31. Raya
RAYA
I awoke with a fractured heart. I could have sworn I felt it cracked inside me, a physical, pulsing wound made more evident by the consistent flare of sharp pain in my chest. My entire body hurt, muscles and bones pinching in protest as I lifted myself up off the uncomfortable desert floor and looked around wildly for Bodhi, only to see nothing at all around me.
A pained sound escaped me.
My mum was gone.
So too was Bodhi.
Now, I was utterly alone, and I had no one to blame but myself.
I slumped back down onto the floor, casting my sight to the sky. Would it be easier to just wither away and die out here?
It felt like it.
Until Riley’s face flashed in my mind and reminded me there was still her. And Bodhi, though I doubt he wanted anything more to do with me. I couldn’t blame him.
Never in my life had I hated myself more than in this moment. I hadn’t been enough last night, and I desperately wished I was—not smart enough to execute a plan, not powerful enough to beat them or fight them.
I didn’t even know if I could face anybody, especially not Riley. How could I tell my sister that the reason our mum was gone was because of me?
The pain in my chest amplified.
Maybe I should let the animals of the desert eat away at me and take with it my guilt, my grief, this damn pain.
But then Riley would have lost her entire biological family in one night, and I thought about the intensity of her grief and knew I couldn’t do it. I needed to protect what little I could of her, even if it meant admitting what I did and ruining everything. Even if it meant living out the rest of my life alone.
Pain tightened my throat.
But it was those thoughts of Riley that forced me to pull myself up off the floor and rise on shaky legs.
I took a single step forward, then another.
I couldn’t even feel any inkling of my gift inside me, no matter how incessantly I urged it forward. There was no response.
Defective. Murderer.
The cuffs on my wrist were utterly useless too. The only thing they were good for was getting me into more trouble in a city that tolerated none of it.
Still, I persisted, moving not because I truly wanted to, but because I had to, not for me, but for Riley. Her and Bodhi were the only two reasons I could bear this pain.
I moved past the compound, not wanting to go inside, instead trudging past it, further and further away from the barrier that separated me from my mum and towards an empty home.
If only to hide for a day.
I had barely felt the water from the shower, though I had vaguely recognised its icy touch, the redness of my skin a testament to it as I clumsily pulled on clothes in my bedroom.
A numbness had swept in since I stepped foot in this house. It was the only way I could tolerate being here, everything clean and exactly the way she had left it.
My stomach grumbled loudly, and I pulled the door open, moving towards the staircase to trudge down a single step at a time.
I distantly registered the scrunching of paper as I lifted my head towards the sound and was caught in the snare of Bodhi’s broken expression.
I blinked at him as he held my gaze, and that guilt rose up inside me again, threatening to drag me back under.
My feet moved towards him magnetically, just as they always did when I felt like shit, my soul demanding his to soothe my ache.
“Don’t.”
I paused. Guilt and grief drove higher.
“You’re okay?” The words sounded foreign as they fell from my lips, as if I was truly no longer connected to my body.
He grunted, his eyes downcast. He looked wrecked, as if I’d stolen the lively essence right out of his being.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, not when he looked at me in the same way others had done well before I had joined the defence.
Defective. Murderer.
Not an Alpha.
Not an Omega.
An other, and a broken one at that. I deserved it.
“You’re sorry?” He enunciated the words as if tasting them, a sour expression on his face.
“We had a plan. I wa-” But he cut me off with a bitter laugh.
“Who had a plan, Raya? You and Tia?” He looked at me incredulously. “You and Tia had a plan to leave the Haven, and what? Leave me behind? Leave Riley behind?”
He got up then, fury and something more wretched and broken simmering beneath it as he stepped towards me.
“And how did your plan work out?” I knew the question itself was a trap to highlight my incompetence, to highlight my recklessness.
“How the fuck did your plan work out?” he roared as his voice broke off at the end.
I flinched, and my body shook as the words fell quietly from my lips. “It didn’t.”
But he was ready for it, ready and furious for my answer. “Exactly right. It didn’t. And now, I’ve lost the only parent I have ever known to murderous filth beyond my reach. Now, everything I’ve worked for in this stupid defence over the past years of my sentence has felt like a fucking waste. And now I feel guilt,” he smacked a palm to his chest, “that shouldn’t be mine but somehow is, alongside a pain I cannot even begin to summarise into words.”
Every vein in his throat bulged, his voice hoarse as I stood there, taking in every word as if it was a kick to the gut. Even then, I wished it was. It was hardly worse than the acuity of the pain in my heart. I deserved all of this and more. I should have pushed back on my mother and told him.
“Then there’s you, the woman I thought cared about me just as much as I did her. The woman who, for the first time since I’d met her, made me believe that the dreams I’d had were possible.”
I reached for him, the first tear falling from my eye. “They are possible, Bo. Please listen to me. We were coming back for you and Riley.”
He jerked away from me.
“Coming back for us?” He bared his teeth. “Did you ask me whether I wanted to leave the Haven, Raya? Did you ask Riley?”
I opened my mouth and closed it.
“I wouldn’t go,” he stated. “I wouldn’t go and neither would Riley. Do you not see what they do to us when they infiltrate our borders? There is a whole world of them beyond our shield! Two of our own were murdered last night!”
I forced myself to swallow the bile coming up. I hadn’t known.
“The thing is, Raya, my whole world revolves around you.” He lifted his arms up and dropped them. “My entire world. But it’s quite obvious to me now that I am just a tiny blip in your existence. Too insignificant to be truthful towards. My opinion is clearly not valued, given you are quite happy to make decisions on my behalf.”
“That’s not fair, Bodhi. I was told not to tell you to protect you!” My voice gained strength; he was wrong about that. I cared too much, and it was what drove every decision I’d ever made.
He paused when I spoke, contemplating what I’d said, which surprised me.
“We have to leave, Bo,” I reasoned. “Now more than ever, because I need to get her back. There is no life for us here. It’s a cage.”
His expression hardened again. “She is gone, Raya, as is every other Omega who has ever been taken, never to be seen again. Tia would want us to protect those who remain here, to honour her memory, and I intend to do just that.”
“And what if I leave to get her back? What if I don’t accept that she is gone forever?”
I was shocked by my own words. Could I find her? I must. I could. I would prove to them I was worthy and fix everything.
Bodhi picked his stuff up and moved out of the living room towards the front door. The quiet words that followed signified the end of whatever had been blooming between us.
“You will not get her back, Raya, and I will not follow you if you try.”
He yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind him with finality, not a single glance back towards me as my face crumpled and my legs gave out in devastation.