To heal a Rogue

BONNIE

"Why are you acting like I hijacked things?" She reached out and grabbed my ankle. Her hand was ice. I kicked at her but she held on, fingers digging into my calf, pulling me toward her across the gray expanse. "You gave me permission. You always do. You know I handle shit when you cannot. Back then. And now."

My vision flickered. For a split second, everything went red. Not metaphorical red, not anger-red, but the color of arterial blood sprayed across a white wall. Screams filled my mouth, coppery and thick, screams that weren’t mine but belonged to a younger throat, a smaller body. I saw hands reaching, grabbing, felt the snap of small bones under small fists, tasted dirt and—

The red cleared. I gasped, choking on air that wasn’t there.

"What is that?" I clawed at my own chest, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What did you show me?"

The woman—this evil twin, this dark mirror—knelt over me now. She smiled, and her teeth were too sharp. "You do not want to remember quite yet, Bonnie. But when you want to. You will know."

"Know what?"

"The world was harsh after all." She leaned down, her hair falling around us like a curtain, cutting off the gray light. "You did what you needed to do to survive. You always have. That’s why you made me."

I shoved at her chest, my palms flat against her sternum. She was solid, real, warm where her hand on my ankle was cold. "Where is this? Where are we?"

"Inside." She grabbed my wrists, pinning them to the ground above my head with one hand. With the other, she traced my jawline, my throat, the valley between my breasts. "Deep inside. Where you put all the things you don’t want to be. The anger. The violence. The willingness to do what needs doing when the world demands payment."

"Who exactly are you?"

She released my wrists. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. She lowered herself onto me, her weight settling against my hips, her breasts pressing against mine, and she smelled like smoke and sex and graveyard dirt. She wrapped her arms around me, not restraining but embracing, her cheek against my cheek, her lips at my ear.

"I am you," she whispered. The breath was hot, tickling, intimate. "I am every dark thing you do not want for yourself. Every cruel thought. Every violent urge. Every moment you looked at someone who hurt you and imagined their throat under your teeth."

I shuddered. She held me tighter, her thighs clamping around mine, her fingers tracing circles on my back.

"It has been a while since you reached out," she continued, her voice dropping to a velvet murmur. "You were doing so well, weren’t you? Playing healer. Playing good girl. Playing mate to a future king who doesn’t deserve you... deserves us. But meeting with our father has strengthened us. You felt him, didn’t you? That quarter-god in us. That evil seed you fear we will become."

I went rigid. "I don’t have a father. I have a sperm donor who abandoned my mother to die."

"Exactly." She pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes. The horizontal pupils dilated, black swallowing yellow. "You don’t want to be connected to him in any way. You want to stay pure. Stay good. Stay the healer who fixes broken things. And I..." She grinned, sharp and hungry. "I get to be the quarter-god. I get to be his evil seed. I get to do the breaking. And that is fine. It is why you created me after all."

I bucked my hips, throwing her off balance, and rolled away. I got to my feet, swaying, my hands up in a fighting stance I’d learned from Fia. "Create? I created you? If that is the case... I never want to see you again. I don’t want to feel you again. Never. Ever. Again."

The woman lay on her back where I’d thrown her, her black hair spread out like a halo. She laughed, low and throaty, and the sound made my skin pebble with gooseflesh.

"You said that last time." She rolled onto her hands and knees, then pushed herself up, fluid as smoke. "You said it when you were a kid and wanted nothing more than to bury the memory of what you did to that man who touched you in the alley. You said it when you were fourteen, and you made me choke the air out of that pimp who was going to sell your virginity to the highest bidder. You said it when you were seventeen, and I tore that sentinel’s throat out for beating the younger Omegas."

I shook my head harder, my hands over my ears as flashes came back. "Shut up. Shut up."

She shifted. The form blurred again, bones cracking and reforming, skin giving way to fur. The wolf stood before me, massive, impossible, its goat eyes level with mine even as I stood.

"One thing about your hypocrite ass," the wolf growled, its lips peeling back from teeth like daggers. "Is that you will be back. When the world hurts you again. When the crown betrays you again. When you realize that being good gets you nothing but dead friends and empty beds. You will crawl back inside me, little Bonnie. You will wrap yourself in my fur, and you will hand me the reins. And I will be ready."

"I won’t," I whispered.

"You will." The wolf stepped forward and licked my face. Its tongue was rough as sandpaper and left a trail of wet heat across my cheek. "Because I love you. I love us to the very end. I am the only one who has ever truly protected you. The only one who never asked you to be smaller. To be quieter or be good."

My knees buckled. I sank to the ground, my hands covering my face, my shoulders shaking.

"Sleep now," the wolf murmured. "Forget again. Be the healer. Be the victim. Be the good girl. I’ll wait. I always wait."

The gray began to brighten. Not to light, but to white, blinding and absolute, erasing the wolf, erasing the space, erasing everything.

The last thing I heard was her voice, whispering from the fading dark: "I’ll be here when you need me. I am always here."

Then it all went white.