Brynna rolled her eyes. Okay, so maybe I was doing my asshole thing again. I was good at it. I could deflect tension better than anyone else I knew.
Glen laughed. “You, Micah. Tia and I think you would be the perfect person to raise our children.”
I waited for Tia to object. When she didn’t, I turned to stare at her. There was a challenge in her eyes. “What, Micah? Are you saying you don’t want to raise my son and this baby I’m having? Are you suggesting you would rather not raise them?”
Yeah… I had walked into this one. “In the event both you and Glen die, I would be happy to take any offspring you might have produced by then and raise them right by my side until they are old enough to go be Warriors all on their own.”
Brynna squeezed my arm. “They could do a lot worse.”
I… I wasn’t even sure what to say.
Werewolves suddenly surrounded us, and we hadn’t felt them at all. Screams sounded out, and I grabbed my machete off my back. Looked like the Vampires weren’t the only ones who had their signals messed with. We hadn’t known they were coming.
Brynna didn’t have any weapons. “Hun,” I called out to her. “Get out of here.”
She didn’t argue. Instead, she grabbed Nero from Glen and shoved him at Tia. Then my mate took Tia and Lydia by the arms and ran away from the group at her top, unwatchable speed. She wouldn’t go far, just enough to not be in the midst of the mess and potentially making things worse.
“If I don’t live through this, thank your mate for me, would you?” Glen spoke as we all moved into circles, back-to-back. This was how you fought Werewolves, whether you had warning or not.
“All right,” Deacon called out to the newbies. “We’re not afraid of these fuckers and…”
The Alpha spoke. It was always bizarre to see a Wolf form with a human voice. Only the Alpha could do it. “We are not here to fight you, human.”
“Oh no?” I answered. It should probably have been Chad or Deacon, but I did it anyway. They could give me crap about it later if they wanted to. It had felt like the Werewolf spoke to me. “This doesn’t feel like a friendly visit to me.”
“You speak loudly even when you think you are quiet. We heard you back in the warehouse. You are heading for Doubleday.”
Great. They knew our plans. “And you’re her personal guards? Don’t they usually have Vampires for the role? And you’re their ‘grunt work, keep shit in order’ people?”
“Micah,” Chad said, warning in his voice. I didn’t know what he wanted to say.
I wasn’t done. “If you’re not here to fight, get to the fucking point.”
“We want the boy, Jason Kenwood, that was cloned. He was born to lead us. We need the Kenwoods back. You will get him for us.”
I would not. “I’ve got news for you. I have no intention of getting Jason for anyone. This is not a redo of four years ago. I will not be bringing Jason Kenwood, his father, or Isaac Icahn back to the fray. Some things have to stay done.”
“You will bring us the boy, and we will give you a map to every scientist left in the world.”
Chad put away his machete. Apparently, he believed that these creatures didn’t want to fight. My big brother could be trusting. I’d keep my machete right where it belonged, ready to take off their fucking heads.
“How do we know you have such a map? If such a thing existed, why on earth would you be in possession of it?”
The Alpha shifted from his Wolf form into a human one. As Alpha he could change whenever he wanted. Even during full moons. I checked the sky. The moon wasn’t full. It was only one quarter displayed. There had been a time when I had been constantly aware of the moon. My trips down below had made me sloppy. I needed to do better than this.
In his human form, the Alpha had red hair and freckles. He was taller than I was but skinnier. Was he from my time or had he been born in this one? It could go either way with the Werewolves.
“We have the map. We took it when we managed to escape from Doubleday’s lair after she experimented on us. We thought to use it eventually for our own means. But Jason is more important.”
Werewolves and their logic—they never made sense to me. Why did they want Jason so much?
“Why?” I was actually curious.
“Not helpful right now,” Deacon hissed at me. “Let Chad do this. We all have our strengths. This is not yours, brother.”
I could have argued, except he was right. Okay, I’d keep quiet. For now, anyway.
