10. Raya
RAYA
“ W hat have you done, Raya?” My mum’s voice was the first to reach me as I stepped a weary foot through my front door.
She was standing near the doorway, her sand-coated arms crossed in front of her dirtied dress, her hair unkempt as her vibrant, knowing eyes cast over me.
“What needed to be done,” I retorted as I trudged further inward, my shoulders relaxing slightly beneath the fury emanating from her. It confirmed to me that I’d done the right thing; her spirit was still intact.
She huffed. “I don’t need to be saved by my daughter, not when I am meant to be the protector.”
I tried to continue past her, eager to head to my room to use my hands, to immerse myself in colours and patterns, anything to detract from the anxiety gnawing inside me.
Footsteps behind me told me she was following me upstairs, prompting me to grip the railing tighter with every step higher. I couldn’t even seem to feel excited by the fact that I’d freed her.
“What did you give up, Raya?”
I ignored her. I didn’t want to get into this right now. I’d done what I needed to do, and now, I needed to focus on ensuring I completed the next phase of my plan. Survive. Save an Omega.
I turned towards my room, cradling the itch to draw, immerse myself in a world so unlike my own heightening. Footsteps hurried after me. I sighed.
“Raya, stop.” The edge in her voice was what gave me pause. I rubbed two fingers on my temples in an effort to calm myself down.
“Look at me, please.” No. I don’t want you to worry.
My chest inflated from my long breath in.
“Please,” she begged. My shoulders slumped at the sound of her voice. There was a reason I didn’t want to look at her face for any longer than I had to right now. I hated to see her sad in any capacity, and I especially hated to see her sad for something I had done.
I exhaled, defeated. I may as well get it over with.
I turned on my heels towards her, and I couldn’t stop the guilt that overwhelmed me at the sight of her worry deepening the few lines on her face. Her eyes flicked back and forth, searching mine, her mouth pinched tight.
I felt like I was drowning again in that same grief and guilt that had overtaken me when Jakari had stolen my father’s journals and I had to run back home and admit my mistake, to admit that I had lost the few prized possessions we had left of him.
“What did you give up?” she asked again, her face softening to something sadder, like she already knew what would spill from my lips.
I conjured every ounce of confidence I could muster before I spoke.
“I am to serve in the defence for a single season. It is a small price,” I replied, licking my lips and holding her gaze.
Her lips pulled back, revealing her sharp canines, highlighting a certain savagery I had never seen before from her. “It is not a small price at all,” she hissed. Her chest heaved with her barely-contained rage as she took me in.
“Then it is a price I was willing to pay,” I offered, her eyes darkening, reminding me of a thunderous sky. My hands shook. I stood taller than my mum by a head, my limbs thicker with muscle, supposedly much like my athletic father, but there are times when I looked at her and questioned things. Times like now, when she became so fiercely protective that it was like her presence in any room enlarged, became suffocating, almost dominating. It was that same thing I could feel shifting into the room right now, her overprotective, motherly instincts activating. She was one of the few Omegas in this city I consider to be just as mighty as any Alpha.
Her chin lifts upward, determination sliding across her face. “Then we will make a new deal or revoke the one you have.”
I marched towards her, my own fury now drawing upward to challenge hers. I could not allow her to ruin or change what I knew I could gain for this family. “We will not. I made a choice, and I will see it through.”
“You could die, Raya.” Her voice quivered and tapered off, but her steely stare held mine. I noted her arms hanging heavy at her sides, the shakiness of her hands as she clenched them. She never coped well with the absence of my dad. I knew it would destroy her to lose her child, but I knew I was strong now. I knew I could achieve what I set out to do.
I reached out to her, wrapping my coarse fingertips around her soft ones.
“I am not weak anymore, Mum. I am strong, fierce, braver than I ever was before, all because you helped me get control of my gift.” Her eyes clouded over, and her hand squeezed mine. “You believed in me then, back when everyone told me I was defective. And now, I need to know that you believe me to still be capable. That I’m every bit as strong and devastating in a fight as you told me I could be. That I know I am.”
She blinked a few times, and her brows scrunched together as she swallowed. “I don’t know what I did in this lifetime to deserve daughters like you and Riley, but I am so grateful,” she stated as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
I reached forward to brush it away with a soft smile.
“Even though you are stubborn, Raya, and reckless,” she scolded me before exhaling a breath in surrender. “I am proud of you. For fighting for your beliefs and for always trying to help this family.”
Warmth erupts in my chest, my body no longer rigid with guilt.
“Which is why I think it is time I give you something meant to be yours.” She squeezed my hand again before turning to quickly dart into her room, rummaging around in her closet.
I frowned, unsure what she was talking about, but she didn’t keep me wondering. Not even a minute later, she walked swiftly back towards me, her long skirt swishing at her ankles, a worn box held between her hands.
