Epilogue

Ben

Everything was black.

Where the hells was Alayna? Where was I? Why did I hurt so damn much?

Pain pounded dully through my entire body. My brain fumbled around for any clue as to why I was in pain or why my eyelids were lead weights I couldn't lift.

Desperately, I scrambled after the scraps of memory just out of reach, but jolts of agony kept wrecking my focus, scattering my thoughts.

I kept drifting in and out, consciousness punching through the darkness. The pain wouldn't let go—maybe it was my stomach... or my back.

What the fuck is happening?

Time dragged on—seconds, minutes, hours all blurred together in hazy confusion and agony. Then sounds started filtering in. Everything was loud. Hospital monitors hammered in my ears and mingled with the murmur of distant voices. I tried to move. A pathetic attempt to get up led nowhere; my body wouldn’t cooperate.

“Nate, he’s twitching his fingers!” That was Mum's voice cracking with tears.

I’m right here! Stop crying.

Mum's sobs drowned out my mental shouts. All I managed was a raspy gurgle that scraped like sandpaper against my throat.

“Son, can you hear me?” Dad's voice now.

Yeah, but hells if I can get words out.

“I think the Sloane is wearing off,” Dad said.

Sloane. Why did I need a sedative again?

“He’s had about a vat of Venenum. Do you think it’s worked that quickly?” Mum whispered.

“Venenum isn’t going to fix that. They’ve just stopped the bleeding long enough to get him in for surgery. Connor needs to hurry up,” Dad's voice had that edge of panic that he usually hid pretty damn well.

Mum and Dad kept talking about some critical surgery I guess I needed and it piled on more layers of frustration and anger inside me.

“Should I call Paul? He’ll want to see Aaron,” Mum said at some point.

Is Aaron okay? But nothing came out when I tried to ask; my lips might as well have been stitched shut.

"No, wait 'til that asshole-"

"Asshole or not, he's Paul's kid," Mum cut in.

Dad sighed roughly, “Wait until Aaron’s sorted. I don’t trust those people in my house without Paul there to keep an eye.”

“Have they said anything understandable yet?” Mum asked.

“They just kept saying Alayna and showing Paul their GPS.”

Alayna! For fuck sake, where is she?

“She must have sent those Lambentians to us. They didn’t seem violent, just desperate kids who wanted to go home-” Mum said.

“They’re grown ass adults, Jules. Either way, we aren’t getting involved until we know more,” Dad grumbled dismissively, cutting her off. “Alayna would not have sent them to us unless Ben had okayed it.” I felt his grip on my leg. “Wake up and explain to us what in the hells you’ve done now!”

My stomach lurched with a sickening mix of anger and disgust.

Why are you annoyed at me now? Why is it always my fucking fault? Why the hell was I getting blamed for Alayna's dumbass choices? I almost fucking killed him too–

Shit.

I told Alex to blow up the library.

The memory of what happened right before I blacked out hit me like another bomb blast—Alayna sending everyone to get me to safety while she went off with Louise.

How could she be so stupid?

Mom was bawling, her sobs cutting through the drone of hospital machines. “I practically said I wanted him dead. How could I do that… After…”

She didn’t say Jax’s name. They never said Jax’s name.

“Yeah well he earned it,” Dad snapped nastily before releasing a heavy sigh. “You can apologise when he wakes up. He knows you didn’t mean it.”

No, I fucking didn’t.

“Wakes up! Have you seen the state of him?” Her screech cut sharper than a scalpel.

“He’s tough, Julie,” Dad said quietly.

I better be.

I was barely conscious when shit hit the fan minutes later. Hours later. Days later. Who knew.

Faint yelling in the background was trying to get through the fog in my head. The whole atmosphere changed—suddenly everyone sounded more urgent and panicked.

“They’ve found her,” Lucas’s voice shouted over the din. Grief. That sound was pure grief.

I hadn’t realised that Mum was holding my hand until she let go. The hospital had been loud before but the new addition to the wing had made the noise deafening. The only thing I could really hear over everyone's panicked shouts was a shriek that caught my full attention.

“Alayna!” Mum’s scream tore into me.

