A Gift from the Goddess

Book Two – Ch.# 36

“Rae… What’s happened?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to reply but the words wouldn’t come out. My body was running on pure adrenaline for survival now and I was doing my best to push through the overwhelming urge to cave into my emotions.

“I… I’m…,” I fumbled.

My eyes were trying to water but I gritted my teeth against it.

I didn’t want to fight Kieran… I didn’t know if I could live myself if I were to see the look of hatred in his eyes. Anything but that.

“Rae?”

“I… Kieran, someth-.”

But before I could finish speaking, I was suddenly cut off.

“RAVEN!” Allison’s voice shrilly screamed.

And I cursed. She was here. Probably at the staircase looking for me.

This was game over.

Kieran frowned but turned around to investigate, walking towards my only available exit. One now manned by his insane little sister.

“Kieran! W-wait… don’t….”

However, as I futilely trailed behind him, I was further stressed by seeing that Allison had recruited help. Help in the form of Daniel, the Beta heir.

“Hand yourself over, Raven,” Daniel said, stepping cautiously forward. “Let’s not drag this out any longer than we have to.”

“What the hell is going on?” Kieran demanded.

“I’m sorry, man, but she’s been lying to you,” he said. “Allison said that she admitted to being one of them. Called herself by a name that belonged to The Council of the Silver Mist. She’s a Knight. Rheyna Knight.”

But as Daniel enlightened him to the situation, it was Kieran’s reaction that was the most unsettling.

Or, lack of, to be precise.

Because there was no shock or surprise that crossed his features at all. Just… remaining completely silent as he held Daniel’s gaze.

Almost as if…

Almost as if he knew.

“…Kieran?” I whispered. “Why aren’t you….”

And his face then confirmed it, closing his eyes in guilt for a moment.

Everything made sense now. Why he kept our training sessions private, why I was never allowed to talk about my health problems publicly, why he’d said those words to me last night. They’d struck me as odd, but I’d had more important things to worry about at the time. But his phrasing had been weird.

father forced you to do, then I think we’ll be fine.”*’ That was what he had said. ‘Biggest issue’ being my past.

Let alone keep this from me? Why bring me here

after I found out about the silver suppressors,” he said. “You kept up with me during a fight whilst taking them, Rae. It meant you had to be from a powerful pack, one stronger than even Ashwood by a considerable margin. Of which,

anything I’d felt before. He’d known this entire time and kept it from me, knowing full well that this might happen one day. That it was information that could likely lead to my death.

deeper inside, the last shred of

Secrets that had dire consequences. Perhaps our relationship really

a descendant of the Siren. Manipulation is

snapped angrily. “She couldn’t even shift before I brought her here. She didn’t even know what werewolves were. She was an orphan of war, somehow surviving long enough to still be tortured by

you covering up her tracks, believing her fabrications,” she said. “Now I’m starting to wonder if Sterling’s death was really as justified as you claimed. She probably had you kill him as well.

isn’t a devil like we were always told. She’s just a

said quietly, my voice cutting through the room. “It wasn’t

was me. I killed him.”

“Rae!”

she’s right,” I said. “Whether it’s because I’m a so-called ‘Devil’ or due to my past crimes, I’m no innocent, Kieran. Pick a title; Rogue or Devil. Because the same meaning still applies. I don’t belong here. I never did. There is nothing I can do

someone I wasn’t… and exhausted of now defending myself against something I couldn’t change. My body felt numb to everything as the truth

I was done.

out over hearing my confession, tears starting to fall down her face.

literally admitting

killed him, I would have. He overstepped a line and was trying to abandon Ashwood, breaking our rules in the process. He was a bad person,

interjected before she could reply.

Because that’s what he was. What you were too. A job, Kieran. You really think I was allowed to come here of my own volition? With a man like my father? My leash has only ever been long enough to

“What…?”

Kieran looked surprised.

assignment, Kieran,” I said, swallowing back my emotions. “You always were, even from the very beginning when we first met. I was sent to retrieve documents once in possession of a smuggler I’d killed, believed to be handed over to Victor Lycroft. Documents that I then discovered Sterling knew the whereabouts of. After he attacked me, I turned the tables on him and tortured him into admission. This shouldn’t be a shock. I already told you

“Rae-.”

corrected. “…Rae is a lie. She doesn’t exist.”

looked at me, making me want to take it

here with me, I know it. I saw it in your face every

at letting me push him away was only making this harder. Too hard to deal with… and I suddenly

once, a cumulation of both the revelations today and the

FIX ME,

birth family nor change my past. This isn’t something you can mend like my

believing the best still exists inside me,’ I

there. It never will

have made him uncomfortable, unsure probably if I were about to

to suggest a fight, and I sighed. I was letting my emotions seep in again, something that was a snowball that would probably end badly. Right now,

problem now was… how.

still guarding the stairs, yet we were too many floors up for me to safely utilise a window escape. I was trapped unless I intended

take her to

him decide

Kieran wasn’t having that. He looked… pissed. Probably

to

You really want to defend her? A child of the monsters who killed your mother? Our other pack members? So many died in that war because of

father? Siblings?” he argued. “Because her entire family is dead because of us. Did

…I hadn’t.

was right. This

moving too quickly for me to think about it before but… but if it weren’t for Ashwood, perhaps I would have grown up normally. I might have known what it was