Chad finally spoke. “So we get Jason Kenwood out for you, and we, what, trust you to give us this map?”
The Alpha stayed still. “It would be my pleasure to let you deal with the scientists. It would be a dream to have them gone. I cannot express this enough. We hate them.”
Well, I supposed we had our hatred in common.
Chad nodded. “Deal, I’ll bring you Jason. But if you screw with us, I’m going to let our Wolf Killer burn you to death.”
I wondered if Deacon liked that nickname any better than the man with the plan. My lips twitched.
What had it cost my brother emotionally to say he’d bring back Jason? I guessed it didn’t matter. All deals in this world were deals with the devil.
We spent the night around a fire, not talking. We couldn’t sense the Werewolves, and they could hear us. That meant we couldn’t plot. I wished I had a pen and paper. I had a lot of questions. Like how were my brother and his wife doing with this whole thing. Rachel stared at the fire.
I couldn’t take any more of the silence. Maybe my need for noise spoke badly of me. People were either comfortable with their own private thoughts or they weren’t.
I was clearly not.
“Rachel, I have this memory of you from Before Time.”
She raised her gaze to meet mine. “That so?”
“Yes. Remember the time Chad drove you home after Tia ditched you for Glen in the ice skating rink?
My sister groaned, loudly. “I didn’t ditch her.”
“You kind of did, babe.” Glen was more and more chatty these days. I liked it.
Lydia looked between the group. “You all knew each other?”
“A lot of us did, in various ways. There were reasons Icahn picked the crew he did,” Rachel spoke. “Micah, I remember the ice skating incident, too. You were with a girl. You left Chad to supervise Tia while you did… whatever.”
I’d walked into the discomfort of her bringing up some nameless girl. “I don’t even remember her name.”
Brynna nudged me. “Want me to tell you?”
Shit. She had that memory. “No. I’m good with remembering no other women but you, Hun.”
“What’s with the Hun? I haven’t agreed to this nickname.”
I’d wanted noise, and I’d gotten it. Everyone around the circle cracked up.
“Would you prefer sweetie pie?” I winked at her.
“Only if you want to be called baby cakes.” She nudged me. “What gets me about this is you people did things growing up like ice skating.”
Rachel leaned toward the fire. “What did you do as a teenager?”
“She’s a Manhattan girl. I bet it was sophisticated and interesting.” I loved this. If we were home in Genesis and not fighting for our lives out in the woods, I would think I’d never been so happy.
Chad and Glen groaned. It was my brother who spoke. “Are you anti-Jersey, Brynna?”
“I’m working on getting over it.” Her eyes twinkled. “I’m convinced I would have run into your brother somewhere along the line anyway.”
I pointed at her. “She’s older than me. By a few years. So she would have had to go cougaring when she was in grad school and I was in the Navy.”
“I thought it was Air Force.” Chad raised his eyebrows. “Since you were going against Dad’s branch of the military you should, at least, know which one you were going to do.”
“What gets me,” Deacon inserted himself for the first time, “was you two have had this c
onversation. How and when you would have met in a fictional future that never happened for either of you.”
I threw a rock at him, and he ducked. “This from the guy who stayed to save a town because he liked a girl.”
Lydia batted her eyes at Deacon. “And thank goodness he did.”
We might have been walking into our deaths. We’d made a deal with the Werewolves—which we knew better than to do—but right then, everything felt easy.
“So in this scenario, are you going off to live with Micah in Jersey when you fall in love and are together?” Deacon sat back.
She fake gasped. “Oh no, he’s coming with me to New York City.”
“Oh, hell no, I am not.” I kicked her foot.
Everyone laughed again.
A memory moved through me. Brynna ran through a park. Her breaths came in and out in short bursts. She was pushing her workout another mile past what she would have normally done. In her ears, a song I didn’t know flooded her senses. It was something about a boy breaking someone’s heart. It pushed her forward. Snow came down on her nose, and she brushed it away.
