37. Raya
RAYA
M uffled voices swarmed my awareness as I fought my way to consciousness.
My eyelids were struggling to comply with my command to open and see what was going on around me, and when I’d finally forced them open, they couldn’t seem to focus on anything between the darkness and my blurry vision.
My vision swam under the strain of my effort, and I groaned as my entire body fell back onto something cushiony, heavy and lethargic. What was going on? Why couldn’t I remember anything?
“She’s fighting the toxin,” a male voice whispered to someone urgently as I took a deep gulp of the pooling, metallic-tasting spit in my mouth.
“Shit. I wasn’t certain how it would work on a Gifted with the limited numbers we have.” A female voice then. My hearing was going in and out, though I could identify that voice anywhere.
Riley.
What the hell was she doing here? We were meant to be out protecting the Haven. Where was everyone else? I squinted through the dark, trying to focus my vision to limited results. Another wave of dizziness rippled through me.
“Riley?” I moaned. “What have you done?”
I focused intently on the muscles in my arms, willing strength back into them with minimal results. I exhaled a heavy breath in frustration over my slow and sluggish movements until I managed to prop myself up on shaky arms.
I blinked, trying to clear the haze, noticing Riley’s familiar figure standing nearby.
She didn’t bother to acknowledge me, keeping her attention on the other male in the room. “Grab her and let’s go. We’re running out of time, and she’s sluggish enough to not be a problem.”
I knew that whatever she had given me had been enough to zap the strength out of my limbs. I couldn’t move much more, and it was a genuine battle to keep my eyelids from fluttering closed and descending back into sleep.
A strong hand whipped out in the dark and encircled my wrist before hoisting me up into thick arms. My head lolled as Riley hissed, “Don’t be so sloppy, Sly. Put her head on your chest.”
A calloused palm moved to the side of my face and gently tilted my head up and back to rest on a warm chest. My vision began to slowly clear, and I strained to look up at the person carrying me. Sly ?
With a frown, my head tilted back to scan my environment as he walked through the compound. Alphas were passed out in a single open bedroom, Bodhi closest to me and laying in a way that looked like they’d all taken a nap. But that couldn’t have been right. Could it?
I tried to reach a shaky hand out towards him as we passed but was quickly pulled in another direction. Too slow, Raya.
Sly didn’t bother to stop.
Hot, minty breath blew on my face. “He’s not dead, Raya. We just cannot have him interfering.”
I felt slight reassurance at that—that maybe this wasn’t so bad at all, that Bohdi would be fine. Still, it lay far beneath the crippling panic that screamed at me to clarify what he would have to interfere with in the first place.
“What’s go-going on?” I managed to get the words out despite my speech being heavily slurred, and I waited with bated breath for Sly’s response whilst we moved up the stairs towards the compound exit.
“A lot is going on, Raya, none of which I can tell you,” he whispered.
My body jostled back and forth as he climbed up the stairs from the training room. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to get any more information, that what he’d provided was likely already too much.
I tried to search within me, to call to my affinity to take me back to Bohdi, to escape, but I couldn’t even find the cord of energy within me to pull on. My body tingled in all the places I tried to flex and move, unresponsive to my internal cues to run far, far away.
Fear gushed through me as, finally, flecks of memories came rushing back. Me getting supplies. Bodhi, Riley, and I planning to leave. Arriving to an empty compound. Riley’s betrayal. We were all meant to escape; none of this was meant to happen.
She typed the code into the pin pad as we reached the top of the stairs and jerked the door open, holding it for me to be carried through. She completed the same task for the entry point.
A gust of frigid wind met us as Sly stepped out onto the freezing, bitter wasteland.
“Shit, it must have gotten colder whilst we were down there. Wrap her in this.” Riley threw one of the compound’s blankets at me. I’d never even noticed her grab it.
I felt soft material hit my skin, Sly shifting me to tuck the fluffy blanket around me in a cocoon. I shivered. My body began to warm underneath the blanket, the only body part now exposed being my face, which the air took joy in nipping.
Around us, the landscape thrummed with the desert song of insects. There were no usual sounds of fighting, of clashing of bodies and claws in the background. There was only the shifting and lifting of sand whilst my two kidnappers pressed forward.
My brain hurt from the toxic cloud of the drug they had shot me with as my mind ran through the possibilities of why this had happened.
Who was protecting the Omegas if we were out of action? Why the hell was Riley changing the plan? Why, why, why?
I went to grab at Sly’s chest, but my fingers couldn’t seem to grip onto his clothing tight enough for it to have any impact.
We jerked to a stop, and I let out a shaky breath, looking up at him. I’d beg if I must.
Blinding blue eyes stared back, sorrowful.
He leant down towards my face and whispered, “Please make this easy. For Riley.”
For Riley? Riley had drugged me. Riley was trying to get rid of me. Riley was no hero.
A knee cracked in protest as I felt myself moving down to the hard, sandy floor.
Sly looked down at me once with a pleading expression and retreated a few steps to stand alongside the betrayer.
Pins and needles pricked my legs, and my face contorted from the uncomfortable sensations. I slowly moved my hand down to rub the shifting tingles out of my legs in a weakened effort to ease my discomfort.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise?” a rough male voice interrupted the silence.
Did I know that voice? It sounded familiar, though I couldn’t immediately place it. I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off Riley, though. She had seconds to take it all back.
She could still take me back.
Neither Riley nor Sly seemed deterred by his question.
“I want to make an additional trade. I believe she is what you requested. Her in exchange for my mother.” Riley oozed confidence, her hands clasped delicately in front of her, Sly standing proudly beside her.
The cold seemed to penetrate my bones at her words. We were meant to do this together. As a family.
“Is that so?” a second voice commented, a challenge to my sister rather than a question.
