Ch. 110: Happy Birthday

CHAPTER 110

Jake~

I woke up from a dream just before midnight. I had been running through the forest again with Rachel’s wolf. It was coming - her birthday. I don’t know what time she was born so I don’t know the exact moment - but I’ll be ready.

Ally let us know she’ll be with her later today, so I go train as normal as I prepare my mind for today. She should be able to fight through whatever was blocking her, and I will be there to help her fight it.

Hours pass and I get to her house too early. So I head down to the corner store to get her some ice cream. I’m on my way back when I double over. 

Something’s wrong, Aamon says in a panic.

I try to run back up over the hill but I’m not moving as fast as I’d like. By the time I’m on the top, I feel it. Fire. It takes over my body faster than it ever has before. My bones crack and I fall to the ground. Everything is breaking. It hurts more than before. I’m breaking more than before.

Alpha?, I hear Evan somehow. A link. 

Ev - I think, I link him, Rachel’s in trouble. I think it’s happening, I’m shifting.

I’m panicking until I hear Nick say, ‘Alpha - Ally says it’s time. It’s time. Let it happen, the Gods say it’s time.

That’s when I let go.

The pain is greater than anything I’ve felt before and it happens so fast I don’t even have a chance to scream.

Seconds pass, feeling like hours but then finally, finally it’s over. I’ve changed, I’ve fully shifted. 

GO, Aamon presses.

And this time, I give him control.

We’re off. Running, leaping down to the parking lot. 

She’s gone, I note.

Aamon grunts and we take a second to smell something. Rachel’s panic, that Sean freak, a drug we’re not familiar with, car exhaust. She’s been taken.

Aamon feels Rachel more strongly than I, so he charges off, in full control of us. We’re moving so fast the world is a blur. We link Evan and Nick that something is going on. We keep on charging along the coast. I should care about revealing myself to humans, but I don’t care. Rachel is scared and fighting unconsciousness. It’s got to be Sean. We’ll kill him.

We pass two cities before the scent of her picks up. Along the cliffs, we race along the beach to keep from dealing with winding highways and gawking people. The land widens and I veer left into a mountainside. She’s close.

We hit a new gear of speed, and it’s like nitrous in a racecar. We’re off. A blink later we’re in a compound of some sort. 

She’s here, I say, even though I don’t need to. Aamon knows.

We look at the various buildings, the chainlink fence surrounding the place. And then jerk our head left. There.

We run to the door and shove it but it’s not budging. Punk was prepared for beings like me. But not for me. We turn up the heat. We go from red to bright white, and the metal door melts to let us walk right in.

There on some sort of medical table lies Rachel. I race toward her when I’m hit by something. I fly backwards and then jump to my feet. On all four legs I regain my balance and charge again. 

Smack.

This time I’m more prepared. I slide back and shake my head a bit before going back to the barrier and turning up the heat. I feel it give a little, and then a door opens.

“Oh wow!” Sean exclaims. “Is it that time already?!”

I growl at him and continue to burn through. I nearly push through when I get slammed by another invisible wall. This time this one came charging at me, not the other way around.

“Why don’t you leave while you still can?” Sean says, all energy and confidence.

Like he’s won the lottery. 

The only lottery he’s won is russian roulette, I growl out to Aamon.

We push further, burn brighter, hotter, bigger. We move forward, inch by inch. Moving through the barrier slowly like its thick maple syrup. But we’re moving through.

“Absolutely not!” Sean yells. 

The hits get faster. He throws wall after wall at me. But I get better at anticipating his attacks, and I barely get moved backwards. I push and push. He’s got to run out of steam soon.

A storm crackles outside. Wind is everywhere, and I can barely see. But I don’t need to see in order to keep pushing through. I squint and keep my eyes focused on Rachel. The fire in me, the fire that is me, moves higher. It reaches over the edge of his barrier and I grin internally. This should be over soon.

Then I see him wheel out another person. A girl. She looks a little like Sean. And he starts chanting something while holding their hands. This can’t be good.

‘Rachel!’, I screamed in my mind, through a link that didn’t exist, through the bond.




Rachel~

I woke up on Saturday excited for the day. I was still happy from family dinner last night, and between that and the glow I had going on because of Jack, my new friend from the coffee shop. We had been hanging out every day after school this week. We ended up exchanging numbers on Wednesday. I smile each time he sends me something.

I feel guilty about it. I shouldn’t be feeling these things about anyone other than Sean, right? So why was it that he did nothing but irritate me all week?

I got another text from him and didn’t open it. He has been pushing me to hang out today but I really would rather spend it with anyone else.

I get out of bed and wash my face, then come out of the bathroom to find my mom and my sister right there, singing me ‘happy birthday’ along with whoever from Peru was on the phone. I didn’t need to be told, I knew.

The tradition of it all touched me and when my mom handed me the phone I talked with my aunt, my grandma, and my three cousins for a bit. They had all been up for a while with their time zone being ahead of ours. I let them go so they could get on with their afternoons.

My mom came around the corner with a cute breakfast - a smiley face arranged out of eggs, bacon and a little breakfast link for a nose. I laughed and ate it happily along with an English muffin. Great start to the day!

I got dressed and got ready to walk into town where I had plans to meet Ally and Lana. So I grab a few things and shove my feet into my sneakers, grab a jacket, wish my mom a quick ‘bye’, and head down the stairs.

Then I stop dead in my tracks.

“Sunshine!” Sean greets me. He’s standing in the parking lot by his car. “Are you ready for your super fun day?”

I walk down to him. Being with him these days is uncomfortable. “Hey, um, Sean. I’m sorry, I sort of already made plans…”

He puts a firm hand on my forearm. “But I came all this way.” He says it with a smile but it makes me squirm. His touch feels - wrong.

“I’m sorry, maybe we can meet up later?” I offer for some reason.

“No,” he says, his eyes blazing. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Then something jabs into my shoulder. I look down, my mouth open in shock. He stabbed me - with a needle. An injection.

“What is that?” I ask him and try to take a step back.

“Don’t struggle, please, it’ll just make it worse,” he says in a bored tone.

His grip is firm and I go to yell when I find I have no voice. I look at him shocked again, and then a white cloth is over my nose and mouth. And like I’ve done far too much lately - I black out.

I fight to wake up. It’s like the stickiest dream I’ve ever had. But the fight doesn’t help and it all goes black.

I blinked to find myself next to someone familiar. Aurora. I sat straight up. Memories collided. It made my head explode.

“What’s happening? Where is he taking me?” I question her, cutting right to the point.

“It’s time Rachel. Everything comes to a head today. Remember what I told you. You’ll need to defeat Sean, and then you know what comes after,” she said, her gaze piercing me.

“I’m ready,” I tell her.

“Show them what you’re made of, my daughter,” she says with a proud gaze.

Then darkness again. I’m floating in darkness. I’m aware of the darkness, but I can’t feel or hear anything. I float on.

Until I feel fear, panic. But it’s not my own. I twist and turn, feeling around for some way out. Some way to fix the pain. Their pain. I need to help. 

I am nearing something when I feel something again. A wave of fear so heightened it feels like it could be my own. And a tug, somewhere in me. My heart? What is that?

Then I heard a message echoing.

‘Rachel!’ it echoes and echoes.

I knew that voice. I know that voice. My head rushes. Images, feelings. Jake. My heart aches suddenly.

Jake!