21. Raya
RAYA
M y heart thundered loudly, my nerves like a wrecking ball inside me as I crouched low on the western point of the expanse, my eyes locked onto the soon-to-be entry point in our shield.
Hayden and I were partnered tonight, with a change in strategy to continue the defence’s goal of protecting and blocking another Omega abduction for the night through the element of surprise. His serpentine tongue flicked in and out nervously, impatient for the thinning to begin as I fought and failed to settle my own nerves.
Tonight, Bohdi had positioned us further back from the barrier, wanting to avoid the shit show of last week, when everyone in the team was wiped out by the infiltrating male fittingly named Silver. Even his name rolled off the tongue as fluidly as he moved.
I was eager to find out what he truly was: Shifter or Gifted.
Beside me, Hayden shifted fully into his serpentine form, his head swaying to and fro, causing a nervous shudder to run up my spine in response.
I had to remind myself over and over that it was okay. He wouldn’t strike. Though the adjustment to shifted forms was slow for me, so I avoided looking over at him when I felt him bunker down in the sand, covering himself with it.
On the other side of the field, I watched in the distance as Apple mimicked his movements. Good . The first team was in position.
I spied the spot where Klarissa and Bohdi were paired tonight at the furthest point in the field as the last port of call. Her idea, apparently. I almost scoffed aloud when she’d shared the plan, given that I had been the only defence member left standing last week and the only member in our history to have ever saved an Omega.
Instead, I swallowed it down and agreed with the others that it was the best thing to do. Still, there was that same annoying, niggling sensation inside of me that felt a lot like jealousy. I swallowed that feeling down too.
The familiar vibration in the ground pulled me out of my rambling thoughts, my gaze drawn towards and locked onto the shield. Sand jostled around me, and I hunkered lower to steady myself, awaiting their first move.
Apple and Hayden were the first Alphas assigned to the initial confrontation, a tag team to keep some of them busy, hoping to draw Silver out.
I held my breath in anticipation, my heartbeat increasing alongside my rapid, short breaths. My body buzzed, the shifting sand beneath me growing uncomfortable, forcing me to plunge my fingers into it to regain my balance as the entirety of our team waited for the terror that was to come.
It was then I saw it.
A single leg, clad in black, pushing through the veil slowly, carefully, followed by the rest of the first trespasser.
Silver.
Who was followed by the bigger Dominant I now knew to be Raid, as casual and unhurried as always, followed by a third member—one I couldn’t make out from this distance, someone unrecognisable, with their back arrogantly turned to the desert.
Time ticked over, and no one followed. I frowned and wet my lips, focused.
Only three?
We didn’t move, not even when they took a few easy steps forward to stand side by side.
I waited with bated breath, my fingers clawing impatiently deeper into the sand.
None of them moved.
I stepped in a crouch to the side, peering behind their forms towards the opening, waiting for others to join them. The brunette female. The Hawk. Anyone else at all.
But there was…no one.
It was then that I concentrated back on their trio, the third figure now facing ahead sparking a sense of familiarity: tan skin, sandy brown hair, and hard eyes that surveyed the expanse.
My skin prickled in awareness. No. It couldn’t be him. I hadn’t actually believed he would dare come back.
I faltered for a brief moment. I couldn’t entirely see the colour of those eyes, but I would know him anywhere if I saw them.
My heart rate kicked up with a jolt, my eyes narrowing in on my target. Omni may have gifted me a single chance to get my revenge whilst achieving my goal.
I doubt he would have expected me to ever join the defence, to become a warrior the way I did. No longer was I the weak, timid girl that he had so carelessly tossed aside.
I would destroy him for all his sins, past and current—not only for me, but for the city of the Haven and the Omegas who are long lost.
My attention barely registered the shifting sand in my periphery, noting that Hayden was moving ahead as planned, effortlessly sliding across the sand towards them. Apple was working from the other end to meet at the feet of the intruders.
But I was so transfixed on the familiar male, stabbing into his deceitful skin from afar.
Jakari.
This was simply an opportunity I couldn’t miss. In taking it, I would help. I would show Bohdi my talent wasn’t wasted. I would show Klarissa I was strong, and I would prove to that smug, deceitful Dominant I was not the scared little Gifted he once knew.
But mostly, I would avenge myself and the Haven and every family in this city whose lives he had destroyed through abduction.