Sly took a step back from Riley, his eyes fixed on me whilst I desperately searched for an inkling of my power.
“Yes. She has been sedated, as they all have, guaranteeing her compliance. I can see you have already completed your part of the deal.”
The sand shifted around me as a body moved to kneel over me. “You are lucky to be wanted after the stunt you pulled,” he murmured.
I panicked at the threat in his tone, searching quicker and faster inside me, worried that I was losing time as I found and followed a tiny ember of light within me, latching onto the thinnest thread of my power, beginning to pull.
I felt hefty resistance against my demand as I looked down at my body warping in and out, a sign my power was not fully in my grip. But I wasn’t deterred by difficulty. I pulled harder, yanking as I fought to regain composure and control, desperate to get back to Bohdi.
“Enough, Raya.”
I looked over at the gentler of my kidnappers as he cocked a gun at the back of my sister’s head. She didn’t balk.
“Stop, or I fire the gun.”
I considered him as I looked through hazy eyes. They seemed friendly, close enough to plot this entire night together, but was I willing to take a chance with her life? Even if she was a terrible person, as vicious as Zander, was I willing to be?
No.
With my lips pursed, I slowly released the tiny thread of power I had found and felt myself solidify completely.
I slumped onto my back and stared up at the night sky, taking note of the beauty and wonder the space above us held, how perfectly imperfect the stars hung, despite the weight of the words I had spoken to them over the years. I’d do anything to distract from the pain of this night.
A head popped into my line of sight, blocking my vision completely. Silver hair glinted in the moonlight, and hard, grey eyes stared down at me. This was a face I knew: the same Gifted asshole who had taken my mother. I turned my eyes away from him, not wanting him to bear witness to my failure. Grief waged a war, inside me.
A breathy laugh escaped him before he cleared his throat and leant down towards me. “I’m not interested in games. I already know you are a cruel, vicious little thing. We all do.”
He had no idea who I was.
“You need to hurry up and get going. We had a deal. Hand it over and get out before you fuck everything up.”
Who the hell was this new version of Riley, this viper of a sister? This whole time, she pretended to be this beautiful, graceful icon of the Haven, an inspiration to us all.
This entire time, she had been the silent snake in the grass. She was no prey.
I watched as she stood toe-to-toe with the Dominant’s of the other side, all lined up, listening to her without rebuttal. She proved Omegas were not weak at all. If she and Zander were anything to go by, they were as oily and as cunning as anyone I had ever met. They were all predators.
“R-ile-y,” I croaked out.
I wasn’t done with her, but my body was overwhelmed with lethargy. My eyelids opened sluggishly, and my efforts at batting them profusely to stay open lagged from the intense amount of concentration. I needed to see this all, no matter how much it hurt.
“Shut it, Raya. I do not want to hear what you have to say. You will understand one day that this is for the best. For both of us.”
A second body was placed unconscious on the ground, closer to Riley, and I squinted. Mum. I whimpered and moved to reach for her. She was meant to be near me. We were all meant to be together. She wasn’t meant to have turned her back on me.
My insides seized as grief attempted to claw its way to the surface, the pressure in my chest mounting heavier than ever. I struggled to draw in a breath.
Hands snaked around my back and gripped me tight, lifting me up and carrying me back towards the other figures standing by the entrance. Away from my family. Away from Bodhi. I noted they carried other unconscious Omegas in their grip.
Disgust was potent within me, my sister completely unrecognisable.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Rose. You will find everything you requested in the package.”
The biggest Dominant, Raid, tossed a small bag towards Riley, which lodged itself in the sand at her feet. She looked down at it and then back up towards him, her irritation clear.
The package that lay on the ground was a tiny thing, almost invisible beneath the sand trickling over the top of it. The wooden box, half the size of my palm, was worth my life, apparently.
Two tears rolled down my cheeks, and my tongue darted out to wipe them away, tasting the pain within them.
I couldn’t get my throat to work to speak, to scream. My mum would not survive this. She and Bodhi needed me.
A pained screech broke through my sorrow, and I opened my eyes in fright to see Bohdi near, a looming form diving from above. The sight of him ignited a feral need inside me, urging me to fight, to not give up. I grabbed hold of the leash of my power again and ripped it with all the force I could muster.
“No.” Silver’s voice was harsh and close as he crushed me to his chest, and I felt the thread I had grabbed pulled far out of my reach.
“What the…? How did he…?” Riley stammered over her words, showing a dent in her armour. Sly turned and trained the gun directly at Bohdi’s wild, flying form.
Three successive gunshots rang out across the field, the sound reverberating in my ears, competing with my throbbing pulse. Bohdi dodged lazily fighting the toxins in his system but unable to miss the second and third shots that had followed the first. He faltered in his flight, careening to the side, battling to flap his wings.
I held my breath, my pulse a deafening roar in my ears, panic seizing the air from my lungs. His wings beat slower until he was making no progress at all.
We all watched as his energy left him, shifting mid-flight, his body unable to maintain his form. Stark naked, there was no glory in his fall, only brutal, unrelenting pain as he plummeted towards the ground, colliding against it with a violent crack of his bones.
Nobody bothered to move.
I hammered against the binds that kept my body prisoner to the drug.
I fought with everything I had.
To move.
To get to him.
To save him.
Tears came thick and fast, my body failing to respond.
Everybody turned away from him.
I looked back towards Riley, my sister and betrayer, the one who told me she loved Bohdi—who’d told me she loved me .
There was nothing familiar about the Riley who stood there.
She was no beautiful, delicate Omega.
No. As I watched my sister, the moonlight casting severe shadows across her face and the wind whipping her long black hair around her, I realised one thing.
My sister was the most beastly of us all.