Wrath

by Lana Pecherczyk

  Wyatt loitered after her, looking uncomfortable. God, she was the one who felt like a fish out of water. The way he’d handled himself at the club, he was in his element.

  Definitely Secret Service. Maybe Homeland. Military of some sort.

  She opened her office door and ushered him inside. “In here,” she whispered.

  The window-free office space was small, but not tiny. Rolled up spare yoga mats and floor cushions were stacked next to her computer desk. The beautiful Ficus plant and her Himalayan salt candles brought some much needed positive ions into the space. Misha retrieved her locker key from the desk drawer and pulled out the desk chair for Wyatt.

  “You can stay here while I change in the locker room.” She suddenly felt self-conscious.

  In the end, she took a scalding hot shower to calm her nerves. When she was done, she dressed in a pair of soft flowing yoga pants and an oversized slouch top that tended to fall off one shoulder. Returning to the office, she found Wyatt standing guard at the doorway, surveying across the vast studio to look through the street-side windows. He cut a menacing figure in the dark with his arms folded, face stern and gaze focused. That gel he’d applied in his hair had loosened on the ride over, and his cheekbones were pink with wind burn.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I needed a shower. You can have one too, if you like, but I’m afraid I don’t have any spare clothes here in your size.”

  He gave the barest shake of his head and then returned to his watchful guard.

  Alrighty, then.

  Misha unrolled yoga mats and laid them on the empty floor space behind her desk. She dropped a few floor cushions down and flopped down, testing the spring of her makeshift bed. Not bad.

  “Think of it like camping,” she told herself. Ooh. That gave her an idea.

  She retrieved some pine incense sticks from her desk drawer and lit them up. Soon, if she closed her eyes, she smelled forest. Much better. She laid down, but still wasn’t comfortable. Lifting her heels, she shuffled her butt and pressed both lifted legs and ass to the wall. With her feet in the air, she took deep restorative breaths and tilted her head back to view Wyatt upside down. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  He’d been watching her keenly during her ministrations.

  She patted the floor beside her. “Come on. Sitting like this is extremely calming. All the blood rushes back to your brain.”

  He pointed out to the street, shaking his head.

  Keeping watch. Got it.

  Lowering her legs, she rolled to her stomach and propped her chin on her hand. Framed by the blue moonlight, his tall muscular silhouette wasn’t so scary. Maybe not alien after all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  His gaze snapped to hers, dark brows drawing together.

  “For everything. For Dimitri. From the fire stopping you from leaving the other day. I guess you wanted something simple when you took the job at the Palace, but instead, you got our mess.”

  Wyatt shook his head and then rotated his fist around his chest in a clockwise motion.

  I’m sorry, he signed, and then tapped himself for effect. It’s my fault. They’re after me.

  “Dimitri has been harassing me since we were kids, so unless you’ve known him longer, I’d say I win.”

  It’s not a game.

  Misha sighed and shifted to her back, staring at the blank white ceiling. She should put some star stickers up there. She’d rather be looking at the sky.

  “Do you think we’re safe?” When silence answered her, she looked at him. “He has an army, Wyatt. How can we beat that?”

  I have the Deadly Seven.

  She laughed. “I’m sorry, I must have mixed up your words. It sounded like you said you have the Deadly Seven.”

  His cold stare was her answer.

  Sitting upright like a catapult, Misha pulled a cushion to her chest and hugged. That would make so much sense. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded gravely and showed her his wrist tattoo.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  His eyes flashed with frustration and he hit the doorframe, making the earth move beneath them.

  “Whoa. Chill, Bill.” She scrambled to her desk. Opening a drawer, she pulled out a notebook and pen. “Here. Writing it down always makes me feel better. We can even burn it later if you prefer. I did that once when I found a college boyfriend cheated on me. Wrote all these nasty, untrue things, but it made me feel better and then I burned it. It’s very cathartic.”

