Psycho Devils: Aran’s Story Book 2 (Cruel Shifterverse 5)

Rebirth—Day 58, hour 3

One week earlier

The clock struck 3:00 a.m.

It was the morning of the final showcase.

Today I’d be competing.

I lay rigid on top of the bed.

Warren the ferret nuzzled his face against my cheek to try to comfort me. He was wrapped around my neck like a scarf, the position he always took when he was trying to offer support.

I didn’t pet him.

“Arabella Alis Egan must earn her wings today,” the Angel Consciousness said loudly in my head. “The council has been impressed with her performance, but she needs to sacrifice more. They are still worried that she is too much like her mother.”

I rolled my eyes and thought back, I know.

People annoyed me, but the voice in my head—that had been bothering me since I’d agreed to be Aran’s guardian—made me downright homicidal.

The bed bounced underneath me from the force of my tremors.

In thirteen years of life, I’d never slept.

I’d never known a single night of peace.

How could I?

Invisible metal cuffs were cold and heavy on my wrists. Layered with dark enchantments that emitted electric shocks, the hardware kept me in perpetual pain. Every. Single. Night.

The only consolation was they failed to fully serve their purpose.

The cuffs were supposed to keep me docile.

I wasn’t.

I’d describe myself as truculent, ornery, and bumptious.

Never docile.

Unfortunately, my jailer recognized this.

When Dick had looked at me across the arena a few weeks ago, he must have seen something in my carefully crafted expression that he didn’t like.

The pain at night was getting worse.

He’d turned up the voltage.

Now I convulsed on the bed. Twitched. Trembled in silence.

If my jaw weren’t aching from electric pulses, I would have grinned.

It was humorous that Dick went to such extreme physical measures to contain me when physically I was as weak as a human. Maybe weaker.

Sadly, his actions weren’t surprising. Everything about the realms of the High Court was ghastly and primitive.

The people in these realms worshipped brawn and feats of toughness. Didn’t they know anyone could learn to be strong?

It was intellect that couldn’t be taught.

Wit was the true differentiator.

At least, it was back at home.

My fingers twitched, water streaked down the sides of my face, and my tears provided a few lucky micrometers of skin with insulation from electric shock.

I sank deeper into my mind and focused on my plans, the revenge that I would successfully execute in the future. Violently.

Ten years ago, my thoughts never would have turned so primitive.

These realms were getting to me.

Dick had treated me like a dog for so long that a part of me had learned to think like one. Like the rabble that surrounded me.

My adoptive brother, Jax, and his mates snored on the three beds they’d pushed together.

Every muscle cramped in my body as the volts of electricity caused a migraine to throb through my skull.

As always, I suffered in silence.

My life was defined by a triumvirate of imprisonment: cuffs, electric shock, and secrets.

So many secrets.

The tangle of lies was so knotted that there was no “truth” anymore. There was just blackmail and distortion.

One word summarized my entire existence: exploitation.

I was a rare species from a faraway galaxy that didn’t go through puberty until twenty-five years old.

I was twenty-four years old.

Dick forced me to masquerade as a child.

It shouldn’t have been that large of a lie; after all, I was still technically prepubescent, and it was only a ten-year difference.

But it made all the difference.

No one could truly comprehend what could be accomplished in a decade of exploitation.

Ten years.

In my case, it was the difference between a war being won or lost.

The things I’d been forced to do were so shocking that it hurt to think about them.

Electricity burned my neurons.

One more year until adulthood. It was so close. Yet so far away.

Not that it mattered. Adulthood couldn’t change the fact that as a child, I’d been sold by rare species traffickers. It wouldn’t change that I was enslaved to the High Court.

I was nothing more than a tool.

“For the greater good,” Dick loved to say.

He had no remorse.

I had misery.

I convulsed silently as the projection of the night sky swirled on the ceiling above me. It was audacious of the High Court to refer to this primitive island as “Elite.”

