Page 4 of Celestial Alphas (Nexus #2)

Chapter

Three

“ H ey, dad.”

“Hey there, Tulip.” He sits down next to me on the bench, and I smile at him. It’s hard not to smile at my father, even when I’m a chaotic mess inside. He has a kind face, always has done, but he never fails to make me smile even on my worst day. My mum always says I’m a daddy’s girl like it’s an insult, but knowing my dad, it’s a compliment. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for me, and every day, he proves it. Even with that nickname he knows I’m not too fond of. I’m nothing like an innocent flower. They don’t compare monsters like me with pretty flowers.

He sits down next to me on the cliff, his long brown jacket hanging off his big shoulders. His brown hair is messy tonight, and he looks so tired. His blue eyes seem almost faded. Dad rubs his beard before frowning at me and turning to look at London at night, with a million stars high in the sky, hidden from human sight with the bright lights of their cities. I can see them, and the longer I stare, the deeper a shiver travels down my spine until I can’t watch anymore. The stars always feel like they are watching me right back. Waiting. Judging. “How are you feeling? You didn’t eat much of your dinner.”

Feeling? I don’t think I ever know how I’m feeling, because I try hard not to feel anything at all. Surely, it’s easier not to feel the shattering heartbreak in my chest, to feel the lingering pull back to my mates and the need to beg my Nexus to stop feeling all this with me. It’s too much and I’m drowning with it. It’s been two months since I rejected them and ran with my parents. Two months of running and sleeping on the floor in dingy hotel rooms. Two weeks spent in a camper van when the heating didn’t work, and my fingertips were blue when I woke up. This is it; this is my endless life. It will never stop. I love my parents for being there with me, for doing this for me, but… “Dad, what if this is all a mistake? I know mum said that this is the only way, that it had to be this way, but what if, what if I just went and told them about everything? They might understand and?—”

“They won’t,” he firmly interrupts and picks up my hand. I glance at the black tulip marking on his pale hand. “It takes a special person to love what you are. I hate how your mother calls you a monster. That Nexus inside you does not make you a monster, Gwenieve.” He pauses. “You’re different and different is not accepted in our world. Never has been, never will be. They would kill you for being different, and I can’t have that happen. I promised the moment I knew about your existence that I’d spend my entire life fighting to protect you, to make sure you had a free life because this has never been your fault. Your mates, no matter how strong they are, if they’re strong at all, they will try to kill you because they are Nexus. The Nexus…I hate them all, and you should, too.”

My shoulders drop. “You’ve never told me why you hate them, though.”

He sighs. “They…” He pauses. “One day I will tell you everything with your mum, and it will make sense. You’ll hate them too. Until then, you need to learn to control it.” I feel like my Nexus is watching him from one eye with full attention now. I always get the feeling she doesn’t like my parents as much as I do. She didn’t have the same bond to them, perhaps. It scares me that one day I’ll wake up, and she will have killed them. I beg her daily not to kill them. Maybe she just hates them because they took us away and made me reject what she feels is hers. “Is she watching me now?”

I nod. “Always through my one eye. She rarely sleeps at the moment.”

He grips my chin and looks into my one eye. “I don’t know what kind of being you are that chose my daughter and ripped her entire life apart just to exist. But you and her are one and the same now. Born together, live forever together, and you have to protect her, okay? We will get her ready for all battles, but you, Nexus, need to be on her side.” My Nexus doesn’t respond, only stills and watches him like prey. Sweat trickles down my neck as I feel her wanting to push to the surface to take over. He smiles as he lets go. I know he’s looking at me now, and my Nexus stops. She slithers away into my mind, into the deep parts that feel like an endless pool where it hides, ready to snap out whenever needed. “Your mother, she thinks we need to begin training.”

I’m confused. “What kind of training? You already trained me to fight.”

“Training for your Nexus. We know you can’t die. How far does that go?” he wonders, but I get the feeling he doesn’t want to know. This is all my mother’s doing.

“What do you mean?” I whisper. I’ve only died once so far, the very first time my Nexus came out, and I don’t like to think about that memory. Death, it was horrible. It was more horrible coming back, too.

He can’t look at me. “Maybe training your Nexus by dying would give you more control. It’s your mother’s theory, and she is usually right. It’s a Vian method we are going to use.”