  Stubbornly, he leaned against the doorjamb for a few more minutes before easing into the office where he sat cross-legged on the mat next to her. His long legs barely fit in the small space, but he made it work. Squinting at the page in the dark, he pulled his phone out to turn on the light.

  “Wait.” Misha hopped up and went to another drawer. “I have a better idea.”

  Collecting some candles she had in storage, she set them on her desk and lit them. Soft light bloomed, casting his features into chiseled relief. Yeah, he was a babe. She couldn’t deny it. Another night with him would be incredible. But while she was waxing poetic about his handsomeness, he was scowling at the light the candles made.

  Misha kicked the office door so it shut half-way. “I think we’re out of the way enough that it can’t be seen from the street. Plus, it really is like we’re camping now. Much better.”

  When Misha settled next to him, his expression filled with judgment.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” Misha folded her arms, scowling. “I know we’ve just gone through something pretty serious, but I’m not irreverent. I’m not dumb, and I’m not facetious. I just prefer to take my joys where I can get them, no matter how small they might be. If anything, a night like tonight just proved that. We can’t spend our short lives wallowing in misery or fear.”

  The moment she said the words, she regretted them. They’d come out harsher than intended and, to be honest, she knew the lecture was aimed at herself, because deep down, she was all those things.

  He paled at her proximity, and she shimmied back to give him space. It must have been what he needed because he dipped his head, staring at the blank paper for long minutes. Then he began to write. He filled a page with his words, and a second page, and a third. Anticipation and curiosity licked up her bones. When he was done, he stood and gruffly handed her the notebook, then walked out of the office and went to stand near the entrance.

  He’d put an entire studio’s worth of distance between them.

  “Okay, then,” she whispered, almost too afraid to read his words.

  Knowing he trusted her with his innermost thoughts, she sat down, got comfortable, and read.

  Misha… he wrote. I don’t know how to start, but I guess beginning with my creation is a good place.

  He wrote that thirty-two years ago, he was made in a lab and genetically modified to be an ultimate soldier. He could sense the sin of wrath in every living person and was physically driven to stop the worst of sin—it was a compulsion built into him and his siblings. Stop the sin or feel sick with it.

  Sometimes I want to kill people where they stand, just to stop the feeling.

  Clutching the letter to her chest, her heart ached. Imagine having a pain inside you, and the only way to get rid of it was killing someone. She couldn’t imagine how hard that would have been to resist.

  But she read on.

  He wrote that he was stronger, faster, and could regenerate and heal at a paranormal rate. Together with his brothers and sisters, they made up the Deadly Seven. Except, when Misha met him, he’d been on the run… hiding from his duty, hiding from his past. In denial.

  Then he proceeded to enlighten Misha about the fanatical organization that bankrolled the experiment that created him. The Syndicate was an organization with deep pockets. They wanted his brothers and sisters to destroy half the world, remove all sinners, no matter if sinners could redeem themselves or not, no matter if they were a child or a mistake.

 
When Wyatt’s adoptive mother rescued them from the lab, tragically, they lost their biological mother and one sister—Despair, or Daisy as they’d named her afterwards.

  Wyatt believed the Syndicate were behind the attack on Misha and him at the club. They wanted his blood because, through meeting someone—a fated mate that held no wrath and embodied his sin’s opposing virtue, he had unlocked his true potential. It’s why he was now bulletproof.

  Now they want an army of soldiers like me.

  A lump formed in Misha’s throat and she put the paper down. He couldn’t make this shit up. He must be telling the truth, as whacky as it sounded, she knew the Deadly Seven existed. She knew some of them had developed special powers. It was all over the news. Lilo had a lady boner for writing about them at her newspaper.

  Misha went back to reading and almost wished she hadn’t. Wyatt’s next confession was that he’d recently been betrayed by his now dead fiancée. Reading this part of the story almost broke her heart. His fiancée had pretended to love him for years, even went as far as drastically training her psyche to feel less wrath so she appeared to be his perfect match—all so she could gather biological samples without his knowledge, and to turn it over to The Syndicate. She was the one who had sliced his throat and left him for dead, all because she’d wanted his brother’s unlocked DNA. But Wyatt wasn’t angry about it anymore, because all those horrible events eventually brought him to Misha.

