Clare

  The sunlight streaming into the room stung my eyes when I opened them. Everything was too bright, too sharp. The steady beep of monitors cut through the cotton in my head.

  Hospital. I was in a hospital.

  My throat felt raw when I tried to swallow. Had I screamed? I remembered...flashes. Dark shapes. Hands. Magic burning through my veins like lightning. Then nothing.

  The memories crashed over me in waves, not just from that night, but from years ago. My stepfather's face. The feeling of struggling to hold on to my consciousness while he did filthy things to me. The gaps in my memory, caused not by forgetfulness but by deliberate erasure.

  Something shifted in the corner of my vision, and when I turned my head, I saw Kai sitting in the corner. His usually composed demeanor was marked by dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were rumpled and untidy, as if he was wearing the previous day’s clothes or something. However, I was very happy to see him because after my discussion with Remy, I’d thought he was dead.

  “What day is today? How long was I unconscious?” I asked, trying to sit up.

  Kai stopped me, using a firm hand on my shoulders to keep me lying on my bed. “You’ve been unconscious for a few days, but thankfully, you’re healing nicely.”

  He brought a cup of water with a straw and directed me to take several sips. When I couldn’t drink anymore, he dropped the cup on the table beside my bed and sat back in his chair. “How do you feel? Are you in a lot of pain? The doctor just left, but if you’re in a lot of pain, I can call him over again.”

  “I’m fine…Are you okay? Manager Remy told me he…killed you.” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry, I’m perfectly all right. I made him believe he killed me. I just…didn’t expect him to go after you. I’m sorry about that. That was an oversight on my part.”

  "The men," I whispered, my voice cracking. "The ones who..." I couldn't finish the sentence.

  Kai leaned forward, his face grave. "You don't need to worry about them anymore."

  "I killed them, didn't I?" The words came out surprisingly steady. "With my magic...Again."

  He nodded slowly but didn’t say anything.

  Something broke inside me. After Zayn’s death, my magic had felt stained, but recently with Sawyer’s help, I’d thought that maybe it could be used for something good. But now, I’d used it to kill three more people again. There was no need for anyone to tell me that this magic was evil. No one should have the ability to touch people’s souls or spiritual bodies and rip them apart for any reason.

  Of course, beneath my grief with my magic, I could feel the relief, the darker feeling of savage satisfaction that I’d successfully escaped and punished those men that almost hurt me. Beneath my remorse, I felt like those men, like my stepfather, deserved what they got.

  "I never wanted to kill anyone," I said, tears sliding down my cheeks. "But I'm not sorry they're dead." The monitors picked up my heartbeat's sudden spike. "Does that make me like them?"

  "No," Kai said firmly, moving to sit on the edge of my bed. "It makes you a survivor."

  I closed my eyes, but the darkness behind my eyelids was worse. "I remember everything," I whispered. The magic inside me stirred restlessly, changed somehow. Darker. Stronger. Mine. "I remember everything now."

  Kai stayed quiet, but his hand found mine, warm and steady. I wished it was enough. I wished it could be enough, but I knew. I could feel that underneath the numbness of just remembering my old memories and what I'd done to those men was a storm waiting to unfold.

  But I was alive. I survived. Maybe that's where my healing had to start.

  Maybe.

  ***

  I woke up screaming from an intense nightmare where there were hands everywhere. In that dream, I was helpless again, drowsy and dizzy with whatever had been pumped into my veins. My kicking movements and fists seemed to be in slow motion, probably feeling like kitten slaps to the person holding me down.

  And I hated it. In response, I could feel that feeling balloon in me again. The one of my magic taking over to eliminate the threat.

  When I woke up to see Kai holding my hand and staring down at me in concern, I burst into tears. He immediately pulled me into a warm embrace, patting my back and whispering little assurances about how I was okay and how I was no longer in danger.

  Soon, I was all cried out. Just staring up at the white ceiling and listening to the bustling sound of people moving around the hospital hallway outside.

  “Clare…can you tell me what happened? We, I mean, the Supernatural Council and I, have done some preliminary findings about how the Beta of the Hawkins pack sent your pictures to some guys to get some dirt on you, caught Remy’s people’s attentions, acquired the videos of you dancing at the Diamond Club from Remy and spread them around the Hawkins pack. We can guess that Remy came to get you from the Hawkins pack and knowing Remy’s abilities and the fact that Josie is not looking for you but has instead reported to the pack that you left of your own accord, we can guess that he might have manipulated her memories.”

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  He paused to grab my hand and squeezed it. “As for the men with you, a postcognition expert—someone who can read past events imprinted on an object—has already uncovered what happened in the car. However, Remy wasn’t in the car with you and he has all but disappeared. We can’t take any action before we know the full story. Can you help us out? Just…you can leave out the…any parts you don’t want to talk about.”

  I was silent for a minute or several minutes before I started telling him everything about how I’d arrived at Josie’s trailer home, only to discover Remy there and how he manipulated Josie’s memories and took me away, but got separated from us before we left.

  After I stopped talking, he squeezed my hand again. “I’m so sorry that you had to go through this, Clare. I…”

  “It’s okay. You already did everything you could to help me. I was the one who didn’t keep my head down and offended the Beta of the Hawkins pack.” I said with a faint smile.

