Page 45 of Run Wild Omega

“I’ve got you,” I whisper against her skin as Miles floors the gas, tearing us toward town and the hospital. “I’m not letting you go.”

The darkness outside the window presses in, but inside my arms, she’s alive. And that’s the only thing that matters.

Tess

Darkness.

I’m not in the crevice anymore. The walls of stone and ice are gone.

I am ten years old.

I’m standing on the lowest branch of the giant oak tree behind the elementary school. The bark is rough against my palms, sticky with sap. The sky is a deep purple, clouds heavy with an autumn storm that hasn’t broken yet.

I reach up. I want the leaf that’s just out of reach, the one that’s turning the perfect shade of red.

My foot slips, the rubber of my sneaker catching on a patch of moss.

For a second, I hang there, suspended by gravity and bad decisions. I look down. The ground is miles away.

Then I fall.

The air rushes past my ears, a whooshing sound that drowns out the playground noise. I feel small—so incredibly small. My body is light. My hands look tiny, waving in the air, fingers grasping at nothing.

I’m flying.

I’m falling.

This is wrong.

I shouldn’t be falling here. I fell from this tree when I was ten. I broke my arm. I remember the snap, the sickening crack of bone.

But as I tumble through the air, waiting for the impact, I don’t feel the break in my arm.

I feel a white-hot explosion in my shin.

The ground rushes up, and it’s not the soft dirt of the playground. It’s hard, unforgiving ice. It’s jagged rock.

I hit.

The breath is driven out of me. I curl into a ball, the taste of copper flooding my mouth.

“Tess!”

I open my eyes.

I’m not in the playground. I’m on the mountain. The snow is falling sideways, stinging like needles.

But the face leaning over me…

It’s Wyatt.

He’s looking down at me, his expression terrified, his eyes wide and dark. He’s grabbing my shoulders, his grip tight enough to bruise.

But something is wrong.

I blink, trying to clear the frost from my eyelashes. He looks… young.

The scar is gone from his eyebrow. The lines of exhaustion around his eyes are smoothed out. His hair is longer, falling over his forehead in that messy, dark wave he used to hate before he joined the service and cut it all off.