"No, no, no," I murmured, more to myself than to him. The realization of what I had just uncovered, slashed my heart into pieces with a shard of ice. The cold, brutal and sickening feeling of betrayal took over, controlling every single cell in my body.
My eyes floated toward the ground. I couldn't look at his face anymore, at his green eyes that had me falling and drowning. My head started spinning. "No, no, no." I think I was crying, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly at what point in this revelation that had begun again.
"Sari, please, let me explain," he begged me.
"How-" I had to gasp for air. My lungs couldn't fill anymore. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't breathe. "How could you do this?" I still didn't dare to look up at him.
"Sari, I promise I have a good reason, just please, please look at me."
I couldn't. I couldn't look at him. I wasn't sure if I could ever look at him again.
"All this time," I panted. "I trusted you." I turned around, my back facing him. My eyes tried to hold steady on the spinning ground, a feeble attempt to regain my balance. But to no avail. My dizziness paved the way for nausea, and I felt the sudden urge to empty my stomach contents. But I couldn't. I couldn't break down.
Not in front of him.
Not ever again.
"Aven trusted you," I said, tears flowing everywhere in between. Even though my eyes were emptying themselves at a steady tempo, inside I felt numb. I didn't feel sad, or angry. I didn't feel myself crying, it was just an automatic reaction my body was having. I could only feel the burning, suffocating, and yet still numbing sensation of betrayal, perhaps the worst feeling I'd ever encountered. The pressure on my heart. If feelings could ever be heard, my heart felt loud. "What has he ever done to you? What have I ever done?"
Jerr grabbed my arm, gently but with an urge behind it, trying to get me to look up. I pulled my arm out of his grasp.
"Don't touch me," I spat at him. I finally found the courage to turn around and face him. To stare into those green eyes. But I didn't see the green that made me feel safe and calm. That made me feel at home.
I saw a green so vicious and vile, it tore me up from the inside and left me open on the cobblestones, waiting for my soul to slowly rot away. I saw him and Beckett, scheming together. I saw all our time together, our love for each other. But all of it was covered in blood and betrayal. All of it had been a lie, a game.
My mind was screaming. I didn't care if Jerr could hear me. He already knew everything there was to know. He'd played me. And he'd won. I had fallen for him. Sun burn me, I had actually fallen for him.
"Sari, please," Jerr said. His eyes were watery too, and his cheeks were tear-stained. But I didn't care. I didn't want to wipe them away. I didn't want to console him. I wanted to leave, to run, to never come back. But I couldn't move anymore. "You've seen it yourself what a sunburned dangerous wolf Aven is. Don't pretend you've never questioned his methods."
"And Beckett is so much better?" I huffed.
"No, Beckett's just as bad, I know. Please, let me explain," he begged again, holding off my body from leaving. I hadn't even noticed that I'd tried.
"Don't touch me," I bit, easily freeing myself from his grasp. "Aven took you in. He saved you!"
Jerr raised his hands to his ruffled brown hair, hair I'd loved to have ruffled my fingers in only moments ago. Hair my fingers had played with, just a few nights ago. He looked away from me, frantically looking around, before he spat out, "Who do you think I needed saving from?"
I froze again. My breath got stuck in my throat. "What?"
"I haven't told you everything about the night my family died. Just please, hear me out, Sari," Jerr pleaded. His voice trembled. He tried reaching for me, but suddenly remembered how much I did not want to be touched by him right now and withdrew his hands before they reached me.
"You're not making any sense." My body started trembling. He was working with Beckett. What possible explanation could he have that would justify any of it?
"I know I am not, which is why I need you to listen to me. Let me explain this, please," he continued begging.
I didn't know why he kept playing his game. It was over. He could stop his act – his crying, all the broken looks he was sending me. His hands trying to reach for mine, but pulling back each time.
I was broken. Shattered. Wasn't this enough for him?
"Sari, I have never played you. I love you," he said. Liar. Liar, liar, liar. The three words that would have normally filled me with ecstasy now filled me with horror and disgust. "I do, I love you. I swear on everything that is blessed. But Aven killed my family, Sari. He killed them. Beckett gave me the chance for revenge."
"No," I countered, the sobs accentuating the shaking of my head. "You told me that Aven saved you."
"I couldn't exactly have told you this," he said. "But I got home from the market, and I found my family murdered. By Aven."
"And you saw him do it?" I asked.
"No, I didn't have to. They all had a crescent moon carved on top of their hearts."
What he said hit me like a punch to the stomach. It didn't make any sense. Why would Aven kill a family of innocents? What would he gain from that?
"He'd gain me, a fifteen-year-old Wise Moon, still young enough to be influenced and shaped into a powerful weapon. A lot of Alphas would've done what he did to get me to join their pack. He was simply the one who got to it first."
None of it made sense. My head continued spinning, nausea never leaving.
"Sari, let me explain everything," Jerr said, his hand lightly cupping my face, wiping my tears away.
"You've had plenty of chances to come clean," I said, turning my head away from his touch. I still felt chills when he touched me, and I hated it. I hated myself for it. But I hated him even more.
"By the Moons, Willis-" I suddenly realized. The nausea intensified, and I felt myself doubling over, preparing to hurl at the disgust I was feeling. But my body blocked it off, keeping me in this horrible state. Making me suffer more than I had to. He had been working with Beckett all this time. He had been the mole, he had let it happen-
Jerr interrupted me before I could even finish my train of thought. "I had nothing to do with what he did to Willis. Nothing. I was as disgusted by what he did as you were."
But how could he be if he still worked with him? How could any of this be true?
