Chapter 29
Confessions
Finding the Resistance and finding the hidden exit out of this nightmare city happen to be in the same direction.
We all walk like we’re prepared for anything.
Mia is safe in the middle of the group, and I walk near her.
None of us feels easy, and we’re all on high alert. It feels like we’re being hunted.
I trust my instincts when it comes to the Beta’s Path.
Legion walks with Cadel behind us, while Jarek and Mordecai walk ahead of us, murmuring to each other.
The friendship between the guys has been growing, too.
I thought maybe I would feel left out, but I like to watch them together.
There’s a look that Jarek gets when he looks at Mordecai that has me mesmerised.
“You must be really brave to come here, Mia,” I say suddenly. It’s true. She volunteered and signed up for this when I’m sure most people would’ve run the other way.
She glances at me. “I’m just a cook; I’m not a fighter. I could offer something.”
“You’re fighting in your own way. I spent years trying not to come here. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to volunteer.” And that is very true. Especially after I went to the citadel. Facing what I went through again? No, thanks.
Mia crinkles her nose. “We’ve all lost so much. There isn’t a single family left untouched by this madness. Most of us don’t have any family left. It’s not so much a sacrifice as an honour. If I die, I get to join my family again.”
I bump her shoulder with mine. “See, brave.”
“Keres?”
“Yup?”
“Thank you for saving me.”
She sniffles and then turns, throwing herself at me. For a long moment, I just stand there, then I lift my arms, holding her while she cries.
“I’m sorry. I thought I was good and ready to die, but twice, the sickness and then the Beta’s Path. You saved me, and I don’t want to die yet. I haven’t lived.”
“Mia,” I murmur, patting her back. “We’re okay; we’re not going to die.” Hearing myself say those words, I realise I don’t believe them yet, but I want to.
“I know, I’m just so grateful.” She lets me go and swipes her arm across her eyes. She offers a wobbly smile and pats her light brown hair back into position.
Legion folds his arms over his chest and watches. He looks exhausted still, and I don’t know; there’s something off about him.
“Come on, we have to keep moving,” I murmur.
She wipes her face and gives me a wavering smile and rushes to catch up with Mordecai. I watch her, considering what she said. I don’t think she has anyone left in her life. The Resistance are her family, so it didn’t matter how scared she was; she came anyway.
My admiration of her goes up.
Legion and Cadel catch up and walk on either side of me.
I glance at Legion, trying to figure out his secret until I feel like I’m going to go insane.
I’ve never seen an omega cry like that. Not in such heartbreaking, soul-stealing sobs.
Someone hurt this omega badly. I don’t think he will ever willingly open up, though.
The streets are narrow, and we’re walking in knee-high grass, but everything is quiet. No drums today, which is a welcome relief.
Does the Beta’s Path take days off from killing?
I glance at Legion, who looks away quickly. I’m still staring at him when he glances at me again, his face going pale.
“I can’t take it anymore!” I explode. The group stops, turning to me, but I ignore everyone but my target. I turn on Legion and bare my teeth at him. “Out with it!”
Legion purses his lips. “I knew your mother.”
I stop walking towards him, the world tilting wildly, leaving me feeling like I’m balanced on the edge of a cliff. I stare at him; every instinct in me is screaming at me to reach for him and shake the truth out of him.
Cadel grabs the back of my neck in a hold that stops me moving but grounds me in a way that has me thinking instead of reacting.
“You knew my mother?” I manage to choke out.
Legion sighs heavily when he looks at me; his eyes are full of regret. “Yes. In fact, I might be the reason she didn’t make it.”
I stare at him, wondering if I’m going to have to kill this omega that I have started to like.
“Start at the beginning,” I spit out through gritted teeth.
The whole Beta army could walk past right now; I would not look away from this male.
He runs his hand through his long hair and looks away. “Five years ago, I was injured and hiding in a building that was falling apart. Your mother came in during a storm. It was ferocious, wild, and crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I was convinced I would die.”
I glare at him.
