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Turns out Trash City ambushed the group a’ Dark City Alphas I ordered to stay behind to guard them. The Alphas left behind are dead now, or so the defecting scavengers suppose. They said they signed on to follow Merlin, not to kill Alphas, and managed to escape in the brief scuffle that ensued. Woulda found it fuckin’ hilarious that Betas would come to Alphas for protection against another Beta if I hadn’t fuckin’ met her myself, and if I hadn’t lost good Alphas in the process.
Yaron wanted ‘em dead, but the information they had proved valuable — and relevant to Yaron. Looks like Merlin is gettin’ fuckin’ bold. She’s expandin’ her reach and,accordin’ to the scavengers, she’s got access to a boat. She’sgoin’ after somethin’ on the south island, makin’ Yaron’s people vulnerable.
“Shadowlands, the city with no walls.” I shake my head. “That’s why Alphas built walled cities ages ago, cocky bastard.” The knowledge that Merlin may be up to somethin’ in Shadowlands has derailed our plans. Now, as soon as we leave Echo’s garden, he’s goin’ after ‘em. Plans to burn Trash City to the ground and root out any scavengers left in his territory. And I ain’t plannin’ on stoppin’ him.
I shake my dick and tuck it back in my pants, done pissin’ off the edge of the garden because I refuse to piss in it, even if it means I gotta sprint a mile to get to its nearest edge.
Echo thinks I’m crazy but she doesn’t know how crazy I am about her flowers. I dream in flowers. I only ever dream about one other thing… what it would feel like to hold her trust in my hands one more time, how terrifyin’ it would feel knowin’ I could lose it so easily…like I have. Like I did. Right now, I hold nothin’. It hurts like hell, but in another sense, it’s a relief for a fuck up like me. Nothin’s easier to hold onto.
And fuck — what the shit is she doin’ out here? Thought I left her back with the scavengers and the Alphas tryna cook food outta one of the weirder vegetables Echo created. Called it a squash, ‘cept its purple, grows underground and tastes like a potato. Oh yeah, it’s also three fuckin’ feet long.
“Echo, hey. Get your ass back here, before I tan it.” Red hair gleams between the trees, movin’ further outta the garden and further into Paradise Hole. My heart jackhammers. My palms start to sweat. She leavin’ me? She said I’d never hold her trust again, or her heart, but she said she’d stay, if for nothin’ else than to hold me to my word about the Betas livin’ in Dark City and to solve the mystery of Mirage City and their dead Alphas…she…fuck…
Did she change her mind?
I go through everything I did in the past five days that coulda been mistaken by her for somethin’ else. Did I fuck her too hard, too rough, too much, not enough? Did I push too hard? Should I have called her wife? I like to think she seemed saddened by the lack, but I want —need— her to accept the chain around my neck before I take that leap again. Want her to claim me butfuck,maybe she can’t. Maybe, there is no redemption and quick fucks and restrained smiles are all I’ll get from her for the rest of my lifetime. It’s not about me, maybe that’s what she needs. Fuck. Every insecurity I got is suddenly etched into the black, wet trees before me. All my confidence I left in the garden at my back.
My boots sink into the earth as I step out of Echo’s garden. It gets muddier the further I move. Echo’s in black pants and a black sweatshirt — just like she was when I left her. She’s runnin’.
I pick up my pace. “Echo, you don’t turn around now and get your ass back over here, you won’t be able to sit for a fuckin’ week…” I’m gainin’ on her. “Echo…” The distance between us closin’. “Echo, please!” She leaps. I lunge. My hand clamps down on her arm and she spins down onto one knee.
She looks up at me and I rear back, arm dropping from her shoulder as if burned. She’s hot to the touch. This ain’t Echo. She wears her hair, but her face is all wrong. Her skin is three shades lighter. Her eyes are bright green. And worse than all these things, she doesn’t have any freckles to torture me.
She has a hard gleam in her electric eyes, the color of Echo’s leaves. My jaw works, my mind soft and buttery and still trapped in the delusion that Echo was out here leavin’ me while my fists hang limp at my sides at the horror of havin’ touched another Omega. “Fate…” I whisper.EarthFate, my mind corrects. Echo’s opposite, if what the fucker in the cave said is true, which it is, because Echo believes him and I believe in her.
I drop into the ground as the earth opens beneath me and swallows me up to the waist. I start to transform into my Berserker, but pain shatters my mind and I roar at the agony of it. My mind blanks. I see stars, galaxies, new lifetimes. I drift in and out on a scream and when I come to, I look up at the dead grey sky and find myself surrounded.
