Annihilate (Hive Trilogy #3)(33)

My heart was clenching in my chest as I walked up the stairs. I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that this thing with Ryder was getting worse. He was pulling away from me and I had no idea how to stop him.



By the time full darkness had fallen, everyone was exhausted. Becca had been in her lab all day. Every three hours she was taking samples from subject three and reporting that his oxytocin was rising and the virus was virtually disappearing from his system.

Ryder was basically ignoring me. He went from outside perimeter watch, to a few hours’ nap time, and then back to vampire test subject watch. I couldn’t get a moment alone to pull him aside. Finally, just after dinner, Becca came charging out of the lab, grinning broadly.

“It’s the cure!” she said, waving some papers in the air.

I was playing cards with Markus. We both threw them down and stood.

“Number three?” I asked.

She nodded. “It was one of the ones I put fifty-fifty odds on. I expected that this cure wouldn’t bind properly to the white cell, or not long enough to enact a full body response. But it did! Subject three is permanently cured in less than twenty-four hours.”

Holy shit. I let her news sink in. We had a cure for the Anima Mortem virus.

“Can we mass produce this here?”

She seemed to consider. “I’ll need some of my bigger machinery down at the main lab.”

Ryder’s voice came out of nowhere. “I’ll take her.”

I turned, frowning. “I can come too.”

Ryder waved it off. “I’ll take her and load up the snowmobile and we’ll be right back. Nightfall is the perfect cover.”

Markus shared a look with me but didn’t push it.

“Fine.” I shrugged, pissed off and worried. Mostly worried. Yeah, the snowmobiles were small, and if she was lugging big equipment up here, there wasn’t really room for me too, but I didn’t like this feeling that Ryder was deliberately avoiding me. Felt like we’d jumped back to those early days when he was messed up about his fiancée. Ryder internalized too much, and carried too much guilt. I needed to find time to talk with him properly, but it clearly wasn’t going to be now.

Becca gave Jayden some instructions. He had officially become her lab bitch – his words, not mine. Sam was still downstairs on vamp duty.

Ryder crossed the space and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “I love you, Charlie.”

He dashed off then before I could say anything. I took a step after him, but he was already in the snowmobile with Becca, and then they were gone. I stood outside in the cold as everyone else trudged back inside. Jayden was on his way to release number three.

As snowy winds whipped around me, I crossed my arms over my chest, as if I could halt all of the fear and worry from tearing out of my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking about Ryder’s last words. The way he’d said it … had my heart aching and my stomach tied up in knots. Initially I thought it was just because I hated that we would be so far apart, especially with the mental distance already between us. But as I stood there forever, the cold chilling me to the bone, I realized that the reason for the potent fear filling me was that his I love you had sounded a lot like goodbye.



Three hours after Becca left, she returned … alone. The second she walked in with a note in her shaking hand, I knew.

“I couldn’t stop him,” Becca said, and tears lined her eyes. “He loaded the equipment and then drove me to the safety of the thick trees and then he—”

“Noooo!” The word ripped from my throat as I ran for the door. Becca’s hand came out quickly. I paused long enough to see that the note she was holding was in Ryder’s handwriting.

“For you,” she said.

I could barely see through the tears overflowing down my cheeks. I knew that last “I love you” had been different. Fuck. This couldn’t be happening. Why would he just leave us like that? We could have helped him.

Clutching the note, I forced myself to read it.

Charlie,

I’m not the man you fell in love with. The genocide of the enforcers has broken me. I can’t sleep without seeing their blood spilling. We should have known that our anarchy would bring about more consequences than just for us. We never warned them and they paid the ultimate price. I can’t live with my mistake one second longer. Leave no man behind. I failed them and I need to make up for it. Justice will be had.

I love you and I’m going to make it right.

I’ll be back for you.

Ryder

I collapsed into a sobbing mess, and of all the people to close his arms around me it was Sam who held me tight and rocked my body.

“Shhhh, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out,” he whispered in my ear as I clutched onto his shirt.

The pain settled over me, weighing my limbs down so that I could barely stand. That motherfucker. The love of my life just went off on a suicide mission. He was a badass, but one man couldn’t take on the Hive, could he?

Heavy footsteps caused me to pull away from Sam and meet Kyle’s wide eyes as he ran up the stairs.

“What’s wrong? I heard you scream.” Kyle was scanning me for wounds. He wouldn’t see them; my wounds were internal. I couldn’t even find the words, so I just thrust out the note.

The enforcer observed mine and Becca’s drawn features as he took the note. As his eyes hit the paper, his face fell. When he was done he crumpled it up and threw it against the wall. His face was an agonized mesh of emotions, his eyes screaming. I knew Kyle would share my pain. All of these guys were close with Ryder, but Kyle and Ryder had a special bond. A lifetime of friendship.