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.

publicly is just crimes your father forced you to do, then I think we’ll be fine.”*’ That was what he had said. ‘Biggest issue’ being my past. Because he knew that my birth family would cause a

you know? Let alone keep this from me? Why bring me

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, there was only one other in modern history. But… I thought you didn’t remember

betrayal stung me unlike 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

sink deeper inside, the last shred

both been keeping things from each other. Secrets that

in. “She’s a descendant of the

what werewolves were. She was an orphan of war, somehow surviving long enough to still be tortured by our pack despite

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. Swaying your mind to do her

tell you. Raven isn’t a devil like we were always told. She’s

my voice cutting through the room. “It

was me. I killed him.”

“Rae!”

“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

was feeling… exhausted. Exhausted of pretending to be 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 was unravelled.

I was done.

hearing my confession, tears

literally admitting that she’s evil. She-.”

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

interjected before she

finished the job. Because that’s what he was. What you were too. A job,

“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

“Rae-.”

is a lie. She

to take it all back. But even if it hurt, these were the

it. I saw it in your face every day we were together. I promised to protect you,

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

surfaced all at once, a cumulation

FIX ME, KIERAN,” I

change my past. This isn’t something you can

and genuinely good person, believing the best still exists inside me,’ I added in my

it’s not there. It never will

him uncomfortable, unsure probably if I were about to perform some other devil magic. Whatever the hell that

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

now was… how.

Daniel and Allison were 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 to fight my way out. Something that I

her

Daniel said. “Let him decide what

that. He looked… pissed. Probably rightfully so given the circumstances.

her and I swear to the Goddess, Daniel…,” Kieran

child of the monsters who killed your mother? Our other pack members? So many died in

father? Siblings?” he argued. “Because her entire family

…I hadn’t.

This

me to think about it before but… but if it weren’t for Ashwood, perhaps I would