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CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

~Arcay~

DEEP, SWIRLING BLACKNESS surrounded me, laced through with spots of light that danced on the edge of my focus. I concentrated on them and they slipped away from me like slick fish.

Entirely alone, I felt nothing except the deep well of emptiness inside me, like a cavern so wide everything would fall into it until it consumed the entire universe.

There was no warmth. No clash of vital emotion. No shimmering life within me.

Which could only mean one thing.

I was dead.

I had succeeded in my mission to free Clay from me. It was the only thing I could hold on to. Clay was free.

All other thoughts drifted away into a numb sea of darkness.

I was dead. But this afterlife was not what it should be. Just a churning darkness that contained nothing and consumed everything. Perhaps I was not worthy to pass through.

I drifted for untold time, cold and alone, until something caught my attention. Through the silence, the faintest murmur of a sound. I focused on it, and it resolved into a faint tick tick tick.

Odd.

I concentrated and tried to move towards it, following the sound as it faded and rose. The darkness was thick and heavy, lying on me like a sludge, weighing me down. I struggled until the noise became clear.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

All at once, the insipid points of light swam back from their hiding places and gathered in flitting shoals. They began to come together as the noise grew in strength, until they focused into something resembling a blurred image.

I kept pushing towards it, wading through the impossible heaviness.

The image refined itself and…

My eyelids were heavy. I forced them open and squinted into blinding light. Where was I? Was this the afterlife?

I tried to move. My limbs were dead weights. Discomfort registered, a deep ache that grew rapidly into intense pain.

I rolled my eyes to the side, trying to make anything out in the light that felt like needles to my eyes. A blurred expanse of gray.

I rolled my eyes in the other direction.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

More discomfort bled in. My scar hurt. My everything hurt.

It seemed strange that I should feel pain in death, wasn’t that supposed to stay behind with my body? It did not seem fair to my fragmented mind.

Sharp stabbing pain, this time from my chest, where the deep empty cavern tore into me. My breath stuttered. I felt like something vital had been ripped from me, leaving me empty. My soul ached at the loss and I groaned.

“I was wondering how long you would be out for.”

A voice. It barely registered through the pain. Bewildered, and with great effort, I turned my head towards it.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Something was wrong. My eyes finally focused, and my heart froze.

Ulgar.

He sat on a raised platform, towering over me, my head at his feet. He was tapping something on the platform, making a steady ticking noise.

Panic flooded through me. What was happening? I was dead, wasn’t I?

But no, the bond was gone, but I was somehow still alive. Pain rippled through me, and my breath sawed in and out of my lungs. This was not right. How…?

Ulgar watched me with interest, with his chin resting in one hand and his yellow eyes hooded.

I snarled, the deep, ragged noise vibrating through my chest. Trying to speak dissolved me into a storm of choking coughs that wracked my already aching body, stinging my throat. When I did managed, my voice was a ruined mess.

“What—what are you doing?” I rasped. “Why haven’t you killed me?”

Ulgar raised his brow, amused, and leaned down towards me. “Oh, you wanted to die? Too bad.” He sat upright again, and his amusement faded. “You took away the humans, so now I will have to make do with you instead.”

What was he talking about? None of this made sense. I tried to move, to roll over, get on my knees, anything. But my body was weak and the clawing emptiness inside me made each thought a struggle. I groaned and lay still, keeping my eyes turned away as he watched, studying me with spiteful interest.

“How does it feel?” He said. “Is it gone?”

My eyes blew wide and shot up to him. My soul bond with Clay. The empty ragged hole where he used to be. How did he know it was gone? The horror already twisting in my gut grew. And the thoughts I had struggled to gather suddenly swamped and suffocated me, choking me with dread. If I was still alive, and the bond was gone, that could only mean…

No .

Had he somehow managed to get to Clay? Was Clay the one who had died, taking the bond with him?

“You have not—you did not—” I whispered, unable to say it.

