15. Merle #2
“Father!” I call again, but my voice is a rasp of a whisper. The years of being one of his birds has me torn between fear, hatred, and this desperate need to please him. Robin doesn’t feel that way, she just hates him. She doesn’t fear him or what he can do.
The room has no windows, it’s dark almost all day and night with just enough light to make our Robin’s form on the table.
I can hear rats, but luckily, none have come in here.
Outside, everything is strangely quiet. I can’t hear cars or people.
I don’t know where we are, but no one is coming to rescue us.
It’s so dark, it never stops being dark.
Robin’s been lying in her own blood since Father tied her there. Our punishment for not killing the mark was to be whipped again. It should have been a simple job. Go and inject him with poison, but the boy looked too much like us, and when I’d looked at him, I couldn’t do it.
Robin and I fought over it, but I couldn’t kill him. He was covered in scars and bruises, too. He had the same look in his eyes. How could I have hurt him?
She said it would have been a kindness. I asked if she thought we would be better off dead. She’d said absolutely. The way she said it, with no hesitation, no doubt, hurt me deeply.
“You would leave me?” I’d asked.
“I just want the pain to end, Blackbird.”
I couldn’t fault her for it, but I didn’t want her to go. I’m selfish, and I wanted her to stay. But she’d stopped eating, and I got this sick feeling in my stomach, even if I didn’t understand what it all meant.
Not until now.
Not until I realised that eating was the only way she could control it. The only way she could choose.
She didn’t include me.
Robin refused to speak when Father punished us. She refused to answer his questions, refused to explain our actions. Refused to scream, refused to cry. She locked her lips and just went into her head.
Even when I begged her.
Father had become someone else in his rage. He’d turned scary. He’d lost his temper, and he hit her over and over. Until she was really badly hurt.
Until she couldn’t move, and she coughed up blood.
“Robin?” I whisper, desperate to fix what I already know I can’t change. She’s going where I can’t follow.
She turns her head towards me, just an inch. She doesn’t speak, but our eyes, our identical eyes, lock and hold.
I don’t think she can speak anymore.
“Don’t leave me,” I whisper.
But just a few hours later, she does. I stare into her gaunt face, and I cry, I beg, I scream. But I’m all alone in the dark with ghosts of my family, and nobody comes to save me.
And Robin doesn’t wake up.
Robin is gone, and I’m not allowed to say her name. Father is furious with me. He rants and raves for days, but I don’t speak. I remember it all being hazy and confused. Like I was in a fog, like I was numb but screaming on the inside.
Robin is gone, and I’m broken. In the days that followed, my mind shattered so that I could cope with the pain, so that I could survive.
Over the years, I realise I was broken into six parts that day.
Merle, Kestrel, Raven, Raptor, Jay, and Dove.
Robin and her memory just disappear from my mind.
I stop remembering her, our parents, our past, everything just disappears.
The pain gets less, and I don’t know anything but Father and my name, Merle.
I just forgot her? How could I do that? I squeeze my hand into a fist and hit my head. How could I just forget her? She was my sister! My twin!
What was her name? What was mine?
Why can’t I remember it?
King slams into me, pulling me against his chest, ignoring the way I fight him. He just hugs me as I cry, as I sob into his chest. He pulls back, grabbing my face and swiping my tears with his giant thumbs.
“What happened?”
I stare up at him as if he’s my salvation, as if he can fix this, as if he can make sense of it. I grip his shirt so hard my fingers hurt, dragging him closer to me. He scans my body and looks into my eyes again.
“Merle, my darling, I don’t know what to do,” he says helplessly.
I open my mouth, but the words, my words, my voice, it’s been stolen, and I can’t tell him about Robin. I can’t tell him how I watched her last breath rattle in her chest. About how I sat with her body for so long that everything broke into pieces.
I can’t tell him I don’t have a name. That I don’t have a birthday. That my identity and everything I am is just a creation of a monster.
He named me Blackbird. I was the one who was supposed to die, not her. Me!
King kisses my forehead, his arms wrapping around me.
