Omega Phoenix: Provoked

Chapter 2

2

Max

Confusion and fear battle inside me as I’m trying to make sense of what just happened.

Cyra and the Alpha phoenix were fighting, first in the sky, and then after an anxiety-inducing action from Cyra, they were fighting on the roof. But, suddenly, they seemed to have both disappeared, their flames no longer visible from this distance. And my eyesight isn’t good enough to see their human forms from here.

What’s going on?

Liam and I couldn’t really do much during the battle, apart from cheering them on and hoping that they wouldn’t get hurt too much, since we can’t fly, so we couldn’t fly out of here and mix in with the others.

After taking down the handful of shifters who did come into the building, we’ve only been able to watch what’s going on in the sky.

After Cyra saw that the Alpha phoenix was fighting Zack and Spence, she couldn’t stay out of it. Her fury made her fire burn so bright that there’s not much flammable left in the path between where she was standing before and the window through which she left the building. We all had to quickly get out of her way, and I still managed to scorch some of the fur on my side from standing too close. Damn...

The fight between Cyra and the Alpha phoenix seemed to drag on, but in reality, it didn’t really take that long. My heart tried to break out of my chest and I nearly jumped out of the room to protect her when I saw how Cyra grabbed the Alpha phoenix and plunged them both towards the ground.

I held my breath tightly, until I saw Cyra soar past the other end of the roof, and my heart beat like crazy after that. That was so f*****g dangerous.

Then I got distracted as Spence was attacked by a gargoyle. Even from this distance, I could see how the gargoyle dug their claws into Spence’s side. One of Spence’s legs was hanging at his side oddly and the fur on his leg was turning dark really quickly.

I took my eyes off Cyra and the Alpha phoenix for only a few seconds, and suddenly they were gone. They were fighting one moment, and the next moment they seemed to have disappeared.

I try to focus all my heads on where I last saw Cyra and the Alpha phoenix, but it’s no use. I take a step forward, only to realise that I’m almost stepping out of the building. f**k.

“I can’t see s**t from here,” Liam growls at my side and I jolt away from him, too focused on what was going on outside and forgetting where I was.

I shift back into my human form and reach out to him. “We have to get to them. We have to get closer.” My voice is rough. “We have to find Cyra.” The urge to find her is getting stronger by the second.

Then I glance around and find Maeve staring out to the fight in the sky, her eyes wide as she’s holding Gavin tightly to her. Her tears are close to the surface and I realise that Dec isn’t here with us.

I scan the air in the direction she’s staring and find Dec’s blue dragon form in an intense fight with a fire dragon. Dec is much smaller than the fire dragon, but he’s also faster and seems to be able to hold his ground, or air, I don’t know.

Then, from the corner of my eyes, I notice movements on a nearby rooftop, and two shifters drop out of the air, like stones.

“Fuck.” Liam’s voice is tight. “Shifter enforcement. Someone called them. That’s what must have happened to Cyra.” He eyes me. “We have to get down there. We have to...” He swallows hard, panic setting in his gaze. “We have to get to her.”

But before we can move, men in black outfits burst into the room, their weapons focused on us.

I quickly put my hands up, and Liam does the same while Maeve stills, holding Gavin close to her, as the little one bursts out crying. He’s been really good the whole time, but he’s obviously had enough of everything now.

The men in black look around the room, and as I follow their gazes to the shifters scattered around the room, bile rises in my throat. Crap. This doesn’t look very good for us...

“On the floor. Hands above your head.” One of the men in black shouts and I try to comply as best as possible, my wounds making it hard to move.

Then I hear a shot and next to me, Liam slumps to the ground.

What?!

No.

No!

Anger flashes through me as I glare at the men in black and I throw myself between the men and Liam. My skin ripples, my cerberus ready to break out and protect Liam. I try to suppress my cerberus, not wanting to get shot too, but it’s a losing battle. Between not knowing what’s going on with Cyra, Spence being hurt, and my family being in danger, I can’t suppress him any longer.

Then there’s the sound of another shot, followed by a pinch in my back, before the world around me goes dark.

Fuck.

Not good...

The white hospital room feels way too sterile for the storm of emotions fighting inside of me. Everything is wrong. Nothing is right.

I stare at Cyra’s unconscious form, her skin pale, almost the same colour as the sheets she’s lying on, between the quickly darkening bruises that cover her whole body. She looks so close to death, way too close to death. I can’t lose her. I really can’t, not after everything we’ve been through. Not now our family is finally reunited.

I lean closer to her, reaching up with my good arm. I wince as I pull a muscle on my bad arm, but then push through the pain and softly touch her cheek, needing to make sure her skin is still warm, that she’s still alive. Her chest goes up and down in calm movements, but somehow that doesn’t ease the fear.

I want to scream and cry at the same time. I want to hurt someone, anyone, like they’ve hurt my mate, my love. But all I can do right now is sit here and wait for her to wake up.

“Please, sleep for a while longer, just a while longer.” My voice is barely above a whisper as I try to keep my emotions in check. “So you won’t have to...” I swallow hard, blinking fast. So she won’t have to face reality yet.

