Page 97 of Of Daggers and Deceit

“She’s fighting the toxin,” a male voice whispered to someone urgently as I took a deep gulp of the pooling, metallic-tasting spit in my mouth.

“Shit. I wasn’t certain how it would work on a Gifted with the limited numbers we have.” A female voice then. My hearing was going in and out, though I could identify that voice anywhere.

Riley.

What the hell was she doing here? We were meant to be out protecting the Haven. Where was everyone else? I squinted through the dark, trying to focus my vision to limited results. Another wave of dizziness rippled through me.

“Riley?” I moaned. “What have you done?”

I focused intently on the muscles in my arms, willing strength back into them with minimal results. I exhaled a heavy breath in frustration over my slow and sluggish movements until I managed to prop myself up on shaky arms.

I blinked, trying to clear the haze, noticing Riley’s familiar figure standing nearby.

She didn’t bother to acknowledge me, keeping her attention on the other male in the room. “Grab her and let’s go. We’re running out of time, and she’s sluggish enough to not be a problem.”

I knew that whatever she had given me had been enough to zap the strength out of my limbs. I couldn’t move much more, and it was a genuine battle to keep my eyelids from fluttering closed and descending back into sleep.

A strong hand whipped out in the dark and encircled my wrist before hoisting me up into thick arms. My head lolled as Riley hissed, “Don’t be so sloppy, Sly. Put her head on your chest.”

A calloused palm moved to the side of my face and gently tilted my head up and back to rest on a warm chest. My vision began to slowly clear, and I strained to look up at the person carrying me. Sly?

With a frown, my head tilted back to scan my environment as he walked through the compound. Alphas were passed out in a single open bedroom, Bodhi closest to me and laying in a way that looked like they’d all taken a nap. But that couldn’t have been right. Could it?

I tried to reach a shaky hand out towards him as we passed but was quickly pulled in another direction. Too slow, Raya.

Sly didn’t bother to stop.

Hot, minty breath blew on my face. “He’s not dead, Raya. We just cannot have him interfering.”

I felt slight reassurance at that—that maybe this wasn’t so bad at all, that Bohdi would be fine. Still, it lay far beneath the crippling panic that screamed at me to clarify what he would have to interfere with in the first place.

“What’s go-going on?” I managed to get the words out despite my speech being heavily slurred, and I waited with bated breath for Sly’s response whilst we moved up the stairs towards the compound exit.

“A lot is going on, Raya, none of which I can tell you,” he whispered.

My body jostled back and forth as he climbed up the stairs from the training room. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to get any more information, that what he’d provided was likely already too much.

I tried to search within me, to call to my affinity to take me back to Bohdi, to escape, but I couldn’t even find the cord of energy within me to pull on. My body tingled in all the places I tried to flex and move, unresponsive to my internal cues to run far, far away.

Fear gushed through me as, finally, flecks of memories came rushing back. Me getting supplies. Bodhi, Riley, and I planning to leave. Arriving to an empty compound. Riley’s betrayal. We were all meant to escape; none of this was meant to happen.

She typed the code into the pin pad as we reached the top of the stairs and jerked the door open, holding it for me to be carried through. She completed the same task for the entry point.

A gust of frigid wind met us as Sly stepped out onto the freezing, bitter wasteland.

“Shit, it must have gotten colder whilst we were down there. Wrap her in this.” Riley threw one of the compound’s blankets at me. I’d never even noticed her grab it.

I felt soft material hit my skin, Sly shifting me to tuck the fluffy blanket around me in a cocoon. I shivered. My body began to warm underneath the blanket, the only body part now exposed being my face, which the air took joy in nipping.

Around us, the landscape thrummed with the desert song of insects. There were no usual sounds of fighting, of clashing of bodies and claws in the background. There was only the shifting and lifting of sand whilst my two kidnappers pressed forward.

My brain hurt from the toxic cloud of the drug they had shot me with as my mind ran through the possibilities of why this had happened.

Who was protecting the Omegas if we were out of action? Why the hell was Riley changing the plan? Why, why, why?

I went to grab at Sly’s chest, but my fingers couldn’t seem to grip onto his clothing tight enough for it to have any impact.

We jerked to a stop, and I let out a shaky breath, looking up at him. I’d beg if I must.

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