  You’re my true mate, Misha. You made me bulletproof.

  Just through touching her, the sensation of his sin ebbed away. She brought an equilibrium to his soul. She brought peace and purpose. She’d healed him without even trying. He believed Misha was the one for him.

  Misha looked to the door where he had left and teared up. No one had ever written to her like this before. He’d poured out his vulnerable heart and basically proclaimed his undying love. They’d only just met!

  Having the guts to lay out everything like that was incredibly brave.

  It scared her. It scared her so much that she tore the pages into tiny pieces—to protect his secret, she told herself—and then she tucked herself into the cushions, rolled to her side and stared into the dark studio, hoping he wouldn’t come back, not yet.

  She wasn’t brave. She was evasive and frivolous. She jiggled her breasts and ass for a living at night and was a self-proclaimed yogi bear during the day. Her father often joked and called her his little butterfly, but she knew the truth underlying his endearment. She was not what a hero like Wyatt needed, and once he realized that, he wouldn’t stick around.

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty minutes after Wyatt handed his story to Misha, she hadn’t called out or come to him. Forty minutes later, still no word. An hour had gone by and, still, he’d not heard a peep.

  Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer and left his post. He returned to the office and found Misha asleep, his heart sank. And when he found his letter ripped to shreds in the wastebasket, a bitterness entered his mouth. That was it. That was all he had to give, and it wasn’t enough for her. She’d thrown it out.

  Numb, he went back to stand near the entrance and watched the dark street outside for signs of life.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected from Misha. He guessed, a part of him thought since he’d come to terms with her importance to him, she would too. But why should she? They’d only known each other for a few weeks and most of that time was spent apart. He had a biological urge to produce pheromones around her, not the other way around. It wasn’t like he gave her instant calm just by being there. No shit, she was a drug for him. When she touched him, the grimy sense of wrath ebbed away like an ocean.

  He scrubbed his stubble, thinking. It was too much for her. He’d revealed too much, too soon, but after all the secrets in his past relationship, he didn’t want to start a new one with lies. You couldn’t dump a secret like his and expect a normal person to shrug it off. Not only had he confessed his true crime fighting-identity, but his deepest pain, and what she meant to him. Hell, he never did anything in halves. He was surprised she hadn’t run for the hills.

  All out on the table now.

  I’m such a dickhead.

  Sara had taunted him before slicing his throat. She’d said she picked him out of the Seven because he was the dumbest, most gullible. Maybe she was right, but he was also stubborn and helpless to leave Misha now. Like it or not, she was carved into his life. Accepting that notion was liberating. He just had to convince her he was worth it.

  Wyatt didn’t sleep. At first, he was concerned with maintaining watch, ensuring no one had followed them from the club. Staying at the studio had gone against his better judgement, but he found he was fast becoming powerless to say no to Misha. When the soft light of dawn unfurled through the windows, he moved from his spot near the studio entrance and found Misha awake and tidying the office.

  “Morning,” she chirped as she tied a string around a green rubber mat.

  Momentarily stunned, he did nothing but stand there and stare. He expected some resistance or awkwardness from her, but there was none. What the hell was going on?

  While he waited for the other shoe to drop, he admired how pretty she was after waking. This was the second time he’d seen her in the morning, and her vibrancy was no less diminished. Her blond hair had taken a life of its own, and his fingers twitched to touch. Was it just him, because of his connection with her? Or did the whole world see her this way?

  “So,” Misha said, finishing her packing. “I was thinking that I really need to go to my happy place and do some salutations. It’s the best way to start a morning and, to be honest, if we top it off with some meditation, you’ll probably find it really helps with your”—she screwed up her face and made a mincing motion with her hands—“you know, your squashing things.”