I blurred forward, my sight set on my target, materializing right at his side, to his shock. It only took a fraction of a second for me to confirm it was him as those mossy green eyes landed on me. I gripped his shoulder as hard as I could and yanked him back, portaling us directly to the place where it all began, right on the crevice of our favourite cliff.
I dumped him straight down and portaled backwards, watching him try to orient himself, swaying and staring at the ground.
“Nice to see you again, Jakari.” It was both truth and a lie in this bittersweet meeting. My heart remembered our time together, but my brain reminded me what it had become. I trailed down his body in disgust.
He appeared bulkier than before, his muscles having filled out his shape. Where he was once a bit more gangly and awkward, now, his presence commanded.
Too bad his beauty didn’t reach below the surface.
He tilted his head to look up at me, and his mouth quirked up in a slow, dark gleam. Those same bright green eyes sparkled as he slowly took me in, pausing briefly on the cuffs now adorning my wrist with a curious tilt of his head. He held out his arm earnestly, as if I had no reason in the world not to grip it in an Asrarian greeting. I didn’t want to engage in anything he’d once shown me.
“I’ve waited a long time for this moment, Raya.” My stomach flipped uncomfortably at the sound of his deep voice.
I lifted my daggers in a warning as I scanned him again, carefully this time to spot any weapons he carried. Like Raid, I found nothing.
“So have I,” I responded truthfully, though my voice shook slightly. My anger was palpable, and judging by the quirk of his brow, he knew I was withholding what I truly wanted to say to him. My grip on my daggers tightened and released, again and again, the longer the silence between us stretched.
He pivoted to walk confidently back and forth along the small cliff edge, my eyes tracking his every movement. The Dominant seemed oblivious to the fact that I could literally portal right next to him and slit his throat. There was once a time I believe he wasn’t so arrogant.
“I came back for you, Raya,” he said matter-of-factly as he continued to pace along the cliff edge. My brows lifted in bewilderment; my muscles continued to tighten.
“So I can kill you this time?” I asked, entirely serious, though he laughed in reply. I held my position, my daggers raised, a tingling awareness cascading down my back as my heart seized momentarily.
“I came here to save you. I’d much rather you didn’t kill me either, not when we have a whole wonderful life to return to in Asrar,” he replied nonchalantly despite the evident tension in the air between us.
“Save me?” I asked incredulously, laughter creeping into my tone. “I don’t need anybody to save me from anything, and I definitely do not want to be living in Asrar with you.” The last few words dripped out of my mouth in disgust. My expression was pinched now, rage quickly replacing the few nerves that remained from earlier.
He paused and turned to me. “Are you a stupid Gifted, Raya?” The question was more of an insult, rhetorical and annoying.
I materialised in front of him, the tip of my dagger pressing into his throat. I looked up at him, fury blazing through me. “Are you a stupid Dominant, Jakari?”
He didn’t move a muscle, staring down at me with a slight curve to his lips, his sight landing on the golden cuffs hanging from my wrist. His eyes flashed.
“Such a beautiful yet dangerous woman with seemingly no understanding of the sheer power she wields.” His voice took on a low murmur as it rippled over my skin, raising goosebumps in its wake.
“I know exactly what kind of power I wield,” I hissed. “Such a shame you are so easily dominated by it.”
His lips lifted ever so slowly as he dipped closer towards my face. God, the smell of him was still so rich and wonderful. I forced myself to breathe through my mouth. His scent was like a lure, guaranteeing death, and I had no interest in being hooked by it.
His warm breath spooled across my face, but I dared not move. “You have one week, Raya. One week to say goodbye to all you love here. One week to pack your things and meet me in this same spot where our story began so I can take you beyond the borders of this city. I think that is a very generous offer.”
His eyes scanned the space quickly, as if alerted to a sound or as an attempt to distract me. I held still and pressed the dagger a fraction deeper until a thin bubble of blood bloomed from beneath its point.
Eyes on me asshole.
He laughed cruelly and leant in closer, blood trickling faster down his neck until I eased back to accommodate him. His voice was a low whisper, mocking me. “See, Raya? You could never do it. You are no threat to me.”
My hands shook with my fury. He emulated power in his fitted tactical suit, his shoulders drawn back and his hands clasped loosely behind his back. Clearly, he was one of their leads, one who supported the imprisonment, rape, torture, and subjugation of Omegas. His entitlement was evident in his over-confident stance, the slightly amused lift of his lips, like everything was his to take if it was something he wanted.
