38. Merle
Merle
Five years ago
Merle
The wound has healed, not fully, but it’s not bleeding anymore.
I’m so hot, though, my skin sizzling. My lips are cracked, and I don’t remember the last time I drank anything.
There’s a tiny little spread of light. It’s not much, and it takes forever for me to become aware of it, but once I do, I can’t stop looking.
I know that we should die, but I want to live, and I want to be away from him.
I pull myself to my feet and stumble, crawl towards it. It takes me a couple of goes, but I manage to climb the boxes, tearing open wounds on my knees and hands, but I ignore them. What’s a little bit more pain now?
Then I’m pressed against a pane of glass. Cold, slippery, smells of dust, and the acrid stench of my dehydrated urine that pervades the room.
Glass means I can break it, my sluggish mind supplies. I snap my hand out and bang on it, but nothing happens. And then I see the latch. I shift it, and to my surprise, the window almost falls open.
I blink, trying to make sense of it. Can it really be that easy?
It takes me a long time to crawl up into that small hole and even longer to get to the point where I’m tilted, hanging on the side, and then all of a sudden, I’m falling.
I lay there in the outside, staring up at the grey sky.
Nothing really rouses me until it starts to rain.
I lick the water from my parched lips, and it brings me to life.
I drink from scraps and puddles, and then I stumble away.
Dove
The smells of food draw me to a crowd, and a random person hands me a hot roll.
I devour it, then feel sick because it hurts my stomach, but I force myself to keep it down.
When I look up, there’s a person staring at me, but kindly, and they hold out another one.
Wariness wars with hunger, but hunger wins. I take it.
“I think you’ve been through it.” The male beta starts talking, speaking fast and with this happiness that is strange, but I ignore them, chewing slowly on this roll, relishing the taste of the butter and cheese. “Come on. Let’s get you more food.”
He takes me to the police station. I don’t like this at all.
They ask who I am. I don’t know. I don’t have a name, so I don’t speak. They ask about my family? What family? I can’t speak.
They ask me about Father, about who hurt me. I shut my mouth and sink into myself, realising how much trouble I’m in.
I’m not stupid. I’ve seen what father does to snitches.
Then a big alpha comes in, and he feels different.
Even from across the room, I watch him, knowing he’s special.
I like him, and I don’t know why. I trust him, and I shouldn’t.
When they shove me at him, he’s all I can see.
I shouldn’t, but when he crouches in front of me and tells me I’m safe now, I believe him.
“My name is Aaron Roseland, but you can call me Rose. Who are you? What’s your name?”
For the time, I clear my throat, and I speak.
“I’m Dove.”
Raven
Roseland walks into his apartment and turns the light on. He doesn’t notice me right away, though he should. He’s exhausted, I can tell by the way his shoulder’s droop. In the way he dumps his food, uneaten, on the counter, ignoring it. His eyes have bags, and his face has stubble.
He looks like someone stole his best friend.
“Hello,” I say quietly.
He startles and turns. “Dove? How did you get in here?”
I laugh, but not loudly. No, there’s something Dove didn’t know and that I can see clear as day.
This alpha is our scent match. He’s mine.
No wonder she loves him.
“No, Rose, I’m not Dove,” I say gently, my eyes roving over him in wonder.
He looks confused. “I’m not sure I understand the game you are playing.”
“This isn’t a game, Rose. This is a very big problem, and you’re going to help me fix it.”
I wish I didn’t have to ask. I wish I could do it on my own.
“Oh, and why would I do that?”
I sway towards him, walking my fingers up his chest, before leaning in and kissing his jaw. He tastes like a paradise, like a temptation and a reward. This is what I’m going to fight for. If I can get free, Rose is going to be waiting for me at the end.
He’s so startled and hypnotized by my presence that he doesn’t stop me.
“You’re going to help me because it’s your duty to care for the helpless and to right wrongs, and because Father needs to be stopped.”
“Where is Dove?” he asks in a low growl.
He believes us. Good.
“She’s here with the rest of us. He broke us, Rose. He shattered us. Now we’re just parts and pieces. But I want to see him dead. I want him to have everything taken away from him, and I know that you are the alpha to do it.”
He stands perfectly still while I slide my hands up his chest and lean up to kiss him. Properly. I have to. Not taking my next breath would be easier than denying myself this kiss.
Fuck, I’m going to love him so much.
“Also, I really like you, Rose. I’ve been watching.”
He tries to resist, but it’s just a few seconds of pressing my lips to his before he lifts me. I wrap my legs around him, and we don’t stop kissing, not until he falls asleep. Then I kiss him once more and leave, with just a note promising to return on the table.
Raptor
The punch almost breaks my jaw.
I surge forward into existence, kicking and punching, and within seconds, the idiot alpha who thought he could rape me is unconscious and about to be dead.
I take my time.
Ha! Who am I kidding? I make a sloppy fucking mess and kill him in about five minutes, then I walk out laughing.
I rub my jaw. That fucking hit hurt.
All around me is a dark neighbourhood that I don’t recognise. I don’t know where I am or how I got here.
“What you looking at, bitch?” A homeless man shouts at me.
I scowl. “Your fucking dead corpse if you don’t fuck off.”
He stares, and then with a eep of panic, rushes into the dark, disappearing.
