then pauses, his expression softening slightly as he watches Knight's limp form being dragged away. "But make it secure. Twice as secure as you think necessary. And… don't hurt him."
"Put him somewhere safe. Not a fucking dungeon," Geo demands, applying pressure to his forearm with his other hand where he took the edge of an electric spear for Knight.
He and Nikolai both intervened when Knight went down.
I don't know if Geo would have if I hadn't tried, and he hadn't shoved me aside and barreled him himself.
Plague's eyes narrow. "He just killed multiple Surhiiran guards—"
"Because he thought we were torturing his mate!" I cut in, my voice raw. "He needs medical attention, not a dungeon. Did you see what he did to himself when that mask came off? He carved himself open with his own hand trying to hide from us."
Everyone stares at me.
I don't care.
"He's terrified and bleeding everywhere," I continue. "And you want to throw him in a dungeon like he's some kind of—"
"Raven." Nikolai's hand on my shoulder, grounding me.
I'm still shaking. Can't get the image out of my head—the extent of the damage, the raw exposure of what's left of Knight's face.
Plague holds up a hand. "If Knight escapes a standard cell and goes hunting for her, he could go on a killing spree before we realize he's loose. The royal guards will see a threat, not a traumatized victim."
"Then sedate him properly and get him medical care," I snap. "He's pack. He didn't understand what was happening. He saw the white coats, the equipment, Cosima sedated on that table, and he just..."
Plague nods slowly, a flicker of sympathy softening his features.
"I know. This place must have reminded him of the lab in Vrissia.
Vytoskyk. Where they..." He trails off, glancing at the destroyed chrome equipment, the blood spatters.
He collects himself. "My packmate—Wraith—was tortured in the same facility.
I was there when we freed Knight. I know exactly what they did to him, which is why the reinforced dungeon is the only option.
He's impossibly strong. I've fought him myself.
When he wakes, he won't understand where he is. Or that Cosima is safe."
Plague's voice is distant. Still cold, but there's a sadness bleeding into it that wasn't there before, his jaw tight as he watches the remaining guards haul Knight's massive body through the doorway.
More guards and medics file into the room, carefully stepping around pools of blood as they begin tending to the injured and removing bodies.
What if Knight was right to react the way he did?
What if he could sense something we couldn't?
He found her across so many years and even more miles. Their bond exists on a level I don't fully understand.
What if he knew—
"You're making a mistake!"
Azarel's snarl cuts through the room as he comes out of the haze of sedation just enough to start fighting again.
He's restrained, three guards holding him while a fourth approaches with yet another sedative, but the prince fights like a cornered wolf, kicking out with a boot and sending a guard crashing into the sparking, smoking machines.
Blood streams from his split lip where Geo's fist connected at some point during the fight, and there's pure murder in those pale blue eyes.
"If you hurt her," Azarel grits out, his eyes locked on his brother as he strains against the guards' grip with enough force that one of them staggers.
"I will have vengeance in kind. Starting with your omega.
And then your other mate. I will burn this palace and every last inch of this land to ash if anything happens to her. "
The room feels even colder all of a sudden.
Plague's expression doesn't change, but deadly ice flickers behind his gaze. A frigid edge that makes the family resemblance even more clear. He turns to the guards with the kind of calm that precedes violence.
"Do the same with my brother," he says in a cold tone that could freeze hell over. "The dungeon. And don't be gentle with him."
But something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong if Azarel and Knight are on the same page.
"Wait—" I start forward, but Geo's huge hand clamps on my shoulder, holding me back.
"This is between them," he mutters.
Azarel fights. Gods, does he fight. He breaks one of the chains binding him around the chest and his elbow connects with one guard's jaw, sending the beta sprawling. Another lunges for his legs and gets kicked across the room for his trouble. For a moment, I think he might actually break free.
Then the fourth guard jabs the needle into his neck.
He doesn't drop right away. His struggles slow, his movements turning sluggish as the drug floods his system. But his eyes remain locked on us—on me, Geo, Nikolai—burning with fury and desperate certainty.
"You'll have her blood on your hands," he rasps, the words slurring as unconsciousness drags him under. "All of you. And I'll come for you. I swear it on the goddess. I swear I'll—"
His eyes roll back. The guards catch him before he hits the floor.
The silence that follows is suffocating.
I can't breathe properly. Can't think past the echo of Azarel's words, the image of Knight's terror-filled eyes and the sound of him roaring—no, screaming—Cosima's name, the conviction in both of them that felt less like threats and more like prophecy.
What if they're right?
What if we just fucking signed Cosima's death warrant?
"Raven." Nikolai's voice, rough and uncertain in a way I've never heard before.
I turn to find him and Geo both staring at the table where Cosima lies unconscious, her chest rising and falling in a slow, drugged rhythm. She looks peaceful. Fragile. Utterly vulnerable.
It's just a scan.
Necessary, non-invasive, harmless.
Unlike the chip in her brain that Maybrecht could apparently use as a detonator at any moment.
But is it really?
"Your Highness," the beta woman in the gray coat asks, looking to Plague.
She's standing by the machine's control panel, her expression professional and neutral above her veil, like Dr. Rami's.
They both seem vaguely shaken at the most, despite half the room being destroyed and puddles of sticky blood still covering the parts of the floor that are still being cleaned.
Plague glances at them. "Yes?"
"How should we proceed?" the beta asks.
Plague hesitates, glancing at the doorway where both Azarel and Knight were dragged away. "There's absolutely no reason a mere scan would affect anything."
"Your brother seems to disagree," I grit out. Doing nothing isn't an option either, but now, I'm not even sure this is the right path forward. "And Knight."
"Azarel is paranoid." Plague's words come out sharp. Defensive. "He is no longer the same man he was when he left Surhiira. His time in Reinmich has clearly had an effect on his psyche."
He pauses, his gaze sliding to the doorway.
"As for Knight," he continues in a softer tone.
"The trauma he endured, the experimentation…
after everything he's been through, there's no surprise he reacted the way he did to seeing his omega sedated.
Allowing him in here was a mistake. The same would have happened if it had been Wraith and Ivy in their places. "
The logic is sound. Rational. It mirrors my own thoughts closely enough it should be all the confirmation I need to feel like we're doing the right thing for Cosima.
But my gut screams otherwise.
"We should wait," I hear myself say. "Do it later. When—"
"When?" Geo cuts me off, his voice rough. "Any second now, Maybrecht could find out Azarel's gone AWOL. We can't just sit by and wait for him to press the kill switch. And the little lady made it perfectly clear. She chose this, even knowing something's up."
He's right. I know he's right.
But that doesn't make the fear churning in my stomach any less visceral.
I look at Nikolai, hoping he'll back me up. He's staring at Cosima with an expression I know well. Love tangling with logic. The peril of inaction warring with the risk of choice.
"Plague." Nikolai's voice is careful. Too careful. "Give us a minute."
"I've dragged half the fucking medical experts in the nation here. I need a decision," Plague says, and there's steel beneath the silk now. "Now."
"Then you can't fucking have it," Nikolai says through his teeth, staring him down. The guards in the room shift, their hands resting on their sidearms, ready to back their prince up if this turns any uglier than it already has.
I step up to his side. Geo flanks him on the other, all three of us creating a barrier between the prince and our omega.