Wheels creaking woke me.

White flashed in my vision, the lights burning so bright above me as my tired eyes flickered open. I hurt, I ached. Everything felt like a fresh bruise, blooming right under the surface of already sensitive skin. A gasp caught in my throat and my head whipped to the side, seeing the hip of a woman dressed in green scrubs.

My arms rose.

No. Tried to rise.

A thick band of leather circled around my arms and torso, keeping me strapped to a narrow bed. The wheels continued to shriek as they moved further down a path of white. I whimpered, jerking violently. A scream of pain shot across my body and a noise garbled in my throat, a half-scream that I clamped down on.

I hadn't had time to prepare myself. I always knew when they were coming for me. I could always smell the doctors coming down the long hall, whispering about the new procedure. A new method to pull me apart, make me beg and scream and see how much they could twist my mind, my resolve.

"No," I pulled against the leather bands. "No. No. No. Please."

Tears blurred my vision. I waited to see Doc-Mai's face leaning over me, that twisted smile that only appeared in my moment's of weakness.

It wasn't her face I saw.

Inside, in the blurred vision of tears, I saw eyes of molten gold. A large hand smoothened over my hair, whisper soft. "Nova."

No mercy.

A sob caught in my throat and the nurse on my right startled. No mercy – even the man fated to me by the moon herself could not find mercy in his heart for the beast that I had become. Even the man, soft and warm despite his scarred face, could not find mercy for me.

A plea worked its way onto my tongue. I didn't want to spend the last moments of my life strapped to a chair, begging to be killed.

Clumsily, he wiped my cheeks. "It will be alright."

They were going to pull me apart. How was that alright?

I moved my legs. Another band of leather around my legs.

They were going to tear open my insides and spool my guts in their hands, looking for the Ravi's secret recipe. Or crack open my skull like a boiled egg and prob my rotted, grey brain for the cogs of Ravi's design.

I bit hard onto my lip. I had to get out. Or die. Either was better than what was coming for me.

Whispers were like knifes in my ears. "Healing at a rapid rate..."

"...Upset."

"....Not Happy."

"Blood tests..."

Death would be better. It would be my choice.

Lordie – I needed to calm down. Think first. I had lived long enough to know how to escape. Not that I had been great at it in the first place.

Easton stopped wiping my tears and instead, took a fragile hold of my hand.

I took stock what was happening, my breathing rapid and panicked. Not Doc-Mai or the Ravi. At least they wouldn't enjoy pulling me apart.

I could use that.

Guilt was a weapon, just as fear was. Had I not gotten my claws on a few Ravi doctors who were guilted by the pain they caused a poor, sweet girl.

Two nurses. One at my side, stroking my hair. One pushing the bed behind me. There were leather straps around my torso and legs, but nothing metal welding my hands to the side. I could gut the nurse with one curl of my hand, cut the leather and be gone before the Alpha realized what was happening.

I was wheeled into a white-walled room, but there were vases of colourful blooms perched precariously on the table to the side of the room. The nurse wheeling me left and I was left with the one who stroked my hair and the Alpha. She smelled of oranges and hummed a sweet melody. She fussed at my blankets and as she left with a promise of a quick return, she clipped open the leather holds.

The minute she vanished, Easton spoke.

"Nova...I...words cannot describe how sorry I am."

"Don't apologise." I croaked, my mouth dry. "Don't apologise to make yourself feel better."

"This is nothing to do with ..." A shrill ring shattered the silent room. I winced, the sudden sharp noise like razor-blades against my ear-drums.

Easton winced. "I need to take this."

I looked at the flowers, the colourful blooms. "Don't make me stop you."

"Attacks," His cheeks reddened as he tried to find the words. "The Ravi weren't happy about their failure at Lunar."

"Three lost weapons."

The phone continued to ring. I sunk back into the pillows, pressing the heels of my hands into my ears.

Pain lashed up my spine and I bit down hard, a keening whine slipping from me. There was a machine whirring beside me, but it didn't beep. I tore needles from my hands and moved in my flowing nightgown to survey the room.

It was spacious. Deceptively comfortable. Blooming flowers. A wardrobe built into the corner. As I pulled it open, there was a rack of my favourite clothes.

A trap?

It didn't make sense. Was he trying to make me comfortable before they tore me apart? Had they already done it? My body did hurt. Aching wounds closed by stitches across my shoulders and collarbones. The bones had healed.

I shoved myself into clothes, dragging a jumper three sizes too big over my bruised and burned body and a pair of wide legged trousers. Once I slipped my feet into some shoes, I was gone.

The hallways were quiet. I kept my pace slow and cut right, hurtling down the stairs. The bottom floor was busy, choked with people and noise and panic. The smell of blood was tart and my ravenous stomach snarled. People barely looked at me amongst the organized mess.