I would not allow myself to become another prisoner of his world. Every piece of anger I had ever held, every shard of grief, every night watching my mother spill tears detonated like a bomb inside me. It decimated every doubt I’d ever had about what this moment would look like.
But it was his words, you could never do it, you are no threat to me that drove me towards my next action. I could do everything on my own. I wasn’t who he remembered.
I swung my arm back in an arc as he turned to walk away, driving my weapon down, piercing my blade straight through his back. He turned around as a roar sounded down in the field, his eyes wide. I smiled darkly. Finally, he saw me. All of me.
I had already unsheathed two extra blades, lunging forward and swinging as he blocked both my arms, his breathing now audible. The first blade had likely pierced a lung, exactly where I’d targeted. His death would not be swift.
But he was strong as his fingers circled my wrist tighter, a cry of pain escaping me. I used his grip to push more force in my kick straight to his stomach which he failed to block, his wheezing now amplifying.
But despite the wound I had inflicted, he didn’t let go. Our positions were uncomfortably locked too close together, much too close to my liking. It was at that moment I decided on something drastic. I needed to be rid of him once and for all. So too did the Haven, eager to protect and avenge every Omega who had ever been threatened and every one of them now long gone.
“Goodbye Jakari,” I whispered, and his eyes briefly captured mine.
This would be the end of this story.
I portaled us high into the air off the cliff face, ensuring my body landed on top of his briefly, his back to the ground as we fell. The last thing he would see before he died would be me, the Gifted he betrayed. The female he mistook for weak.
I drove two extra blades straight through his chest, his eyes now open with shock. His breathing was haggard and raw, and I could vaguely hear the yells from the others echoing across the field. I shoved him downward as he flailed and clawed at me, leaping upward from his body with a dark ferocity I hadn’t known I possessed.
I portaled away quickly, mere feet from the ground, knowing his fate was certain, back to the spot high up in the cliffs where I had the best view of the expanse, ready to find that other asshole, Silver.
But the moment I materialised, every muscle in my body spasmed as electrical currents ran through my body, stemming from the tracker in my neck. Wave after wave pulsed through my rigid body, rendering me unable to respond, unable to fight as manic laughter sounded behind me.
Victim to the agonising currents, I watched on below as Alphas from the Haven were subject to this horror, their bodies writhing in pain. The Dominants faltered briefly in confusion before seizing the opportunity, smashing my teammates to the ground with brutality before breaching our city and disappearing from view. I hadn’t noticed more had funnelled through our shield.
I screamed as my knees gave out in a moment of relief, involuntary tears streaming from my eyes as two unrecognisable Dominants carried the limp body of Jakari back through the veil to the other side. I hoped that, at the very least, he was dead.
Every Alpha from the Haven lay unconscious on the field, my body still tingling and barely responsive to the onslaught of moments ago. I heaved in lungfuls of air, falling to lean against a rock, now weak and depleted, to face the likely culprit behind me.
With shaky, unsteady hands, I unsheathed the last blade from my suit, turning my head to the darkness behind me, waiting for the offender to emerge.
I had barely any energy left in me, but I would fight, right up until the very end, even if my blade lay lazily on my leg, my hand barely able to hold it upright.
A rock kicked towards me from the darkness as slow, agonising seconds passed with no further movement. Adrenaline coursed through my system, desperate to give whatever energy it could to prepare myself for what was imminent.
Finally, a figure emerged.
“Well, that went better than expected.” I tensed, unbelieving of who stood before me, of who was out on the night of the thinning.
My expression mirrored Jakari’s mere moments before as I took in the Benefactor standing with a control in his hand, proudly assessing the field below with a triumphant smile.
My brows pulled together in a frown, confusion lacing my system.
I didn’t know what was happening, not the why or the how.
The only thing certain right now was that I was going to fail. Omegas were going to be taken because of this. I was going to lose the small protection my family had received because I couldn’t maintain what I’d said I would. Worry tightened my chest alongside the confusion that bubbled beneath it. No Benefactor had ever been outside of the Inner Ring, let alone to the expanse on a normal day, and never on a night as dangerous as tonight.
But still, there he stood, with a satisfied smile on his face as, slowly, he lowered his gaze to mine to take me in with a tip of his head. “I believe I deserve a reward for risking my life to come out on a night like tonight, don’t you think?”