  “Clare…although Josie doesn’t remember you. The Supernatural Council has been getting requests about you leaving the pack without going through the correct procedures from the Hawkins pack Alpha, which means someone in the pack is looking for you. Do you want us to tell them where you are and…” he asked.

  “No,” I whispered. I cleared my throat and said in a firmer tone. “No, it’s fine like this. Just tell them I left and help me complete the procedures to leave the pack. I-I can’t face them like this. Not only did I kill those three men, I also killed Zayn. And something in me is happy that I killed those men. I know that if I had to, I would do it again. And if I meet my stepfather, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him to. I…I don’t want Sawyer…I don’t want them to be associated with a killer. Plus, they don’t even know the things I’ve done with my stepfather. I—“

  Kai sat on my bed. His sharp gray eyes had an intense, focused look as he cupped my face. “You did nothing wrong. What you’re feeling…the hatred for those men and what you had to do to survive? It’s normal. It’s the normal instinct of a strong survivor. You’re not a murderer because you didn’t kill those men intentionally. You killed them to protect yourself and because you had to. As for your stepfather, you didn’t do anything with him. He forced himself on you and hid those memories with his instinctual magic. We did a scan of your brain and there are lesions there from just how much time he spent hiding your memories because you kept remembering them or showing signs of recovering them. You were not an accomplice to his crime. Do you understand?”

  I tried to nod, but tears were rolling down my face again. “But I feel so…so terrible now. If…if I’d known that he had already done all those things. Maybe everything wouldn’t have happened like this. Maybe I could have taken Remy’s offer from the day I got to the club, or maybe I could have just allowed Zayn to get what he wanted. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before and—”

  Kai’s grip on my face tightened for a second before lightening again. “Stop. Your body is not a toy that you can give out to whoever wants it. Just because Hugo did the things he did to you, doesn’t mean that there’s no value in your consent. If you don’t want to be with someone, you don’t have to be with them for any reason. Your no is always no and you deserve to say no, do you understand?”

  I knew what he was trying to say, but it was hard to actually believe them sincerely.

  But I nodded so we could stop talking about this topic. “How is Josie doing? Are there any side effects to what…Remy did to her?”

  “She’s fine. All her scans look pretty good. Remy’s abilities are way more stable than Hugo’s, so there are no issues with her brain or memories. We’re thinking of inviting a specialist to return her memories to the way they were before Remy manipulated them. We’re just worried that doing that would affect her and—“

  “There’s no need…” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Just…leave her memories that way.”

  “She…doesn’t have a very good impression of you right now. Although her memories of you are vague, she thinks you’re a rude, inconsiderate brat who ran away because you don’t want to go to school and wanted to work at a club as a stripper for Remy…”

  “It’s…okay. Just let her believe that. You can just help me complete the procedures to leave the Hawkins pack. I don’t want to go back there, especially since Remy is still missing. What if he attacks again…or, or hurts Josie? It’s better if they think I left on my own. Tell them I’m a lost cause or that I disappeared or something.”

  It was better that way. That way, Sawyer and Elijah could move on with their lives without getting involved in my messed up life and they would never need to find out about my awful past and the filthy things I'd done.

  “All right. But if you ever want to inform the people at Hawkins pack that you’re okay, just let me know. I’ll hold off for now from telling them anything. So you can make this decision later, when you’re not feeling so…uncomfortable. Is that okay?” Kai’s gentleness and understanding were present in his voice.

  His patience all through this conversation kept making me feel weird and guilty, like someone like me didn’t deserve such kindness. But I knew better than to share how I really felt with him.

  “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “It’s okay, thank you.”

  He nodded, rubbing at his stud earring with his forefinger. “I don’t know if you want to hear this now, but your stepfather is on trial here at the Supernatural Council for quite a number of crimes. After finding out that he all but sold you to the Diamond Club while I was undercover at the Diamond Club, I used my connections there to find him and helped the Supernatural Council capture him. He’s been abusing that ability of his for quite a while and he’s definitely going to spend several years in the Supernatural Council's Prison for offenders like him. I just wanted you to know that you have nothing to worry about. If you want to file additional charges for everything he did to you, just let me know.”

  His words made something tight in my chest loosen. They were words of assurance that I didn’t even know that I needed.

  “It’s okay. It’s fine as long as he goes to prison. If I add to his charges, wouldn’t I have to go to court and see him again? I don’t want to.” The thought of seeing him again made me shudder with disgust.

  Trying to push away the nausea that arose at the thought of him, I asked a different question. “What about…my mom? Did he bury her well? What about her things? Our things?”

  “Don’t worry, I put your things in a storage facility. When you’re up to it, you’re free to go look through them or we can leave them there for however long you want. As for your mom, I…don’t know if this is going too far, but I moved her urn to a private columbarium managed by a friend’s family member. I—“

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “No, that’s fine. Thank you so much. I don’t know how to repay you for everything you have done for me.”

  “You don’t have to repay me—“ he said.

  “No, this is something I have to do to be able to live well, so please…if there’s any time in the future where I can help you, please ask for my help.”

  He sighed, “Well, I can’t ask for your help in your current state, so how about you get well as soon as possible?”

  “I’ll try my best.” It was a whispered promise, however, that I didn’t know how to keep because I had no idea if I would ever recover from killing three men and recovering memories of years of abuse from my stepfather.

  The room fell into silence and I didn’t know when I drifted to sleep while listening to the busy hallway beyond my quiet room.