Chapter 38

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

ORION

S tars! My knees hurt along with my nose, as did everything else.

Pink smoke licked at me nervously, recoiling as I got back on my feet.

Curse Dawn and its floor-breaking nonsense!

I stood on uneven ground inside a hole resembling a large grave. Water leaked from broken pipes, jagged pieces of metal pointed at me, ready to slice and dice.

I made sure to avoid them, taking some steps toward a replica. It became a pool of watery honey, another one gone.

"Hello?" I spoke into the pink smoke, my voice hoarse.

A body moved, getting to its feet.

"Miko?"

No. Replica. The other one got up with it, both pointing to the real Miko.

The real Miko was bleeding from his chest and head. Unconscious. Barely breathing.

No. Stars, no. I ran to him, every piece of dread, every single nightmare condensing into this one form of fear.

The fear of losing him.

I fell to his side, knees crunching on metal. "Miko…" I touched his face. Cold. So cold. "Wake up, Miko. Wake up."

Thump… Thump… Too slow, not the right rhythm.

"Miko, please. Just wake up…"

A groan, a head rising out of the smoke, pink eyes fixing to me.

"Paige…" I said.

I flung blood in her face. She hissed and went back down, thrashing, clawing at the air.

"Wretched fae!" Dawn screamed.

Cate sat up next. She received the same treatment, rolling around this makeshift grave with her comrade.

I smoothed Miko's short, sweat-damp hair with the back of my hand. "Miko…"

"This is your end! This is your end!"

"Come on, Mr. Robot. Wake up." Miko shouldn't be cold. He shouldn't be bleeding like this. He needed my healing, though his wounds seemed out of my range to heal.

Crap.

He really needed Basil. But I'd try. I'd?—

"Please state your password," the robot voice said.

I looked up in the direction of Lab 8. "What's going on?"

A replica stood on the edge of the hole, a small piece of floor left at the sealed door. Looking down at me, holding the fob.

He had the fob but couldn't speak—a condition of being replicated.

I was the only one to get the door open.

But Miko…

The replica tapped the fob again.

"Please state your password."

If I didn't act now, there would be no Miko. This was our final chance. This all came down to me and the replicas. Two left, one of me.

Let's do this…

I swept my anguish, fear, and every other negative emotion under a rug like dust to be dealt with later. Getting to my feet, I stepped on a pipe to give me some leverage out of the hole.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I spun, expecting Dawn or one of the possessed pack members. But a replica smiled at me, offering a boost. He helped me onto the ledge with the other replica, this one helping me get steady on the narrow space.

He went to tap the fob again.

A pink blade cut his head off.

"Stars!" I cried.

Dawn howled with laughter, floating above the hole wearing Lance's body, twirling a pink scythe. "I win. I win. I win."

The replica melted away. I caught the fob before it vanished into the hole.

One more left.

Cate, Paige, and James were on their feet, fully under Dawn's thrall. The final replica vaulted out of the hole, joining me.

Oh, stars. Oh, stars. Oh, stars.

Dawn's elongated weapon retracted into its body, returning seconds later as a whip. "Impossible, cherry fae. This is all so impossible."

I hated hearing that.

Adrenaline got me slamming the fob onto the panel.

"Please state your password."

"Hayes, He?—"

The pink whip snapped taut around my neck, choking me off. Dawn yanked and I lost my footing.

"I win!"

The replica's forceful hand locked around my arm, keeping me from crashing into the hole. The pack hissed below, scrambling forward.

"You cannot win!" Dawn screamed, changing into Mama again. "Die! Die! Die! I am great! I am powerful! I will be full and bright and end all things! I grow! I?—"

I laid my bloody palm on the whip. It sizzled and withered, the part around my neck melting into black goo. The rest of it sprang back to Dawn like a broken rubber band.

"Cherry fae! Your blood may sting yet your blood will never prevail. The chosen wolf will die! You will all die!"

I moved without thinking, Cate almost out of the hole.

"Please state your password."

"Hayes, Henry!"

The lab door slid open. I hurried inside with the replica's hand in mine. Cate followed, getting inside as the door closed. She hissed, making for a rugby tackle.

Curses! Why wasn't she breaking free from Dawn's hold already?

The replica knocked her off course. But she didn't go down, spinning on him, raking her nails down his face. Blood poured from his wounds.

"No!" I shoved him aside, lifting my arms. Cate bit down on right my arm. I felt her teeth break the skin.

"Stars!" I wailed.

She shook her head like a rabid dog, tearing a big chunk from me. I went down onto my backside, the pain unbelievable, blurring my vision. I gagged at the sight of exposed sinew and bone, blood leaking all over the lab floor.

"Crap…" My eyes watered, shedding tears of agony.

Cate collapsed onto all fours, choking on my flesh. She spat it out, heaving, my blood doing its thing in her system.

And Dawn called me silly?

The usual scene played on, black ooze pouring out of Cate while the replica opened a hatch close to my foot, a blaze of pink light radiating from it. He pointed into the opening, the boom of a thousand crashing gongs filling the lab.

"Heart?" I asked, trying not to pass out.

He nodded.

I moved to look, the light too bright for me to see much. Squinting, I just about made out the shape of a beating heart deep in the luminous pink.

"I will win!" Dawn roared, the window exploding in a spray of glass.

The replica jumped into the hole.

My heart lurched, my instincts crying out to stop him. Even though he couldn't speak, the replica was still a perfect copy. It still amounted to my mate giving his life to save the world.

