Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

Back from wherever they’d been taken.

Back from someone who’d kill without hesitation.

I should have done more to protect them .

Sweat trickled down my cheeks—no, not sweat. Tears. My throat closed, making it almost impossible to breathe. The dam I’d been slamming against all night finally broke, and I fell to my knees sobbing. For Felix. For Ava. For my own pent-up frustration and anger. For everyone whose loved ones were missing.

I couldn’t stop the torrent of tears or stifle the choking gasps. Couldn’t do anything but let it out. And then someone’s arms were around me, pulling me close. I let him drag me against a firm chest, held tight by those strong, warm arms. I pressed my face into the crook of his shoulder, awareness breaking through with a single thought—Wyatt.

The realization just deepened my sobs. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on. One hand cupped my neck while the other stroked my back in gentle circles. I let him hold me, let him rock me, like he hadn’t for so long.

“I should have died, Wyatt.” I barely choked out the words. “He should have killed me. They’d all be safe if I was dead.”

“You don’t know that,” he replied. His voice rumbled in his chest, a soothing sound beneath my cheek.

“Everyone else dies, but not me. Not even when I give up and ask.”

He tensed. My words were the source of our most recent argument. An argument that had split us down the center. One I didn’t care to repeat. Not now, not ever. In my lowest moment, I told Walter Thackery I wouldn’t resist his experiments if he promised to kill me when he was done. I’d been convinced I wouldn’t mentally survive being tortured again.

I’d been wrong—so fucking wrong—but it didn’t change the fact that I’d given up. More than the memories of the torture, it was my own cowardice that haunted me, that had changed me, and I was terrified that it had forever altered the way Wyatt saw me. That he’d never again look at me the way he had a month ago at Boot Camp, with wonder and need and love.

“It’s okay, Evy,” he said softly.

It wasn’t, but I loved that he’d said it anyway, and that he held me without judgment while I cried.

BEFORE

Sunday, June 29

Boot Camp

I launch myself at Wyatt and throw my arms around his neck in a choking hug. His arms snake around my waist, painfully tight. I press my face into his neck, inhaling his scent, feeling his sandpapery skin on my face. He twirls us in a circle, and I laugh out loud—I didn’t feel him lift me off the ground.

He sets me back down and crushes his lips to mine. I open for him and groan under the bruising, possessive force of a kiss tinged with desperation and joy. I don’t want it to end, but I’m sore and tired and the adrenaline rush is almost gone. It’s way too easy to collapse against Wyatt’s chest; he doesn’t let me fall.

His hand strokes my neck, tangles in the thick waves of my ponytail. “When?”

I understand his shorthand. “Yesterday morning. Max and his coven attacked the truck the day before, but he brought me back to the city yesterday before sunrise.”

“Truck?”

I explain what I can stand to remember. How Walter Thackery kept me in a tractor-trailer laboratory for almost three weeks, kept us on the move, kept those twenty days an endless cycle of hellish pain. I gloss over the details; Wyatt has a pretty good imagination, and he’s seen some of the injuries I’ve healed from with his own eyes.

Wyatt’s walkie crackles to life with a stranger’s voice: “Marcus to Truman. You alive, pal?”

Wyatt grabs the walkie off his impressively weaponed belt. “Yeah, I’m alive. There’s a Pit behind the main building. Meet me there.”

He puts the device back without waiting for a response from this Marcus person, and I can’t help wondering if he has something to do with Wyatt’s new look. The Black Ops outfit and rigging, especially.

“Stone!” echoes down into the Pit before I can question him.

I look up, shielding my eyes with one hand. A tall, slim figure descends the bleachers, heading quickly for our position. As soon as he’s within reach, I let go of Wyatt and throw my arms around Tybalt. I surprise myself and him, too, because it takes a few seconds for him to hug back.

“How many lives are you down to?” he asks.

I snort laughter. “Might be on my last one after this. Heard you killed something today.”

He pulls back, one hand still gripping my left elbow, and I glance down. His missing forearm has been replaced by … well, it looks robotic and a little bit deadly. “Yeah, I did,” he says, not hiding the pride in that statement. “Guess I’m not useless after all.” He gives a pointed look at Wyatt as he speaks, which reminds me of all the questions I have for both of them.

Wyatt beats me to it. “How’d you get out here?”

“Rode in with Baylor’s team,” Tybalt replies. “Carly and I stayed in touch after Felix got hurt, and since I’m not a Hunter anymore, there are no rules against us being friends.”

Carly—I vaguely recall meeting her the night the hounds attacked us at the cabin in the woods. Good for Tybalt, too, for doing everything he can to help. I twist my wrist to give his arm a squeeze. He looks down and both eyebrows shoot to his hairline. Crap.

Tybalt takes my left hand in his and lifts it up, anger etching deep lines in his forehead. “Jesus Christ, Stone. Did Thackery do that to you?”

“Yep.” I wrench my hand out of his grip and take a step backward, away from both men and their angry, confused looks. “He thought my healing powers made great nighttime entertainment. Thought if he could prove it was physical and not magical, he could re-create it somehow.”

“And he cut off your finger to prove that?”

“At the end.”

Wyatt shudders. There’s a deadly anger radiating from him, so strong it’s almost a physical force.

“We looked for you,” Tybalt says.

“I know. Thackery kept us on the move.”

He nods, quiet misery in his expression. Coming from someone who tried to kill me only a few weeks ago, the emotion is both touching and overwhelming. His gaze flickers beyond my head, and he blinks hard. “What the hell is that?”

I don’t have to look to know what he’s talking about. The corpse of Wolf Boy is baking in the mid-morning sun, my knife still buried in its mouth. In its half-transformed state, it looks like some hybrid beast that Walter Thackery might have cooked up, only I’m sure it’s not a hybrid. It’s something else.

“Whoever he was, he worked for Thackery,” I reply. “I’ve seen him before, both as a huge wolf and as a teenage boy.”

“A shape-shifter?”

“If so, he’s not from a Clan I’ve ever heard of.”

A low feline growl raises the hair on the back of my neck, and I pivot with a complete lack of grace. An unfamiliar man dressed in clothes identical to Wyatt’s is crouched over the wolf-thing’s body. I didn’t even hear him descend the bleachers. Felia. Has to be.

He looks up, copper eyes going past me, right to Wyatt. “Well, it seems like we finally found the source of the smell,” he says in a voice as smooth and rich as gourmet coffee.

“Smell?” I ask.

“It was detected in the parking garage where Thackery left Phineas,” Wyatt says. His voice is strained, tight, as though he’s struggling to not scream the words. “And a few other places around the city, including the old train station.”

“Detected by who?”

“Myself,” the Felia says as he stands, “as well as several other of our brethren. Our sense of smell is more developed than yours.”