A Vian method? Something our enemies do? “That doesn’t make sense. Can Vian die and come back like me, then?”

“No, they can’t,” he answers, linking his hands in his lap. “But they edge their stronger warriors close to death and then bring them back as part of the ceremony to increase their natural powers. They do it when they’re young, and it makes them stronger.”

Sickness rises in my throat. The Vian are vile. Who would do that to their child? “How would mum know so much about Vian culture?”

He leans over and kisses the side of my forehead. “I’ll tell you about that one day, not yet. You need to be brave for me now, and remember, we love you. We don’t want to do this. When you know, I only ask that you don’t hate me.”

“Why would I ever hate you?” I rest my head on his shoulder, wondering how bad this training is going to be. Mum wouldn’t really hurt me or kill me over and over. They love me, and you don’t hurt those you love, so they must have another idea.

He is silent for a long time as we watch the city filled with humans. Humans who don’t have to run from their people. “One day, I think you’ll hate us both, and I hope I’m alive to tell you I love you and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, my beautiful daughter.”

The memory, the last good one with my dad, disappears like smoke as I wake up on the cold stone floor. I don’t know how many hours have passed, how long I was unconscious for, or whether it’s just been minutes, but there is so much pain from that damn, fucking rune. I’m used to pain. It’s an old friend of mine, but this is cruel. I can’t breathe, I can’t think through it. I have no one to imagine saving me. My mates put me in here, and there is literally no one else left who gives a damn about me. The pain of that thought hurts just as bad as the fucking rune.

My body’s covered with sweat, and I can taste blood in my mouth where I’ve bitten my tongue from screaming. The rune sends out waves of pain every three hundred seconds, and right now, it’s fading for a moment. I can’t even get up off the cold floor. I’m shaking as the door opens. I don’t even register who’s there, who picks me up. Not until a hand wraps around the rune, and then the pain stops. It just disappears.

“Fucking bastard,” a familiar voice mutters near my ear as I’m carefully placed on a bed. “Tell me you’re okay, Gwenieve? Tell me you hate me and you want me fucking dead. Anything. Try to kill me. I won’t even fucking stop you this time…come on…”

Who is that? My Nexus is silent, too beaten from the rune to even come out, and I don’t care anymore. They can kill me. Or try too. At least the death darkness I go to for a bit will be silent and pain free. The room is spinning as I crack my eyes open, tasting my tears in my mouth as I see my rescuer and wish I hadn’t. Severi. How is he not dead?

With the little strength I have left in my body, I crawl backwards across the bed. My back hits the cold stone wall, and I wince. I swear he winces with me. I must be imagining things, because Severi only cares about himself. I put my shaky hand up between us. He steps back, holding his hands up at his side with a smirk that doesn’t meet his eyes. “Not here to hurt you…this time.”

“Oh, so torture’s just a thing in our past, then?” I demand. He looks different. He has always been tanned, but now he looks paler than usual. That chirpy American accent from the south is still the same, but there is none of his usual humour. His dark hair is cut short, almost spiked at the top of his head, and it only makes his handsome face more defined. His dark brown eyes are still the same, but they are creased at the corners, and he is tired. I hate that he’s handsome. It’d be easier if he was ugly. My Nexus perks up at the feeling of one of her mates nearby, only to begin whining like a broken wolf when she realises which one. I don’t blame her.

He grunts and leans against the wall on the other side. “I think you’ve been tortured enough for today, don’t you?”

“How the fuck did you get in here?” I demand. The room is still spinning, and I want to throw up. Hopefully, I aim well and throw up all over his tight black jeans and crisp black shirt.

“The new Supreme Alpha and I are friends.” He winks at me. When I don’t respond, he glances around the room. “This room is pathetic and cold. They say the Vian are monsters, but we give our prisoners more comforts than this.”

“Oh, so you don’t just drain their powers and kill them, then?” I snap. He ignores me and picks up a piece of bread from a tray of cold food by the door before taking a bite. “You’re really eating my food when it’s all I get all day?” I’m being petty, as I’m not eating it, but still…it’s the point.

“Someone might as well. Food shouldn’t be wasted.” He watches me again. Still eating the bread. He doesn’t touch the mystery-flavour brown soup though.

“What do you want, Severi?” I ask, tired. “If it’s to hurt me, bad luck, I’m already hurt and tired.”

