I missed Brynna the second I left her, but I had to ignore the ache. I searched until I found Deacon. He was home with his wife. She had her feet up while he rubbed them. I could see through the makeshift windows in the tent. Lydia laughed at something he said. I was too wet to go inside. I’d get water everywhere, and unlike my home, they’d actually taken the time with theirs to make it look like someplace a person would want to spend time.
I knocked on the window until they both looked at me. Yeah, they could both call me Peeping Micah. I was pressed against their window like a creeper.
Deacon opened the door flap and stuck his head out. “Hey, man, come inside.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I can’t.” I wouldn’t be welcome anymore in anyone’s home. I’d officially cloned a Werewolf that had tried to kill us all, and I didn’t have the balls to stay there and kill him. As soon as I could, I’d run away. Because I was a coward on top of everything else.
Deacon stepped outside into the rain. I hadn’t wanted him to do that. I’d only wanted to tell him what I knew. “Go back out of the storm.”
“Why can’t you come in?” He stayed by the door. I stepped away from the window. I wouldn’t spy on him anymore.
“Because you won’t want me in there.”
Deacon scrunched up his nose. “Why?”
“I’m a coward, and you never are.” I spoke the truth. It felt good to do so. “I cloned Jason Kenwood. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Because, fuck, that’s what I do, right? I fuck up. Icahn is already back. And there’s somebody named Doubleday who’s actually running the show. You want to get your raincoat or umbrella or whatever the fuck you want and go get my father. Someone needs to arrest me. I’ll stay here.”
Deacon didn’t do as I asked. In fact, he made no noticeable movements. He lifted his eyebrows. That was all.
“Micah,” Brynna called to me, and I turned to the left to see her standing there. “Chad doesn’t have her heart. You do.” I almost couldn’t breathe after she spoke her words. The storm picked up, the rain flying sideways at us. “Your grandmother. I can see her in your head—I don’t know how this memory sharing works—and I can see her in Chad’s. You have her heart. Your father wasn’t nice enough to her. Chad knew, knows, whatever, that, too. But you have her heart. They haven’t taken good enough care of it. You are not your father. Tia is maybe the closest, but I don’t know her. I haven’t met her. All I know is you have it. You love like she did. Completely. Without reservation. The only difference is she had your grandfather, until he died. And he loved her the right way. That’s how she got through all of it, I think. That’s what Chad thought. That’s what she told him, once.”
I felt like a voyeur for the second time in minutes. First I was looking through Deacon’s window and now into Chad’s memories via my mate. How much more fucked up could things get?
But she got me… and I didn’t want her to stop. I didn’t want this to stop. Maybe it was the mating, or maybe it was that I liked having her total attention. “I wish I was her. She didn’t have a selfish bone in her body. She loved my dad every second of her life, even when he was an asshole.”
“Well, your father was her child. That’s how it works most of the time. As far as I can tell from other people’s memories. You love them and you forgive them. Time and again. Your father should be loving you the same way.”
Whatever. We were in the rain. And what did it matter? There was a Werewolf coming for my sister-in-law. Why was I here talking to Deacon? Why had I run straight here? Why did Brynna follow me? I…
I’d always supposed I’d know if I was about to have a freak out. I’d have warning. I could take myself some place and do it in private where no one would see. That wasn’t how it worked. One second I was okay, and the next, I just wasn’t.
I turned my head to the sky and screamed. I fell to my knees. I couldn’t even have explained why if asked. My hands tingled. My legs had gone numb. Deacon was there. He said something to me. Brynna was by my side. They were talking. She wiped my wet hair off my face, pressed her head against my shoulder. The smell of roses in the rain. I couldn’t stop… fuck, what was I doing? Crying? No. Lyons men didn’t cry.
Except I was, and I wasn’t stopping. I let my head fall forward. Deacon was still talking but to who? I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the rain and thunder. When had the thunder happened? Streaks of light lit up the darkness. Lightning. Lydia was there, a blanket around my shoulders—all of it was vague.
There was so much death. There was nothing. The world my grandmother lived in was long gone. Hundreds of years. Vampires and Werewolves ruled our night. I was so sick of being strong. What did it matter anyway? I fucked up everything, and the woman who made me feel not alone for the first time maybe ever wanted out of this arrangement.
I was brought inside. My shoes came off. I thought I kept telling them all to stop. I thought I twice managed to stop crying. I didn’t know. Not for sure.
Because I knew nothing, not really. Just that everything was always hard. Always a small piece of hell, and we never really got to beat back the devil because I fucked everything up and brought them right back.
I wiped at my eyes. When had Chad arrived? He sat across from me at Deacon’s table. When had I gotten there? Chad silently watched me. “Hey.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Hey?”
