Reaper

A week passed in the compound.

I learned that the organization that my family worked for was called the SDS – Supernatural Detection Service. My parents had helped to start the foundation – which explained why they were absent so often while I was a kid. Noah and Mason had each found out about the organization and had chosen to become part of it. Noah had actually been a soldier in Afghanistan while he was deployed, but he had worked at the SDS both before and after he shipped out. Mason had earned his medical license, but he, too, had decided to work here with Noah and my parents.

I felt betrayed that I had been excluded from the experience. Noah and Mason assured me that it had been for my own protection, but that didn’t ease the pain I felt. I had always thought that my parents hadn’t liked me as much as my brothers, and now I had tangible proof of that. That, I think, was what stung the most.

I hadn’t run into my parents yet – thank god. The two of them were actually on a business trip and would be back to the compound in a few days. I don’t think they knew about me since Noah had said it would be hard to contact them, but I could only imagine that they wouldn’t be so happy to see me, even if I had been dead to them. I wasn’t looking forward to that reunion.

Mason and Noah had tried to probe me about my relationship with Sawyer, but I hadn’t told them much. I think Mason knew more than he let on, but he chose not to make Noah angry by the fact that Sawyer had intended to do less-than-appropriate things with his little sister. I doubted that Noah would be so nice to him after that.

I was getting along well with Lily. She educated me on some of the finer points of Reaper lore that I had missed in my experience and in my limited research. I was grateful for the lesson, but somehow learning more about Reapers and had made me feel worse about what happened to Sawyer, and the rest of the pack. I found myself missing them terribly, and I was still hurt that they hadn’t found us by the time Noah and his reinforcements had arrived, but I knew they had tried. At least, I hoped they had.

Jesse had made some friends in the compound, but he stuck mostly with Fitch and with Noah, who was surprisingly cool with him. Apparently Fitch had gotten involved with the SDS when I had disappeared – my brother had come looking for me, and he had unknowingly recruited Fitch to the organization that seemed to be slowly infiltrating my life.

Sawyer was healing, but he was healing really slowly. I was skeptical – I remembered how quickly he had healed after he had fought with Hunter and with the werewolves and wondered why this time was different. But the important part was that he was alive, and according to Lily and Mason, the poison from the bullet had left his system. It was all uphill from here, she told me.

“Look, I’m not going to respect the guy just because Charlie’s developed a case of Stockholm syndrome,” Noah snarled as Mason followed him into the cafeteria.

I sat at my table, alone, and froze. I wasn’t sure if they saw me, but I stopped moving with a forkful of spaghetti mid-air in the hopes that they wouldn’t. I wanted to see where this conversation would go if they didn’t know I was listening. Noah thought I had Stockholm syndrome? What exactly did he think Sawyer had done to me?

Mason rolled his eyes. “I see your psych degree is becoming useful to you,” Mason said dryly. “Noah, you have to at least give the guy a chance,” he reasoned, grabbing a tray and getting in line for food. “I understand that he’s –“ Mason glanced around and lowered his voice, “That he’s technically a Reaper, but Charlie is obviously crazy for him and I think you need to respect that.”

Mason had been surprisingly more accepting of Sawyer than Noah had. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it had something to do with the knowledge that I had felt the bullet that had hit Sawyer’s arm. Something about that connection meant something to Mason, and I’m sure Lily had told him the reason even if she hadn’t told me yet.

Noah glared at him. “I will never be okay with that – that monster putting his hands on her,” he growled, pulling a plate of food onto his tray. “Honestly, it’s like you don’t even care that she could get hurt.”

Mason did something then that really surprised me. He grabbed Noah by the front of his shirt and yanked him up to his face so that the two were almost touching. Noah looked terrified, and suddenly I remembered how much Mason tormented Noah when they were little. Noah may have been my older brother, but he was Mason’s younger brother, and he made sure to remind him of that.

“Don’t you dare say I don’t care about Charlie,” he said quietly, his voice full of rage, “I remember the day she came home from the hospital like it was yesterday. I watched Mom and Dad shove her aside, I watched you turn her into a weapon, and I watched her leave heartbroken that no one wanted her to stay with us.” He narrowed his eyes at him. “But don’t think for a second I wouldn’t have stopped her if I didn’t believe that the best thing for her was to get the hell away from our family, and you know it.” He finally released Noah with a shove, and he staggered back a few feet. “Now, I don’t care that you don’t like Sawyer, little brother. Charlie can’t help her feelings for him, it’s in her DNA. She couldn’t stop caring about him if she tried.” He gave Noah one last shove. “And it’s about time you suck it up.”

Mason grabbed an apple from the pile in the corner and stormed out of the room angrily, his white coat trailing behind him.

Thankfully, neither of them had seen me. I quietly finished my food and took my tray to the conveyor belt where it was washed, and ducked out before Noah could realize I was there. For a soldier, he certainly wasn’t that attentive.

Besides, I had been surprised by what Mason had said about me and Sawyer. I wanted to ask Lily about it first before I really started to take it to heart.

