Chapter 31
Betrayal stings the worst
We break out of the tunnel from below just when I think I’m about to lose my mind and go completely and irrevocably insane. There’s no way I could have taken another minute down there. Darkness has a weight and a price that comes with it for me.
I slide up onto the street and duck behind a car, waiting for Mordecai to come up through the manhole.
He’s much more elegant than me when he comes up, but he doesn’t waste time talking or trying to discuss a plan. He shackles my wrist and drags me behind him.
I want to know where we are going. I want to know what Taryn said.
Everything in me wants to find Jarek and Cadel and make sure they are both okay, but this alpha in front of me isn’t giving me a choice, and I’m already suspicious of his motives.
“Mordecai, stop!” I snarl at him for the tenth time. When he ignores me, I kick the back of his knee, sending him crashing to the ground. He rolls, pulling me into his arms.
I swing at his face, but he catches my fist, and then I’m flipped, and I’m lying beneath a massive alpha that I have no way of overpowering. I’m not terrified at all. He growls, but I snarl back, refusing to even acknowledge the way my body is responding to this alpha lying on top of me.
“You—”
He cuts me off, slamming his mouth down on mine. I fight him, bite him until I can taste his blood, I shove and scream into his mouth, and when he pulls back, I grab his hair and lift myself up, pressing my lips back to his.
Our kiss is aggressive, tumultuous. It’s more than passion. This is life and death, its survival, its every horrible minute of everything we’ve ever missed and dreamed of having in one desire-laden exchange between an alpha and his omega.
What we want isn’t on the cards. May never be on the cards. There won’t be happy little bonding ceremonies. The heat that I may one day find myself in won’t trigger a mating heat but a rut that will rip one of us apart.
What-ifs go through my mind.
What if things were different?
What if I could have him?
What if, what if, what if?
When I let myself fall back, he doesn’t chase me but remains up on his forearms, staring down at me. His bottom lip oozes blood, but he doesn’t notice it.
After another few long seconds, where I see our lives exist in our minds and then burn to the ash that they are, he rolls off me. I lick my lips and almost groan at the taste of him that invades my senses. I get to my feet, wincing at the pain from the rock that I was lying on.
“How are we going to find the others?” I ask softly, but now the anger is gone.
He looks up, and I realise that Mordecai might seem like an older alpha with tons of experience and knowledge, but right now, he’s an alpha who is around the same age as I am and lost his parents when he was a child.
He raised a village and saved them. What kind of weight does that responsibility do to a person?
“We go to the next safe house and hope they are waiting and keep going until we find everyone.”
“Okay.”
He looks at me with a hint of distrust. “Not going to fight me?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not.”
For some reason, that only upsets him more.
“Come on.”
He starts running, and I find myself struggling to keep up.
“Mordecai! Cai!”
He looks up, frustrated and distracted. He turns in a circle. “We haven’t got much time until dark.”
“What?” I’m not sure what to do with this version of him.
The alpha who kissed me has disappeared, and I’ve got this almost panicked alpha who can barely keep his thoughts straight.
Was the kiss that bad? I thought he was into it, but maybe he wasn’t, or I’m misreading things.
My unease is growing with each passing minute.
“We need to find Taryn!” he hisses. He slams his hand through his hair, messing it up.
“I’m not sure how we’ll find her.” I look around helplessly, but I’m a bit annoyed because we’re in Foreen. Did he think we’d just miraculously run into her? “Do you want to go into the temple and rest?” I suggest with a snarl of sarcasm.
He whips his head towards me so fast I’m surprised his neck didn’t snap. “What did you say?”
Why is he even more scared? Why is his panic rubbing off on me?
“No, this can’t be right. She’s wrong.”
I don’t think I was supposed to hear those last two sentences, so I pretend I didn’t.
“I asked if you want to go into the temple and discuss the plan?” I point to the temple hidden between two buildings.
It’s impossible to miss it once you see it, but I’m sure hundreds if not thousands of people have walked past it and never noticed the circle with the three wavy lines through them.
The small grey building is set back between two glass buildings.
The door is hidden, but now that I know what to look for, I can see it clear as day.
His mouth opens and closes, and his face gets really pale. “You should go in and stay there.”
I shake my head. “We go together.”
“No, seriously. It would be easier and faster if I were on my own.”
“I don’t think so,” I say with an eerie chill. I don’t know why, but I know absolutely that I have to stay with him. Being left alone would be catastrophic.