A bag was swiped from a distracted woman in the packed waiting room. I circled through the throng, fishing out some cash before I left the bag back down. She would be down enough credits, but I would be far away. I walked out of the emergency room doors into blustering wind and a grey, dreary afternoon.

I walked through the carpark, following the footpath and looking over my shoulder warily. The wind bit into my hands and exposed cheeks. I could restart again. There were plenty of places in this expansive country to disappear and get a job where no one would look at me twice or question me. I didn't want to. I wanted to stay with my small group of friends, the security and the music room. I didn't even want to leave Easton – there was a safety that came with being around him.

Not anymore.

He would have to tear me apart.

The rain fell harder and I was miserable as it settled into my bones. I walked for a while, a little lost because I didn't recognise the city I was walking through. I stopped for coffee, enmeshing myself into the crowd of people crowding around the counter. The bitterness helped to ground me, but each step hurt. The fight with the Alpha had been brutal and I felt the marks of his teeth and claws along my body, still healing.

I found a quiet bus-stop and stood under the cover as the rain began to pelt harder.. The only other person waiting for the bus was an elderly woman who perched delicately on the edge of the chair. She eyed my purple, swollen fingers that held my coffee cup delicately. The tears burning at the back of my eyes would surely break if I shredded the cardboard. Something trivial, but I was balancing on the edge of a very dark precipice.

"When's the next bus?" I croaked.

The old lady smelled of cherries. She gave me a quick once over, before replying, "The bus for Winston is coming in five. The bus for Tuscan is coming in twenty minutes."

"Is Tuscan far?" I had been to Winston before – had walked through it in my wanderings. It was small and pokey and a girl like me would stick out like a sore thumb.

"About four hours away."

Not far enough. But it would be a start. "Twenty minutes is a long time to wait in the cold," I said pointedly. The rain fell over the lip of the bus shelter, pooling on the grey asphalt. Lordie, it was miserable.

She snorted. "I could say the same about you, but I'm going to Winston."

"Oh."

I perched on the other edge of the bench. We waited in silence and when her bus came, she handed me a small bar of chocolate that she had pulled from a heavy handbag. I packed her suitcase into the undercarriage and she waved before she vanished onto the bus.

I waited again, watching the rain ripple across the puddles. The street was quiet, save for an occasional car. The stores across the road were quiet. No one braved the rain. The world was grey and dark. I would still take it over what my fate entailed.

It was a shift. A sudden, tiny shift that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. Before I could form a thought, I was up and hurtling into the rain at violent speeds. My shoes were soaked through by puddles and with the growing rain, my coat provided little help.

I scrambled around the red-brick of an old townhouse, launching over the garden fence. There were three children dancing in the heavy rain, shrieking with laughter. They froze as I tore past them and over the back fence again.

I didn't know these streets, but I raced down them anyway. I couldn't hear him behind me, but could sense him like a sear of heat around the ring of my neck. I shredded the door of a factory, nails shrieking through the metal. A great open space, smelling of sweat and oil, greeted me. My footsteps rang on the metal steps and I climbed, high past swinging metal hooks.

With growing panic, I made my way to the roof and out into the open air. Smoke belched from great vents and I teetered on the edge of the roof's lip. The jump to the next rough was more than a hundred feet away. Could I make it?

I eyed the drop, my chest heaving. Would it shatter my legs?

Behind me, a door opened delicately.

"Nova?" His gravelly voice called out to me.

I whirled around. The wind whipped at my hair and long limbs. The Alpha ducked as he stepped through the door, eyes gleaming a violent, molten gold.

"Don't you dare." I said savagely. "I'm not being taken apart. Never again.

My shoulders were heavy. I was tired.

So tired.

As if I hadn't gotten a good sleep in the past eight years.

I continued to stare as the Alpha crossed to the middle of the roof. He wore a dark coat, his hair plastered to his head. I checked behind him, where the guards might be but I couldn't see them in the heavy rain. The rain distorted my smell but there wasn't a hint of them either.

"Nova."

It hurt to look at him.

"Easton."

"You're hurt."

I gave him the hint of a humourless smile. "You did a good number of me, Alpha. I can see now that the stories about you were one hundred percent true."

His expression tightened. "You should have said something to me. I thought the Omega had taken you, or knew where you had gone."

"Saying something would have put you in an awkward position."

"An awkward position?" The tightly leashed tension in his voice drew my eyes to him once more. Again, he was in that same, careful stance that I had gotten used to all those weeks ago. I teetered on the edge, knowing salvation came at either his death, or at a body corpse on the pavement below.

"The Omega needs to go, but it is me, and I am it. There is no way to pull it from me, like a leach on my brain. It is woven into my bones and flesh. You have to pull me apart and you know it."

"There was a plan to discover the secrets of the Ravi through the Omega's body."