My whole body hurt like the time I’d had the flu. “Yeah… sorry.”
Was there protocol for what to say when you had a nervous breakdown?
“If you say sorry one more time, I’m going to deck you.”
Had I said it multiple times? “I don’t remember saying it before.”
Chad leaned forward. “How long have you been holding on to so much pain?”
Now there was the question of the hour. “What difference does it make?”
“Don’t deflect.”
Fuck me. I supposed, considering what I’d done, I didn’t get to play it cool for at least 24 hours. “I don’t even know, Chad.”
“Well, none of us are poster children for mental health and nothing we can do about it, anyway. So Jason Kenwood is back. You didn’t build the cloning machine. You threw a chair. That’s what Brynna said. She went back to see if she could waylay Jason. If he comes back, then we’ll deal with him. He’s not the end of the world. Rachel picked me. She had herself wiped from people’s minds for me. At the end of the day, at this point, he’s another Werewolf.”
Somehow, I sincerely doubted my brother felt as blasé as he sounded. But, fine. If he wanted to play it this way, we’d do that. “I did this.”
“You didn’t do anything, but get mated to a Vampire. How’s your mating going, by the way?”
I shrugged. “She doesn’t want me. She wants out of the mating. Apparently, I’m a manwhore.”
“That’s what she said? That you’re a manwhore?”
“In not so many words.” What was complicated about this?
“Huh.”
I bent my head. Since we were sharing, I might as well be honest. “I don’t understand it when you make noises like that. That sound, that huh or whatever. I don’t know what you are thinking or what you want. I’m not smart.”
Chad leaned forward and pounded on Deacon’s small table. The two water glasses sitting on it somehow leapt in the air and fell back down without spilling. “You’re smarter than I am. You always were. You never put your head down and studied. You never took two seconds to give two shits about our classes. You still made decent grades. I had to work all the time. If I’d spent as little time as you, I’d have failed.”
“The difference, Chad, is you’re physically incapable of failure, and I’m pretty much fine with it.”
He patted his chest. “I died, Micah. I’d say that was pretty much failing. Wouldn’t you? The me in front of you has different skin than the one I was born with. I’m a copy. That’s a pretty big failure.”
I hated talking about this. “Look…”
“No.” He pointed his finger at me. “You look. You freaked out tonight, and I think it was a long time coming. You picked the right person to go to in order to have your eruption. Deacon would step in front of traffic for you if there was such a thing anymore. So would I. Rachel, too, for that matter. And the woman you think believes you to be a manwhore went back underground because she wants to fix this for you. What do you want, Micah? Do you want to disappear underground? Never come back? You could have done so a dozen times now. Do you want to stay here and fight? Not fight? What do you want?”
The problem was the answer to his questions changed every day. Every hour. Every minute. “I don’t want to stay here and be a lesser version of you to Dad and every person, other than the ones you mentioned, every second of the day. I want to help the effort. And I can’t have all of those things all at once. Right now, I also want to destroy every cloning machine ever made and that makes me feel like shit because that’s why you’re sitting here.”
Chad ran his hand over his face. “Then let’s do it. Let’s be hypocrites. All right, I’m here because of the tech. Well, screw it. I’m tired of these scientists getting to mess with our lives. Let’s get rid of their technology. Let’s make them live like the rest of us.”
I loved the idea of doing something tangible. “Goodbye Dr. Icahn permanently? Goodbye whoever this Doubleday is?”
He pointed at me. “There you are. There’s the Micah spark you’ve been missing for months and months. Looks like you needed this freak out.”
“I…” I hated to even think about what had happened. “I can’t remember the last few hours. Is that normal?”
Chad shrugged. “Do I seem like a psychiatrist to you? I have no idea what’s normal. Our brains have been worked over, or in my case regrown, so many times I can’t even begin to imagine how they function at all. Probably not. But which of us are normal anymore?”
An ache passed through my body. “Feel that?”
Chad yawned. “Sure. I guess it’s time to go kill Vampires. Can you?”
“Look, I know I lost my mind, but I’m not totally incapable. I’m sure I can take out some Vampires.” I got to my feet. I was looser than I’d been in a long time.
“No.” Chad laughed. He hadn’t stood. “I mean because you’re in love with a Vampire. Or former Vampire. So bizarre, but then I’m a clone. So who am I to judge?”
I followed his thinking, finally. “You were there underground. I don’t think Brynna has a problem with Vampire killing.”
“She didn’t watch us do it. So she may not have a problem in theory, but reality? It might be something you need to figure out.”
He made a fair point. “I didn’t say I was in love with her.”
Chad finally got up. “You don’t have to. What could cause a man to lose his shit like that? Love, my brother. Love. Trust me. I spent nights pacing the floors about Rachel. She was with a Werewolf.”