I stretch my arms out, enjoying the freedom. For a moment, I stand in the dark, and this sense of the world being too big, too huge, grows and grows until I feel smaller than an ant and scared.
Truly scared.
Which makes me angry.
Which makes me furious.
“I am Raptor. I am the huntress. Fear is my enemy. Fear is not in my vocabulary,” I chant. “Now, let's go explore.”
I force myself to pick a direction and then walk.
It’s harder than I would have thought, but this is a whole new side of the world that I haven’t seen before.
And suddenly, I don’t want to disappear again.
Jay
The screaming of the arcades call me back like a siren I can’t ignore. I sit in the seat behind a steering wheel and race against a computer. It’s like a whole other world. No one would think to look for me here, and I can silence the pain.
The screams.
The truth.
We’re becoming aware of each other. It’s taken a while of us moving in and out, but now we know. We’re ships passing in the night, hostile entities who take over during shift change.
We hate each other.
But don’t most people hate themselves?
I stay until my head starts to ache, and the past gets louder than the sound of the arcade. Then I stand up, and with my bottle of coke, I slip out into the busy street.
I’m just another person walking in a crowd until, suddenly, I am another person.
Kestrel
I sit against the wall, my knees to my chest. Everything is terrifying.
I don’t know how I got here. This empty warehouse, with its broken glass and homeless people sitting around barrels of fire.
My stomach seizes painfully. When did I last eat?
Where is Father? I know I’ve lost a lot of time.
I don’t have control of my body anymore.
The others keep taking it, and I get to sit there, watching as they do things I would never do.
I’m crazy.
Damaged.
My body aches. My stomach cramps viciously, painfully. I take the pain and put it in a box and hold it.
There’s something wrong with me, and I don’t know where to go to get help. I think I might be crazy.
I bury my face in my knees.
“At least we’re not in Father’s hold anymore. We’re free,” I whisper and then turn and vomit.
When I’m finished, I’m shaking and weak, sweaty, and I feel gross.
I need food…I need…
Is this better?
Freedom doesn’t really look like freedom. It just looks like a different name for starving.
People still beat us. The world is still cold.
There’s no bed.
No friendly smiles.
No happiness.
Not for me.
I close my eyes, leaning my head back against the wall, holding the pain.
It’s easier just to let them take my body. What the fuck am I staying here for?
Raven
“This is a fucking awful idea, Raven,” Rose shouts at me.
“It’s the only one we have. In almost four years, we haven’t found anything to find out who he is. We can’t just leave it like this. I have to go back to him.”
He grips my shoulders and shakes me. “No. Out of the question, absolutely fucking not.”
“Rose, you can’t just say no,” I say with a grin. Fuck, he’s adorable.
“Watch me.”
“We’ve been trying for years. We can’t just keep doing the same thing.”
He growls and stalks away from me. “Raven, you can’t. What if he kills you?”
“What if he doesn’t? What if I can get us the information to take him down?”
He stares at me.
“You know it’s a brilliant plan.”
“It’s a horrible plan.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out the gift I had made for him. I set it on the table that’s between us. Rose lives in a shitty apartment, but it’s become the only home I’ve ever had. He takes the box, opening it, and finds the knife and the message I’ve had engraved.
“Trust me when I say making this decision was not easy. I would rather stay here with you,” I whisper. “Rose, I love you.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever said it. The first time I’ve meant it.
“I’m going to come back to you.”
Rose stares at me, but he looks utterly defeated.
“Is it fair if we are happy at the expense of so many other people?”
He exhales, guilt, despair, horror.
“You are the reason I fight, Rose. So I can come home to you. One day, all of us will be able to come home to you.”
I step back from him.
“When you get my call, follow the instructions to the letter. I will find you again. I don’t know how, but I’ll find you.”
“Raven, wait.”
“Goodbye, Rose.”
Merle
I stare at the darkest place, remembering it all. Remembering Robin. My breathing is sawing in and out of my chest. My head aches with all the new that has just revealed itself.
The cold of the factory and that horrible smell of blood and dust forces me out of our memories.
Each of us sharing our information is not something we’ve done, not like this. That plan, the one no one but Raven knew about. That damned evil plan that put us back in Father’s hands.
I want to be angry at her…but I can’t. She was doing what we couldn’t.
That was when we saw Blaze, where we saw the ghost. It’s where Raven stole the Nightingales. She took all his birds away from him. I don’t understand what that means. It doesn’t make sense.
We struggled for so long. In his stupid warehouses of agony and then on the cold, cruel streets.
Father is talking, but we are busy.
We’re trying to find a way to survive.
We have the knife Raven gave Rose. We have the skills Father gave us. The bonds. We have so much more than we used to have.
I picture the alphas, one by one.
Rolly, who smiled at me with so much awe.
Pix, who protected me, so fierce.
Blaze, who taught me so gently.
Rose, who loved us for so much longer than we ever knew.
King, who was my safest place.
And Sage, who is a mirror. Will he be okay on his own, without the pack?
Father comes close to us, and we look up, Raptor whispers in my ear and I find myself feeling braver than I have before. I want to fight.
I launch myself, punching him in the face. Screaming inside and out.
The mask shifts, and I see skin, I see human skin.
He’s not a monster, I remind myself viciously. He’s just a fucking man.
And men can be killed.