"Sari, I swear, by the life of our Moons, I would never, ever harm a child. I have hated working with Beckett ever since I learned about his true nature. But I hate Aven more."
"And that should justify this?" I asked offended.
"No, it doesn't justify it," he denied, shaking his head, tears still streaming down. By the Moons, was he good. "I want Aven dead, for the same reasons you want Beckett dead. I am only on Beckett's side for anything directly related to my revenge, to Aven's death. I don't even want to torture him. I just want him gone. Beckett can make that happen, I can't. He has the powers of Sariranyasa, Sari. I'm no match for him. I've never been."
How he spoke disgusted me. He admitted he was on Beckett's side, even if it was just for this one thing. How he could be on his side, a monstrous being like Beckett, made no sense to me.
Unless Jerr was one of the monsters, too. And he had been all along.
"Sari, please," he continued begging. "I hate this, I never wanted you to find out this way."
My name from his lips brought shivers to my body. Not like before, these shivers were cold and distant. "And how was I supposed to find out, then?" My tears soaked my shirt, mixing with blood and sweat, the material of it now sticking to my skin. My lips tasted salty, but I couldn't be bothered to wipe my face. It had no use since I wasn't nearly done crying.
"I don't know," he cried out. "I don't know, I hoped you never would-"
"You would have continued lying," I said under my breath. You would have continued playing your game. I thought that last part silently, so he wouldn't hear. Just like he had taught me. But maybe that didn't work at all, maybe he'd only pretended he couldn't hear me.
But I needed him to believe I wasn't onto his game. I needed him to think I was willing to listen to what he had to say. He wanted to finish his game, the same way Beckett always did. So if I wanted to leave, I needed to let him do just that. And I did want to leave. I wanted to leave him, and Spitta, behind me for good.
"Talk," I finally said, in between his broken pleas and venomous I love you's, when my breath had gathered a little bit.
He hesitated for a moment, trying to find his words. As if anything he was going to say now, would change the outcome of this match. He had won, no matter what he said now.
He had completely and utterly won.
"When I came back from the market, I found my family, murdered. My parents and Kalina, their lifeless and dull eyes were staring at me, their throats slit and a crescent moon carved on their bare chests. I broke then and there, finding my own family like that.
"Beckett found me in my house only moments after I had returned and found my family," he said, his voice shaking. He was good at this, I had to admit. I couldn't blame myself for falling into his trap. He was just really good.
"He told me his spies had informed him that Aven had been planning this and that he came as soon as he could, in a feeble attempt to stop him. At that moment, I believed him. I was young, and overloaded with emotions I couldn't make sense of. Now I realize how he played me just as hard as Aven did. He never would have stopped Aven, because if Aven hadn't killed my family, Beckett couldn't use me against him. I dug inside his mind, as best as I could, and I only found evidence that he was telling the truth. Aven had done this.
"We didn't have a lot of time. Aven had left my house to go looking for me, and my scent would soon lead him back to my home. He carved the crescent moons to scare me into going with him, but Beckett quickly convinced me that it would be better if he thought I had never known it was him.
"I had to burn my own house to the ground, Sari. With them inside. I have never had the possibility of a proper goodbye, or even a proper burial. Aven took that from me as well." Jerr's voice was still shaking, but his story didn't hesitate. He had practiced his part well.
I kept quiet. I kept myself frozen in place as I listened to what he said. Because I knew that if I said one word, if I showed one emotion, I'd give him the satisfaction of winning all over again.
Jerr took my silence as his signal to continue with his story. "I was heartbroken when I found my family dead. And I was furious, a fury I had never experienced before. So when Beckett offered me the chance to avenge them, I took it without hesitation. Aven came back and found me there, in front of the burning house. I pretended I didn't know what happened. I pretended I got home with the house already aflame. Aven took the bait, took me home with him, and has trusted me ever since."
Jerr paused again. He was trying to make this look even more believable, I realized. But I wouldn't fall for it. I'd never fall for his tricks again. So I kept quiet, as much as it pained me not to throw up on the floor in front of us, to call him names. To hurt him too, even though I knew I didn't have that power over him.
After all our time together, it now seemed he had always had the upper hand. We had never been equal.
"You know the rest. But I promise you, Sari, Beckett is only a means to an end. I want nothing to do with him other than this, and I have done nothing else with him that wasn't directly related to Aven's death."
A sudden shift in the air. Or was it in me? I hardly registered my nostrils flaring open, but I saw Jerr's do the same. A subtle change around us, an explosion that had gone off somewhere and was now forcing us to adjust, to widen our eyes the tiniest bit. No, not an explosion.
A tug. A pull.
Jerr. He caught on that I had just tried to play him to get away.
"Stop this," I seethed.
"Sari, I'm not doing-,"
"You've won your stupid game," I breathed. "Now quit playing and let me go." Get out of my head. Let my mind go. Don't force me to stay with you.
He had won. I had surrendered.
I turned around and ran away, as fast as I could. I could feel Jerr following me, but I didn't look back.
I knew it here. I'd grown up here, in these very slums. I knew it like the back of my hand.
So I ran. I kept running and running and running. I let my legs take over as my mind was still under Jerr's possession.
I ran into different alleys, slowly feeling that tug in my mind weaken, the screams of my name becoming more silent with every turn that I took. I ran away from Jerr, into seemingly dead-end streets, where only a local would know about the little passageway that was hidden behind the trash.
I ran and I ran and I ran until that tug was finally absent and I knew I had lost Jerr.
I'd lost him in more ways than one.
A/N: My dearest reader, I am sorry for this chapter. I promise it will all make sense, but for now, our hearts shall remain broken. :(