I curl up like a child in need of a mother’s embrace as I stare at the remains of my home where my brother would have been when this happened. My teary face grips the ground beneath me, and the grit clings to me as it joins me in the sorrowful moment.
I feel too sick to fight it, and I sit up quickly to expel all the contents of my stomach as the vicious waves of pain strike without mercy. It won’t stop. I cough out as more rises to my throat in the form of bile.
“Aria!” Jase screams again, but I still ignore him.
He’s the last fucking person I want to see right now.
“Rex,” I whimper to myself, my tears still pouring freely from my eyes as I lie back down beside my pile of disgustingness.
Please give me my savage. I can’t face this by myself. I need that detachment right now.
The nameless entity I’m praying to doesn’t answer my plea. No one offers me solace. No one can. My brother, my cousin… they’re gone.
“Aria,” Jase’s voice says in relief as his cool hands slide around my curled up body.
“Don’t touch me!” I scream, my tears falling all the harder, but I don’t have the energy to fight him as he ignores my demand and pulls me to his chest.
“I’ve got you, baby,” he murmurs while kissing my forehead.
Finally, my absent fight finds me, and I jerk free from his embrace while staggering around on the ground. I double over, hands on my knees, and I vomit once more as the pain hits me in an excruciating takeover.
“Go the fuck away,” I gurgle out while dropping back to the ground.
“Baby, your emotions are heightened,” he whispers. “You can’t handle something like this alone.”
I stand up, something inside me snapping, as my eyes meet his with the burning glow of sheer hatred.
“I’ll kill you if you fucking call me baby one more time.”
He takes a step back, his eyes gauging mine, but I’m not savage. I’m just done. I’m tired of it all. It hurts too much to face, so I start fighting to shut it all down.
“Aria, please talk to me,” he cautiously pleads.
“I told you to leave me alone. Don’t act like you give a damn now. I hate you!”
He winces as tears stain his eyes, and then he shakes his head.
“You don’t hate me, Aria, you just don’t know how to deal with this. Just let me help-”
“Aria!” a familiar voice yells out, and my tears reemerge as my stomach slips into my throat.
“Rex!” I cry out, my voice crackling, my grief apparently leaving me completely delusional to believe he could have survived this.
Then I feel the warm arms around me before I see his face. I sob into his chest, praying I'm not just crazy, as he holds me to him, his voice cooing to calm me down.
“You’re alive,” Jase gasps. “I thought-”
“I know. I should be, but someone got some of us out before the attack. We were paralyzed, completely motionless and trapped inside our own bodies. I felt arms pulling me out, and then I passed out from the pressure on my chest. When I woke up, there were at least a hundred of us left out in the middle of the fields outside the compound. It took a while for the paralysis to wear off.”
I just sob that much harder, and my brother holds me all the tighter while kissing my hair.
“I came back as soon as I could because I knew it would damn near kill Aria if she reached this before she knew I was alive.”
“Who got you out?” Jase asks, shock still lingering in his tone.
“I don’t know. My eyes were forced shut by unseen hands, and the paralysis made it impossible for me to reopen them until it wore off. I could hear the collapse, feel the vibrations of the demolition, smell the smoke and death toll, and taste the fire, but I couldn’t move or help in anyway. I was praying my savage would be provoked, but I don’t know if even that would have been enough.”
Jase sighs out, and I can hear him ruffling a hand through his hair. My heart is still breaking for so many reasons, but I finally manage the courage to ask the question I’ve been dreading.
