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.

That was what he had said. ‘Biggest issue’ being my past. Because he knew that my birth family would cause a reaction like this, far greater than any other

Let alone keep this from me? Why bring me here

pack, one stronger than even Ashwood by a

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

felt myself sink deeper inside, the last shred of hope dying.

keeping things from each other. Secrets that had

and bewitched you, Kieran!” Allison chimed in. “She’s a descendant of the Siren. Manipulation is in her blood.”

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 our pack despite her situation. Sterling was selling silver suppressors, Allison.

she said. “Now I’m starting to wonder if Sterling’s death was really as justified as you claimed. She probably had

to what I’m trying to tell you. Raven isn’t a devil like we were always told. She’s just a girl,

I said quietly, my voice cutting through the room.

was me. I killed him.”

“Rae!”

‘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 to

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

I was done.

confession, tears starting to

to her, Kieran! She is literally

her room and tried to force his mark on her. If she hadn’t of killed him, I would have. He overstepped a line and was trying to abandon Ashwood, breaking our rules

before

finger joints were repeatedly broken prior to his death,” I added. “I tortured him before I finished the job. Because that’s what he was. What you were

“What…?”

finally, Kieran

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 that I’m not who

“Rae-.”

corrected. “…Rae is a lie. She

want to take it

me, I know it. I saw it in your face every day we were together. I promised to protect you, and I still intend to do that.

making this

cumulation of both the revelations today and the confliction from last night.

FIX ME, KIERAN,”

isn’t something you

to always be such a kind and genuinely good person, believing the best still exists inside

there. It never will be.’

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

took two steps towards me, taking an aggressive stance to suggest a fight, and I sighed. I was letting my emotions seep in again, something that was

now

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

need to take her to your father,

“Let him decide what

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

swear to the

want to defend her? A child of the monsters who killed your mother? Our

he argued. “Because her entire family is dead because of us. Did

…I hadn’t.

was right. This

had been 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