“Weak, but he said a good meal and a shower would help him,” Kyle says.
“Sounds like him. What did he have to say for himself?”
“You said you had information?” Toshi asks. “About what?”
“Should we take this inside?” Sebastian asks.
My body heaves at the motion of being in a house with Kyle, and it brings tears to my eyes.
“Come on. I’ve got a better place to talk,” Joel says. “And you need some clothes.”
“No. This can’t wait. Look. Lord Wesley said that the Council is fractured. One part wants to kill all humans, and another wants to change them into me. Into Clarissa. He says no one is going to make it out of this war unscathed,” Kyle says.
“We need to talk in private,” Toshi says.
“No!”
I watch as Kyle shoves Toshi into the show.
“You guys have to listen to me. I get that you don’t like me, and you hate the fact that I’m the one that got Clarissa and not you. But this affects her,” Kyle says. “One side wants to make her a weapon, and one side wants to make her a dispersion for the serum.”
“So there is a serum,” Vlad says.
“Yes. There is. I’m assuming that’s what they’ve used on me,” Kyle says. “You have to believe me. This came from Lord Wesley himself. Clarissa, you’re in danger. I have to get you out of here.”
Kyle lunges for me, and I want to go into his arms, but my body instinctively recoils from him. I fight with all my might to reach out to him. To take his hands within mine and feel the strong arms of my husband around me again. But the answer I was looking for is staring me right in the face.
Kyle might be alive, but he is not the man I married.
My husband is dead, and the man in front of me is a reborn carcass I’m not familiar with.
A reborn carcass my body can’t even tolerate.
Kyle scrambles to get to me, but I burrow deeply into Sebastian. Theo and Joel wrap their arms around Kyle’s and begin dragging him in the opposite direction. He’s fighting against them with everything he’s got, and I can see the anger on his face. I can see his veins pulsing with a need to turn, and it brings tears to my eyes. Sebastian wraps me up in his arms, and Toshi rubs my back as Joel and Theo drag him away, and I can feel my heart shattering into a million pieces.
The hope of Kyle being alive is snuffed out by the realization that, at a biological level, I can’t have him. My body won’t hear of it.
“Come on,” Toshi says. “Let’s get her inside.”
Sebastian cradles me in his arms and walks me all the way back to the cottage. He sits me in a chair, and I turn to look out the window. I see Kyle still fighting Joel and Theo as they hand him off to someone else. They’re talking with him. Probably trying to get him to calm down, then I see him willingly go with some strange person I’ve never seen before.
Probably one of the villagers who might take him in.
Like Joel and Josie did for all of us.
I stare out into the snow as I try to digest everything that has happened. Kyle. His encounter with Lord Wesley. The information he’s confirmed. All of our theories were mildly correct. The Council was united in their idea for war, but two sides would be fighting for different reasons. One to eradicate and one to transform. That means we’re fighting not one, but two distinct wars. Fighting to keep me and my child alive and fighting for the fate of the human race.
They aren’t deserving of death nor are they deserving of the prison my body has encased me in.
I hear the door open as heavy footfalls hit the floor. Theo. Joel. They’re both back. I lean into my chair and pull the blanket around me that Toshi snagged, and I can hear all of them whispering. Talking low behind me like I don’t have the capability of zoning in on their conversation.
“Dispersal method? What does that mean?” Vlad asks.
“We can’t be certain Kyle even knew what he was talking about. He’s been captive for weeks,” Toshi says.
“Yes. And there’s the whole business of him dying,” Theo says. “That can have any number of psychological effects on someone.”
“But he talked to my father. I trust my father’s word,” Vlad says.