Wrong Side of Dead

by Kelly Meding

  The fact that I embraced my inner Chalice and I gave up.

  “I still love you, too, Wyatt, but that was never the problem,” I hear myself saying. “It’s everything else.”

  He doesn’t patronize either of us by asking what else. He simply nods, thoughtful. “The odds are against us ever being happy, I know. So that means we don’t even try?”

  “Relationships are hard, and they require trust, right? Both people have to trust each other.”

  “You don’t trust me.” It isn’t posed as a question, and I want to shake him for it.

  “No, you can’t trust me.”

  He frowns, releases my arms, and steps backward several paces. The distance might as well be a mile. “What do you mean?”

  I feel as though I’m standing on a cliff and the stones beneath my feet are crumbling. “That there are still some things I can’t tell you, and they’re not little things, and I know that by keeping them from you I’m being dishonest. And you deserve better than that, Wyatt.”

  “I don’t give a fuck anymore what I deserve, Evy. I want you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  His face is a perfect illustration of what the fuck do you mean, am I sure?

  “You don’t know me anymore, not even these last two months. The girl you fell in love with died. The goblins made sure she died in the worst possible way. I’m not her. I haven’t been her for a long time.”

  “I know who you are.” His voice is firm, his expression stormy.

  “I don’t even know who I am. How can you?”

  “Because the parts that matter are still there, Evy. Your loyalty, your pride, your drive and willingness to fight for what you think is right. Your ability to out-cuss anyone I know.”

  He isn’t getting this. “I let him go,” I say.

  Wyatt’s eyebrow furrow. “Let who go?”

  Shit. It isn’t what I intended when I opened my mouth, but there it is. In for a penny … “I let Felix go.”

  “When?”

  When? Seriously? “Today, Wyatt. I let him go today, in the fucking bus.”

  Wyatt freezes completely, so still for so long that I’m sure he’s been replaced by a photograph. Then he shakes his head. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw his eyes. I saw the color change. I knew he’d been infected and I knew what I needed to do.” My stomach is in knots over the split-second decision that I’m not even sure I consciously made. “Marcus was already outside. It was just me, Milo, and that asshole who got Milo shot. I didn’t … shit.”

  Why is this so hard? I’ve owned up to my mistakes before, admitted them out loud to Wyatt. What about this hurts so much? That I don’t think of it as a mistake?

  “What did he do, Evy?” Wyatt asks.

  “He knocked me down, and he had the advantage. I was so shocked I couldn’t react. It was like looking at Jesse all over again.” Months ago I’d watched my former partner get bitten and turn into a Halfie in front of my eyes. Watched him murder our other partner, Ash, then look at her with a sick fascination born of passion and confusion. Disgust and bloodlust. And then I shot him in the heart.

  “And then Felix smiled,” I continue. “Smiled like he’d just discovered the ultimate secret to joy and wanted to share. He looked at me, and even though I could see the madness, for one brief moment he was perfectly lucid. He was Felix. And do you know what he said to me?”

  Wyatt shakes his head, eyes suspiciously bright.

  “He said ‘it doesn’t hurt anymore, Evy.’ ” My voice breaks just as my heart broke earlier on the bus. “He wasn’t holding tight. I probably could have gotten my arms free, reached up, and snapped his neck. Kept him from an existence in half-Blood hell, but I didn’t.”

  “You let him go.” His voice is so quiet. Not the quiet of calm or intimacy. No, this is furious-Wyatt’s quiet voice.

  “Yeah.” More tears escape, tracking down my cheeks.

  “You let a Halfie go.”

  “I did. I let Felix go.”

  “No, Evy.” Anger flushes his cheeks. His shoulders tremble faintly. “Felix was gone. You know that wasn’t him anymore. You let a Halfie go free, and not just any goddamned Halfie, but one with Hunter training and knowledge. One who knows where the Watchtower is and can use all of that against us.”

  He’s livid. Angrier than I’ve seen him in a long time, and it’s my fault. Letting Felix go was wrong and stupid, and a decision made in only a few tense seconds. I can’t even defend myself, because there is no defense for my actions. I allowed emotion to control me, and I ignored my training.

  Wyatt is not done spearing me with words. “Jesse was your partner for four years. He was infected right in front of you, and you still freed him. Alex was an innocent, and he was Chalice’s best friend. And you still put a bullet in the back of his head to free him. You’ve killed dozens and dozens of Halfies over the years, Evy. They don’t get a stay of execution, they get put down with extreme prejudice.”

  “I know!” The two shouted words come out like vomit—unexpected and bitter. My throat hurts, my chest hurts, and I’m afraid I’ll turn inside out from all the emotion churning inside me. “I fucking know that, Wyatt!”

  “Then why?” He’s finally shouting back, giving in to his temper. “Why Felix? You should fucking know better, Evy!”

  I don’t want to keep fighting, but say it anyway. “Because he wasn’t in pain anymore. I know better than anyone what it’s like to spend hour after hour, day after day, in agony, just praying the pain will stop. But it doesn’t. It’s always there, even when you’re asleep. You can’t get away from it. The goblins tortured me, Thackery tortured me, and both times I’d have given anything for it to stop. Even if it was for just a few minutes. And all I had to look forward to was death.”

  Wyatt’s eyebrows pull together as he puzzles something out. “You told me with Kelsa that you never stopped hoping for rescue.”

  “I didn’t.” Fucking hell, I said too much. My cheeks are hot, my hands are cold, and I’m fairly positive I’m about to pass out. Or maybe spontaneously combust. “I didn’t give up with Kelsa.” I catch his stony gaze and try to hold it through a film of tears. “But I didn’t think I could survive that again and come back whole. I didn’t want to.”

  He blinks hard, fighting his own tears. He knows. He won’t ask me to stop talking, but he knows what I’m about to say—the agony in his eyes tells me so.

  “So,” I say, choking on the words, “I made Thackery promise to kill me when he was finished with me.”

  All the anger he exuded before disappears, replaced by a kind of miserable grief mixed with disbelief. His eyebrows arch up, his mouth drops open. He’s so stricken it’s almost comical. But not really. Not at all.

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  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.

  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 sidewa
ys 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.”