“Your dad told me I could only give these to you when I felt it was the right time—when you both needed them and had earned them. I don’t really know what he meant by earned them, given what they are, but still, I will always honour his wishes, so I have waited.” She held out the box towards me, her eyes glistening again as she smiled brightly. “I can’t think of any more appropriate time than now.”
I stared down at it, somewhat afraid to touch another item of my dad’s. Or ruin it. Or lose it. It seemed safer in her hands. But my mum was intuitive, seeming to sense my hesitation. She lifted it towards me, a look of pride on her face. A bigger part of me didn’t want to turn away from it or disappoint her. I wasn’t as na?ve as I once was.
Slowly, I reached out to take the old navy box from her hands, gently removing the lid.
Nestled inside the box sat two beautiful golden cuffs. What the? When I both needed and earned them. Jewellery, though?
My mum watched me as I carefully lifted one from the box to inspect it. Simple but beautiful, and surprisingly lightweight. I had always enjoyed jewellery, but I never needed it. I lifted the other cuff for inspection, same as the first.
Though grateful, I knew I would cherish these simply because they were from my dad. Still, I felt confused.
“I had to earn these and supposedly need them?” I asked as my mum simply laughed at my puzzled expression.
“I thought the same thing when I saw them,” she replied before her attention caught on the jewellery with a frown. “But, knowing your father, I believe there is more than meets the eye.”
My expression mirrored hers as I stared down at them, my lips twitching back and forth.
“Thank you,” I breathed as I stumbled forward, wrapping her in my arms with a tight squeeze that she returned.
“No, sweet girl. Thank you.” Her voice was muffled as I crushed her into my chest, but I heard it all the same, just as much as I felt the ferocity of her love for me. I was glad to have gained my fire from her.
After several minutes, we finally released each other and headed off towards our respective rooms with a final goodnight to the other.
With my mind now occupied solely on the gift from my father, my fingers no longer have that same itch to draw and colour, to escape. Instead, a deep fatigue set in as I set the cuffs to rest on my bedside table and fall down onto my bed, sleep claiming me almost instantly.
“Hello, darlin’. You’re the last stop on this trip.” A wild, wicked grin looms towards me from the dark.
Fear paralyses my limbs at the sound of his voice, my head darting left and right, desperate to find Jakari. Where is he? He promised to meet me.
The dominant before me steps closer, his face dark with a promise of pain.
“I-I-I’m not an omega,” I stammer, stepping backwards until my back hits stone.
His lips lift mockingly. “So I’ve heard,” he begins. “But I’m not here for you. I’m only here for those precious journals in your bag. We’ve been looking for them for some time now.”
Dread blooms in my gut. Not those. It’s all I have of him.
Still frozen, I manage to grit out a single word. “No.”
“No?” he questions, one eyebrow raised as he begins to move towards me. “You seem to think I was asking. No, darlin’, I’m very much taking them. Jakari has requested them, and what that Dominant wants, he gets.”
Grief and fear war in my gut, my body shaking against the hard rock behind me.
No. No. No.
I slam my head repeatedly against the rock at my back. It’s just a dream.
But the Dominant steps closer. My hands tighten on my father’s journals. It’s just a dream.
Wake up, Raya.
Wake up.
The smell of smoke wafts off him, filling my nose with its awful stench. Fear spikes in my chest. I pull forward in desperation and slam my head a final time against the stone at my back, a final attempt to wake up from this horror.
I lurched up from my bed, gasping for air as I swiped at the hair plastered to my forehead with sweat. The full moon beamed in, steady and sure, illuminating the space around me, seemingly enhancing all the shadows within my room. Including my own it seems.
I focused on quieting my breathing again and steadying my erratic heart. I hated that night, resented Jakari even more, but I couldn’t change it.
A glow to the left of my vision snagged my attention, and I shifted my head towards it. I spied the box containing the cuffs to the side of me softly glowing at the seams, and I instinctively reached out towards it, lifting the lid to look inside.
Only when you earn it.
Both cuffs lay nestled in the same position I had left them, though they were ever so softly glowing. I blinked my eyes repeatedly, widening them to clarify it wasn’t a trick of the light. But by the time I focused on them, reaching out to inspect them, the light was gone, and they lay exactly the same as when they had been gifted to me.
I tried again, lifting and turning them over in confusion.
Only when you need it.
I didn’t know what I had truly seen, whether true or a trick of the light or still feeling hazy from sleep.
But as I set the cuff back in the box, I knew that any of those options could be true. If I could portal through space and time, then glowing cuffs were hardly far-fetched.
The problem with the possibility of glowing jewellery lay in the unknown of why and what it meant, and that was just something I didn’t want to deal with amongst the other chaos of my life. So, I shoved the box closed and turned my back on it, closing my eyes to the possibility.