All at once everything came into sharp, agonising focus. My eyes shot open. For a second, I forgot I was hurt. I lurched forward in an attempt to get up. Agony shot down my legs like molten lead spilling into my veins sending me tumbling to the floor. A load drips and wires clattered down with me. Immediately, blood started soaking the hospital gown I’d been forced into. My head banged as the room spun wildly in front of me. Dad's arms found me and I clutched them as he helped me back to the bed.

“Where is she?” I wheezed. He didn't answer; his narrow eyes fixed somewhere over me. “Dad! Where is Aly?”

His throat moved as he swallowed hard before whispering, “She has been attacked by Umbrith. She’s in a bad way.”

Tears started streaming down his face and a blanket of black ice formed in my gut.

Jamesons don’t cry.

Fighting against the vertigo that threatened to make me black out, I squinted through the window into the main ward. There were too many people blocking the view for me to make sense of anything until they shifted enough for a glimpse of horror: blood-drenched bandages wrapping the still figure being transferred onto a gurney. I couldn’t see her face but I didn’t need to. She was transferred onto a hospital bed and quickly rushed into another room.

“How bad is a bad way?” My lips felt numb.

“I think you’ve finally killed her,” he said emotionlessly, eyes too wide.

He didn’t say anything else before he left the room, steps slow like a man walking to the gallows.

I knew he was right. It was on me. I needed to see her, to know she was alive. With a groan, I pushed against the mattress, trying once again to get up. A piercing ache tore through my back as blood soaked the white sheets and I flopped back with a grunt. Rage convulsed through me, dying to escape, and I almost lashed out at the nearest monitor.

Connor burst through the door they’d whisked Alayna through, and my fury clawed its way to the surface. "Connor! Get over here!" My voice tore from me. The sharp twinge of my injuries ricocheted inside me like Louise’s lightning.

He skidded to a stop, his face draining of colour at either my tone or the fact I looked half dead. "We have to get you sorted out. Just hang on a sec."

“No! Tell me what the fuck is going on!” I screamed after him, rending pain rippling through my entire body.

Connor threw a quick glance over his shoulder, eyes wide. He held up two fingers, signalling he'd return shortly before darting away. Grimacing, I reached for some Venenum on the stand beside me, pouring it where I could see holes in my body; there was the real problem that I could bleed to death before Connor came back. As if hospitals weren't already stretched thin since the war began—staff sprinting on fumes and supplies haemorrhaging like I was.

I certainly wasn’t getting into surgery before Alayna. I’d have killed anyone who tried to make me anyway. If she died because I took her place under the surgeon's knife... No, that blood wouldn't wash off.

After the longest two minutes of my life, Connor didn’t come back. Instead, he sent Alex. His black hair looked like someone had had a good go at pulling it out. His blood-smeared pale face was heavy, making him look older than my age. Not good.

“If someone doesn’t tell me what the fuck is going on, I swear-”

He cut me off, “After getting you to the hospital, me and Leesa went back for Alayna and Louise. We heard screams and hauled ass to get to them. Called Lucas to come help. When we got there, Louise's head was gone. Alayna was on the ground with three Umbrith standing over her. We barely fought them off. Lucky one was already hurt. But Leesa got banged up pretty bad..."

Louise was dead. Another one down. Decapitated. A vice tightened around my temples as rage seethed in my veins at the thought.

“Is Leesa alive?” The words left me clipped and sharp.

He nodded and an insignificant amount of relief ebbed through me like dropping a pebble in an ocean.

I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. "Alayna? Will she live?”

Alex just looked at me, brown eyes wide, not saying anything.

“What were her injuries when you found her?” Giving him a question with no room for interpretation was a better idea.

He hesitated, “Ben, you’ve had a shitter of a day-”

“Tell me,” I growled through clenched teeth; each word felt like dragging nails over raw skin.

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He choked, “Bad bruising on her face and neck. Skull caved in the back, maybe brain damage. Left arm sliced to the bone. Collapsed lung. They started eating her, part of her abdomen is gone...” His whisper faded out.

“Is she already dead?” I choked out.

“Well… When we found her w-we got no pulse. It isn’t looking good. There was a lot of blood… we did what we could at the scene. Managed to get a heartbeat back. But yeah, I think she might already…” Alex didn’t finish his sentence.

Guts twisted into knots, an iron tang clung to the back of my throat. As the wave of revulsion and anger crashed over me, my heart drummed an erratic percussion against my ribcage. Each pulse seemed to drain a little more colour from my vision, the world losing its saturation to grayscale.

