Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (14 page)

She could feel emotions just as well as she could reach out and feel someone’s skin.  Everyone’s essence, their aura, their vibration, their emotional signature—as she’d taken to calling it—was as clear as their physical body to her.  Sometimes it could be even
more
clear.  She didn’t have to be with people to feel their emotional signature.

Meg was thinking about the irony of her empath gift causing people to feel stress instead of the peace it could offer
,
when she saw Alik and Farrow walking toward her.

“Hey, Meg.  Are you okay if we head to do some shopping?”  Alik nodded toward the airport. 

“Of course, I’m okay.”  Meg offered Farrow a smile.  The more she got to know Farrow, the more Meg really liked her. 
T
hey didn’t elaborate
about
what they were shopping for,
but
they didn’t have to.  Meg knew Alik and Farrow went into the airport to pick up a few items she hadn’t thought to pack for the girl.  Farrow had to have a few essential toiletries.

Evan offered to walk with Maze outside.  The poor coyote was in desperate need of fresh air and a smooth patch of grass.  The indoor doggie pads
they
had for him to use during the flight were just enough to make him mad.  He yipped happily exiting the plane.  Meg couldn’t help but smile at his joy. 

Even though everyone had only been gone for twenty minutes, she found herself wringing her
hands and pacing the aisle
.  She would
stop periodically to
close her
eyes and focus on the foreign emotional signatures around the aircraft looking for any malevolence. 

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head
,” a male voice called to her.  Meg
turned abruptly and watched Captain Jacobi wink reassuringly
at her
.  “LAX is my turf.  I know every one of the crew under this bird’s belly.  They’re good people.  Don’t fret, little lady.  I’ll get you and your family to
Dallas
.”

She
smiled at the older gentlem
a
n.  It really was sweet of him to try to make
her feel better. 
 

She
’d take his word for it
a whole lot more if she
had
n’t had to calm him down with her gift moments after they
boarded the plane back on the
Big
Island
.

Captain Jacobi had witnessed Paulie’s death and was severely sha
ken by it—rightfully so.  But they
needed
him to fly, so Meg
le
ft the copilot in charge while she
sat with Jacobi and
mended his fractured psyche.  She
had never done that before.  Good grie
f, all this was new to her, but she understood they
needed him functioning and, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. 
Meg hoped she
didn’t overdo it in there.  Jacobi seemed awfully relaxed and chipper. 

Jacobi made a clicking sound with his tongue while winking
and shooting a pretend gun at her
before walk
ing away.  Meg shook her
head, worried. 
Yeah, maybe I did overdo it
. 

From th
e back of the plane Meg heard someone call her
name. 

“Meg? 
Are you there?”

Smiling at the sound of his deepened voice, she walked back to see Cole.  “Hey, sleepyhead,” she teased. 

“Hey, you.” He smiled through a sleepy grin showcasing that sweet dimple in his cheek.

Meg giggled at his brown hair standing straight up, momentarily forgetting the possible dangers around them.

“What’s so funny?” Cole looked around himself.

“You are sporting some serious bed-head,” Meg laughed, reaching out to try to smooth the four inches of his thick hair defying gravity.

He grinned sheepishly and reached to run his large hands through his mane, only making it worse.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, hopping up to sit on what used to be Farrow’s gurney.

“Better.  I needed that nap.” 

Evan had removed his I.V. and allowed him to get dressed earlier.  His wrinkled green T-shirt matched his eyes.  Cole was always a handsome boy, but the infinite serum had morphed him into a strikingly gorgeous guy.  His physique just seemed to keep redefining itself. 

Meg hadn’t realized she was staring until Cole’s face started blushing red and he hopped off his gurney to busy his hands with folding his sheet.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“For what?” he asked, pretending nonchalance.

“For staring.  You really have changed a lot.  It’s like watching a butterfly work its way out of a chrysalis, fluttering its wet wings,” she marveled.

Cole shrugged in his aw-shucks-ma’am kind of way. 

“I guess I was really lucky to have survived the serum,” he muttered.

“Yeah, you were.”

“I almost died, didn’t I?”

Meg blinked away the tears that sprang
to
her eyes.  “Yeah, you did.”

“Dad told me you saved me.”

Now it was her turn to shrug.

“He said you used your evolved gift to help me.”  Cole stopped fidgeting with the blanket he was folding and stared earnestly at Meg.  She was studying her ragged cuticles.

“He said if you hadn’t done that, I may have died before we even made
stateside
.  And that it hurts you to use your gift, but you did it anyway to try to save me,” Cole pressed.

Meg wished Dr. Andrews hadn’t mentioned that part.  She hated looking weak to anyone.  It was her turn to fidget, so she hopped off the gurney started straightening the wrinkles she just created there, intentionally turning her back to her friend.  

“How did you know it would work, Meg?  Why did you risk it?”

“What do you mean, why?” Meg felt a surge of defensiveness.

“You know what I mean,” he pushed. 

“I didn’t know it would work.  I wasn’t even trying at first.  I was really mad at you, Cole Andrews.”  She spun and glared up at Cole’s earnest face.

“I was sitting beside you, watching your blue lips and feeling your feverish forehead, and
I was LIVID!
”

Ah yes
, Meg thought. 
I’m much more comfortable yelling than feeling we
a
k and emotional all the time.

