“Yes, sweetheart,” Killian says.
“Of course we will.” Vash feigns a smile.
With some time, the alphas will get over their feud. When life resumes, everything will be so much easier.
While the pack discusses their plans, Lucas notices Ruby checking her wound. It’s green; infected.
“You guys,” Lucas says, silencing them. “I think we need to get Ruby help.”
Ruby exhales slowly. “Rae, there’s something I need you to do.”
Rae stares.
“This is serious,” Ruby says, nearly breathless. “I’m dying, and I want you to give me synthesis.”
Rae
“You’re not dying. You can’t be dying, Ruby. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met,” Rae says.
She falls to her knees and takes Ruby’s hands, pressing them against her cheeks. She’s so cold and weak.
Ruby is pallid and practically immobile. Her eyes waver open and closed. “Sister,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
Rae is breathless. Throat aching, every muscle tenses. “For what?”
“For dying on you,” she says. “I really thought this time would be different.”
Rae stands, but her ankles buckle. Vash swoops under her, catching her fall.
Rae coughs and chokes on her breath until she dry heaves. She was never close to her sister. Before this, they were mortal enemies, destined to tear each other apart.
People change. The stakes of the world shift. The sister that clings to life in front of her is not the same torturous woman she met those years ago.
“You can’t die,” Rae says. “You’re the toughest clone I know.”
“I’m the only clone you know,” Ruby says, smile hanging.
Killian kneels down to her level. He slides a few strands of hair from her eyes. “She made it this far,” he says, taking her hand and squeezing. “All the way to her twin sister.”
But he seems to ponder an unanswerable question. She knows that look. she’s really dying, and she’s going to have to fa
ce that fact. Synthesis is the only way forward if she wants to live another life.
Gritting her teeth, she lets out a strong cry. “Don’t you treat me like I’m some child. I know what I have to do.”
Vash starts for her, but something stops him in his tracks. “Rae...”
They look at each other how they did when they first met. There’s confusion, trauma, and love. All at once, the feelings coalesce around a sadness only these two seem to rely on time and time again.
Their melancholic connection. That’s what brought them together, and that’s what tore them apart. He was to her detriment from the very beginning, and he seems to know it, now more than ever.
The relationship has been hard because, well, love is fucking hard. Change is hard. If it wasn’t, nobody would fight with so much tenacity for it.
Love is rare. It breaks the strong and provides the poor and destitute nourishment. But for every fault that Vash has shown her, he has proved to be the opposite of his outward venomousness with acts of kindness, courage, and redemption.
Vash isn’t perfect. Rae knows that much. In the end, she never wanted him to be perfect. Still, he seems to take the reality harder than the rest.
He breaks down, a ruined alpha.