Out of all of us, it seems that I got off the easiest. I needed stitches in my shoulder and back, but nothing too bad. I’m sore, but that’s about it.

Liam just got out of surgery. The jaguar who attacked him luckily hadn’t hit any major arteries or organs, but his side was shredded and they had to perform surgery on him to get as much of it back together as possible.

They said that his blood loss from the wounds was much more dangerous than the initial wounds had been. The only thing keeping him up during the fight had probably been the adrenaline. Hell.

Right now, both Zack and Spence are still in surgery. Zack has broken bones that have to be reset and he’s also lost a lot of blood. Plus, they have to treat the burns on his side, which looked pretty bad when I saw him for a few moments earlier.

But Spence...

My throat closes up and tears blur my sight. I don’t want to remember how he looked when I saw him as they rolled him right into surgery as he arrived at the hospital. What I’ve understood of things, it’s not good. He got hurt really badly, and they’ve been trying to stitch him together for the last two hours, but I have no idea how that’s going.

And soon... Soon, they’ll come to take Cyra into surgery too. When she arrived, they took a couple of scans of her, to make sure the babies are okay. The good news is that the babies look to be fine, but the doctors don’t like how some of her wounds look, and they want to make sure that the wounds down her side didn’t hit anything important.

They quickly cleaned her up, but they now want to wait for her to wake up first, before they do more. The way she’d apparently crashed into a force barrier when they caught her makes the docs worry that there might be more damage than they can see on scans right now. They don’t want to put her through surgery two or three times, for her and the babies, so they’re letting her wake up first.

I wish she’d wake up already, just to let us know that she’s fine and the doctors are worrying over nothing. But I also don’t want her to wake up yet. I don’t want her to experience what’s going on right now. The uncertainty, the pain, the stress. I don’t want her to have to go through that.

I don’t want her to have to go through waiting on news about Spence. Not knowing if he’s doing well. Not knowing what’s going on with him. Please, let her wake up when we know that he’s going to be fine, that he’ll pull through. He has to pull through.

Staring at Cyra, my only light in this darkness, I try to convince myself that everything will be okay. It has to be. The only way to make sure I don’t do something stupid is to keep my attention, all my attention, on her. She’s the only thing keeping me here.

If it wasn’t for her, I would have hunted down the Alpha phoenix and finish what Cyra had tried but failed to do earlier. But I can’t, not now, not when she needs me.

A shadow falls over me and I glance up. Audrey is standing on Cyra’s other side, her eyes dark, her lips squeezed together tightly, tears brimming in her eyes.

My heart hurts, fear taking hold of me. “Any news?”

Audrey came as soon as she saw what happened on TV and she’s been trying to keep everything together for us. She’s been the one talking to the doctors, to the nurses, the police, to anyone.

She slowly shakes her head. “No news.” Her eyes flit to Cyra’s face as the tears drop from her lashes and slide down her cheeks. She takes a shuddering breath.

“Then, what is it?” I frown at her. Not sure about her reaction.

She takes Cyra’s hand, holding it tenderly. “It feels like it’s taking too long. Cyra not waking up. Spence’s surgery. It’s all taking too long.” Her voice breaks and she clears her throat. “Too long.”

I nod. “I know.”

Then the door to our room opens and Liam is pushed inside. His bed is parked opposite Cyra’s. He still looks a little out of it, but he’s awake. As soon as they’ve parked him, he looks around, awkwardly meeting my eyes, his gaze filled with panic. “How is she?” He tries to look at Cyra, but I suspect that from his angle on his back on the bed, he can’t see her well. “Is she okay?”

With a groan, I carefully push myself up and drag myself over to him. My lifelong best friend, one of the few people I’d trust to always have my back, one of the few people I’d give my life to protect. “No change yet. She hasn’t woken up.”

“That’s bad, right?” Liam frowns. He moves and looks about to push himself up so that he can look over to her.

I thoughtlessly shoot out my arm, trying to prevent him from sitting up and hurting himself more, but the arm I reach out with is the one that’s hurt and I feel how I pull too hard on the stitches.

The sudden pain and then the wet sensation spreading over my back lets me know that I’ve pulled at least one of the stitches. My head feels a little too light and I sway slightly before I grab hold of the side of the bed, managing to remember to do it with my good arm. f**k. Not good.

Liam meets my eyes, alarm flashing through them, and his good arm shoots out to me, grabbing my good wrist. “You need to get that checked out. Don’t wait.”

“I’m fine.” I take careful breaths, breathing through the pain and the lightheadedness. “I’m fine. I’m just... I’m just staying with Cyra until they take her in for surgery.”

I carefully walk back to the chair where I was sitting as my head swims from the new pain and exhaustion and I sit down, my eyes back on Cyra. As soon as I sit, darkness seems to overwhelm me for a moment, the lightheadedness not seeming to go down, but I ignore it. That can wait.

I just need to stay at Cyra’s side until she’s awake. I can’t leave her side. Of all of us, I’m the least hurt. That means that I need to be the one looking out for our family, looking after Cyra. I just need to hold on a little longer.

Just a little longer.