Cole just nodded, accepting her anger.

She kept going. 

“You selfish ass!  You dosed yourself with an untested serum!  You were so willing to risk your life, for what?  So you’d stop feeling pain?  So you could be a big, tough guy meta?   When you were filling that syringe back at the lab, did it ever occur to you that you could have killed yourself?  Did it?  Did you think about what that would have done to your dad?  Do you have any idea how terrifying it was when we found your
body
on the floor?”

Her body shuddered at the image she painted in her mind. 

The muscles in Cole’s jaw bulged as he clenched his teeth against her tirade.  His eyes were downcast, but he said nothing in his defense.

“Then, not even twenty-four hours pass and we learn Williams is en route to hunt us with more than a dozen deranged mutant metas and we have to somehow escape him while dragging your unconscious ass around!  Paulie and Creed are dead!  And one of the most precious people in my life, one of the few people on this measly planet I thought I could trust with my life, is dangling by a blackened thread, on death’s door!”  Meg’s voice cracked with tears she refused to acknowledge.

“Why did I risk trying to bring you back?  I’ll tell you why, Cole Andrews, because I can’t have everyone I love die all around me, and just sit back and watch it happen!”  

Cole was watching
Meg’s
face now with a mixture of emotions dancing across his soft green eyes.

So caught up in her emotional storm, she couldn’t sense him, so it was a complete surprise when he reached out and gently pulled her into his wide chest.  His strong arms were
shaking
as he wrapped them around her.  Shocked, Meg held rigid still for a moment, surrounded by his massive body, his warm scent enveloping her senses, his strong heartbeat pounding against her cheek.

Then she melted.

This was her Cole.  This was the boy who shared his family’s home in Kansas with her, gave her quiet moments of laughter even as they were hunted, took care of her traumatized mother, cared for sick children at his dad’s hospital and stayed by her side to fight those who sought to harm her and
her
family—making her enemies his own. 

Then, in what could have been his final act of devotion, he tried to become the fighter he thought she needed.  All of this Meg knew with her whole heart, and the sunlight hit her eyes for the first time.  

Cole.

Cole w
ould
accept her no matter what, faults, enemies, uncertainties—all of it. 

His rough stubble scratched her temple, as he leaned down, wrapping his tall, handsome body protectively around Meg.   She could feel his warm breath on her eyelashes.  “You have every right to be furious with me.  I never wanted to leave you, Meg.”  He breathed deeply and she could hear his lungs fill with air.  “I only want to be with you.  Just tell me what to do to make it right.  Anything.  I’ll do anything for you.”

Meg let her arms wrap around Cole’s wide back, and nuzzled her face into his chest, feeling a pull on her heart she hadn’t let herself acknowledge before.  “Don’t ever put yourself in danger again.” She pouted against his shirt.

Meg could sense the smile as it hit Cole’s face and heard it in his voice when he said, “I’ll make you a deal, Meg Winter.  I won’t put myself in any more danger than you put
yourself
into.”

She huffed.

Cole chuckled a deep, handsome laugh.

Inside an hour, they had been cleared by the tower for takeoff and were making their ascent into the dark sky, heading even further east.  Though they were crossing time zones faster than they could keep track, to their internal clocks, they had been up all night.  The stress of all the events over the past few weeks was weighing heavily on everyone’s minds.  They had taken seats throughout the cabin, and were quietly lost in their thoughts. 

Cole was sitting beside her, nodding off periodically.  He didn’t want to leave her side since their talk.  Truth be told, Meg wanted him right with her, too.  She watched his profile in the dim light of the cabin.  His head was tilted back against the headrest
,
jaw opened slightly
;
soft snores whispered rhythmically.  His dark lashes stood
in
beautiful shadowed contrast against his light skin.  She stared at his full pink lips, so
perfectly
formed and caught herself wondering what it would feel like to trace her finger around them. 

Blushing, Meg turned away from the object of her
confusion
and bit her lips together, as though chastising them for their naughty thoughts.  

Good grief, Meg
!  He may as well be your brother after all we’ve been through.  What are you thinking?
 

It was probably safer to look out her cabin window into the night sky, which is what she did with a sigh. She was tired, too, but sleep evaded her, so she allowed her thoughts to wander to her family. 

Alik had befriended Farrow during the flight, and Meg was glad for it.  Farrow needed a friend, and Alik is such a gentle, constant.   Meg knew Farrow had come a long way in her healing, but like Creed, Meg sensed Farrow had a desperate wish to feel worthy to be accepted into the family.  

She felt so sad for the two metahumans raised to think everything good had to be earned
—t
hat they weren’t enough to be loved and accepted just for
who they were.
Williams
taught them their worthiness was directly equal to how perfectly they
performed
in the eyes of their superiors. 

Meg closed her eyes and quietly thanked God for her mother who gave up everything to save her and her brothers.  If not for Margo, Meg would either be dead or raised in such violence and dysfunction that she would be as broken as Creed and Farrow.  How many more were out there?  How many souls were lost this very moment?  What could she do about it? 

I’m just one girl. 

I’m not even a girl. 

I’m a mutated human.

I was abandoned, unwanted as a baby.

I was expendable.

I was just a rodent in a room with a one-way mirror so cruel people in white lab coats could watch the torment they put me through.