“My Kendric, don’t tell him what happened. Tell him it was quick. He always worries too much.”
“I’ll tell him,” I say, tearing up and swallowing the guilt. I don’t think Kendric made it.
“Good. Tell him I love him, and he’s got to carry the rest now.”
I hold his hand as he coughs again. The sound is wet but weaker. His breathing gets slower and slower until he finally doesn’t inhale again.
“Alpha save you, brother. May you walk in strength, wisdom, and heart and return to us soon.” I say the traditional goodbye the way my mother taught me, the way I’m sure he would have wanted to have been sent off. I hold a fist to my chest with my pinky pointed straight out. The symbol of the alpha.
I let go of his hand and search more thoroughly, but no one is left alive, and as I wander, I count, and I realise that there is less than a quarter of the Resistance here. Hope beats in my chest the longer I go, not finding anyone else I know.
Taryn might have survived.
I climb up into the ceiling and grab one of the maps, leaving the others up there. Only people sworn into the Resistance can read them; to me, they are more useful as fuel for a fire.
I climb down but still when I see something outside.
What is that?
I creep to the window, but it’s too far away, so I climb through, landing lightly on the ground on the other side.
With every foot I take, I’m checking, waiting, listening, but no one bursts out to capture or kill me. Nothing happens whatsoever.
I stare at the two shapes and cock my head to the side, trying to make out what they are. It takes me a long time to get close to them, but when I do, I realise they look weird because they are covered in crows.
There’s a stick to my left, so I grab it and wave it around. The crows explode into the air in a cloud of feathers, leaving behind two rotting corpses that have been impaled.
I recognise both alphas.
Hernan I didn’t know very well, but his warm and infectious smile was always spreading joy. His face is tortured, an agonised scream of pain frozen like a monument to that single moment.
The other is a person I’d already thought was dead. Alex. Willow lied. Why would he do that?
I stare up at them and feel myself go numb, down to my bones. This is what is going to happen.
They will ruin us, destroy us. Maybe I should join the Resistance. Maybe it’s better to die fighting than to live in fear.
My head is clouded with the images I’ve seen when I get back to the room. I go and sit down, ignoring everyone.
“Kaida,” Mordecai asks. “Please.”
I lift my eyes. “Most people got out; there were roughly forty-five dead. I found…” I stop choking on the words. “I found someone alive, but they were too injured. They died with me there.”
“Who?”
“They said that Bear and Taryn got out. Most people did.”
I’m breathing hard and fast, struggling to calm down. Mordecai pulls me into his arms and squeezes tight.
“Tell me the rest; let us help you carry the pain.”
“It was Marshall. And then,” I let out a hysterical sound that’s half-laugh and half-sob, “Hernan and Alex, they have been impaled.”
Mordecai stills, but then his hands resume stroking. A sound comes from the side, and I see Jarek, Legion, and Mia staring at me in horror.
Legion struggles up, but Cadel shoves him back down.
“No, I have to—”