“She helped me heal, and she talked to me a lot over the next couple of weeks. She told me lots of things. To be honest, I thought she was crazy. Your mother talked about you a lot. She said that you didn’t know what was coming and that you will never know how sorry she is.”
I hold up my hand. “How did you get her killed?”
“I had a job to stake out Foreen, and she found me. She’d told me not to go, but I insisted, telling her that her stories were crazy.
As if the world’s fate would rest on my shoulders.
As if I were important to anyone.” He huffs.
“She drugged me and left me alone, and she got caught and taken in. But I found a letter when I woke up.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls it out.
I reach for it and carefully unfold it.
Lucian,
You have no idea how important you are. The fate of the world will rest on your shoulders and only love, only your pure love, will save it. Learn how to see monsters. Don’t listen to everyone else; trust yourself.
And tell Keres that I gave her the information to find the escape out of that nightmare. She knows if she just thinks about it.
Stay smart, little boy.
This was my choice and my time.
I turn it over, but that’s it. I press my lips together, frustrated.
“It’s not your fault. She says it right here,” I mutter. “I want to hate you, but I can’t. My mother was like this. She just did everything her own way, and to hell with the rest of us.”
I huff and turn away.
“Do you know how to find this escape?” Cadel asks with a fierce glare at Legion.
“No! Yes! I don’t know. She would tell me everything through coded fairy tales and stories. A lot of what she taught me makes little sense until it happens, and then I’m like, oh, that’s what she meant.”
Legion smiles. “I picked up on that a lot.”
“She would always say if we just stay true to ourselves, we’d stay on the right path. So, I guess we just go on, and eventually, I will find something that jogs a memory, or Jarek will find it.”
Cadel lets go of the back of my neck and walks past me, his fingers brushing mine. Legion and I walk side by side.
“Was she okay when you saw her?” I whisper.
“She refused to tell me what happened, but she cried in her sleep. She called your name and cried for you. I think, whatever you did, she never expected you to do it. She was panicked and kept going out and meeting people and coming back at night exhausted.”
“You took care of her,” I say, suddenly understanding.
“I tried. After she looked after me, I owed her. It was only for a few months.”
We walk in silence, and a wind blows, bringing the faintest trace of wildflowers in the blood-soaked air. I stop, turning with the air. The grass rustles. I lean down, letting it tickle my fingers.
Legion withdraws silently, giving me a moment.
My mum is dead.
A tear runs down my cheek and falls into the grass. Somewhere in this skeleton of a city, her body has fallen, forgotten.
I lick my lips, trying to breathe through the pain. All these years of searching for nothing. Going down into the citadel didn’t save them. They lied.
I gasp, sharp and deep, but no air goes into my lungs. My knees tremble, and I throw my head back, gasping again.
Jarek slams into me, wrapping around me and squeezing me to him.
“Please don’t cry, Kaida. Please. I can’t bear it.”
“My family, my friends, everyone I knew, they are all dead. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have…I should have done something, anything. I thought it would help, I thought…”
Jarek kisses my cheeks, murmuring my name over and over. “Not your fault. You did the best you could. You cannot control evil. I’m here.”
“I thought there was hope, that maybe she was stuck and waiting for me, but she’s not. She’s here. All this time, she was here? She needed me, Jarek.” I sob, my knees collapsing, but he holds me up. “She was alone.”
Jarek grabs my hair, tightening his fingers in it, and presses his cheek against mine.
“No, Kaida, no. You don’t think about that. Don’t.”
Cadel presses against my back, and Mordecai stands behind Jarek, a silent witness to my pain, his own radiating out of him.
“She’s dead, Alpha. What do I do now?”
Jarek touches a kiss to my lips. “You keep going, you keep fighting. She wouldn’t want to see you in their hands.”
I bury my face in his shoulder. Cadel strokes his big hands down the outside of my upper arms.
“I can’t remember if I have a family or not,” Cadel murmurs. “But if I had someone like you, I would want you to be safe, no matter what I went through.”
I reach my hand up, and he grabs it, holding tight. We stand like that for long minutes, and it feels like something unimaginable wraps around us, tying us together.