Ulgar slid from his seat and crouched down over me. He held his hand out, still holding the thing he’d been tapping against the bench, revealing it to be a syringe. My eyes focused on it, even as they blurred.

“This is something that I have been experimenting with.”

Why was he talking about a syringe when the universe was collapsing around us? I groaned at the impossible pain and tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled choke. He ignored me, his eyes gleaming.

“I have made a discovery that will free our people. It will change us as a species forever.”

No. Clay. My Clay. A high, keening noise escaped through the fist of my throat. My omega.

A sharp slap stung my cheek, knocking my head towards Ulgar and making my ears ring.

“Are you listening to me? Pay attention, I hold history in my hands.”

I moved my eyes back to Ulgar.

“What have you done?”

He smiled. “I have found the answer to our problem.” He tilted the syringe in his hand, tipping the serum inside. My eyes focused on it properly this time. It glowed with a faint green sheen. “A chemical compound that can create soul bonds in any class; omega, beta, even alpha.”

Through my grief his words barely made sense, but something stirred inside me.

“And remove them too.” A flame of hope sparked to life, growing stronger as he kept talking, even as a new horror dawned on me. “Yours is the first natural bond I have tested it on, and it seems to have worked. Maybe I did not need the humans after all, although I would have liked to perfect it. As it is, the only bond it can create is one-sided. A failing, I first thought, but it is not entirely a bad thing.” Ulgar gestured past me. For the first time, I noticed an alpha guard standing at the edge of the room. His eyes were glued to me, his face creased in discomfort, as though he wished to help me but was unable to. “They are bonded to me. They can feel me, but I can not feel them. It seems to give me some control over them.”

“You have used it on yourself?” I said, my mind reeling.

“Of course. And it allows me to have more than one. I currently have several alphas bound to me.”

Suddenly Tarro made sense. His discomfort when he had disobeyed me. Ulgar had been preventing him from following my orders. It must cause them pain to try to resist him.

“This is wrong,” I rasped.

“No, what is wrong is that an Aldar like you can have what we all crave, and waste it. What is wrong is that weak-minded Aldar like you can be in charge.” He spat onto the floor. “No, I am helping our people, Arcay. You would be able to see that if you were not so clouded with emotion.”

“Me? You have been insane with jealousy ever since I found Clay.”

He slammed his hand down on the floor next to my head, his face suddenly constricted into a mask of rage.

“I am not jealous. I am rightfully angry that the omega did not come to me when you failed to do your part.” he roared.

He stood, suddenly calm again. He was unhinged.

“I was going to kill you when the time came, but since you took the humans away from me, I will put you to more beneficial use.”

I shuddered. My bond with Clay had only been in place for a short time, but already it was vitally ingrained in me. Without it, I had nothing to hold on to, nothing to center myself on. I was adrift, and lost, and entirely alone. My shoulders shook as I screwed my eyes shut tight.

Breaking the bond had been my intention, for Clay’s sake, but I did not intend to be alive to experience it. It was so much worse than I had predicted. Was Clay feeling it just as much, wherever he was? I hoped not. He was human, perhaps it would not affect him.

“It is annoying that you sent the omega away, I was going to take him. It is a shame I was too late. He smelled so very sweet. But I will make the most of the situation presented to me.” He crouched next to me again. “You will step down, and I will take your place as Second.”

“No,” I said.

“You will have no choice but to obey once you are bound to me. And then I will find more subjects and finish my work.”

My stomach tightened. “Jursin will never allow it.”

“Jursin will never know, and I will have the support of Arcay, the former Second and Jursin’s favorite pet.”

He smiled and it was a cold, vicious thing.

I did not have the energy to fight back anymore. I was empty and alone. My head flopped to the side and I closed my eyes. Clay was safe.

His hand closed around my jaw and tilted it back up again so that his eyes could peer into mine. An icy shiver ran up my spine at the manic hunger in them.

“It would be foolish of me not to enjoy this moment.”