(Alnilam)

Jamina!!!

The world halts for a second...

The ringing sound echoes in my ears like a doom.

My hair coils around her body, and my shield comes up, trying to protect her. She stumbles forward, but deep down I know it’s already too late.

Eyes wide, the blood gurgles out of her open mouth. She holds a wounded apologetic smile, as she lands in my arms and I hug her to my chest.

"What have you done? Why didn’t you let the portal take the bullet away?" Painfully I murmur, something breaking inside me, something awakening inside me.

I hear Zabiel’s grunt and Karna’s scream. Their feet thud behind me.

My hands are coated with her seeping blood.

"I...instincts," she breathes out with difficulty. I understand she had such limited time to think that she moved on pure instinct to slowly protect me.

"No, you are going to be fine. Open the portal, TJ will heal you..." I desperately tell her, and her eyes slowly close.

My wild eyes shoot towards Betelgeuse who is staggering to his feet, smirking. "That’s for hurting my mate back in the day."

Bellatrix is screaming behind me, somewhere, probably still trapped in Saiph’s nightmare.

The rage is a hurricane in my chest, howling to be free, just as I had felt the night I discovered Amaia is my mate. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

There is a newness inside me and it’s destructive, something I don’t quite understand. It works with my emotions.

I feel it tear from me, a visible vortex of wind that hurtles toward Betelgeuse. It hits not with a punch, but with the raw, shoving fist of a gale, sending him screeching. The gun breaks into pieces as if made of glass and not metal.

My hair extends creating sharpened edges, arrows, spears, and knives to impale him and end his pathetic life.

His screams grow when he lands on the ground and coughs up blood.

"Y...yield, we yield," he tells the officiator like the coward he is.

"The fight is over. Team Alnilam is the winner. Step back from the opponents."

My knees give way, dropping to the ground with her secured in my arms. My desperate eyes find her.

I hold her closer, her blood warm against the chilling fury that still crackles in my veins. This power has risen from a place where love and protection for people I care about reside.

I feel others around me but no one speaks.

"Jamina, Jamina! Open your eyes." Desperately, I pat her cheek. My heart trembles at the thought of losing her.

Slowly, her beautiful eyes open and find me. The light she carries has substantially dimmed, but the love she holds for me shines in her eyes.

With effort, she lifts her trembling hand and places it on my face.

"...Alni!" Her lips quiver, voice trembles. "Acc...cept Amaia as y...your mate." She smiles at me, but it’s broken. "In the n...next life y...you will be mine."

"Don’t you dare leave me." I shackle her face, and the blood seeps out of her mouth and onto my hands. Her eyelids droop and close, her hand drops from my face and I know she is gone.

My heart shatters like glass being hit by a hammer, so many pieces...it won’t even be complete again.

I try to scream, I want to scream but no sound comes out.

Only tears.

I haven’t cried in a long time but my vision blurs, tears leak out and drop on her serene face.

So peaceful, so beautiful she appears as if sleeping. My hair curls around her, holding her to me.

Karna’s sobs sound behind me.

Someone’s hand presses into my shoulder.

"Alnilam..." Saiph calls me, his voice seems to come from afar.

"Now we are even. Consider the debt paid for our dead companions," Bellatrix’s mocking words have me finally lifting my head and glance in her direction.

She is holding her injured brother, her hair dishevelled and eyes wide. Her forehead is bleeding. Saiph seems to have done a number on her.

"Get lost before I forget the battle is over and end you," Zabiel threatens.

She snorts. "We will meet again, soon." Her eyes remain on me. Just profound hatred embroils inside me and I want to end them both, right here.

The one surviving Reaver and the devil twins leave.

I don’t care, I care about nothing at this moment but the woman in my arms.

It should have been me, lying here dead, not her.

She was innocent. I am not.

The bitterly cold winter wind picks up, howling all around me like the sirens of death, her death. Her soul they have taken, leaving only her battered body behind in my arms.

These bleak winds are bringing and announcing a permanent change that has descended in my life from this point forward.

I will never be the same.

Jamina was a beacon, a guide star who always showed me the way forward. Held my hand through the thick and thin life threw at me. She kept me from spiralling into the dark, to lose myself in all those years without a mate.

We were worlds apart when it came to moods, temperaments, choices and yet she stuck with me.

She was a whole rainbow to my white and greys. She was a world of colours and I was merely a shadow. She deserved to live, not me.

She died protecting me, making me indebted to her for an eternity. I couldn’t even pay the debt...it was going to drown me.

The last rays of the evening fell on her melted gold hair, illuminating it. My silvery streaks mingled with them, holding onto them for a few last moments.

Feet shuffled all around me, people came and went, some tried to speak to me but my mind deciphered nothing.

I stared at my blood-stained hands. How was I going to wash away her blood from them?

"My boy," Mama’s voice finally broke my focus and had me lifting my head to watch her. Tears had dried on my cheeks while they swam in my mother’s eyes.

"She is gone..." My words broke as she kneeled in front of me, placing her hand on my arm.

"I know, I am so sorry. But we have to take her back to her parents. We have to inform them." Carefully, she tries to remove my arms from around her.

"No, no. I am not going to let her go..."

And then Amaia’s scent hits me. She is here.