My insides burned. I could barely think.
He surged forward with no care for what was happening below, no care for Omegas lost. My grip tightened on the blade I managed to lift towards him.
Unfazed, he pressed a button on the remote, and my body locked up again, smaller currents rippling through my limbs as he kneeled before me, trailing his clammy hands up my thighs. Every muscle strained, and I screamed inside my head. Move. Move. Move.
“This is a new technology Ace. It’s working well. It’s like an electric shock to the body, one only you can feel, and even when I touch you, I cannot.” He laughed in awe, his hands sliding higher.
A small, fearful whimper escaped me, my body unable to act, entirely at the mercy of the wicked Benefactor before me.
“You know, your mother has been promised to me,” he began, his hot breath blowing on the skin of my neck. “Not as my wife, of course. Not when she is a sympathiser. Still, she will serve me—in any way that I want.”
I choked, fear paralysing me. His hands wrapped around the back of my trembling body, squeezing the globes of my ass painfully. Pressure and pain were all I felt. Everywhere. Nausea bubbled inside me, and the desire to throw up heightened.
“But I need to make sure she will be good enough for the job. I have certain… needs that must be met, and they do say that a daughter is much like her mother. So, who better to show me than the Ace of the Haven? We have wondered whether your cunt is Gifted like you.”
Filthy lips sucked on my neck as my breaths came out in a terrified pant. I could feel the veins in my neck protruding from the torture lancing my body. I was going to die like this.
He pressed the button again, and it stopped, blissfully, even if momentarily, though my muscles continued to spasm.
My power flickered in and out with my panic, unable to grip it to move, even though I tried again and again.
“The Haven is advancing now. Not even Gifted like yourself or your father will ever be a threat again. You will all learn to serve. So be a good girl, Ace, and show me how well you will serve,” he murmured, his rough hands jerking me right up against his crotch.
My father was alive?
Defiance and determination exploded inside of me alongside a cool, unfamiliar thrum of energy that settled neatly alongside my gift.
Something like metal, cool and solid, slid into my grip as I dragged my hands up with a scream of fury and pushed them forward with every scrap of energy I had left inside me, straight into his chest.
He grunted low, his body jerking reactively on top of me, his face pulling back into a snarl as he looked down at his chest.
I stared down at my hands gripping tightly to two shiny golden daggers now embedded in his chest. White-hot panic instantly wove through me as the gold became soft, moving like water back across my palms and up to my wrists, reforming into the shape of those same cuffs my mother had given me from my father. What? How?
The Benefactor heaved in a terrible breath, muffling words that were completely inaudible, choking on them instead. Blood poured steadily from his wounds, my hands now slick with it, my body too fatigued to do anything to stop it.
All I could do with his weight pressed firmly on top of mine was watch as his body weakened, the light draining from his eyes until finally, he slumped on top of me unmoving. Tears streamed from my eyes, ignited by a sharp release of adrenaline from my system, leaving me too exhausted, in far too much pain to move.
But I was alive. Alive. Alive. Alive.
So many questions ran through my mind, all of them unable to be answered. Wetness began to seep around my stomach area, sticking to my skin as fear began its suffocation of me, both from what I had done and from the information I had acquired.
It was too much. This was all too much for me to deal with, as it felt like my very soul had reached its absolute tipping point, dragged there by all my previous actions, which had led me towards this very moment.
Only to be pushed off the edge.
I didn’t want anything from tonight to make sense, but the evidence was so glaringly obvious. I choked thinking about it, gulping in breaths of air. I had little options left.
The Haven was not safe. It would never be safe, and we would never be free, no matter what we gave up. My life as I once knew it was over.
I killed a Benefactor. A wicked, evil, disgusting Omega, but it would never be perceived as such.
My family would never have control of their own lives here, and Riley would never know she lived with someone who had been planning to give our mother away, to use her. Those great, gulping breaths grew louder the longer I lay there processing it all.
There was no one who could help me when everyone in the defence was unconscious.
Or dead.
My fingers trembled as I shakily pulled them out from underneath him. I couldn’t scream for fear that guards would find me like this. I would die immediately, with no hope of getting my family out.
So, I lay there, crying into the night as quietly as possible, praying to the stars above me that someone safe would find me and fix this mess I’d created.
Because if this problem wasn’t hidden, the only thing that would ever be certain was my death.