As I walked, though, I couldn’t help but think about what Mason had told Noah about me. About how he had watched me grow up and hadn’t said anything because he wanted what was best for me. It took a while for me to process that, but thinking back, I could see it. Mason had been about eight years old when I was born. I remembered stuff from when I was eight, especially if it was important, so it was no stretch that he remembered my birth had it had affected him. Noah had only been four – even if he had known what was happening, I doubt he remembered it much. Mason had been distant when I was a kid, but maybe that had been because he knew the truth about Mom and Dad and wanted to keep me out of it. I never realized that he had cared so much about me, but after seeing how he reacted when he found out I was alive and how he had behaved with Noah, I started to change my opinion about him.

Mason only wanted to protect me. It was his way of showing that he cared about me, even if it meant that I didn’t see him the way he wanted me to.

I understood then why Sawyer behaved the way he did. Sawyer was a lot like Mason, in that way – he was protective of me. Not because he thought I couldn’t take care of myself, necessarily, especially since he knew that I knew how to shoot, but because that was how he showed that he cared about me. I was mentally kicking myself that I hadn’t noticed that earlier, that I hadn’t connected the dots. I had felt like I was a child because Sawyer thought he had to take care of me.

Now, I get it. Sawyer just wanted me to be safe. That was how he showed he cared about me.

I walked into Sawyer’s room to see that he was sitting on his bed, as usual. Lilly was changing his bandages carefully, but she looked like something was bothering her. Sawyer hissed in pain as she moved, but he didn’t seem to notice I was there until I knocked timidly on the doorframe.

“Can I come in?” I asked, even though I knew I could.

Lily seemed startled that I was there, but when she turned around, she smiled and nodded to the armchair next to the bed. “Oh, of course, Charlie. Actually, I wanted to talk to you and Sawyer about something.” Her face went back to being upset, and I knew instantly that that thing probably wasn’t good.

I closed the door behind me and went over to the chair. I folded my hands stiffly in my lap and sat up straight, suddenly uncomfortable that I was here. What could she tell us? Did it have to do with what Mason had told Noah earlier?

She finished changing Sawyer’s bandage, and carefully slipped her latex gloves off. I knew she was nervous to talk to us because her hands were shaking as she did so, and suddenly I felt a knot start to form in my stomach.

She took a deep breath and glanced between Sawyer and me before she finally released it, staring down at her hands. Oh, boy.

“Okay, the first thing you guys have to understand is that you two are in an extremely rare situation,” she said slowly, still staring at her hands. “We don’t have a lot of research about any of this. Sawyer, you were a Gamma before all of this, so only half of your DNA was Reaper, maybe even less. This in itself is uncommon, so that’s the first variable.”

We had had the discussion a few days ago with Sawyer about being half human. He hadn’t seemed too surprised, but he had seemed kind of disappointed. I knew from the other Reapers that Gammas, or half-humans, were not treated well in Sawyer’s world. They were seen as mutants, halflings, and no respectable Reaper was kind to them. Sawyer had confessed that he didn’t know about being a Reaper until he was older, and Lily had told him that that was typical for a Gamma. He had also told her that he hadn’t known his mother well and that his father had been absent more often than not while he was growing up, so he had no idea which one was the Reaper and which one the human. He told us that Hunter had decided to take him in – whether Hunter and the others knew about Sawyer being a Gamma was a mystery, but I leaned toward them not knowing.

“The second is that, well, Sawyer was hit with the bullet laced with CS-22,” Lily continued, fidgeting with her fingers. “We know that this compound will kill Reapers by attacking their bodies at a cellular level. It targets cells with a DNA sequence that is specific to Reapers and kills it. Sawyer, since you only had parts of this sequence, it only destroyed the parts that were Reaper-specific, and left the rest intact. That was why I wanted to look at your blood work before I told you anything about your condition.”

Sawyer nodded gravely.

“The final variable is that, well, I believe that you two are – were – might be mates,” she said quickly, her face flushing, “Again, we don’t have a lot of research on this phenomenon, but we do know that this bond is strong and it is both physical and emotional. It is very rare, especially for this to happen between a human and a Gamma, but I think it’s the explanation behind what happened when Sawyer was shot.”

I felt the knots in my stomach tighten even tighter. Sawyer and I were mates. I was Sawyer’s mate. How that was even possible was beyond me, but somewhere deep inside of me I knew it had been true since he had told me about it, way back in that motel room. Lily telling me to my face was just conformation of something I had both wanted and feared.

“Ultimately, these three variables contribute to my final understanding of what happened to Sawyer,” she finally said softly.

I was almost afraid to ask. “What was it?”

She sat up straight, and took a deep breath.

“The poison in the bullet attacked the part of Sawyer that was Reaper. It killed off that part of him, leaving behind the other half – the human half. Charlie, what you felt was what most mates feel once their partners have died – they feel their pain acutely because of the connection they share. Only you didn’t feel Sawyer dying, you felt the Reaper half of him die.”

She looked between Sawyer and me, who both stared back at her, dazed and completely taken aback, before she finally dropped the ultimate bomb on us.

“It’s my belief that Sawyer is now completely human.”