Page 49 of Wrath
Misha…he wrote. Idon’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 wasthe onefor 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 minutesafter 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?
