Chapter 61 Chapter 0061

Chapter 61 Chapter 0061
•RAVEN•

I paced in my room when we returned from the meeting with Sebastian. I still couldn't wrap my mind around everything that he told me about the locket.

I found it difficult to believe that it had been the cause of my numerous comebacks every time I died. But instead of taking me to the accurate timeline, it took me back before my banishment.

It felt like I was given a second chance to do things differently and save my unborn child, but Sebastian showed up.

He was threatening to stand in my way, and I couldn't afford to be distracted. Not by him.

I couldn't stay in my room.

I had been pacing for twenty minutes and the walls kept getting closer, so I walked out into the corridor and told myself I was going to get water. That was all. Just water, and then I would come back and think clearly.

But my feet took me toward Tristan's office instead.

I didn't plan it. I just needed to tell him that Sebastian Krane was not someone we should be doing business with, that there were things about him that complicated everything, and that Tristan needed to know before he signed anything.

That was the reason I went there.

I didn't knock. I never knocked on his office door. Five years of marriage had made that a habit, and I hadn't thought to break it yet.

The door opened and I saw them immediately.

Tristan had Rumi pressed against the far wall with his hands on her face and his mouth on hers. She had her fingers curled into his shirt. Neither of them heard me come in.

I stood there for a moment, watching them.

I had already lived this moment once before, in another timeline, in another version of this same nightmare, but I never thought that I would have to go through it again.

My stomach dropped the same way it had the first time. My throat closed the same way. The difference was that this time I didn't react almost immediately.

I stepped back and reached for the door handle to pull it shut behind me.

Tristan heard the movement and spun around. He gasped. "Raven—"

"I came to talk about the Krane meeting," I answered. "It can wait. You can carry on with what you're doing."

I turned around and walked out.

"Raven, wait—" he called behind me, but I had already closed the door and leaned my back against it.

"Let her go," Rumi murmured. "I am here with you, my love. And I am not going anywhere."

I walked down the corridor without running and pushed through the front door of the pack house and stepped outside. I stopped on the top step and breathed.

I was trying to catch my breath when I heard people chanting as they approached the pack house.

Pack members spread across the front grounds. They looked angry, and my first thought was that they were probably there to speak with Tristan.

One voice rose above the rest. "Luna Raven has no place leading this pack!"

Others joined immediately, overlapping each other. "She's an omega! She always was!"

"She has done nothing for us! Nothing!"

"Other packs mock us because of her! We are a joke!"

I stood on the top step and looked out at all of them. Most of them were people I knew, people I had gone out of my way to help.

I couldn't believe that they were standing there again, chanting for me to removed after all that I had done for them.

"Remove the omega Luna! Remove the omega Luna!"

I turned to go back inside, and told myself that I weren't strong enough to handle that.

Before, I had believed that they had been influenced by their Alpha, but now, it became crystal clear that the entire pack didn't want me.

I was hit by a stone before I reached the door.

It caught me just above my right temple and the pain was instant and sharp. I stumbled forward and put my hand up to my head on instinct, and when I pulled it away and looked down at my palm, I saw blood.

I looked out at the crowd, and another stone came before I could move.

"She tried to kill the Alpha and got away!"

"She infiltrated this pack as a child! She was sent here to bring us down from the inside!"

"She was never one of us! She was always their weapon!"

I tried to get to the door, but my legs gave out before I reached it.

I hit the ground on my hands and knees and the gravel cut into my palms. A cramp tore through my lower abdomen so suddenly that I couldn't hold back the sound it pulled from me.

No.

I pressed both hands against my stomach and tried to get up.

Another stone hit my shoulder, and another caught my back.

I curled forward over my knees, trying to cover my stomach, trying to stay upright, trying to breathe through the cramping that was getting worse with every second I stayed on the cold ground.

Not again.

I could feel the blood spreading between my legs and I knew what it meant because I had felt it before in that forest, running from these same gates, carrying this same child.

"Please," I murmured. "Please, not again."

The chanting continued behind me. The stones kept coming, hitting me all over my body until I felt like I would faint.

I looked up at the door and it opened.

Tristan stepped out first, and Rumi was just behind him with her hand in his.

I looked at his face and thought he would help me up for the sake of our baby. But he looked down at me and said nothing.

Rumi stood beside him and smirked when she looked at me. It wa almost as if she were mocking me.

The cramping hit again, harder, and I pressed my forehead down toward the ground because I couldn't hold myself upright anymore.

I could feel the blood now on my legs. Too much of it. The same as the forest. The same ending working its way toward me through the same sequence of losses.

The chanting above me began to blur.

The cold from the ground moved up through my hands and into my arms and I couldn't feel my fingers anymore.

I turned my head to the side and looked at the sky above the pack house. But my eyes closed before I could say a prayer to the moon.

The noise faded last, slower than everything else, the chanting and the stones and Tristan's silence all bleeding together into something that meant nothing by the time the dark finally closed over me completely.

And I let go.