She is my omega.
It’s time for me to take my responsibility as High Alpha and return my omega to her rightful place beside me.
Chapter 10
It begins
Cadel jerks awake, bouncing to his feet and looking around like he’s expecting someone to appear in front of his eyes. There is a longing on his face that contrasts with the sheer aura of danger that is dripping off him.
He moved so quickly.
“Are you all right?” I murmur.
He shakes his head. “Just a dream. A bad dream. I can’t even remember now.”
I peer at him. It would be awful to have no memories, to have nothing. To not even know your own name.
“It’s okay. Don’t try to remember. It will come back or it won’t.”
He turns away from me, but there’s a tension in his shoulders that makes me think he’s going to be thinking about it for a long time.
I’ve got my own thoughts that are swamping my mind. I feel like I’ve barely had a chance to process ending up here. One minute I was so close to the answers, now I’m further away than I ever have been.
I don’t feel well. My head is burning and feels thick and heavy, and I feel like vomiting. All I want to do is curl up and pass out.
“It’s morning. We should get going,” Mordecai says.
I roll to my feet. “Give me a minute.”
I take care of business and return, waiting for the others, which only takes another moment. I’m almost scared to go out of the temple and see what horrors await us.
Still, Mordecai gives us all one heavy look and silently walks out into the dull light of the new day.
Will this be the day I die? I feel like it. I put a hand to my hot face, trying to cool off.
Walking out into the city this morning is like walking into some place new. It doesn’t look at all how it looked last night. Perhaps my perception was off, my shock and sleep deprivation turning the bleak grey buildings into a nightmarescape. The smell isn’t so offensive this morning.
In the morning light, even hidden behind clouds, the buildings are bigger than they appeared, and they seem much less intimidating. Birds fly through the top floors, while the wind howls through them as if they are tunnels. There is more green than I expected, but everywhere I look I see signs of the previous hunts. A body lying in the grass; only the skeleton remains with shreds of clothing. There’s a sword embedded in the bricks of the temple. Someone carved ‘help’ in a sheet of plastic, an immortalised plea for help from someone who could have died hundreds of years ago. Or yesterday.
The grasses have blood-red flowers that I’ve never seen before and are tall, growing in clumps that rise to my thighs. The trees are massive, towering giants that grow around parts of buildings, letting through dappled light that still feels sinister.
If our souls stay on this plane, unhappy with our lives, are the trees fed by the spirits of the deceased? Do the people who die here come back as part of the world holding it together? Are the blood-red blooms red because of the blood that fed them?
“How far to the school that Bear was talking about?” I ask with a shudder.
I feel like we’re being watched, but there are so many places for someone to watch us from. Spirits or people, ghosts that have their bodies or ghosts about to lose them.
My morbid thoughts press on me.
I want to move.
I need to run.
“I’m not actually sure where we are,” Mordecai says. “We need to head to the center of the city.”
I curse because I’d much rather be on the outer fringes. Preferably as far from the gate as I can get.
The wind picks up, and I catch the scent of something burning. My mind fills with horrible thoughts. My skin crawls, and I turn in a circle, trying to work out where that smell is coming from.
