Chapter 14 The Anomaly

Chapter 14 The Anomaly
Odessa's Pov

"We were supposed to go to Madison for the new season for an apparent reason. Someone wanted us dead." Rowan recounted, his voice bitter with disgust, each word dripping with the kind of anger that comes from knowing you were hunted. "Our pilot turned on us. Had a bomb strapped on him on the bloody plane. We were already in the air when he triggered it."

I watch his hands grip the steering wheel, knuckles going white.

"He wouldn't say who sent him," Rowan continues, shaking his head. "Wouldn't give a name, wouldn't give anything. Just smiled and told us we should have been more careful about who we trusted. I'm sure it's Damien. It had to be Damien. No one else wanted us dead that badly."

My mouth goes dry at the thought. There's something more to this, something deeper than just trying to get the company. He's blowing people up for what? Two seconds of power? A few years of control? It doesn't add up. It's too extreme, too reckless, too final.

"We're going to do everything in our power to make sure we expose every intricate lie, Odessa." Hades turns in his seat to look at me, his eyes earnest in a way I've never seen before. "Just say the word. I know there's nothing that I can do that would erase what I've done to you in the past, but I've regretted my actions since then. Every single one of them. I'm hoping that I could make it up to you through this."

"This is all so crazy," I whisper, pressing my palm against my forehead. The information is too much, stacking on top of everything else. "Not your apology, Hades, but this whole go back in time thing. They also killed my mother and she was reborn."

Rowan and Hades exchange a look in the front seat, something passing between them that I can't read.

"Maybe the Moon Goddess decided to be gracious on us," Rowan shrugs, but it's a stiff movement, uncertain. "Damien Gracias is more dangerous than we think, and we have to make sure we don't underestimate him. Don't let him take us off guard. Do our very best to drag him to the ground where he belongs."

"What if he was reborn too?" I ask the most dreadful question that's been sitting in the back of my mind since this conversation started. "What if we're not the only ones who came back?"

The car goes quiet for a long moment.

"That means he'd have to die again," Hades says slowly, thinking it through, "and he'll be more careful. He'll go in for the kill now that he's well aware of what's coming. The heavens seem to be on our side, and we shouldn't take that for granted."

"You're right." I nod, feeling some of the tension leave my shoulders. "I've got a plan, but I just need your help. It's really crazy, but I need something to make sure it exposes them. Something that protects me with the eye of an audience watching."

I share the details with them, every piece of it, from the show to the crisis to the stocks. I watch their faces as I talk, looking for judgment or disbelief, but I don't find any. They actually seemed pleased, willing to do whatever I wanted them to do. It's great to have the reassurance that people are supporting you no matter what happens. I forgot what that felt like.

"No strings attached," I promise. "Just a partnership. If you team up with me, Rowan, then it'll be smoother. We'll have more control."

"What if you end up getting paired with someone else?" Hades asks, his brow furrowing.

"That's when you'll come in." I point at him. "I just need you to register. Both of you. We'll watch his every move, and he's definitely going to try to sabotage me or hurt one of you. I'll make sure it doesn't happen."

Rowan turns to me from the front seat, his voice low and serious. "At the end of the day, Damien could just be a puppet to an even sinister master. Someone pulling the strings from somewhere we can't see."

"If his acts are gone, the showman would show his face at the circus." I meet his eyes. "Let's take down the puppets first."

"Agreed." Hades nods firmly.

"Thank you." I swallow past the lump in my throat. "Thank you both, deeply. For everything."

"It's the least that we can do," Rowan says with an assured smile, the first real one I've seen from him since this conversation started.

Suddenly, a knock on the window jolts a wave of shock through me. I jump in my seat, my heart slamming against my ribs, and turn to look at Nikolai. He's standing right outside, close enough that his breath fogs the glass. He sticks his pierced tongue out at me with a grin, like a child who just won a game I didn't know we were playing.

"Why is he still so mean to me?" I ask with a sharp scoff, turning back to face the front. With Hades being remorseful and Rowan being helpful, I expected he'd follow his brother's footsteps for a change. But here we are, still at square one with Nikolai acting like the same insufferable jerk from college.

