Rachel

I was going to go to hell.

There was really no doubt left about it anymore. I've done some bad things in my life. I've killed—ripped the throats out of living, sentient creatures and watched them bleed. More than that, I've enjoyed the fighting, the killing, the power. Enjoying the killing cancels out any good reasons I might have had for doing it.

But this. Maybe it wasn't as wrong, but I didn't have any good, saving-the-world reasons for doing this bad thing. There was no way for me to justify how I would be hurting Tobias. But I couldn't stop.

Because the thing wasn't just in my chest anymore. It was blazing through my entire body, causing every part of me to burn hot and red.

Marco's hands were somehow everywhere at once—my waist, my shoulders, my hair, my breasts. I liked the way that he gripped me. I was tired of being touched like I might break. I pulled him as close to my body as I could. He pressed me up against his living room wall, his hips crashing desperately into mine, but we weren't going to be able to get much closer—at least not with our clothes still on.

My own hands scrambled under Marco's t-shirt, grabbing onto the material to pull it up over his head. My own shirt had buttons all the way down the front. "Rip it," I instructed when Marco started to unfasten them. He grinned and obliging yanked open the shirt, causing buttons to clatter noisily onto the hardwood floors.

I worked at unfastening Marco's belt, but it was hard to focus as he kissed my neck, occasionally pressing his teeth gently into my skin. I didn't know where he had learned that move—it made my insides melt. Why did we both have so much goddamn clothing on?

Why didn't I feel more guilt about all of this? It should be there, somewhere in my head, but instead all I felt was the warmth in my body, begging me for more, more, more.

I gave the belt a good yank, and it slid out of the loops on Marco's jeans. It landed with a metallic clank when I dropped it to the floor. Marco moved away from my neck and back to my mouth. I loved kissing him too much. It lit my blood on fire and burned away everything else.

Swiftly, before I had time to protest, Marco scooped me up off my feet and into his arms. "Aaah! What are you doing?" I gasped, grabbing onto his neck, certain that he was going to drop me.

"Impressing you with my manly strength," he explained, carrying me to his couch and dumping me onto it rather unceremoniously. "Oops, sorry. You got a little heavy there."

I couldn't help laughing as I pulled him down on top of me, eager to get our mouths and bodies back together. I loved the weight of his body pressing me down into the cushions, loved his hand roaming down my back and dipping past the waistband of my jeans, loved his tongue swirling with mine…

"ARARAR-ARFARFARF!"

"AAAAH!"

"EEEEEEK!" I shrieked as something furry and fast and heavy crashed into my head.

Marco flew off me, taking with him the protesting, squirming ball of teeth and wiry white fur that was his step mother's poodle, which had just vaulted onto the couch and landed on both of our heads. I sprung to my feet, ready to fight the enemy if necessary.

Marco had the poodle in his arms, but he was no match for the beast. It gave a furious kick, twisted its entire body, and flung itself away from him, landing on the ground poised and prepared to attack.

"RUN!" Marco bellowed, dashing across the room towards the stairs. I leapt off the arm of the couch and hit the staircase two seconds before him. The dog tore after us, his toes scrambling as he struggled to run on the slick floors. We both stumbled up the staircase at top speed, bounded through the short hallway, and dove through the open door into Marco's bedroom. He slammed the door closed with less than a second to spare. We never would have made it if Marco's house had been carpeted.

We collapsed on the bedroom floor together, gasping for breath. "Do you realize we just got cock blocked by a poodle?" I asked.

"Do you realize that you let out an actual 'eek' down there?" Marco demanded.

I was about to deny it, but instead we both burst into loud, hysterical laughter over our narrow escape. "We're lucky that Visser Three never thought to get an army of those things," Marco said. "We would have been dead years ago."

I rolled over onto Marco, pinning him down to his bedroom floor. "I'm glad we've both managed to survive."

He reached up to touch my face, my hair, my lips, like he needed to make sure I was really there. "Are you sure you want to do this? Not that I'm complaining, but—"

"Yes," I cut him off quickly. "I'm sure. This is what I want." Cassie was right—that was the question that really mattered, at least in this moment.

"I love you, Rachel," he said again. "And I swear it's only like 60% because of your ass."

I squeezed his arms in fake protest. "My ass is worth at least 90%." I wasn't going to say it, not yet, not until I had at least talked to Tobias. I wasn't even going to let myself think it. I was betraying him in every other way possible, but for some reason this was the line I couldn't cross.

Marco slid his hands down my back to test out the aforementioned area. "Hmm, you're right. Definitely higher than 60%."

"Don't forget it." I kissed him again, pressing my entire body down into his. There was still entirely too much clothing between the two of us.

Marco must have been thinking the same thing. He flipped me over onto my back, never taking his mouth away from mine, so that he could begin unfastening my jeans. Painfully slowly. I began fumbling with the zipper on his pants.

"Oh!" Marco gasped into my mouth when I was finally able to reach my hand inside of his jeans and touch him.

"Is this ok?" I slowly stroked him from outside of his boxers.

"Yes! Yesyesyes," he assured me, burying his face in my hair. "Just…is this real? Are we really going to do this?"

As much as I had agonized over my love life, flip flopped back and forth over what I did and didn't want, as much as I had made myself feel guilty over my feelings for Marco, as much as I had worried about the group and the war and the world…

"Let's do it."

"God, Rachel," Marco said into my shoulder as we lay in his bed, his arms completely around me and our legs tangled together. "You are terrible at that. Absolutely, embarrassingly awf—hey!" He protested as my elbow dug into his side.