"I don't want to be alive for that." I told him savagely. "I don't want to be a guinea pig, even for the good of the country. Even if you knock me out to save me the pain, I will feel where the hands rummaged inside of me. I will feel my missing parts."

"Is that why you ran?"

My shoulders bowed. Lordie, why was he bothering with all this talk? "I don't want to be poked and prodded again. Kill me first and then you can pull me apart all you want because I won't be there anymore. I will be resting." Finally.

"You could have just run. I imagine the speed of the Omega could outrun me. Instead, you've found yourself a dead end."

I was silent for a long while. The feeling was there, but just jumbled and wrong inside my head and tongue. "I don't think I'm trying to really run.. I'm just tired. That cell, that lightening...it stripped me bare. Fighting you stripped me bare. I ran from the hospital because that's what I do. I ran because I spotted an sliver. I ran because I don't want to die knowing that I gave up."

I sighed, knowing a death know would at least come with fresh air and raindrops on my cheeks. "It doesn't really matter now."

"Nova," Easton risked a step closer. "How you feel matters. Why you ran, why you fight, why you don't matters."

"It doesn't matter. It's never mattered. You wrote the red ledger. The Omega has to go."

"No." He shook his head, his voice dipping into savagery. He stopped and composed himself. Calmer, he said. "No. I thought the Omega was a mindless beast after what had happened, after reading the reports from the Tube. You are not that."

"You're only saying that because I'm your moon-bound."

"Partially." He admitted. "But also because I've spent time with you. You are not just the Omega. You are made of different parts, all glued together to make you. You wake early to drink moon awful coffee. You step outside and whisper a hello to the sun and sometimes, a goodbye to the moon. You hate it when your cereal is soggy and love it when your hands and mind is busy. You are not savagery. It's a part of you, but that is not because of who you are. It's what the Ravi have made you, it's what you paid to survive. You cannot unlearn that in a few months. Maybe you'll never unlearn it because life will never give you that chance."

I looked away again, jaw tense. The burn was back in my eyes, at the back of my throat. He spoke like he saw me, but... "I'm tired, Easton."

Another step. "What of?"

"I survived the Mad-Maze and the torture the Ravi put me through by becoming some terrible. By using the fear I felt as a weapon to wield. If they feared me, than my own was inconsequential. I had nothing to lose really, only my life and it wasn't a life at all in there. But out here, everything is something I don't want to lose. And I feel... afraid. And stupid in a world I don't understand. I escaped, but not really. I'm free, but sometimes, I don't feel like I am." I scoffed. "This is the most I've spoken about anything vulnerable in years."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Telling me." Easton was closer now, his body a steady stream of warmth. "I know it's not easy."

"You're hard to hate." I told him. "It would be easier if I did hate you. I would have shredded some of that untouched skin then."

"You think you would have beaten me?"

"I know that if I hadn't been starved and electrocuted and didn't know you, I would have torn your flesh to ribbons and I would have enjoyed it. Is that not the makings of a monster?"

"Maybe." Easton hummed. "But who am I to judge what you made yourself into to survive? Eight years is a long time to survive with finding some joy in dark places."

"And you?" I scoffed. "Did you enjoy pulling the guts of those who fought against you?"

"Morally, no." He pulled his hands from his pockets, rubbing them together. A surprisingly human gesture against the cold. "But I am a beast too and he revels in the bloodshed that brings him power."

We were silent for a long moment. I traced the rise of bandages under his clothes. I wondered after time passed, the years slipping away like sand, would he recognise the scars that I had left him on a body laced with his success and failure. I hoped he would.

"I'm tired." I said again.

"Come back to Lunar." Easton said, voice insistent. "Come back to somewhere you know, to your music room and your clothes and coffee."

"I killed one of your guards. They'll never accept me back."

"My men know what you did, the people of Lunar don't. You will be safe there. You can get the help you need there."

"Help?" The word slipped out unbidden. Suspicious.

"For your fear. For the troubles that the Ravi have left you with."

"They're mine to deal with." A trick. Just another trick.

"I needed to talk," Easton was close enough now that he could nab me easily. "After everything. When I was on that pedestal of power that I had wrestled from the royal family. I went home, I talked to my elders. I talked to people who mightn't exactly understand my specific struggle, but it helped."

Lightening shot across the sky and the white light was violent against his warped face. "Nova, when you changed at the compound and I saw the damage I had done to you...I – my soldiers, my men know that no harm will come to you. I would never have put a hand on you had I known it was you. Not when my teeth already scar your skin."

"I would have killed you."

"And I would have bared my neck to make it easier."

Lordie, I believed him. Believed him enough to inch away from the edge of the roof. "You aren't going to pull me apart?"

"No."

"I can go back to the music-room?"

"It's yours." He held out his hand to me. "Come home."

I didn't want to run. I believed him.

I put my hand in his.