“No one,” he says bitterly. “There is no one that I care about.”
“Walker, you’re on the wrong side of history here,” I warn him.
“I know. I am but a servant to the Goddess,” he whispers bleakly.
“Come with us, give it all up and come with me.” I’m clutching at straws without a hope of being able to make it okay. He’s the most well-known, most hated member of the Beta’s Path, and I am the most hunted omega. We can never be free.
I don’t know why I offer it; the Resistance would never forgive him. He’d be murdered on the spot, but maybe I can find a place, and wecould…
“Kaida Keres, will you stop trying to save people?” He laughs bitterly. “Half our problems wouldn’t have happened if you had just stayed at home where you were told to and stop this self-sacrificing bullshit.”
I stare at him. “At least I can look at myself in the mirror and say I did everything.”
“Can you? Because your scars tell a different story,” he says cruelly.
I let out an enraged noise. “You are an idiot.”
He smiles, and it’s beautiful and transforms him. He shakes his head, but he can’t hide himself from me.
“I know.”
“You were my whole world, Walker.”
“I know that, too.”
“Why did you do it?” I throw his words back at him.
He presses his lips together and turns away. “Because I wanted to live.”
“Is this living, though? Is this the world you want to live in? What about a family?”
“Family is overrated,” he mutters.
I stare at him, bitterly wondering when he got so far lost on his path that he became someone I don’t recognise.
“If you get a chance, you should kill me,” Walker says with a wry smile. “It will be interesting to see if you can.”
I stare at him, completely aghast. “How can you say that?”
“I can say that because your family is dead. No, sorry, our family is dead, and it’s my fault, so seize that wicked temper of yours and kill me, moonbeam.”
He takes a step towards me and closes his eyes. Trap, my mind screams, but thanks to my mother’s warning, I’m already aware. I run into the bedroom, ignoring the way he screams my name.
I throw myself out onto the balcony and fall down three flights through a hole that I didn’t see. I land heavily, but after a moment, I can move enough that I take off, racing along the balconies until I find another butterfly and disappear into the building. My mother guides me out.
It takes me twenty minutes to escape, and I make it onto the street just before a Beta’s Path patrol races into the building.
Walker and I are both alive, again. We keep meeting as enemies, but we can’t fight each other. I can’t kill him, and I know he can’t kill me.
I stay hidden, pressed up against the rusted-out shell of a car and stare at my best friend as he stands there until his horse gallops out of the dark. He mounts up and rides away, leaving me sitting in silence, and with my horrible miserable thoughts.
I don’t know where it all went wrong.
And I hate that I miss him.
Chapter 48
There is no way out
