Page 47 of Beta Lies and Cursed Lives
I check out mentally during the auction portion. I do pick out words like “front-line warrior,” and, in the end, the bidding concludes at over one million credits.
I am going to the Kingdom of Russia. Where it is cold and icy, and I will forever be reminded of her.
It’s Lieutenant Yarr who leads me from the training ground and back to the academy building.
“They’re staying the night,” he says, his voice strangled. “They’ll take you first thing tomorrow morning.”
When we’re outside my dorm door, Yarr claps my arm and grips it tight, his expression solemn but his eyes filled with emotion. “You’re a good man, Aubrey,” he tells me earnestly. “Do not die out there.” He leans in, his voice low. “No matter what you need to do, stay alive.”
He’s gone before I can process his words.
Before I scan my eye to unlock my room, I know this isn’t where I want to spend my last hours here. Not alone, not even with Colt if he’s in there.
My feet start moving, and before I know it, I’m jogging, then running through the curved hallway until I reach the door I’d been seeking and pound my fist against it three times.
When it swings open, she’s there, her silver eyes wide, filled with tears. Her lips part, but no words come. Instead, she flings herself at me, her arms around my neck, where she firmly plants her lips.
And all I can think is,Death in Miranda’s arms, I can accept peacefully.
Miranda
A few hours earlier…
Here, at the edge of the woods, I find my solitude, sitting cross-legged on the ground and looking deep into the thick treeline.
That pack. They’re dead.
Is that our future? Is death all we have to look forward to?
It can’t be. It just...can’t.
Now that I know I can touch Rai, that I can probably touch Colt, and even Aubrey, there’s no way I can lose them. Not that I would have wanted to lose them before, but this all has some deeper meaning. I know it in my bones.
That beast in my chest chuffs, and its hackles rise again at the thought of that assembly. That...massacre. They were murdered. And one of them was murdered by one of our own!
I know he was forced. I know he had no choice. I know that this is the future that awaits us all, used as tools, weapons, forced into wars we had no hand in waging, left hopeless. But to see the cruelty first hand…
There’s a shuffling in the grass ahead of me that puts me on edge, and I move to rise, but a little white head with tall ears tipped in black peers out from the brush, and I still my movements. It’s an arctic hare, like the one I released what feels like a lifetime ago.
The little guy’s nose wiggles as his head jerks upward, then side to side, until he nibbles on some moss growing on a nearby tree trunk. His little nibbles bring a smile I never expected to my face. When he looks at me, I get the impossible sensation that this rabbit is the same one I released. But that would be impossible. The grounds here are completely surrounded by a wall. Even with several gates, Laurant and I had taken that hare far from here. And yet…
The little ball of fluff slowly inches closer. His crawl turns into a hop, and the rabbit is suddenly in my lap, looking up at my face with a tilted head, one ear turned sideways.
I can hardly breathe, as I slowly move my gloved hand to his fur. Once there, I stroke the little guy’s back, and at once, he leaps again, this time onto my upper chest where, to my horror, he nuzzles my neck.
Despite my cry of despair, tears threatening to stream down my face at the death of this small and innocent creature, when I pull him from my body, he’s still a rabbit. He’s alive.
When the tears fall now, they’re filled with relief and wonder and utter disbelief.
The rabbit seems unafraid and unbothered as I hold him in one of my arms and pull the glove from my right hand. When I pet him with my bare hand, he’s even softer than I ever imagined, and the tears stream faster down my face.
When his little dark eyes look at me again, I whisper, “Thank you.”
There’s no way this creature knew the danger he was in. There’s no way he’s the same rabbit I released. And yet, I feel a kinship with him I can’t explain.
The beast inside my chest has remained calm and still since this little guy appeared, as if it, too, was fascinated.
“Looks like you made a new friend.”