I whimpered as he burst open, his blood spraying.

"Miko…"

Everything seemed to quiet down. Aside from the gongs falling silent, nothing really happened.

Until Dawn killed the silence.

"No! You cannot! You cannot!"

The gongs crashed, the force of them rattling my bones.

"My heart!" Dawn wailed, the volume making my ears throb. "MY HEART!"

Pink smoke spewed from the hole, as hot as steam. I barely avoided my face melting off, dodging it at the last second.

Stars, my arm seriously hurt, too much blood pouring from me.

Dawn's screams became an endless wail similar to a siren, the ground shaking, the glass cabinets breaking open. I covered my ears against the onslaught, struggling to get to my feet.

The edges of the hole began to collapse, cracks splitting the floor, more hot smoke spraying out.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

I tried getting vertical again, my backside kissing the floor.

"Stars!" I cried.

I couldn't die here. Not after so much fighting to live.

What a selfish thing to say. Did I not think so many others lost their lives after battling to survive? They managed to live through this hell for months and months only to turn down the wrong street and encounter a zombie horde? Or fall down some hole with no one around to pull them out, starving to death?

Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.

But Miko… He needed me.

The wailing stopped, replaced by loud gurgling. Dawn's gong-like heartbeats faded into a softer rhythm, diminishing by the second.

It worked. It really worked.

The ground quaked, part of the ceiling above the hatch breaking loose. It fell into the hole with an almighty racket.

I managed to get up on my third try, wobbling and about to keel over again.

"I've got you." Cate grabbed me, steadying me, her breath smelling of my blood.

"Th-Thanks…"

"Can you walk?"

"Thanks to you."

"Come on."

The ground shook violently. We stumbled to the side, staying upright.

James appeared in the doorway, back to his old self. "Bloody hell." He tore off part of his top, covering my arm with it.

"Sorry for biting you," Cate said, patting me between the shoulder blades.

I couldn't answer, too dizzy to speak.

The wolves navigated the edges of the hole, climbing in and out on the way back to the other side. Cate picked me up to spare me the struggle.

Pink ooze ran down the walls, dripping from the ceiling.

Paige waited for us, also herself again, on the other side of the hole with Miko in her arms. He was still unconscious, looking so fragile, too delicate. An alpha like him didn't get carried. He was too big, too strong.

But not now.

"He's in a bad way," Paige said, her concern piling on the searing pain in my should.

Not him.

Not Miko.

Not at the end…

A severe tremor almost tipped us all onto our faces.

"Come on," James ordered, taking point. Thankfully, he had the fob.

The pink ooze continued to stream down the walls, cracks spidering everywhere, smoke pouring out weakly. The color losing its vibrancy.

"Dawn's dying," I whispered through the rioting pain in my arm.

"So will we if we don't hurry," James responded.

The beta led us back the way we'd come, the doors opening without the fob as the robot voice repeated a warning.

"Facility compromised. Please evacuate immediately."

No problem!

I bounced in Cate's arms, my eyes on Miko. His complexion paled by the minute, his lips parted. The injury on his head appeared much more severe than I first believed.

"Don't leave me," I pleaded through our connection.

His heart barely made a sound.

He's dying.

He's leaving me.

The ground opened up before us, a geyser of pink goo gushing out. Terrific heat filled the corridor.

"Stay back!" James barked.

The spurting stopped, leaving behind a crevasse filled with bubbling Dawn crap. Thankfully, the wolves easily cleared it and the spiral stairs were now in sight.

"Last part!" James cried.

A series of rumbles shook the grated space, the metal bending. Pink liquid began to rise through the floor toward us.

"Onto the stairs!" James ordered, ushering everyone on before him.

He made it on himself just in time.

Cate hurried up behind Paige, footfalls pounding, the tension as thick as molasses. The stairs wobbled, screeched their metallic complaints. Bent in the previous tremors, it could give out at any moment.

The exit opened up. Paige went through, Cate next, then?—

"Shite!" James bellowed, the stairs giving way.

My stomach flipped, bodies moving.

"Gotcha!" Trev's big body loomed beside me. "You ain't going anywhere." He hefted the beta out of the hole.

They bro-hugged. "Thanks."

"Anytime, mate."

"Thank God…" Cate wheezed.

Basil's face appeared in my field of vision. "What happened?"

A mightier wind battered the downs, the raindrops wet punches against my body as the storm intensified. Thunder boomed in the heavens as if there were an earthquake in the sky. Flashings of lightning painted everything a vibrant violet.

"We have to keep moving!" James's voice carried a little squeak.

"Miko?" I said.

Nothing.

"Miko?"

Dunstable Downs quaked, the ground bursting open, the end of Dawn not over yet. Pink smoke and goo and chaos tore out of the ground, the area around the entrance beginning to soften.

Goodness, this entire space might end up collapsing.

The pack didn't hang around.

"Come on!" James galvanized everyone into a hasty flight. "The town is this way!"

Halfway into the mad dash, the downs collapsed, chasing us toward Dunstable itself.

Stars only knew how I didn't pass out from the constant attacks of terror from the incredible booming and shaking ground, faced with the prospect of my final breaths. But I held it together, determined to see Miko wake up again.

A cloud of dust mushroomed into the sky behind us, smothering the view. From somewhere beneath, a series of explosions reverberated through the ground.

We're not going to make it…

The speed of the collapse closed in on us, a beast of death to suck us into the depths.

At least Dawn was dead. At least the world might stand a chance to heal.

"I love you, Miko. I love you so much."