Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

I scrambled forward, heart pounding, and tackled Wyatt before he could jump. It wasn’t graceful. We ended up in a tangle of limbs, each grappling for dominance. His teeth snapped uncomfortably close to my left ear. “Wyatt, stop!”

His struggle ceased when he seemed to realize I was the one who’d attacked him. He went limp beneath me, on his stomach. I held his wrists against the floor, my knees braced on either side of his hips. He was panting, still growling, but no longer fighting me.

A shadow moved in my peripheral vision. “Don’t come near us,” I warned, and I fucking meant it. The look I gave Dr. Vansis could have melted steel. “Get the fuck out right now.”

“If he bites you—” Vansis began.

“I’ll deal with it. Out!”

“Leave them alone,” Milo said. “Let Evy do this.”

I would have kissed him if I didn’t think it would get him flattened by my half-werewolf boyfriend. And the simple fact that the thought of having a half-werewolf boyfriend didn’t send me screaming for the hillside (or racing for the nearest sharp object) felt like personal progress. I was finally growing up.

Once the source of Wyatt’s stress moved out of sight, I climbed off and scooted back. Knelt an arm’s reach away to allow him the room he needed to sit up. He gave me a sideways look. An assessing look tinged with fear. I still couldn’t reconcile those silver eyes in a face I knew so well.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Not this time. You should kill me before I do.”

A flash of anger that he’d even suggest such a thing ripped through me so fast that my hand jerked. “Not going to happen.”

“I’m not me anymore.”

“Yes, you are. You are Wyatt Truman. I don’t care what’s happened to you physically. You are the same.”

“I don’t feel the same.” He cast about the room, as if he could divine answers from the stark white walls. “I feel like a stranger in my own body.”

“Funny, I kind of know what that’s like.”

He held up his hand, bloody fingers facing me. “You didn’t become a monster.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Because I was already a monster.”

“Not like this.”

“I was a worse kind of monster because I let myself be made into one. I killed anything you told me to kill, and I never asked questions. I killed a girl my age to get out of Boot Camp, and I never asked questions. I never let myself think there might be a better way. A black-and-white world was easier to live in.”

I scooted closer to him and reached for his hand. He withheld it a moment, then grasped my wrist tightly. His pulse thrummed, and heat radiated from his skin. “Six months ago I’d have killed you just as you asked me to, because this is wrong. It’s unnatural. But you know what? So am I. I live in the body of a dead girl. I can teleport, I can heal from almost anything, and I can survive a Halfie bite. I’m exactly the kind of scary, ubermagical creature we always feared and hunted.”

“And now,” Wyatt said, “I’m a scary, magical werewolf half-breed.”

“See? We’re perfect for each other.”

He smiled. Those teeth scraped his tender lip, and he winced. Closed his eyes. “God, it still burns.”

“What burns?”

“Everything. The wolf is in my head. He can smell you.” His grip on my wrist tightened. “Wants to claim you.”

Oh boy. I swallowed hard, working to stay calm and not show the sudden flash of nervousness such a statement caused. Wolves sensed fear. I touched his cheek. “The wolf isn’t allowed to have me,” I said. “Only you, Wyatt.”

He opened his eyes, and for a moment they weren’t human. The animal had come out. Silver overtook most of the white, and the pupil became less distinct. Then he blinked, and while still the wrong color, they were human again. He pressed into my hand. Inhaled.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” he said.

“What has ever been easy for us?”

A puff of air that might have been a soft chuckle crossed my wrist. “Good point. How is this happening?”

I had no clue. Therian history said that infected humans were killed or went bat shit from the fever. Wyatt had transformed. Two explanations came to mind. The simplest was that Wyatt’s connection to the Break, being Gifted, affected the change. His tether to magic kept him from being consumed.

The other explanation was far more sinister—Amalie or Thackery manipulated this group of Lupa somehow, altering the way the infection worked. To what end, I couldn’t begin to guess, and I was done underestimating the lengths to which either Thackery or the Fey would go in order to meet their goals.

Not that I was going to share that particular theory with Wyatt. “I wish I knew,” I said. “But it’s happening and, in some ways, I’m grateful. What’s that saying about a gift horse?”

“I suppose. I want—”

“What? What do you want?”

“To taste your blood.” With a cry that echoed what I felt in my heart, Wyatt scrambled back and away. He hit the far wall and stopped, curling tight into himself and covering his face with his hands. “Fuck!”

I left the chasm of distance between us, too stunned to think properly. Certainly nothing had ever come easily for either of us, but we’d never faced anything quite like this before. An enemy we couldn’t fight physically was not my forte, and much like a human infected with the vampire parasite, the Lupa virus was changing Wyatt from the inside out. No one had experienced a Lupa infection in centuries. And certainly not the infection of a Gifted human. No one knew what to expect.

Could he beat this?

“Wyatt, tell me what you’re feeling,” I said.

“Angry,” he said, the word slightly muffled but no less powerful. “Aroused. Hungry.”

The perfect trifecta of emotions. “Okay, angry. What do you want to do with that anger?”

“Hunt. Fight. Eat.”

“What do you want to hunt?”

“Anything.” He raised his head, that animalistic glint back in his eyes. “God, your blood smells so sweet, Evy. I don’t think you should stay in here.”

The room suddenly felt twenty degrees cooler, and a chill ripped down my spine. It was a warning as much as a statement, and I felt the horror of it in my bones. “I trust you, Wyatt.” Somehow my voice didn’t shake.

“I don’t trust myself.”

Logic shooed me toward the door. My heart kept me still. “Then trust me.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“You won’t.”

“But I want to. The wolf wants to. He wants blood.”

“Wyatt, you’re in control. You can control the impulses of the wolf, I know you can. You’ve done it so far.”

“He’s stronger than I am.”

“Bullshit.”

He moved faster than I’d ever seen him—across the room in a blink of time. He knocked me backward and straddled my waist. His hands held my wrists by my head, and his face hovered just above mine. The glinting silver eyes and drying blood created a grotesque mockery of the man I loved. My guts twisted into knots of fear and panic, but I forced myself to not struggle. To stay perfectly still beneath his hold, even though my body screamed at me to fight back. To get away, get out from under, get to a safe distance.

“Is this bullshit?” he asked, breathing hard through his open mouth. “No, it’s a fucking nightmare, Evy, and I can’t wake up from it. I can’t shut it off. Please kill me before I hurt someone.”

Promise you’ll kill me when you’re done .

I hadn’t thought I could survive Thackery’s torture with my soul intact, and I had. Wyatt didn’t think he could survive this, beat back the wolf, and be whole again. Be himself.