“Kaida, for the love of all the omegas who ever existed, please, would you go into the temple and stay where you are safe?”
He’s sweating and leaning over me. I’m not afraid, though. I lay my fingers lightly on his wrist.
“No, we have to stay together.”
He slumps, his shoulders rolling, and lets out a wounded sound.
“Cai? What’s wrong?”
He covers his face with his hand and holds it there.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. No matter what happens, I’m going to fix it. I promise. I will.”
“I don’t understand.”
He shakes his head, his pale blue eyes darker than usual, full of pain.
“This way, come on.”
We race away from the temple, but Mordecai just gets steadily more agitated. No matter how much I pry, he won’t tell me what’s going on; he just says that ‘it’s not fair’ and then goes silent.
The air is colder, and the street is paved in cobblestones. The grass grows out among them, but I can still walk in patches where there is no vegetation.
I take a step into the grass, and something tightens around my ankle. Before I can do anything, I’m hanging upside down, my body aching in a dozen different spots. The back of my head is the worst, and when I pull my hand away, it’s bloody.
“Oh, gods,” Mordecai breathes, his eyes huge with horror.
He’s swaying, his face ghastly white. He pulls his sword out and lunges towards the rope.
I bounce and swing and try to get my bearings.
Mordecai swings a sword down on it, but it bounces off, and he stares at it in horror before attacking it three more times.
Each time, it bounces off without doing anything more than jostling me around.
“Steel cables. Why the fuck would they make a trap out of steel cables? It’s so freaking evil. Kaida,” Mordecai sobs and swipes at his face. “I can’t get you down.”
“No, there has to be a way.” I twist around, looking up and follow the trap to where it originates, high in a building not far away.
He’ll never get me free.
“Mordecai,” I say his name softly, in resignation.
He was looking up at the sky, but he turns to me, and all I can see is bitter regret in wide eyes.
“I’m going to try again!” he insists. His breathing is haggard as he frantically hits the cable. He doesn’t even make a dent.
“Mordecai!” I say louder.
He stops, his head lowered. His whole body trembles. “I can fix this. I know I can. I can do both. It’s not fair. Don’t make me choose.”
“Mordecai, it’s okay. I need you to do me a favour.”
His eyes peel open and focus on me. “Anything,” he says desperately.
“Kill me.”
He recoils like I’ve slapped him. The sword clatters to the ground. “What?”
“Kill me, please,” I say, my voice breaking. “Don’t let them take me alive.”
Why is this so hard? I can see the panic, the fear on his face. But he can’t let them take me. The things they would do.
He shakes his head. “No, I can’t do that.”
“Please, have mercy. Just kill me. Mordecai, it’s the only way. Just put me out of my misery, save everyone, and kill me now. Give me freedom.”
He stares at me, then bends down and lifts his sword. I close my eyes. Waiting for a blow that never comes. When I open my eyes, he’s stepped back from me.
I let out a distressed whine. “Alpha, please.”
He flinches. “Don’t call me that.”
He steps back again. One step, two.
“Mordecai, don’t, please. Cai!” I shout. “Don’t leave me like this!”
He stops ten feet from me. “I’m sorry.” He whispers it, and I know he means it. I can feel it.
But I don’t want this.
“Don’t do this!”
He runs up the street, back the way we came. Ahead, I see him run into Cadel and Taryn. He grabs Taryn, and the three of them disappear into the shadows, leaving me hanging by my ankle.
Cadel was so close. He would have saved me, I know it.
The light fades, and the sounds of the night become as loud as bullets. All I can do is see his face when he took off, leaving me here.
I’m more scared of the Path than I am of dying. They all know that. They don’t understand how completely the Path destroys you from the inside out.
I think I fall into a doze driven by sheer panic and dissociation because, I swear, I see the Warden standing there. He stares and brushes back his white hair in a way that I have seen a million times. When I open my eyes, though, he’s not here.
Instead, I’m faced with the shocked and disbelieving Bear and a few of his Resistance people.
They watch me swinging in the trap.
They’re going to help me; I know they will. Minutes tick by; my head is pounding, and I have long since given up any attempt at dignity. As the night erupts with the sound of drums, I have to bite back a scream.
Bear looks around and then back at me. He puts his index finger and thumb in the sign of the omega on his chest, a sign of respect.
“Kill me,” I beg.