I’d have to think about it. After I killed some Vampires. “Are you fighting tonight?”
“Is that what we’re calling it these days? Fighting? Keith used to call it patrolling.”
Yes, he did. But to me, it had always been fighting, and maybe that’s what I missed when it came down to it. I spent too much time in my own head and not enough kicking some ass.
When the sun rose, all the Vampires who had come at us were dead and we weren’t. I bent over, holding on to my knees. Deacon stretched his arms toward the sun and nodded toward one of our new Warriors. I didn’t know what was more dangerous—a newbie Warrior or an older one who got sloppy?
Right then, I didn’t care much. I missed Brynna. This mating thing was going to be a problem. I hadn’t thought about her during the fight, but now every cell in my body craved the sight of her like I normally would air or food.
Was she missing me at all?
And just like that, she was there. The sun had come out. Dark circles marred the skin under her eyes. I reached to touch the side of her face and then stopped. I had blood on me. My own, I was afraid. I’d gotten nicked on my own stake. Vampires didn’t bleed. They turned to ash.
I didn’t want to get blood on her face.
She touched the side of mine instead. “You could die doing this. You know that, right? Sometimes the Vampires win. I mean, no one wins. This isn’t what they want to be doing either. But, sometimes they get Warriors.”
With her hand on my cheek, the softness of her skin touching my own, I could breathe again. “They haven’t gotten me yet.”
“Doesn’t mean they won’t.”
She was right. “Look, this is who I am. I can’t be docile, all the weeping and losing my mind to the contrary.”
Brynna was so quiet. Anxiety prickled at my skin while I waited for her to respond. “You do look better. Getting Chad was the right thing to do. Deacon told me to wait, but he was wrong.”
So Brynna had brought Chad to me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She dropped her hand but only to lace our fingers together. “What you’re saying is if this mating isn’t going to drive us both crazy, I need to accept you will risk your life nightly?”
I smirked at her. “I thought you didn’t want this. Ending the mating, right?”
“I want this.”
Her words banged into my soul like an explosion, but Chad’s words of caution from earlier had to be addressed. “I kill Vampires.”
She raised her dark, beautiful eyebrows slowly. “I’m not a Vampire anymore. I’m… something else. I don’t know what. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“Careful. You now know I’m a crier. I might start again. You’re not alone. You have me.” I spoke the words and knew they were true. What had cemented this feeling? I didn’t know. Maybe it was mating crap, but this felt good, and why should I want it to stop?
She snorted, and then it changed to a downright laugh. I grinned. “Having me is funny?”
“You as a crier is funny. You didn’t really cry. You kind of roared. Like a lion. Oh, like your last name. L-Y-O-N. Get it?”
She was clearly not a punner. But she was so adorable I didn’t want her to stop. “Totally get it.”
“I… I think we need to speak to Margot. About the mating, yes, but I also think she’s lying. Shouldn’t she have known about Doubleday? Why didn’t she say anything?”
Had our doctor been a spy this whole time? The ramifications were concerning. She wouldn’t be the first person to betray us if nefarious intent proved to be the case. “Yes. But if we do this, you have to stay. No more running off. You have to live here with me.”
“Micah.” She looked down at the ground. “Do you think I’d be welcome?”
“Anyone who makes you feel elsewise can answer to me.”
And that was all I was going to say on that subject.
Margot must have known we were coming. She stood, staring out a window with her back stiff, and didn’t turn when we entered. She started speaking. “Every cloning machine has a purpose. Icahn kept DNA from everyone who lived here at Genesis on his. That let him decide who he could and couldn’t clone. Chad was strategic to have.”
She turned. Her eyes were red rimmed. Had she been crying? I didn’t interrupt her. When someone wanted to confess their sins, it was best to let them do it without talking them out of the need. Particularly since I needed her intel.
“When he and Rachel were taken prisoner and then escaped, the time the Vampires killed Chad, I was there. You were too, Brynna. Do you remember?”
My blood turned to ice. Realization dawned on me. Brynna had said she’d turned Warriors into Vampires. “Did you kill my brother?”
“No, but I could have.” She looked away from me. “Want to take back the things you said outside? I killed other people’s versions of Chad. Lots of brothers, sisters, lovers. The bloodlust hit, and I ended them.”
I stared at Margot, ignoring Brynna’s question for the moment. “You’re pretty manipulative, aren’t you? Brynna and I have a falling out now, and you don’t have to tell me what I need to know.”
She slapped her hand on her forehead. “I’m not trying to be. Sometimes it’s hard not to be. I was raised on conspiracy. What do you need to know, Micah?”
“Doubleday. The cloning machines. Where is Icahn? How much have you told all of them?”
Margot visibly shuddered. “Doubleday is like the devil. I only met her once.”