  He knew how to meditate. He didn’t need another teacher—had one for almost a decade of combat and martial arts training. Once, he’d spent the day with other novitiates learning to balance on a wooden pole with one foot. They’d had to balance on top of that pole for an entire day, remain calm with their heart rate under control, while being pelted with pebbles continuously, all without falling off. He’d been the last remaining novitiate balancing on the pole.

  Meditation was not his problem. He was fine.

  Wyatt put his hands on his hips and paced away, but like a magnet, his gaze drew back to Misha and her infectious grin.

  “So, what do you say?” She beamed. “Up for a little resistance training? It’s the least I can do to say thank you for your help.”

  If it meant spending more time with her, then he’d do it. He may be quick to react, he may be hot headed, but his stubbornness could have its benefits. Quitting wasn’t really his thing, he’d do well to remember that.

  A pang in his chest at the memory of Evan staunching the blood flowing from Wyatt’s neck. His consciousness had faded in and out, but the sound of Evan’s strained voice still carried to him. “A Lazarus never quits.” It was the family mantra Wyatt had started in high school. Get kicked down, get back up again. Get hurt, or bullied, keep on trucking. But Wyatt had quit after Sara, and he was ashamed of it.

  He nodded to Misha. Let’s go.

  “Excellent. Here take this roll.” She handed him a yoga mat and did a little happy dance. “We’ll get some coffee on the way and, you’ll see, everything will make sense after.”

  He doubted that, but fine. Lead the way, Duchess.

  He hesitated outside the studio. They should probably head straight to his apartment, it was safer that way, but he’d not seen a peep of pursuit all night. After the injuries he’d given Dimitri, it was likely he’d not come after them immediately.

  “Please.” Misha implored with her eyes. “I really need coffee.”

  Wyatt sighed. Once again, he found himself powerless against her wishes. They were most likely safe for now, and he was fine functioning without sleep. He motioned for Misha to lead the way. Twenty minutes lat
er and they’d passed three cafés. The clouds brewed with promised rain, and Wyatt was beginning to think she took him on a wild goose chase until she stopped out the front of a little brew house on the east-side of the Quadrant.

  The shop was nothing but a customer service counter in a wall. Behind the counter were two beach-bum looking men, a cappuccino machine and a manual slow-drip coffee brewer.

  “Hi Brian,” Misha said, grinning at the barista who wore a slouchy beanie.

  The man looked up from cleaning his machine, and when his eyes beheld Misha, they sparkled. “Wassup, sunshine?”

  Misha turned to Wyatt. “These guys make the best coffee in the city. Well worth the extra long detour.”

  He’d believe it after he drank it.

  “Ah, a non-believer,” Brian said before turning to his friend stocking the small fridge behind them. “We have a non-believer, bro.”

  The smaller man had long dreadlocks. “We love non-believers.”

  Misha’s grin widened, and they all shared knowing glances with each other, as if Wyatt’s mind was about to get blown by their incredible coffee. But Wyatt knew food. He knew coffee. He knew wine. There was no way this tiny, dinky piece of negligible real estate brewed the best coffee in the city.

  The little bastards looked increasingly smug as they prepared two coffees in takeaway cups and then handed them to Misha.

  “Best coffee in the city, or it’s on the house,” claimed the beanie guy.

  Wyatt scoffed through his teeth and picked up the cup. He removed the protection cap and took a whiff, letting the aroma infuse his senses. Everything inside him relaxed.

  Misha took a sip of her drink. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she moaned sensualy, savoring the flavor as if it was sex in a cup.

  “So good.” She licked her lips, still with her eyes shut.

  Wyatt had to agree, and he hadn’t even tasted it.

  Her eyes popped open, completely oblivious to the three male gazes of appreciation pointed her way. A slow crooked smile curved his lips. She was so eager for his approval on the coffee, he didn’t have the heart to let her down.