Lately, everything felt like a joke of cosmic proportion.

But no one was laughing.

I swallowed roughly as my eyes glossed with tears, and I cursed my fragile physical state for the millionth time.

My weak body had allowed for this complete incarceration. Still, crying, whining, or talking about it with other people was a useless endeavor that would do nothing to alleviate the reality of the situation.

Warren whimpered against my nape.

The shifter was the only person who partially knew what I was going through. I’d wiped his memories a few times in the beast realm, but he’d kept catching me having episodes, and it was too exhausting to silence him.

He’d agreed to not share my secrets on the condition that he stayed by my side for protection.

It was pure blackmail. It almost made me respect him.

Warren whined again as his whiskers tickled against the tears streaking down my cheeks.

Almost was the key word.

“Stop complaining,” I whispered. “You’ll alert the others.”

Warren was insufferably melancholic about the entire ordeal of me being electrocuted against my will at night. I flagellated myself every day for being blackmailed by such a pathetic person.

But I had much bigger problems than a clingy teenage shifter.

My fingers twitched as my cranium throbbed.

“Do not fail us in the showcase, Guardian. If you do, you will be exterminated,” the Angel Consciousness said snootily into my mind.

The throbbing intensified.

Speaking of idiots.

There were layers to my subjugation.

My purpose wasn’t linear, it was circular and convoluted. The various threads wrapped around my neck like a noose.

Each one more dangerous than the last.

More deadly.

About ten years ago, Dick forced me to do the unthinkable and two lives were irrevocably changed. Ironically, I’d been fourteen years old when I’d committed the atrocity. About the same age I masqueraded as now.

At such a tender age, I’d used my abilities and mutilated two people.

Forever.

My only excuse was the High Court had promised me freedom if I did it.

I’d learned that day that even I could play the fool.

Dick had kept me locked away.

Four years later he’d told me I had a new task to complete.

I’d been brought to the shifter realm with three young girls who were backup genetic experiments. They provided the perfect cover.

My task was to infiltrate the family and get close to everyone. All with the aim of forming a relationship and becoming the guardian of one of the people I’d mutilated four years earlier: Aran.

This time, they hadn’t pretended to offer me freedom.

Dick had ordered me to follow his directive.

Or die.

Mortality was the universal motivator of all species.

The High Court was direct with me. They didn’t manipulate me like they did to every other person in the realms.

They were desperate because my initial task had messed with Aran in unexpected ways, and because of what I’d done, I was the only person who could connect with her and join the Angel Consciousness.

Apparently, all angels were assigned a guardian to help them earn their wings and keep them in check after they did so.

Someone strong who could help them.

It was an extremely prestigious position.

They had no choice but to give it to me because no one else could form the mental bond with Aran.

After an angel earned their wings, their guardian could send shock waves of punishment through their mental connection if they acted out of line.

The angel captain with heterochromia had it happen to him after the second competition.

The measure made sense.

As one of the few sentient species with wings and the ability to wield ice, angels were powerful in ways that weren’t easily controllable. They were also highly intelligent. As a result, the first angels had committed horrible atrocities in other realms and were unstoppable.

Angels were strong enough to commit horrors and cunning enough to evade capture.

The High Court had intervened to keep the peace.

The Angel Consciousness and guardian system were ways to keep them in check, and I was the unlucky person assigned to help guide Aran.

Some angels never earned their wings, and from what I could tell, there were no repercussions for the assigned guardian.

Not in our case.

Dick had cheerfully informed me that both of us would be murdered if Aran failed. It was imperative that she earned her wings.

According to him, the fate of all civilized society rested on her earning them.

I highly doubted it.

But it didn’t matter what I thought. I hadn’t been given a choice.

How bad could it be? I’d asked myself at the time.

Indubitably, it had gone way worse than I’d expected.

Aran was the most difficult and infuriating person I’d ever met. How someone so intelligent could act so self-deprecating and depressive was beyond my scope of understanding.

