Wrong Side of Dead

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 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.

But he could. And I knew he could.

“Make a deal with you?” I asked, echoing those fateful words spoken to Thackery nearly two months ago.

Wyatt blinked. Started to shake his head, then stopped. He pressed his forehead to mine, the intense heat making me sweat. This close I smelled his own fear—the sour scent of perspiration, mixed with something even more primal. He inhaled deeply through his nose, held it, then expelled it hard through his mouth. Blood-scented breath brushed my lips, and I shivered.

I hated every fucking thing about this, and nearly jumped out of my skin when he said, “What?”

“I want a week. At least a week to help you. Isolation, chains, whatever you want, but I want you to try with me. Try to beat this.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you, you jackass.”

He raised his head and gazed at me with a chaotic mix of pride, love, terror, and pain. “I thought I was a dumbass.”

“Dumbass, jackass, any kind of ass.”

He smiled. “I love you, Evy. I’m sorry for turning my back on you.”

“You had every reason. I was a coward.”

“No, I was wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

He seemed to realize his exact position over me and made a surprised sound caught somewhere between a grunt and a squeak. He climbed off and scooted back until he could lean against the wall. The thin gown had twisted immodestly, but he didn’t seem to notice the draft. I sat up slowly, careful not to show my utter relief at being free. I hated being held down like that, by anyone.

Wyatt traced a finger across his teeth. “How can you look at me and not see a monster?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t fall in love with your black eyes and straight teeth, Wyatt Truman,” I said, recalling his own words to me so many months ago. “I fell in love with your confidence and your loyalty and your ability to piss me off in five words or less. In the way you can see the logical side of things that I usually can’t. All of that is still there, Wyatt. It just has to work a little harder now.”

He gave me a wry smile. “I’m not you, Evy. I won’t heal from this.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’ll risk it?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t—” He cleared his throat, eyes suspiciously bright. “I don’t know if I can live like this. Or if I want to.”

Goddammit, I was not going to cry. “Give me a week. Please.”

“What if they don’t give me a week?”

“They who?”

“The Assembly.”

A blast of anger flushed my cheeks. “Fuck the Assembly, if they think they get to dictate your fate. Their decision to eradicate the Lupa centuries ago is what led us to this. They don’t get to decide if you live or die.”

“Don’t be so sure, child,” a deep, vaguely familiar voice said behind me.

Wyatt froze, tensed, hands splayed against the wall on either side of him. I twisted around and onto my knees, one hand automatically reaching for the knife still strapped to my left ankle. I stopped before I actually grabbed it, once I recognized the faces standing in the doorway.

Flanked on either side by Astrid and Marcus—each wearing identical expressions of disgusted surprise—was Elder Marcellus Dane of Felia. He was the one who’d spoken.