Brynna was truly happy.
I was rushed back into my own head, and she touched my knee. “Sorry. I can’t control it.”
“What happened?” Deacon looked between us. “Feel like I missed something.”
“Nothing.” I rubbed the back of my neck. I knew something without a doubt—in that Before Time, I would not have made this woman happy. She wanted to run through Central Park, and I would have flown away from there as fast as I possibly could.
Silence hit the fire area again. This time, I didn’t try to fill it.
I didn’t have any more time to contemplate what would have worked and not worked in that fictional time, as Deacon called it, where we weren’t stuck fighting monsters. The weather moving in on our position proved brutal. We all took to our tents, and since we didn’t have enough, we shared. Brynna and I were pushed in with Deacon and Lydia.
I stared up at the top of the tent and hoped it didn’t fold under the assault from the weather. Deacon and Lydia breathed deeply, and next to me, Brynna was silent. I didn’t know if she was asleep. We hadn’t spent enough time together for me to tell her sleeping habits yet. Most of the time, we were passed out, not resting.
She lifted her head up on her elbow. “Micah?” She barely whispered. I turned my head toward her.
“Hey, go to sleep. Long day tomorrow,” I whispered back.
“I made you sad. My running memory. Why?”
I kissed her cheek. “Conversation for another time.”
She leaned back down and pushed herself against my side. I closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come right away, but I tried anyway. Why did any of this matter? We weren’t those people. We never could be again.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from sighing. It mattered because when I looked around at my friends, they’d all ended up with people who would have suited them in any time. Hell, Chad and Rachel, Glen and Tia, there was every chance they’d have been together in Before Time anyway. Tia and Glen had already gotten there when Icahn took them. Deacon and Lydia never lived in Before, and yet they fit like they’d met in a college English class.
I was a stupid romantic, and I wasn’t going to think about any of this crap anymore, period.
Dawn came fast, and the rain didn’t let up. It didn’t matter. We had to get to Doubleday and couldn’t wait for sunny skies to do so. Tia, Lydia, Nero—they’d all stay here. In the tents. Dry.
I went out into the rain earlier than I had to, my hand joined with Brynna—the doubts from the night before not relevant now. We headed for Chad’s tent. I wanted to give Deacon time alone with Lydia. But Chad’s tent wasn’t any happier.
“Micah, tell your brother I can still fight.”
Chad raised his eyebrows slowly. Yeah, I wasn’t going to be telling my brother anything when it came to his wife. Not a damned thing.
“Rachel, I think the fact you’re even arguing speaks volumes. When do you listen to me? Since when do you need my permission? You don’t feel well, you’re not feeling strong, and you know it.”
She sank back down. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Tia, Lydia, the baby—they could use protection.” Brynna sat down next to Rachel. “Now they have you.”
“Thanks for making me feel better. Or trying.” Rachel rubbed her eyes. “Just go. Everything you said was right. All of you go so I can sulk in private and hopefully not do something stupid like have myself erased from your memories.”
I was glad she could joke about it. Or maybe she wasn’t. I never could really tell with Rachel.
The rain never ceased. Maybe that was why Doubleday’s lair looked so completely intimidating. We hadn’t really discussed what we would do once we got here because of the Werewolf problem.
Did we walk in?
“One of us knocks on the door,” Deacon said aloud. “The others try to find different ways in. I’ll go knock. I can distract them for a bit.”
“No,” Brynna answered him. “That’s not what has to happen.”
We all looked at her. Brynna was as smart as anyone I knew. Who better to know how to handle this than my former-Vampire mate?
“What did you have in mind?”
She sighed before she bit down on her bottom lip. My mind was suddenly filled with her memories. I expected to see New York again, but this time it was different. No, this time it was more recent experiences.
