Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

By his own admission, my strength and tenacity are two of the things he loves most about me. Now I’ve just shown him how very weak I can be. How weak I am still. How completely unlike the old Evy Stone I’ve become, and just how far I’ve fallen.

A tear trickles down Wyatt’s cheek, and he brushes it away with an angry swipe. Then he rediscovers his lost anger and the mask is back on. Somehow putting his guard up around me, when we’ve shared so many painful parts of ourselves in the past, hurts more than anything else.

And I’m not even finished breaking his heart. “I knew what Felix was going through, living with that agony,” I say, even though the look on Wyatt’s face should shut me up. Might as well spill my guts before he decides he never wants to speak with me again. “Agony he was in because of me.”

Wyatt inhales sharply. “You didn’t attack him, Evy.”

“He was at the cabin because of me. The hounds were there because Thackery wanted me.” I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand, exhausted and nauseated and just ready for this to be finished. Somehow. “So when he said it didn’t hurt anymore, Wyatt, something in me broke.”

“And you let him go,” he says coldly.

I swallow back a rising tide of tears and square my shoulders; he can’t possibly think less of me than he already does. “No,” I say, the words sticking in my throat like barbed wire. “I told him to go.”

Five words. One final betrayal.

Saturday, July 26

2:25 P.M.

Watchtower

“Wyatt?”

The word didn’t seem to mean anything to him. He stared, eyes flickering slightly, as if taking me in. Measuring me up. Deciding if I was friend or foe. And then the betrayal winked out in a flash of recognition. His hands dropped away from his mouth, and I choked.

His upper canine teeth had lengthened to an unnatural point, and both had pierced his lower lip. Blood oozed from the wounds, smeared his chin, and stained the neckline of his twisted gown.

The Lupa are bi-shifters .

Someone behind me moved, and Wyatt tensed. The soft growl raised the short hairs on the back of my neck. He narrowed his eyes. I moved forward a few inches, stealing his attention back.

“Evy?” Phin asked.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. To Wyatt, I asked, “May I come closer?”

He nodded slowly, wary.

One, two, three steps took me to the foot of the bed. It still provided a barrier between us. I wanted to rush to his side and hold him close, and it hurt to go so slowly. Hurt to see him like that, changed so horribly by the Lupa bite, so unsure and afraid of everything around him.

“Wyatt, do you remember what happened?”

He blinked hard. Unfocused. Went away as he fought to answer my question. “The lot. Jeep. Wolves.” The words had a slight lisp as he fought to speak through the barrier of those longer teeth. His voice hadn’t changed, its familiar cadence marred only by the terror he was working so hard to suppress.

“That’s right,” I said. “You were attacked by a Lupa. A werewolf. It bit you.”

He looked at his arm and plucked at the loosened medical tape barely securing the bandages. “I remember.”

I circled to his side of the bed, slow and measured steps. He looked up sharply but didn’t growl at me again. “It infected you. You got really sick.”

“Hurts.”

“Your arm hurts?”

“Everything. My head … burns.”

“You may still have a fever.”

“Stomach … so hungry.”

“I’ll ask the doctor about some food, okay?”

He closed his eyes and inhaled, nostrils contracting, then flaring as he exhaled hard. His tongue darted out, ran over his incisors once. When he looked at me, shock was mixed with hunger. “I can smell you.”

As much as I wanted to blame that on my dunk in the river water, I knew it wasn’t what he smelled. He smelled me .

“Evy,” Phin said, his voice a sharp warning.

“I’m fine,” I replied gently, holding Wyatt’s gaze the entire time. “He won’t hurt me.”

“How do you know?”

Wyatt snarled, head snapping toward Phin. “Mine.”

Oh boy, that wasn’t good. We’d discuss possessive declarations at a later time, though. Wyatt and Phin were both, by their very natures, alpha males, and with Wyatt’s newfound Lupa-gene boost, I did not need them getting into a fight. Especially if it led to either of them injuring the other.

“Wyatt, look at me.”

He did, those unfamiliar silver eyes blazing with an anger born of fear. “I heard you. Before.”

“Before what?”

“Before the wolf woke me. Heard you talking.”

My admission before the ferry invasion. My pulse quickened. “You were in a coma.”

“Couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. But the wolf wouldn’t let me sleep. Prowled. Heard you.”

To see him, a man so full of strength and fire, reduced to fragmented thoughts and lisped words through nightmarish teeth physically hurt me. I wanted to run away and pretend it wasn’t happening. Only I’d never do that. I’d given up enough for one afterlife. I wouldn’t give up on him.

We’d deal with this. Period.

“What did I say?” I asked, hoping he’d heard the most important part of that ramble.

“Said you love me.”

“I do.”

He touched his mouth, fingertips running over those long canines. “Still?”

“Of course.” I took a tentative step forward. When he didn’t react badly, I closed the distance between us, then squatted down to eye level. He watched me come, as curious as he was scared. “My body changed once, and you still loved me. Underneath all of this, you are still you. I know it.”

“I think the wolf is stronger than me, Evy.”

“It isn’t stronger than us, though.” I held out my hand, palm up and open. Tried very hard to keep it from trembling. “Not stronger than we are together.”

He eyed my hand, then met my intent stare. “You really believe that?”

Without hesitation—“Yes. I didn’t come to a personal epiphany this morning just to lose you to some werewolf bite, so deal with it.”

A spark of humor made the corners of his mouth quirk, and the horrific sight of those fangs and the blood seemed less awful. The Wyatt I knew and loved was still there, fighting hard to stay in control. He reached out. Our fingers brushed, and then he pulled back. Stared at the blood staining his hands.

“Did I hurt someone?” he asked.

“Of course not. You cut your lip.”

He tongued his wounds, noticing them for the first time. “I don’t want to be like this. I feel like I might hurt someone.”

A commotion behind us—voices, scuffling feet, someone grunted—ended with a sharp, “What the hell?” from Dr. Vansis. Terrific .

Wyatt shrank back against the wall, growling, a glare both deadly and terrified directed over my shoulder. All of our progress was erased in three seconds of sheer idiocy.

“Stay out,” I said. I turned my head toward the doorway; Vansis was three steps inside the room.

“Are you insane?” Vansis asked as he took another step closer.

My head was spinning from its impact with the wall before I fully registered the fact that Wyatt had yanked me behind him. I landed sideways on my hip, braced on one hand. He crouched in front of me, ready to spring up like an attentive attack dog. The snarling increased in volume.

“Evy?” Phin asked.

“I’m fine, and stay back for fuck’s sake,” I yelled.

“Someone get my bag from the other room,” Vansis said. “I need a sedative.”

Wyatt shifted his weight to his legs and dropped his shoulders. He was going to attack. The wolf, as he called it, was taking over. Making him act completely on instinct to protect me and himself.