RANK

Chapter 28

"Lee..." Nya mumbles. Her sister was back but the look on her face was what she gave her enemies. It dawned on her in that second the position she was in. She quickly slides away from Vince. "You're back..." She goes to hug her but Malina holds up her palm making her feel as if she walked into a glass door. She freezes, stopped in her tracks.

"Answer me... what did I just walk into?" She shifts her squinted eyes at her ex. "I thought you were on your deathbed."

Vince folds his arms.

"It's a long story." Nya answers. Beads of sweat started forming on her head and her hands turned clammy. Her sister is the most important person in her whole world.

"Was he about to kiss you?"

She swallows a knot taking shape in her throat and hesitantly shakes her head. "Do you really think he would-"

"Are you okay?" Vince cuts her off.

She blinks and finds his brows arched and his penetrating glare boring into her. Now was not the time. She had to think, where was she? What was she doing?

"You're gonna have to do better than that. Because right now I see an alpha who wants to break his own rules and a backstabbing bitch for a sister." Malina points between the two.

The air leaves Nya's lungs. She literally felt like she was dying. The betrayal in her sister's eyes made her afraid. The only thing that put fear in her, the thought of losing someone she cared about. "No..." was the only word she could utter. The truth was that she felt immense guilt because feelings for her alpha as much as she wanted to deny it, were there and as much as she likes to pretend that nothing happened between them, something did. Ughh... She felt treacherous.

"Nya..." Vince calls, and she hears him but doesn't look his way. The churning in her stomach was so violent.

"Who set this up?" Malina looks at Vince. "I thought you were dying. I heard Beta Bent was becoming the new alpha. I've been crying for days praying for it not to be true. "Is this some sick joke? Was this to get me back here?"

"Calm down." He orders. "Everything will be explained to you but right now..." He nears Nya and grabs her upper arms turning her to look into her eyes and it was just as he suspected, her pupils were dilated. "Nya."  His worst fear. Her eyes roll back in her head and she unexpectedly falls limp.

"What's going on?"

"No." He growls as he lifts her and takes her to his study with Malina in tow. "Is she okay?" She asks.

Bent was there flipping through pages behind the desk. He gets up instantly. "Shit." He mutters.

Vince lays her on the sofa and stoops beside her. "Nya..." He taps her cheek. "She's getting hot." He announces and looks to his brother urgently. "Call the lab and get the results now!" 

"Yes sir." Bent picks up his phone and steps out.

"What's happening? Malina urgently looks on. "What's wrong with her?"

She healed me last night.

"She what?"

"She took the bane from me somehow and now... this is what I was afraid of." Excuse me." He maneuvers around her, goes to his desk and begins a search online when after just a few seconds, Bent comes to his side. "You're not going to believe this. The reason they took so long is because they had her blood retested and the results came back conclusive, she's not human."

"What?" His posture stiffens.

"Not one strand of human DNA is in her body."

"What the actual fuck?" Malina blurts out.

"What is she then?"

"She definitely has 13% wolf that we're sure of but the other 87% is unknown for now."

Restless Vince stands and goes back to Nya's side. He takes her hand which was getting hotter and hotter by the second. She isn't going to last long if he doesn't do something now. "We don't have time." On the inside, he was roaring and tossing things aside in a rage, but on the outside, he was calm and collected. He needed to have a clear head. If there was a way for her to take the wolfbane from him there must be a way for her to release it. "Tell them to stop everything else they are doing and compare her DNA to other species.

"Already instructed."

"Good... let's keep looking. We've been looking in the wrong places."

The three get to work searching online and through old books and after some time and not some not-so-promising leads everyone stops when they hear the sound of Bent's phone vibrating. "Go ahead," he picks up.

They listen as Dallas from the lab explains her astonishing find. "You're not going to believe this but the closest thing I found that resembles her DNA is chicken."

They look at each other dumbfounded.

"It's not even close, but it's close enough to tell me she may be some type of bird."

"Thank you." Bent hangs up.

Nya moans and Vince immediately goes to her side.
He dared to lift her shirt and saw the black spider veins that were once on his body. "Damn it." Why? Why did she have to save him? He wanted to take it back, he needed to take it back. How could he take it back?

"My dad used to say that we wolves weren't the only shapeshifting creatures out there."

The two brothers looked at Malina behind them.

"I can't believe I didn't remember this before but one day when I was really little he told me about a white bird that existed long ago that could change form and had healing powers. Only now is it making sense."

"What kind of bird was it?" Vince's body tensed.

"I think it was a caladrius... yeah... that's it."

Bent goes to the computer and searches. "It says here, a caladrius is able to take sickness into itself and then disperses the sickness, healing both itself and the sick person. That's it. This makes perfect sense."

"How do we get it out of her?"

"It's well known..."  Bent keeps reading. "The most common place for the bird to release its burden is in the ocean."

As Vince keeps his eyes on an unconscious Nya he could see the spider veins growing rapidly onto her neck. "There isn't an ocean a hundred miles from here. She'll die."  He started replaying anything that happened repeatedly in his mind. He thought of her explanation of how she healed him. She used the word pulled. I have an idea. I'm taking her to the waterfall."

He carries her outside, rushing to his truck parked in front and buckling her in the front seat." "Stay with me." He whispers as he caresses her cheek.

"I'm coming too," Malina says from behind him.

"I don't have time for that." He slams the door and jumps in. He speeds off whipping the vehicle expertly around bends and curves, all the while never letting go of Nya's hand.
The balanced traction of the truck climbs the steep dirt road to near the edge of the waterfall. He shifts the vehicle into park, kicks off his shoes, takes off his shirt, and goes around to open the door to her side. "Come here beautiful." He scoops her into his arms.

They were at the edge of a cliff where the waterfall dropped. The current was strongest at this point, exactly what he needed. He entered the rushing waters walking in until Nya's body was submerged to her neck making sure to keep her close so the thrashing water couldn't toss her around. You could see just the tip of her chin and a black imperfection creeping to her face. He turned towards the current and hoped the constant motion of the moving water would create a pulling feeling in her fingers and ignite the glowing he saw. "Come on." He says under his breath. Seconds felt like hours as he watched her floating hands. Then exactly as he wanted, her fingertips lit up. "That's my girl..." Slowly the murky veins on her smooth skin began to disappear and the wolfsbane released into the water. He breathes deep.

Her lashes flicker open and she looks up, seeming to recognize him for a second but they quickly close again. He dips his head and kisses her lips lightly. "My little bird." He whispers.

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