“I love you. I don’t care about anything else, and you, you’re not allowed to care about anything else either. You love me, and I love you, and you cling to that, and you don’t let go, Merle. That’s all that matters. It’s all that’s important.”
I let out a high, keening sound. It startles the birds into flight, and I want to join them, flying away from here.
“Fuck, fuck!” King says, and tears, horrible, awful, huge tears, roll down his cheeks. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Tell me how to make this better?”
I stop trying to pull away, stop trying to look at the birds, and instead, I focus entirely on this alpha. My alpha. So big and strong, crying because I’m hurting, desperately trying to fix me, I reach out and wrap an arm around his neck.
Take me away. Make it stop.
Please help me.
“They remember,” Jay says through us sadly.
“Remember what?” King almost shouts.
“They remember Robin. Our twin. How she died. How we became this.”
“How do we make her forget?” King asks at once.
“We don’t. We’re strong enough now to hold the memory. She’s strong enough. Just look after her. Protect her. But let her remember. It’s time.”
In quick, precise words, Jay outlines the worst of what happened, and I feel the alpha holding me go still, his horror blending into his scent.
Jay retreats as King absorbs that emotional blow. I sob, my eyes blurring with the tears I can’t hold back. I tremble, so small, so breakable.
I’m just a useless blackbird.
“All right. Okay. I’ve got you, Merle. I’m not going to let go. It’s you, and it’s me. We’re in this together now. I’m going to take care of you. You don’t need to worry about anything.”
King murmurs again, a little curse, and lifts me up into his arms. I’m even smaller in his arms, but he holds me like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever held.
He carries us swiftly back to the camp and brings me into the tent where, one by one, the members of the pack come and join us until I’m surrounded by their bodies and scents.
Layer by layer, I am covered with blankets, with legs, with arms. Alphas stroke my skin and hair.
Touches that tell me they are there, touches that remind me I’m not alone.
King holds me close and lets out a rough purr, one that he maintains for hours.
I cry until my eyes are swollen. My body shakes, I refuse food and water and curl tighter, but they don’t leave me.
I can feel them all around me.
Blaze leans over and kisses my forehead.
“Sleep, Omega. It’s time for you to rest now.
You have grieved, and you have mourned, but you are alive, and you are loved.
We will take care of you, so sleep, and when you wake up, it won’t be quite as painful, and we will be here, right here, waiting for you. ”
I can’t resist his bark, and I don’t want to. He is kind and gentle and more than I deserve. When he lies down on my other side, I reach out and hold the arm that curls over my hip.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
They say those words every time I whimper. Every time I cry.
Over and over.
We are here.
I try to rise during the night, driven by the terror and restless grief, or the memories drag me up, but every single time my distress spikes, an alpha is there using a bark and a purr to shove it away.
They soothe my fear, my shame, my guilt, and my grief.
They tell me it’s not my fault. That I was a child, that I couldn’t have done anything. Words I have needed so badly to hear. Words that start healing the gaping wounds inside me.
I lay there, and I remember Robin and how her hand felt in mine. I remember her smile and how she hated hurting people. She was gentle and kind and so much stronger than I was.
How could I have forgotten her?
“Merle.”
I open my eyes and find Sage lying nose to nose with me.
“You are here in my arms, and you are safe. No one will hurt you. No one can hurt you here. The memories are just memories. It’s already happened. But this? My fingers on your skin, my kiss, that’s real.”
I clutch his large hand and hold it between my breasts, staring into his eyes. Forcing myself to focus on the here and now.
“Sleep, we will keep you safe.”
Soft touches, softer kisses, warm bodies. Scents that bring comfort, not fear. Everything an omega needs to feel safe. Plus a nest that belongs to me and my omega.
The cracks that shattered across my mind mend, not completely, just enough to hold us together.
It takes time, but when I wake up, I don’t feel like I’m going to break into a million pieces. I just feel sad, so deeply sad that I don’t know if I will ever be happy again.
There’s only one place I want to be. I crawl over the alphas and curl up in Pix’s arms, burying my face in his neck, pressing my lips to that spot where his scent is concentrated.
No one asks questions or tries to get me to do anything but drink, eat, and sleep.
I close my eyes. I’m not ready to face it yet.