"You know I'm amazing." I stretched my body out, enjoying the tingles that spread from Marco's fingers as he traced one hand up and down my side. I closed my eyes. I felt like I could stay here forever—no time limit, no war, no problems.

Marco squeezed me tight in his arms. "Well, I guess it would have been alright if you weren't so fucking hideous…"

I kicked him this time and he laughed, the kind of laugh that I hadn't heard from Marco in a long time. "You weren't so bad yourself. For a clueless virgin," I said, making sure to bat my eyelashes up at him.

"Hey, as of 10 minutes ago, you are looking at a former virgin. I am worldly and experienced now. As soon as you're ready, I can show you all of my new skills."

I grinned and moved away from Marco just long enough to grab my panties from the floor and pull them on, along with one of Marco's t-shirts, which hung on me like a nightshirt. He pulled me back down to the bed and wrapped himself around me as soon as I was finished. We were shamelessly cuddling, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, how comfortable and relaxed I felt. Tobias and I never cuddled much—maybe because of the time limit, or maybe because he just wasn't comfortable with his human body.

After the elementary school the night before, I had barely slept at all, just laid in my bed wide awake and stared at my ceiling. Now, however, I felt deliciously drowsy, barely able to keep my eyes open. "I'm so tired. Can we take a nap? Do we have time to sleep?"

Marco glanced over at his alarm clock. "My dad and Nora aren't going to be home for a long time. We can do whatever you want."

"Good." I closed my eyes, let my mind wander, and waited for sleep to come.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be Marco that made me relax. He was the snarky one, the smart one, the ruthless one. None of those things suggested relaxation. But there was something about the way our bodies fit together that made wonder if maybe it was always supposed to be like this.

Only a few hours ago I had been determined to stick with Tobias and the choice I had made three years ago. Tobias saw the warrior and loved me anyway, despite all of the ugliness inside of me, all the horrible things I'd done… I knew Marco saw them, too, knew Marco worried about my brutality the same as the others. But he saw more than that. He saw the tiny pieces of the girl I had been before, clinging to survive as Warrior Rachel fought to destroy her and her weakness. Tobias wasn't looking for those pieces of me anymore. He wasn't worried about my humanity, or his own, if my suspicions were correct.

Tobias was a red tailed hawk. He was always going to be a red tailed hawk.

I had watched him struggle for years between boy and bird, fighting to find his balance and keep the parts of him that were still human. But he was done now. If I was honest with myself, that fight had been over for a long time. I didn't want to accept it, in case it meant that my battle was over, too, and that the warrior had finally overcome the girl.

I knew what my fate would have been with Tobias, and maybe nothing had changed. The shreds of that normal girl might still shrivel and die, and I might still become the vicious, bloodthirsty monster that everyone was afraid of, but…

Well, like Cassie said. I wasn't going to be afraid of hope anymore.

I woke up with a start and jumped out of bed, frantically grabbing for my alarm clock. What time was it? How long had we slept? Was…?

"Rachel?" Marco mumbled groggily, struggling to pull himself into a sitting position. "What are you doing? What's wrong?"

In an instant, everything came crashing back and I could finally breathe as I remembered where I was and who I had fallen asleep with. There was no time limit. Everything was alright. I sat down on the edge of Marco's bed, my heart still racing. "Sorry. Bad dream," I lied.

Marco stared at his alarm clock, which I had knocked to the floor during my clumsy assault of his nightstand. "You forgot, didn't you? That it was me. That we could sleep for as long as we wanted and the worst thing that could happen is that my parents could come home and—actually, that would be pretty fucking horrible and we'd both end up in therapy until we're 30. What time is it?"

I bent over to pick up the clock and handed it to Marco. "I'm sorry."

"Phew, it's only 7. We've got another hour at least. Don't worry about it—for a moment there I couldn't remember if it was you or Gwyneth Paltrow. These things happen."

"Gwyneth Paltrow?"

"Yeah, sometimes I pretend that my extra pillow—nothing. Never mind."

I laughed at Marco's sheepish grin and my heart rate finally slowed back down to normal. "You know who I used to pretend mine was?"

"Jeremy Jason McCole?"

"No! Well, yeah, but that's not who I was thinking of!"

Marco held up a pillow and pretended to toss his hair and bat his eyelashes. "Oh, Jeremy Jason McCole, you're so soft but still manly—"

I pounced on Marco, knocking the pillow aside and attempted to pin him down, but he just laughed, wiggled his hands free, and started tickling my sides mercilessly until I was laughing-gasping so hard that I could barely breathe.

"Surrender?" Marco paused long enough to let me catch my breath.

"Never!" I quickly pulled the t-shirt I was wearing off over my head, betting that Marco would lose all interest in tickling me once I was in nothing but my lacy pink underwear.

"Hey! No fair using your boobs to win!" Marco shielded his eyes. Briefly. Very briefly. Within ten seconds, his arms were wrapped around me, pulling me down to kiss me and make the world all hot and red again.

I moved my lips away from Marco's just enough to murmur, "Say I won."

Marco groaned. I shifted my lips to the side of his neck and began lightly kissing my way down. "Come on, you can say it…" I whispered, moving more slowly with every word.

"Ok! You win, Rachel! I admit defeat."

I smiled and moved back up, ready to kiss him again, but as I did, my head was angled just enough to catch a glimpse of his window. The sun was just starting to move lower in the sky, the rays piercing through the glass with the intensity of an early sunset. It outlined beautifully the large bird of prey sitting just outside the window.

I froze, my blood turned to ice, and the parts of my body that were moments ago burning red were suddenly cold and white.

"Rachel?"

I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe as I watched the red-tailed hawk lift its wings and fly off into the sun.