“My fault,” the words slipped out involuntarily.

“You weren’t particularly in the right state to be leading the troops,” he said with a hint of pity that grated rather than comforted.

My stomach churned at the attempt to shove away the image Alex had carved into my head, but it clawed its way back with sickening clarity. I saw Alayna there, broken, the life bleeding out of her the same way it had bled out of Hayley. I let Hayley leave that night. I let Hayley die. Just as I let Alayna leave today. Now I’d killed my own sister. Because I needed help first. Just like when Jax died. It didn’t matter that I was only ten. My parents had three sick kids and they chose to get me treated first. If they’d chosen Jax, we might’ve all been alive now.

You don’t have time to fall to bits right now, you stupid bastard.

Right.

“Alex, give me your phone and a minute alone.”

He compiled without a word. The second his footsteps faded, I fumbled with the device, fingers shaking as I punched in Aaron's number. He picked up before the first ring died.

“What’s going on?” Aaron snapped uncharacteristically.

“It’s me,” I muttered.

He let out a breath, almost a laugh. "Mate, I'm literally one floor below you getting my face sewn back together. You could've just come by and said hi."

Words jammed in my throat like shards of glass, not wanting to tell him and ruin his bright mood. But silence wasn't an option; he deserved the truth. After Hayley died he lost his spark for months. I lost mine for good. And I was about to break him all over again.

He kept talking, all upbeat. "I heard you blew yourself up and need surgery. Surprised you’re awake and kicking-”

“Alayna has been attacked by Umbrith. I think she’s already dead,” I blurted out.

The words were similar to the ones he had spoken to me on the worst day of my life. But this time it felt different. More numb. Like it was going to happen no matter what. Everything I cared about got taken away.

I was cursed.

Neither of us cried this time; there was no screaming. No confusion. No shock. Our pain had been scabbed over by too much shit too many times.

Aaron sucked in air, “This isn’t happening again… Sit tight. I’ll come and see you.” He hung up.

The silence was deafening, enough to make me lose my damn mind.

What the fuck was I going to do?

Alayna. That shy little girl who asked me to teach her guitar, not Dad, 'cause apparently he was too good and she was scared to mess up in front of him. Alayna, who made me teach her to drive even though she was shit at it. Alayna, who never backed off no matter how pissed I was. Alayna, who grew up to not even know the meaning of the word shy. Alayna, who was going to die. Alayna, who might already be dead. Alayna, who on her very last day of life thought I’d kill her.

I had to move.

Looking around the desolate room, I realised my head was spinning when I couldn’t concentrate on anything without seeing two of it. I was still pulsing blood but I couldn’t figure out where from. In one last “fuck you” to the insanity creeping up on me, I shoved my elbows back, using every ounce of strength I had to push myself up.

Then I blacked out.

It was days later before I got back any semblance of who the fuck I was. Everything in between was a blurry haze, like a half-remembered dream. I remembered Mum and Dad bickering enough to make me want to throw something at them but I was too frustratingly weak to do anything. I remember female voices speaking to me. Leesa, maybe? And some cute nurse with mousey blonde hair, telling me to rest. Telling me I'd make it. I'd seen her blurry face before. After Josh died. Some trauma response shit that showed up when I was out cold to hold me together. Brains were weird.

“You will be alright, I promise,” she’d said.

I’d told myself that a lot over the years. It was never true. But I told myself that a lot.

Every time I tried to ask about Alayna my words just came out as an unintelligible mumble. I wound myself up and up so much that when I finally opened my eyes I just started shouting. Aaron was the only one in the room and he grinned broadly at my outburst. Immediately I felt calm. Aaron always brought calm.

Wait. He was smiling.

“Alayna’s alive?” I choked.

“Barely. But yeah,” he said.

My head flopped back as breath pushed out through my lips. “Is Leesa okay?”

“If your bad driving didn’t take her down, nothing will. She’s barely been out your room since your op.”

Leesa could be soft as a cloud when she wanted to be. That meant they were both safe. Alayna would get better. Nothing killed her.

“Charlotte is up too,” Aaron continued.

“Good,” I breathed, my body sagging into the bed. “How the hells did Alayna manage to survive? I thought she was already dead.”