“Okay, I’m okay,” I whisper and pull back.
Jarek inspects my face, and I reach up, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“What’s this?”
“I can’t bear to see you in pain, Omega. Your pain is my pain now.” His whispered words wrap around a part of me that has been so lonely for so long.
“We have to survive this place,” I murmur, and a little bit more of my heart believes it.
“We will. We’re going to go and find a nice place and build a home. We’ll have all our friends around us. Children. Grandchildren. We will grow old, sitting side by side on our porch, and this will just be a horrible time in our lives that we’re going to forget.”
He kisses me in a way that makes me think of warmth and the heat of a fire.
I press into him. His scent, his touch, everything soothes the pain inside.
I know its biology, but I don’t care. This alpha makes the pain stop, and he makes me feel like I’m not alone.
It’s our first kiss, but it spins me out, sends me reeling and falling in a direction I didn’t know I wanted to go in.
I whine into his mouth, grabbing onto him, pulling myself closer. He growls and lifts me up, his hands gripping my ass cheeks.
He pulls back, and I stare at him, my hands resting on his shoulders.
To me, he’s a miracle.
He opens his mouth, but Cadel interrupts, tugging on my hand. With a reluctant last glance at Jarek, I get moving again. Mordecai has moved off, ranging ahead to make sure we don’t run into the Beta’s Path.
I need to fix things between him and me. The distance is an ache that I hate.
“I just don’t like it,” Mia says.
“You don’t like what?” I ask, tuning into her conversation with Legion.
“We’re discussing the way Bear has been lately. I know he has a lot on his shoulders, and winning this war is the most important thing, but he doesn’t even seem to care anymore.”
“He cares; he just doesn’t show it,” Legion says, unconcerned.
“He didn’t even cry—”
“Mia, he knew some of those people for the better part of twenty years. They were his brothers and close friends. He cared.”
She bites her bottom lip. “He just doesn’t need to be so secretive and manipulative.”
Legion laughs. “I think everyone who has ever been in charge of anyone is manipulative at some point.”
Mia snorts. “Take Keres for example; he didn’t need to drag her into this. He had to get caught but getting her at the same time? That was cruel.”
I whip my head towards them. “What?”
Mia goes silent, her cheeks burning red as she ducks her head. “Ignore me; I never know when to shut up.”
Rage slithers inside me like a beast, and it takes all my effort to press it down and push it away. I will deal with Bear when I see him.
We pass into the shadows of a massive building, and I look up, startled by a sudden flash of blue, but when I look up, there’s nothing. There is something familiar about it, but my mind is drawn back to their revelation.
“Are you saying Bear was trying to get caught, and he dragged me and Cadel down with him?” I ask, needing it clarified.
If Bear were here right now, I'd probably hit him.
“You being here is safer, anyway. We needed you,” Legion says in a bored voice.
“In the Culling Grounds, with the very people who hate me for escaping them in the first place, who are desperate to have me back, and you all thought dragging me here was a good idea?”
“Not us. Bear,” Legion clarifies. “My opinion was not needed or asked for.”
“I’m starting to really dislike this Resistance leader of yours.”
“We all have periods like that, but in the bigger picture, he’s the lesser of all the evils.”
I walk past a spot and turn back. There’s a single plant growing with purple-black flowers.
The leaves are wide and thick; it’s got thorns all up and down its stems, and the colour is a purple-green that is really pretty.
It’s oddly out of place, but I feel drawn to it, curious about why it’s here and why only one plant.
As I approach it, I get a flash of an image. It’s so strong that I almost cry out.
I’m in Jarek’s arms, screaming, and there’s a skeleton on the ground that I know is Mordecai.
I reel back, breathing hard. At the base of the plant is dirt. There’s no skeleton, but I know he died here. I just know it.
“What is it?” Cadel asks, marching over.
“Nothing,” I gasp. I turn away from the plant, grabbing his wrist and dragging him with me.
“It’s nothing.”
But I look back over my shoulder at the beautiful plant, and I don’t even believe my own lies. I don’t know what I keep seeing, but I feel like I’m going crazy.