“You should be healing by now.” He taps the wall. “Let me guess, the room makes your Nexus weak and stops healing? Tough shit. You’ll have to heal like a human, then. I’ll see what I can do to make him stop with the runes of torture, but you need to promise not to let that pretty little Nexus out here and cause a lot of murderous trouble…for now. You already killed a shit ton of my people, and she should be sated for a bit.”

She is, but I’m not agreeing with him. “You kidnapped me after blowing up a house and killing someone who was a brother to me! Yeah, sorry about wiping out your murderous friends. It’s a shame you escaped!” I grit my teeth. “Do you still have Annie?”

“There she is, the mate who hates me. I like it when you get mad.”

My eyes widen. “You’re deranged!”

“Oh, I know. It’s a winning personality trait of mine.” He smiles and I shake my head. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile, not in all the time we spent together. He was always talking, never shutting up like now, but smiling? It’s weird. This change of behaviour is weird too. “You asked why I’m here. For you. You need training. As for Annie, yes, she is with my people, and no, I won’t just let her out, but if it makes you feel better, I was sworn to keep her alive and unharmed.”

At least she is safe. I can’t help her in here. I wince. “You’re here to train me? You mean more torture? More people I have to kill for sport?” I laugh, but it’s hollow. “Bad luck. I don’t care about anything anymore, and everyone I loved is dead. So good fucking luck with that. As for Annie, if she ends up dead, I’ll let my Nexus destroy everything. I’m so close to doing that already.”

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t say a word. “You never gave up.”

“Well, shit changes,” I mutter, lying down on the bed. I close my eyes and just pretend he isn’t here. I don’t have the strength to fight him, and what is the point anyway?

His footsteps echo across the room, but he doesn’t leave yet. “Get some sleep, Tulip.”

I turn to glare at him. “Only my dad got to call me that. You killed my parents, you tortured me, you made my life hell. For a long time, I hated you just as much as I felt sorry for you. Even then, you could never get my Nexus to come out and see you. Not even when it was a choice between revealing my Nexus or my parents’ life. Why do you think coming here would be any different now? If anything, as I grow older, my Nexus and I are more in tune with each other.” It’s a complete lie. She’s a psychotic bitch, and I have no idea how to reason with her. My Nexus huffs in my mind at that insult but doesn’t disagree. We both know it’s true. “What’s different now, Severi? Something is.”

“Everything’s different. You need to learn how to control that Nexus of yours and actually defend yourself properly. Not the bullshit fighting techniques your father taught you, none of the shit that the other weak mates have taught you at that academy. No, you need to learn to fight with her, the actual true weapon you wield. Then maybe I’ll tell you some truths.” He crosses his arms.

“I don’t want you to come back,” I snarl. I hate him. I’m terrified of him, but I also very much hate being alone in here. I’m scared and I haven’t been truly scared in a long time. “Not unless you’re going to get me out.” His lips tilt up, like the devil he is. Training has to be his code name for torture, and at some point, he will kill me. When he learns the truth and learns that he can torture me again and again, kill me over and over, and I just come back? Well, I’d be an endless weapon for him. Not to mention what he’d do if he learned that I can endlessly kill in my Nexus form. Both as a wolf and as my other shift. “When my Nexus comes out, the first thing she’ll do is kill you, so you might as well focus all your attention on getting me out, and I’ll disappear again. It’s better for everyone if I’m out of Starlight.”

“None of that is true.” He smiles. “I know you’re struggling, and I’m not giving up on you.”

“Everyone does.” I watch him carefully. “And you’re nothing to me.”

“I’m your mate and you haven’t rejected me yet.” He grins. “And you won’t be anytime soon. I was told your first trial has been moved to tomorrow due to your Nexus draining the spells on this shithole you’re staying in. Stay alive, Tulip. Don’t piss them off, and lie through your teeth to survive. You should be used to that last one, at least.”

I don’t know what it is about my Nexus and him, maybe because he’s my mate, but she is terrified of him just as much as I am. Never the others, but him. After what happened…after all the torture, this attitude is just confusing. He finally leaves, the door opening for him and shutting the second he is through. I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling and try to sleep. I’ll need all the rest I can get before the trial tomorrow when I have to face more than my past—my mates who betrayed me too.