It was like she wanted both of us to die brutally.

At first, I’d been suitably impressed when she’d eaten her mother’s heart in the fae realm. When she’d had darkness in her eyes and blood dripping down her chin, I’d understood what all the fuss was about.

I’d gotten why angels needed guardians to help them do the right things.

Her capacity for violence was inspiring.

She had raw potential in her bones and a physical strength I could never hope to achieve.

My task had seemed doable. Difficult but still possible.

But then we’d gone to the beast realm, and Aran spiraled. Her mind couldn’t wrap itself around the sheer depth of depravity she’d displayed.

A pity.

Meanwhile, the Angel Consciousness argued back and forth in my brain.

They were divided on whether her gruesome murder of her mother was a positive—the woman had been an abusive bully—or a negative, for obvious reasons.

While they’d fought it out, nothing was asked of me.

I missed those days.

Once Aran had been brought to Elite Academy, the Consciousness had started making more demands. The voice had become more frequent and urgent.

Whatever happened in training and battles had convinced some members of the Consciousness that Aran might be worthy of earning her wings. Enough people that the voice had hope.

When she fought against the ungodly, they agreed she was a candidate to earn her wings.

They partially removed the mind enchantment that inhibited the expression of angel genes.

This step had prepared her body so if the Consciousness decided to remove the full blocker, the angel genes would express themselves fully and she’d earn her wings.

They’d told me to tell Lothaire to put Aran in more positions of danger.

I’d talked to Lothaire and made up a story about the High Court wanting to monitor Aran’s strength. I pushed him to give her more perilous tasks without revealing that she was an angel. He’d agreed to help.

His compliance was ultimately useless because the High Court had stepped in and instituted the Legionnaire Games.

Their timing had been a little too perfect.

After Aran had sacrificed her life to save Scorpius in the second trial a few weeks ago, the Consciousness decided she was more than a candidate.

They completely removed the blocker.

Aran was officially on the path to earning her wings.

The only step left was for Aran to act righteous enough to trigger the full expression of angel genes. Then she’d earn her wings.

It was obvious that the High Court was getting desperate for Aran to earn her wings because they kept choosing her for each competition.

It was the only hope we had.

Both our lives were hanging in the balance.

If only she knew.

The hourglass was slowly running out.

Aran was currently being shoved across a chessboard, barreling toward either success or failure.

Closing my watery eyes, I focused on the faint buzzing in my head that signaled the connection the Consciousness had given me to Aran.

The link that only I had been able to form with her.

She couldn’t be joined to the main line until she earned her wings, but guardians were given a separate channel uniting them with their angel when they accepted the role.

That hadn’t stopped the voice from the Consciousness trying to interfere in her life. He’d gone so far as to open up channels with random people near her to guide her forward.

Since the angel laws forbade guidance from anyone other than a guardian before wings were earned, he’d tried to speak indirectly in riddles and praise her when she did something positive.

Everyone was desperate for her to succeed.

If only she knew.

The things they’d done to her.

The things they’d forced me to do.

I shivered, a foreign sludgy sensation crawled up my throat. Regret burned like bile.

In my opinion, the entire process was convoluted and ridiculous; boundaries had been crossed in ways that could never be undone.

But nobody asked me.

Huffing, I opened the channel between us and repeated into Aran’s head, Do the right thing. Be righteous. Make the right choices.

I could link to her, but the connection was fuzzy and unclear.

It was broken because of what I’d done to her.

Once again, it was a result of the injustice that I had personally served upon her.

This was my penance.

Aran was asleep, but I hoped my words would sink into her subconscious. It was all I had.

Or we were both dead.

Night was the only time I could try to cajole Aran. It was when the connection between us was the strongest.

During the day, she was constantly zoned out and spiraling in her own head. My mental words barely got through.

The only way to get her attention was to snap at her in person.

Aggressively.

When I taunted her, the glazed, faraway look would disappear from her eyes and she’d actually see me. The resulting rage always brought her back into the present.

