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REI
Iawoke screaming, my hands still clutching the scissors. I struggled to sit upward, hitting my head. It was like I was trapped in a coffin. But that was impossible since I wasn’t dead.
Besides, Gotham didn’t respect me enough for a proper burial. When smoke filled my lungs, I knew I was locked in my now empty chest, flames licking at the wood, the metal lock popping and sizzling as the bark peeled back.
I balled up my body and kicked. Harder and harder until the wood finally gave. When I emerged, I gasped in shocked, using his scissors to cut through my hair which was catching on fire.
Looking around, I realized I'd fallen down a hole. I was in Gotham’s old room at the bottom of the tower, but it looked nothing like it did when I was young.
Countless sketched portraits of me, locks of my hair strung up like treasures. It was like seeing myself as a caged bird, a time capsule of how Gotham had viewed me all these years as he filled my blood with poison to perfect my body in his image. A sick, demented, pervert. He could rot like the bark of his burning skin.
But yet, Gotham was so powerful, even in death he meant to keep me bound to the tower. And my mate was gravely, potentially mortally wounded, and I so very weak.
“Ziran,” I wailed, fighting through the smoke and flames until I made it outside.
And then I screamed, the loud and brutal sound ripped from someone else’s body it seemed. There, hunched over on the tower, bleeding out was my mate. His body was impaled three long branches from Gotham’s corpse. But worse was his eyes, what seemed like thousands of splinters buried in each socket.
I sobbed and tried to yank them out, the sounds of hooves pounding dirt. The army was coming, everything Ziran had told me was true. And yet they were too late to save him now.
“Don’t… cry,” Ziran wheezed, alive yet barely. “It was a mistake… to be with you… when I couldn’t defend you, sweet omega. A fatal mistake.”
“Don’t say that. And even if it’s true, it matters now. We’ll die here together,” I said, clutching my scissors tight.
But then Ziran reached up and cupped my hand, shaking his head no meekly.
“Don’t… be foolish, Rei. Don’t allow my sacrifice to be in vein,” he said.
“I can’t leave you!” I screamed, refusing to abandon him even as my magic began to fade.
“Go!” my alpha screamed, blood leaking from the wounds of his unseeing gaze.
I had yanked the last of the thorns out. There weren’t as many as I thought. And yet, as Ziran closed his eyes, a part of me knew that they’d never open again. They would never dance in the light. They would never melt into a warm purple hue. They would never look at me again with adoration, like I was the moon, the sun, and the stars all wrapped into one.
“I won’t leave you,” I whispered, my tears unstoppable as the tower, my prison, the only home I’ve ever known went up in flames and all the king’s men gained on our location to behead me.
Ziran stroked my cheek weakly, smiling, even as he choked, the light fading from his once majestic, purple gaze as it turned glassy white. “If not for me, for them.”
He clutched my stomach weakly and I shook my head, not understanding. Until it dawned on me what he meant, so late, and I screamed.
The sound was inhumane—not Kindred, not Elohime, not like the roar of a horrifying beast.
“If not for me, live for them,” Ziran repeated, and unable to refuse, least I crush the seeds of life my alpha gifted me, I ran.
I abandoned the love of my life, raced to the shores, and boarded the small boat he had started carving for us in secret to escape to the island. I paddled against the raging water and made it to shore. Every night, through every hardship, I promised myself to abide by his last wish.
I, Reimund Gardiner, would live for them, even if my soul died with my other half back at Gotham’s tower.
CHAPTER TWELVE
REI
Three Years Later
“Zenia! Raylen. Come here so I can finish the story.”
The cool summer breeze wrapped me in its warm embrace as I summoned my children from the island’s shore back to the safety of our home. Three long years had passed since Gotham was slayed, my prince gave his life for me, and I struggled through the birth of our twin lights all by myself. It was only through Solara, Lulana, and Nocturnous’ blessing that we’d made it thus far.
Our life was hard and filled with scavenging most days. I was wanted by the crown, and even if I could dig up some coin from the tower's wreckage, I doubted we would live a better life on the other side of the ocean.
