Chapter 185: There Was No Raymond
Aurora’s POV
"Aurora... what did you do?"
He didn’t scream in the deep, mechanical, modulated growl of the monster who had terrorized my nightmares. The voice that came wheezing out of his chest, choked with blood and agonizing pain, was soft. It was rich. It was a voice that had whispered sweet promises against my skin in the quiet hours of the night.
It sounded exactly like Oliver.
A cold, paralyzing shock rippled through my veins. My gun clattered to the floor, the heavy thud sounding miles away. My hands flew to my mouth as my knees gave out completely, sending me crashing to the carpet beside his chair.
"No," I whimpered, my voice small and full of panic. "No, no, no..."
With a weak, trembling hand, he reached up, pulled the shattered remnants of the matte-black mask away from his face, and threw it to the floor.
I stopped breathing. The entire room tilted on its axis.
Despite the jet-black hair framing his face, and despite the toxic green tint of the lenses obscuring his irises, I knew the sharp angle of that jawline. I knew the slope of his nose. I knew the man who was currently gasping for air, his skin turning a sickeningly translucent pale right before my eyes.
It was Oliver.
My Oliver
"Oliver!" I shrieked, the sound tearing from the very depths of my soul. I threw myself onto him, my hands frantically pressing against his chest, trying to stop the dark, sluggish blood that was already soaking through his shirt. The silver and wolfsbane-tipped bullets were doing their work, burning him from the inside out. "Oliver, oh my God, Oliver, look at me!"
"Somebody help!" I screamed at the top of my voice, my eyes darting frantically toward the heavy wooden door. "Please! Somebody help me!"
He gasped wetly for air, his chest heaving under my palms. The toxin was already paralyzing his nervous system, preventing his wolf from healing the catastrophic damage I had just inflicted. He was slipping away, right in my arms.
"Oliver, what are you doing here?" I sobbed, tears blinding me as they rained down onto his face. I wiped at his cheek, but my hands were already covered in his blood, smearing the crimson across his skin. "Why are you dressed like this? Where is Raymond? Where is he?!"
I stopped. My voice died in my throat.
The scent hider was failing, and beneath the chemical smell of ozone, the rich, woody scent of Oliver began to bleed through.
The room spun. The truth didn’t just dawn on me; it crushed me.
There was no Raymond. There never had been. The man who had taken me in the dark, the man who had bound me to a contract, and the man who had held me while I cried in the hospital wing were the exact same soul. The monster I had come to kill was the only man I had ever truly loved.
"You..." I choked out, the realization breaking what little sanity I had left. "You are Raymond... Oliver, you’re..."
He couldn’t speak. A harsh, rattling cough shook his broad frame, and blood welled over his lips. But he didn’t look at me with anger. He didn’t look at me with the wrath of a betrayed King. His trembling hand reached up, his fingers weakly hooking around the back of my neck, pulling me down until his forehead rested against mine.
"I... love... you..." he wheezed out, his sea-blue eyes fighting through the green lenses to lock onto mine one last time. It was a dark, desperate command, full of a raw honesty that broke my heart into a million unfixable pieces. "Aurora..."
"No! No, don’t say that! Don’t you dare close your eyes!" I wailed, pressing my weight against his chest as if I could physically force the life to stay inside him. "Come back to me! Help! Please, God, help!"
The heavy double doors of the private lounge burst open with a violent crash, slamming against the walls.
I flinched, throwing my body over Oliver’s protectively, expecting guards, expecting his enemies. But when I looked up through my blurred vision, the man standing in the doorway made my heart freeze entirely.
It was Oscar. Oliver’s brother.
Alpha Oscar stood completely stunned, his face draining of all color as his eyes traveled from the smoking pistol on the floor, to the shattered mask, and finally to his brother dying in my arms.
"Oliver!" Oscar shouted, his voice cracking with a pure, unadulterated panic I had never heard from him before. He rushed across the room, his heavy boots thudding against the carpet, and dropped to his knees on the other side of the armchair.
"Help him!" I screamed at Oscar, my voice raw and cracking. "Please, Oscar, help him! I didn’t know! I swear to God I didn’t know it was him! The wolfsbane... the silver... stop it, please stop it!"
Oscar didn’t answer me. His hands were shaking as he ripped open Oliver’s jacket, his fingers pressing hard against the side of his neck to check his pulse. I watched Oscar’s face fall, his eyes widening in horror as he felt the weak, erratic flutter of a heart that was about to stop beating forever.
"Oliver, look at me, stay with me!" Oscar demanded, his voice trembling as he gripped his brother’s shoulder. He looked across at me, his eyes full of a devastating, suffocating grief. "Aurora... what have you done?"
"I didn’t know it was him! Oscar, I swear to God, I didn’t know!" I sobbed. My hands were entirely stained with Oliver’s blood, the dark, toxic crimson soaking into my clothes, into my skin, into the very pores of my being. "I thought he was Raymond... I thought I was protecting..."
My voice died as a violent gasp racked my frame. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell Oscar about the baby, not while his brother’s life was dripping out onto the floor.
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