The first one took place in the rain. Why did so much of what happened with Brynna involve the rain? She stared down at Genesis. She was cold, tired… terrified. She’d gotten away from the scientists. She’d run for us. But then she’d stopped. Why? We were more frightening to her than all the experimentation in the world. What if we rejected her?
From up on the hill, she saw me. I gasped. I’d never seen myself in someone else’s thoughts before. She knew who I was. Chad’s memories in particular were vividly filled with me, but other Warriors who had been turned sometimes featured me as well. She thought I was more handsome in person.
I winced. Hard to see myself that way, even if others said it all the time. In her memory, I threw my head back and laughed at something Deacon said. I shook my head. This must have been before Deacon and I left, before Deacon met Lydia.
I walked away, looking down at my feet, and she was filled with the sense I was sad. She stepped back. She’d do this on her own and not make life harder for me or anyone else in Genesis, the last human beacon in the world. As lovely as her view was of us, there was nothing else as appealing as Genesis.
The next visions were the times she saved my life. She watched me a lot. I’d been so clueless. But even as I’d not known, she’d become more and more convinced I had to survive in the world. Keeping me okay meant she was doing something worthwhile.
I stumbled back into the here and now. I was dizzy. “Brynna, what did you do?”
“You all have to survive and go back to Genesis. You have to. You have to fix it with your dad. He’s become a shell of the man he should be. Time for him to step down. I will get Jason out for you. If I could have figured out how to do this anywhere but here, I would have done it. I should have died hundreds of years ago. These last few days, I’ve been free again. Thank you, Micah. You’ll be separated from me. Go live.”
And suddenly, we were surrounded—by Vampires we couldn’t feel. Shouts sounded as everyone realized what was happening. “Brynna,” I yelled, reaching for her. “Don’t do this.”
I wasn’t even sure yet what I was begging her not to do. I just knew that she had to not do something.
She stepped away from me, and I needed her touch again. She winced, a sign I hoped meant she hated the separation, too. “Hold on, Micah. The pain won’t last too much longer. I can’t make you sad anymore.”
Brynna had completely misunderstood the reason for my feelings the night before. “No.”
“The Vampires won’t hurt you unle
ss you try to hurt them. They’re all conscious right now. They’ll take you back to Rachel. Then you’ll need to run, you’ll need to fight. That’s how long you’ll get. Goodbye, Micah.”
I rushed to follow her, but a Vampire stepped in my way. I was surrounded. Herded like sheep away from the woman I had fallen for beyond sense and reason. The Vampires were the border collies, taking us where they wanted to go.
No. Fuck this shit. I would not be taken from her. I surged forward and two Vampires hissed. Chad’s arms came around me from behind. “Don’t do it. You can’t win right now. We’re deeply outnumbered. I know how you feel. Rachel pulled this for years. You can’t get in between a brave woman and her need to save you. The only thing you can do is go back as soon as we get out of this mess and hope she never does it again. Come on. Sooner we go. Sooner we get back.”
With thunder sounding in the sky and Vampires doing my girl a favor by taking us away from this mess, I had the most bizarre experience of my life. We’d walked all day, but it took half the time to return, considering we practically ran to keep from being trampled by the Vamps.
As we finally got back to the tent, I turned and ran. Yes, I was abandoning my brother, Deacon, and the others to fight Vampires. But they’d done it a million times. I turned around to see Deacon nodding at me. They got it. I wouldn’t make even a minute difference in a fight. But every second I was away from her was a second she could do something stupid.
Or stupider.
Two Vampires ran after me. We’d apparently reached the fighting portion of the evening. I grabbed my stake and struck them down, wincing as I did so. There would no longer be time when I wouldn’t think about how one of them could have been my Brynna in another timeline. Two things went differently on some random Tuesday, and I’d have been staking her instead of loving her.
I ran again, tripping over a root and tumbling before landing on my feet. I might be beat to shit by the time I got to her, but I’d get there, and so help me, I’d strike down anyone—monster or human—who put themselves between Brynna and me.