Back resting against the statue, Lucas stops struggling. In his peripheral, he can see the body in the casket. He doesn’t dare to look any further. He knows it’s her, but it’s just so hard to believe.
“If I follow you, where will we go?” Lucas asks.
Aiden collapses. “No,” he cries. “Think about what you are doing.”
Cassian lends Lucas a hand. “After we claim our territory, I promise you there will be no more war. We won’t hunt the remaining omega. This time, we will do what we set out to do in the first place. We’ll lead the planet into a new era of prosperity,” he says. “And then we will explore the multiverse.”
“The what?”
“Come with me, and you’ll see everything,” Cassian says.
He hasn’t taken Cassian’s hand yet. So many things run through his mind, but it’s his emotions that he can’t seem to understand. “Promise me you’ll get my children back,” he says.
Cassian nods. “That’s first on the agenda.”
Lucas takes his hand and lifts to his feet. A fire burns inside his heart. None of this feels okay, but Cassian is right about one thing.
With his knot, he gave Rae a promise to be a good father. He could feel her soul resting on the impossibility of their relationship. Three alphas. One omega. It was a recipe for disaster.
It was like she knew the worst would come, eventually. The only connection to her that Lucas has left is through their children.
The night he left the pack, Vash looked at him with the scorn of pride. It was at that moment he knew Vash didn’t care whether he lived or died. He just wanted control.
Lucas listens to Aiden’s pleas, but his heart has hardened from so much melancholy and strife, he can not bear it much longer. Now he knows what Vash felt on that fateful night.
They never gave a fuck about him, anyway.
In the frozen desert hills, Lucas turns his back on what he thought to be his destiny. He will never experience love again.
This is the only step forward. The final nail on his coffin.
“Spare Aiden. He is no threat to you. I need you to take me to my children,” he says. “If you do that, I promise to fight by your side til the bitter end.”
Rae
Rae’s toes rest against the foothold of the rusted ladder. Taking a moment, she pauses and gazes at the young omega below her. “You okay?” she asks.
The young omega tightens her grip around the rung above her. “I’m not a little girl. I’ve seen worse.”
Rae climbs back into the network of caves above the city. A chill runs across Rae’s shoulders as they circle past the rotting corpse of the fragile devil.
The young omega pauses next to his pool of blood. “There’s nothing here. I’m telling you. I looked for days,” she says.
They’re both exhausted beyond belief. Water has been available to drink from the barrels below, but they’ve gone through the last of the young omega’s rations. Maybe the girl is right, but turning off the cryo units terrifies her.
Little by little, the tank baby loses its glow. She remembers the quick reaction from the fragile devil, right before she smashed his head in. As the days progress, his words gnaw at her. She wonders how long the tank baby will survive without synthesis.
Searching for another power source is futile. She is really just buying time before she has to give in to the inevitable: extinction or synthesis.
Rae maneuvers through the tunnels she has grown accustomed to walking. Through the old sleeping chambers, past the long network of caves is a path she hasn’t taken.
When she sees it, she knows she’s there. Down a dark tunnel, she walks until she hits a solid door, complete with a fingerprint scanner lock.
Rae turns to eye the young omega. The girl backs away. “I thought you said you checked everywhere,” Rae says. “You must have seen this door.”
The omega stutters. “It wasn’t worth mentioning. There’s no way inside.”
Rae places her thumb against the mechanism next to the door. It turns red and issues an unpleasant noise.