“I said she was barely alive. Don’t get your hopes up. Her heart keeps stopping and she’s been unresponsive since they brought her in. But there’s no damage to her brain. That’s a relief. Although brain damage might not make much difference to a Jameson.”

I somehow managed to laugh. It hurt.

Glancing round the sterile room, I noticed two men on the door.

“What’s that about?” I asked, nodding to them.

Aaron stiffened, “We think someone broke into your room so now you’ve got guards.”

I raised an eyebrow, “How’d you know?”

“Your charts kept going missing for hours at a time,” he explained. “It’s not all bad though. The hospital keeps finding bags of Venenum and Sloan so maybe whoever has been in here was trying to help you. Either way, we didn’t want to take the risk.”

He smiled but it wasn’t his usual optimistic beam. It was the look he gave me before he told me something I didn’t want to hear.

“Spit it out,” I ordered.

He took a deep breath, pulling the white wire we’d strapped to Alayna from behind his chair. That was the only way she’d convinced me to let her go into that stupid library: so we knew exactly when to get her out. It was stained red with her blood and my insides clenched painfully.

“Nicked this from your dad,” he said.

I grimaced, "He'll probably punch you for that."

Dad had almost as much contempt for Aaron as he did for me.

“I’m not sure he knows it’s missing yet,” Aaron admitted. “There’s something really bad on it. I heard your parents saying they weren’t going to tell you about it so I listened.”

If it was something my parents didn’t want me to hear, it was because Alayna had done something thick and they didn’t want me booting off about it. She had not been left to her own devices for long. We had listened to her movements the whole time she was away from us. What the hells could she have done in the brief time she was left alone before losing Louise and getting attacked by Umbrith?

I sighed, “Play it.”

“It’s hard to listen to-”

“Just play it,” I snapped.

“Ben, it’s Marco Hawes killing her and Louise.”

Every muscle in my body clenched, nails digging into my palms. I could feel the rage building as I struggled to contain it. Aaron played the recording before I could explode.

The Umbrith's hissing drowned out everything at first apart from Alayna screaming Louise’s name in a sound so raw it clawed painfully through my body. Then came my little sister’s perfectly timed antagonising. I wanted to call her an idiot, but I'd be a hypocrite—I would've done the same damn thing.

The whole thing lasted about five minutes. Five minutes of listening to Marco Hawes torture Alayna. Telling the Umbrith what to do. He had control over them. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I wasn't. The woman who hired us to kill Anthony had told us he controlled the monsters. We thought she was mental at first. Took her cash and weapons and never saw her again. But when the Umbrith started following me and Aly around like vicious, untamed dogs, the woman’s crazy theory started to make sense. And now we had proof Marco could command them. Meaning Anthony could too. And Tiv.

Alayna's screams on the recording made me flinch every time, and I swore I'd make Marco scream like that someday. But the gasping was worse than the screaming. She sounded so weak, so pathetic. Every ragged gasp she wetly inhaled felt like a red-hot knife stabbing into my chest. And there was a lot of gasping. With the last bit of strength she had, she shrieked for Tiv. I barked a psychotic, humourless laugh as she did it. Even at the bitter end. Even when his brother had just left her for dead. She still thought Tiv Hawes was her fucking saviour. She was the stupidest person I had ever known.

But deep down, I knew that wasn't true. She wasn't an idiot. She was sick. Depressed. Delusional. And Tiv took advantage of that. I should've put a bullet in his skull the first time I saw Alayna in his car. I knew he was a liar from the second she said he knew Sarah and Lucy Hall. Sarah was best friends with Hayley and Charlotte. She helped start our little Umbrith extermination club. We thought her dating Marco to get dirt on Anthony was a solid plan. Sarah and Lucy were dead less than a day after meeting the Hawes brothers. Marco probably did to them what he did to Alayna. The thought made me sick; a sour twitch in my stomach causing a bitter taste to rise to my throat. That whole family was a plague. I should’ve told Alayna the truth from the start—should have opened my stupid mouth and spoke about Sarah. Maybe then she would’ve stayed away from them.

Alayna’s recorded gasps ebbed away, leaving me and Aaron stewing in a dread-soaked quiet. Nothing but Umbrith hissing to fill the silence like steam pissing out a kettle. Then shouting from the recording cut through the silence.