It was exhausting.

All my muscles spasmed at once, and I sobbed silently in the dark room.

Sometimes I felt so alone. No, Warren did not count as company.

Every time I made a pained noise at night and Jax or his mates found me convulsing, I had to wipe their memories.

It was exhausting.

The first few nights after I’d partially revealed my ability, Sadie had tried to sleep beside me in bed and hold me. Dealing with her insufferable mouth breathing had been worse than any migraine.

They thought the worst of my transgressions was wiping their memories.

If only they knew.

The truth was heinous.

None of them would talk to me ever again.

Not even Jax.

He’d never hug me as he smiled down at me. He’d never call me his little sister like it was something to be proud of. He’d never ask me again if I was okay with worry in his eyes.

I’d seen a glimpse of it the night they discovered I’d wiped their memories.

They no longer looked at me like I was theirs.

I’d felt the distance between us, and a chasm splintered through my chest.

There was no longer a we.

It was a them, and a me.

For some reason the realization hurt worse than the electricity vibrating through my bones.

Moisture welled in my eyes until everything was blurry.

Maybe Dick was an expert at breaking people after all.

It was nights like these where all the facts, logic, and reality coalesced into one throbbing truth: everyone would be better off if I had never been born.

I twitched silently in the sleeping room.

The showcase was here.

I didn’t know how tomorrow would play out, but I knew my heritage had something to do with it.

Aran had somehow convinced herself she had a special relationship with me. She’d deluded herself into thinking she cared about my well-being.

They would use that against her.

The voice I spoke to in the Angel Consciousness wanted her to succeed—he was most likely working on behalf of the High Court—but while the rest of the angels had approved her as a candidate, they didn’t think she’d actually prove herself righteous enough to earn her wings.

The voice had said they’d been pleasantly surprised by her actions in the third and fourth competitions.

They needed her to do something big.

The genes wouldn’t express themselves without a monumental display of selflessness.

I gnawed harder on my teeth.

Aran had sacrificed her physical well-being repeatedly in the games, yet they claimed it wasn’t enough for them.

From what the voice had told me, anyone else would have earned their wings already.

They’d put more blockers inside her than normal. She was being punished for her bloodline.

After all, even when her angel genes had been inhibited, Aran had been able to access some of her powers.

She could create ice claws and summon her feathers.

Most angels couldn’t wield any power until they earned their wings.

There was only one other angel in recorded history who could do so, and they had been the most powerful political pawn ever to grace the High Court: her mother.

Aran was being punished for the sins of both her parents.

The Angel Consciousness didn’t care that a daughter was being treated unfairly or that a guardian was being tortured nightly. All they cared about was controlling the powerful angel population and preventing another mass genocide. That was their directive. Period.

Any collateral suffering was beyond their purview.

That’s what happened when a species valued strength over intelligence. Power didn’t exist without the weak.

A twisted cycle of damnation.

As I convulsed on the bed, tears dripped down off my cheeks and soaked my pillow.

Many factors were weighed against us.

The odds of Aran earning her wings today were low.

Extremely low.

Her life was a tangled web of politics.

According to Dick, civilizations would rise and fall by the choices Aran made, and the High Court knew it.

Her power was so unfathomable that the Angel Consciousness was scared of her.

Yet she moped around and lived inside her head.

You will do the right thing, I repeated down the fuzzy connection that led into Aran’s sleeping subconscious. Sacrifice yourself to help others. Show them you are righteous.

Tears dripped.

My limbs twitched.

Warren whined as I lay wide awake in the dark bedroom, paralyzed with pain.

Luckily for Aran, I also lived inside her head, and I was a monster.

Today Aran would walk into the arena for the showcase, and she would earn her wings. There was no other choice.

Arabella Alis Egan would rise above the atrocities that I’d committed against her. The Latin translation of Alis was “wings,” after all.

She would claim her birthright.

And the realms would never be the same.