“Mira. Pull it back.”
“Sorry.”
Except I wasn’t sorry.
I was angry, and the anger didn’t have a clean target because part of me was furious that Lucian and Solomon hadn’t come, and part of me was terrified by the possibility that they might.
Because if all three of them showed up at this compound, Thiago would have everything he wanted. Three alpha lycans on his doorstep, walking into a trap designed for exactly them.
Percival alone was reckless, survivable. All three of them together was a war.
So maybe I didn’t want them to come. Maybe I needed them to stay away. And maybe the fact that I couldn’t stop reaching for their bonds in the middle of the night made me a hypocrite of the highest order.
I threw another cross. Wyatt redirected it, swept my legs, and put me on my back in the puddle the morning rain had left in the courtyard’s low spot.
I stayed down.
“You going to get up?”
“I’m considering my options.”
“Your options are get up or stay in the mud.”
“The mud is surprisingly comfortable.”
He dropped down next to me. Just sat in the puddle, tactical pants and all, and leaned back on his hands. A laugh escaped before I could stop it. A real one.
The guilt followed immediately. I remembered the times I had shared laughter with the three of them.
The laughter died. Wyatt noticed.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
He didn’t push. That was the thing about Wyatt. He noticed everything and pushed nothing.
A beat passed. He looked at me sideways.
“Can I say one thing without you biting my head off?”
“You can try.”
“You look terrible.”
“Wow. I’m flattered.”
“I’m serious.” His voice lost its casual edge. “You’ve dropped weight since you started training. Your reaction time’s getting slower, not faster. You had a nosebleed yesterday you thought I didn’t see, and your hands shake when you’re tired.”
He paused. “We have a clinic. Dr. Elaine runs it. She’s good.”
The suggestion landed with a cold spike of alarm that I kept off my face.
A hunter clinic. Where hunter doctors would run tests and find whatever was happening inside a body that was connected to alpha lycans through a bond that was slowly tearing itself apart.
The deterioration wasn’t a medical condition. It was supernatural. And the second anyone in this compound discovered that, they’d be interested in a bad way.
“I’m fine. Just adjusting to the training load.”