The Four Fates form a semi-circle around me. Berserker Maengor stands among them. He looks down at me withnothingin his gaze — a gaze which I struggle to hold. My own gaze genuflects as I try to push my hands into the ground and lift up, but vines — black vines, thicker than any Echo’s ever produced — explode from the soil and slap over my shoulders, coil up my arms, latch onto my neck. Their oily surface is covered in thorns and I can feel my skin tearing beneath them. My venom works through my system, racing to heal me. I can feel it in the frantic tattoo of my heart.
I blink, see a white blur moving behind their legs, keeping low and moving fast. I blink and I see Echo’s face behind closed eyelids. I open my eyes and see her hair on a face that has no freckles.
Pain pushes through me and I remember my training. I remember every moment of being tortured. The way they sliced and cut and chewed. “We told you you wouldn’t survive this,” Adoqhina says, droppin’ to a crouch so we’re at eye level, her voice a cruel imitation of the one that I want.
“Yeah? Somebody else told me different.” I push the pain in my mind into its box and store it in the cabinet where it belongs. It pounds, wanting out, but I don’t let it. I meet Maengor’s lifeless gaze. “Your dead army is nothing against the united cities. Already, Dark City and Shadowlands fight together. And your Omegas?” I laugh hard and theatrically until my thoughts splinter. “They’re nothin’…nothin’ against…”
Sy, the Omega with the black hair, releases a horrible screech. Everything goes dark, but not before I hear the sound of roaring behind me.
I come to a moment later, or maybe an hour. The Fates are gathered around Maengor, whispering to him, touching him everywhere that they can like sycophants crowding their idol. His gaze looks more haunted, but the pain has receded for a time. I can feel my Berserker banging on my chest with fangs and claws, trying to get out. I try to transform into my beast’s form but the vines are impossibly thick and heavy and the pain is still present, now a pounding ache that radiates up and down my spine. Feels like the heavy hand of a vengeful god has just snapped it. I can’t feelnothin’below the soil.
Somewhere in the distance, I can hear a fight happening. Who versus who, though? I need to get up and get to Echo. I inhale deep and smell death on the breeze and I know that Maengor and his Fates brought with them more of that dead army, just provin’ Freya right. But what are they doin’ here? Tryna take my Omega from me while I lie here bein’ tortured? For what?
I roar and my hands find claws and my legs begin to swell in the loose, wet soil. It’s fuckin’ impossible to get outta these vines and outta the dirt, like tryna claw my way outta wet cement, but I fight and don’t stop fightin’.
“Move, Omega! Do it! Do it now before he escapes!” Sy’s voice is a shriek that spears my brain.
“Sy, compel her,” Omora hisses. “Adoqhina, Odette — do not let him escape!”
Adoqhina and Odette, the Omega with the long, thin braids, turn to me and more vines latch onto my skin, but these aren’t as strong as the last. I break through them. Wind starts to pick up and a ring of fire blazes to life, surroundin’ me, the Fates and Maengor even though it isn’t possible because even though there is no wood, there is no kindling and the ground is wet the flames burn hot and their walls rise high, but not so high I can’t see over them as a group appears — the last group I’d wanted to see here. My Six, Echo, and the woodland witch.
Echo sees me and meets my gaze. She murmurs something, but I can’t read her lips over the chaos running through my veins. Freya transforms, becoming a pack of white bears that shake the earth when they start to charge towards the wall of flames.
A screech splits my remaining concentration and I black out again, comin’ to just long enough to see Omora charging forward to meet the bears. The flames part before her, allowing her passage, and as she throws herself past them, she hits the ground on all fours and becomes a black tiger, two at first, then six,then ten. Two a’ my Six engage the tigers while Barbero and Vi rush towards me.
The animals and the Alphas tear into each other and the fire starts to flicker and dwindle, its heat makin’ me sweat. I claw and scrape at the ground, which is workin’ to suck me down and under. It’s getting wetter, harder for me to claw through, but slowly, I can feel somethin’ start to form underneath my feet — earth or maybe rock,pushing. Echo’s tryna free me.I bark out a deranged laugh.That’s my girl.
“That’s…my…wife,” I mutter, the word leavin’ my lips and filling me with power. I rip through a vine bindin’ my left shoulder and stop it from latchin’ onto my neck and breakin’ Echo’s chain — that, and suffocatin’ me to death. A vine shoots over my head and I snatch it outta the air, because I know who it’s goin’ after.
“Don’t fuckin’ think on it,” I growl.
