Which means he knew I was out there, and he left me. Weeks of me rotting in that cell, then in Nikolai's compound. Weeks of wondering if anyone was looking for me, if anyone cared.
And he knew.
Heknew.
A sharp ringing sound cuts through the silence and I gasp, bringing my hands to either side of my head to make it stop. The side of the gun digs into my temple, and I realize the sound isn't coming from outside.
Everything feels distant suddenly, like I'm watching through frosted glass.
No.
No, no, no.Not here. Not now.
"Cosima?" Raven's voice sounds wrong. Worried. He never calls me by my name.
But even that sounds foreign now.Cosima. The name feels like it belongs to someone else. Someone who wasn't stupid enough to believe in fairy tales. Someone who didn't let herself fall for the first alpha who didn't smell like decay and desperation.
The edges of my vision start to blur, that familiar darkness creeping in like ink spilled across paper.
Memories clash behind my eyes like fireworks, rapid fire, one after the other. Azarel's rough palms, gentle on my face. Monty's friends, their laughter and their hands on my body as sharp as knives. The scrape of my father's pen against paper as he signed my life away. They all blur together, past and present tanglinguntil I can't tell what's real anymore. The voices and sounds of the past are so much louder than the ones calling to me now.
The numbness spreads like ice through my veins, and I welcome it. Better than feeling. Better than knowing.
It was all a lie.
Every stolen kiss, every whispered promise.
And I became the very fool my mother raised me not to be.
Chapter 24
GEO
The momentI see that haunted, empty look in Cosima's eyes, I know we're fucked.
We were fucked the moment we walked into that palace. Hell, probably fucked the moment we decided to follow a woman with a death wish across international borders.
I should've known better than to let a clearly unhinged and insane omega call the shots and nearly get us all killed, but here we are, trapped in a train car with a kidnapped prince and an omega who's checked out of reality faster than a drunk at last call.
And I can't even blame Raven for this colossal lapse in judgment. No onemademe come along on this glorified suicide mission. I invited my own fucking self. Somewhere along the way, I ended up following this unhinged omega like a dog on a leash just like the rest of them, and I can't even smell the little psycho half as well as they can.
"Cosima?" Raven's voice cracks with concern as he takes a hesitant step toward her, as if he's afraid she'll shatter at the slightest provocation. Not an unfounded fear at the moment. "Goddess, can you hear me?"
She doesn't respond. Just stands there with both hands—including the one still gripping the gun—squeezing the sides of her head like she's trying to keep the demons out. Or maybe in. I know she's not gonna respond to him even before the words are all the way out of his mouth, with those violet eyes staring off at something none of us can see. She's muttering something in Vrissian I can't make out, but judging from the looks on Nikolai and Raven's faces, it's concerning.
Nikolai tries next, switching to Vrissian.
Ireallyneed to learn that fucking language.
Whatever he's saying sounds gentle, or at least as gentle as the devil can manage, but it might as well be static for all the good it does. She's gone, lost in whatever nightmare her mind's conjured up to protect itself from the truth.
Even Knight's growling, a concerned rumble that vibrates through the floor. He shifts from foot to foot, clearly wanting to go to her side but rational enough even in his feral mind to know that approaching someone with a gun when they're not home upstairs is a bad fucking idea.
We're all afraid to touch her. One wrong move and she could hurt herself. Wouldn't be the first time I caught some stray lead, but the thought of her turning that gun onherselfmakes my gut clench in a way I don't want to examine too closely. And I've seen enough people in the state she's currently occupying to know that's a very real possibility.
"What's happening?" The panic and desperation in Raven's voice is painful to hear as he looks to me, like I'm supposed to have answers. "What's wrong with her?"
"She's dissociating," Nikolai mutters without taking his eyes off the omega. "It happened before, when the Ghosts first dropped her off and then again when she saw him for the first time at the airfield," he says, nodding toward Knight.