“I didn’t know there was more,” Aaron muttered.

We listened close, at first unable to make out who it was. But the louder the posh inflection in tone became, the clearer it was. Tiv tried to go back for her.

“I’m not leaving her there,” he had bellowed beyond the hissing.

Gunfire could be heard. He was the one who had injured the Umbrith before Alex arrived. I shot Aaron a glance, my eyes wide with a mix of disbelief and loathing.

"Did he actually try to play hero?" I spat the words out more as an accusation than anything else.

Aaron just met my gaze with a stiff shrug, his hazel eyes glassy. Either way, Tiv’s shouts finally stopped. The coward gave up. He left her there. Dying.

We sat there forcing shallow breaths. My fingers itched, twitching with the need to rip something apart—anything to annihilate the tight fury building in my veins.

After what felt like hours but must've been a minute, the rustle of movement, screeching of Umbrith being destroyed and panicked commands replaced the quiet. Alex was freaking out, shouting at Lucas to give Alayna CPR while he handled Venenum.

“Shit, is this thing still on?” was the last thing that could be heard before a click.

That was it.

The rage sitting heavily on my chest made it hard to breathe. I kept gasping involuntarily as my chest spasmed.

Finally, the anger simmering in my chest cooled enough for me to speak. “Where are the Hawes brothers now?”

“Sent Ghost after them. A car collected them and they snuck into Garth under cover of night and left on a ship. They’re gone.”

“Ghost should have ended them,” I muttered bitterly.

“I’m sure if there’d been an opening she would have…”

“Where the hells has she been anyway? She was gone for a full day.”

“She was holed up in that library with them apparently,” Aaron said. “She overheard Marco saying there’s CCTV footage of us in Thruck on the morning Mayrina died—Marco and Anthony know we did it. He told Tiv who seemed apprehensive to believe him. Tiv seems like a fucking idiot. The whole lot of them do. They followed pointless orders to come to Vakoso. Ghost confirmed nobody but Marco seemed to know they were in Harroworth. Alayna was right.”

I took in all he said, not bothering to ask how in the hells Ghost had managed to get in the library without detection—I was well past asking questions about her methods.

“How are we going to kill them if they’re in Lambent?”

Aaron's features were stone, but his voice betrayed a scrap of humour. “Find a way to bring them back or sneak on a ship over there. Second option definitely gets us killed in the process though and I don’t fancy dying away from home.”

Tiv's desperate pleas echoed in my head on repeat. "Tiv might come back for Alayna."

“Maybe. But it’s Marco we want.” He paused for a second before the room seemed to grow colder, an uncharacteristic scowl on his now marred face, “Wouldn’t mind killing Tiv though.”

Yup. I could use that hatred every day. “Bait. Use one to get the other.”

Aaron’s brow creased, “What if Tiv doesn’t come back?”

I scoffed, scratching at the irritating stubble on my chin, “You heard that hero complex bullshit he was spewing. Once he finds out she's alive, he'll come running. Naive prick has no idea what he walked into with us.”

“You don’t seriously think he actually gives a shit about her? He was using her.” Aaron’s jaw worked, the muscle jumping under his skin.

“I haven’t got a fucking clue. He tried to cut her open yesterday and today he was saying he’d eat a magazine of bullets for her in the library.” Trust Alayna to get herself involved in this crap. “You said he didn’t realise he was here. Maybe seeing Aly changed-”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Aaron cut me off, his composure cracking. “He was trying to manipulate her and it worked because she’s fucking broken.”

I shut up then. No point poking at Aaron’s raw nerves when they were still freshly exposed. But he was right. Deep down where anger and reason churned together; I knew Tiv’s actions or lack of them didn’t change the play. Him and his psychotic brothers rolled up here, planning to leave nothing but dead bodies behind. They'd get what was coming to them for that. With Aaron's help, I'd track down Tiv, Marco, and Anthony. So many were dead because of them. They’d pay for it with the drip of their blood.

For Hayley… and now for Alayna.

The thought sent sparks skittering along my nerves. Alayna might have been barely hanging on or she might just slipped away entirely to wherever the hells we went after this shit show of a life.

But in truth, it didn’t matter if Alayna lived or died. I was going to kill every single member of the Hawes family.