The expression on their faces goes down with something I immediately read as pity. Rowan rubs his forehead carefully as he clears his throat, like he's about to deliver bad news.

"For pure bred werewolves, every triplet is born with one core divided in the three." Hades speaks slowly, choosing his words with care. "There's usually an anomaly, one that absorbs energy from both split cores. It strengthens it, makes them more powerful than the others, but at the same time, it might be his greatest weakness." He pauses. "Nikolai may have lived his life for the past ten years, but being the anomaly, he's reborn without any memory. He doesn't remember dying. He doesn't remember the explosion. He doesn't remember any of it. Just the memories of this timeline as a college student nothing after that. He thought we were being stupid when we mentioned what happened last ten years, said we've had much to drink."

I don't even have time to process that altering information when the door opens and Nikolai gets into the back of the car next to where I'm sitting. The vehicle dips under his weight and he sprawls out like he owns the whole backseat.

"If we're seeking a career in kidnapping," he laments, stretching his arms above his head, "we could've found a hotter chick."

I stare at him. "Who still calls women chicks?" The retort falls out before I can catch it, sharp and automatic.

He turns to look at me, those bright blue eyes sparkling with amusement. "Whatever, I'm tired. Just drive, Ro. Bye bye, Tesoro."

"I'll drop her off at the dorms," Rowan clears his throat, putting the car in reverse.

"Y'all can't see this?" Nikolai scoffs, gesturing between me and Rowan like we're all missing something obvious.

"See what, Nico?" Hades raises a brow.

Nikolai leans forward, his voice dripping with accusation. "That she's using you? The girl rejects us in public, chooses that wimp, and now she's here." He throws his hands up. "I thought we were just going to beat up Damien's ass and leave it there."

He adds something in Italian that I'm pretty sure meant I was looking for a rebound to console me and realized what I lost. The words are sharp, cutting, meant to hit bone.

I open my mouth to fire back, but Rowan beats me to it.

"Hey, hey." I start,"What your brothers and I are doing is strictly business. Stay out of it, will you?"

He ignores me completely, doesn't even glance in my direction, then looks at his brothers with this expression that's half desperation and half frustration, hoping that they see what he thinks he sees.

"Just let it be, Nico." Hades tries to explain, his voice calm and measured like he's talking someone down from a ledge. "It's not what you think it is."

"Now you sound like a gaslighting adulterer." Nikolai's laugh is sharp and bitter. "That's it."

He rolls his eyes and gets out of the car before anyone can respond. The door slams shut with enough force to shake the whole vehicle. "I'll call Pablo to drive me. You can go." He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and heads to the trunk to grab his duffel bag without looking back once.

I watch him through the window, his figure getting smaller as he walks away.

"Forgive me for being the only sane one with an avid memory of what she did three days ago," he said. The words echo in my head.

I rub my forehead at the irony of his statement. I thought being reborn was a good thing, a perfect means of a second chance to fix all the mistakes I made the first time around. But looking at Nikolai, watching him stomp off into the evening without even knowing what he lost, I only wonder if his lack of memory is going to be a good thing or a bad thing for me. For all of us.

Rowan starts driving, the car pulling away from the curb. "Just be more... well... nice to him?" He tries to suggest, his voice tentative like he knows he's stepping on thin ice.

I shoot him a glare that could freeze fire. "Nice? Please."

"Well, if he remembered, he wouldn't be this way." Hades adds from the passenger seat, his tone reasonable. "He's not choosing to be difficult, Odessa. He literally doesn't know."

"I doubt that." I cross my arms over my chest, staring out the window at the passing trees. "He hates me to his bones. Honestly, I think he would be grateful that Damien killed me. Probably see it as some karmic justice for all the times I rejected him in college."

"I don't think he hates you, though." Hades continues, and there's something in his voice I can't quite place. "You just have to find a way to get along with him since you'll be writing your new thesis with him."

I freeze.

The words take a second to register, then another second to sink in, and then I slump so hard against the car seat that I nearly slide off it entirely. The car slowly arrives at my dorm, the familiar building coming into view, but I barely notice.

"Just kill me again, already," I mutter, closing my eyes.

This is going to be a long year.