“Her?” I’d heard what Margot said, but I’d not processed it before. “Doubleday is a woman?”
The doctor put her hands on her hips. “Women can be the villain, Micah.”
“We can deal with Micah’s inherent sexism another time. I don’t think he’d argue that women can save the day. He’s followed Rachel Clancy through Vampire hideouts and practically into the pits of hell. He listens to me. I think it’s more like he’s shocked women could be bad rather than capable. When I want you to comment on who he is, I’ll ask you for it, Margot.”
Brynna’s fast response startled me. Only Chad ever jumped to my side like that. “I guess I did hear earlier when the scientists said her. I didn’t focus. I’ve had some things on my mind. Back to what we were discussing…”
“Doubleday is scary as fuck. She makes Icahn look tame. My parents, my aunts and uncles, they’re terrified of her. Every cloning machine has its purpose. The one where the scientists are cloned is deep in the center of Doubleday’s personal lair. You’ll find Icahn there. I haven’t told them anything. I manipulate to survive, but I don’t betray. Brynna should know that.” She looked away. Hurt flashing on her features before she turned.
Margot had saved Brynna. Mistrust must hurt. Unless the whole thing was a manipulation.
She spoke again. “I’m not the one you shouldn’t trust.”
Now that was an interesting statement. Brynna spoke before I could. “Who should we not trust?”
I liked the we. “Well, I think his father is probably right up there.”
“My dad is many things. An asshole, for sure. But not trustworthy when it comes to Genesis is unlikely.”
Margot’s eyebrows shot so high I thought they might fly right off her face. “I’m shocked to hear you say that. He practically handed Rachel to Jason’s dad to save Genesis, his son’s fiancée at the time. That was a big to-do in the studying the Warrior department with Doubleday and, if rumors are true, he told you to sleep with Brynna to get her to do what he wanted.”
I looked down at the floor. “I declined. I said no. When I slept with Brynna, it was for myself, not for him.”
Cowardice would have me keep my eyes glued to the floor. But I had to see how angry Brynna was going to be. Instead, her face was passive. “I think your point has been made, Margot. He’ll do anything for Genesis. Trust him to not be an ass? No. To do what is right for Genesis? Yes. I can see your heart, Micah. Very clearly. Don’t worry about Margot. She means well. She saved my life. A couple of times. She’s why I’m free. I’m giving her a few more free passes before I yell at her.”
Margot’s cheeks reddened. “Come with me.”
We walked out of the medical tent, past agriculture to the prison section. We didn’t have many people locked up in Genesis, but occasionally, someone did break the law. This was all non-Warrior business. We took care of ourselves most of the time. Policed our own behavior. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Margot pulled a key out of her pocket and unlocked a padlock on a tent. She removed the device and then unzipped the tent. Were we going into one of the jails? I followed her in, keeping Brynna behind me.
Then I abruptly stopped. I expected prisoners. I got Vampires. Locked up undead, hissing and walking in circles. Brynna gasped. I couldn’t believe what I saw, but what got me even more was I couldn’t believe what I didn’t feel.
“I’m not getting signaled.”
Margot pointed toward the locked up Vampires. “No, of course you’re not. Just the same way you’re not getting them from Brynna. What you react to when you are in the vicinity of Vampires is the smell of their disease. It’s like if someone had smoke on them. I was never alive before, but that was how my father used to describe it. Whether he knew he was around a smoker or not, he could smell the old scent of cigarettes they’d inhaled hours earlier. That’s what you feel. It’s the same kind of reaction. Your bodies were fixed to be physically allergic to the presence of Vampires and Werewolves.”
I supposed what she said was interesting, but it didn’t answer my question. “Why am I not reacting to those?”
“The scientists decided since Genesis turned on Icahn, we shouldn’t get the benefit of knowing the Vampires were coming anymore. Actually, it was my Uncle Denny. He did it. They’re changing the Vamps. Experimenting on them. I told your father. He went with another Warrior and captured five of them. Knows all about this. And hasn’t told any of you that you are about to lose your one advantage over the monsters—that you know they’re coming. He wants me to experiment on them, see if I can change them back. But my days of experimenting on Vampires are over.”
Brynna stepped toward the cages. “I can’t see their memories. It’s like they’re blocked. If I can’t see them, they’re trapped. They’re all alone. The one thing that makes it bearable is the sense of not being alone.”
“You really can’t be trusted with a secret, can you, Margot?”
My father really needed to wear a bell. We couldn’t feel these Vampires or know that my dad was coming, apparently.
“I’m sick of secrets,” Margot answered. Unlike earlier, she didn’t look ashamed.
I ignored their exchange. What I needed to know before this went any further was how far down this rabbit hole did this whole mess go?
“Dad.”
He nodded. “Micah.”