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Did that make me horrible? Maybe. But in a world of dog eat dog, man eat man, I refused to cower. I refused to be prey when I had the capacity to be predator. Life had made me cold, numb almost, to certain aspects...the inevitable end, for one. Life ended, simple as that.

But I’d be damned if that life was one of my men or one of my younger brothers.

“Nik needs you to remain level-headed,” I continued soothingly. Tommy’s resolve began to wane, eyes flashing towards my younger brother. Nik’s headphones were once more on his ears, blocking out the rest of the world. He didn’t seem scared or upset or even annoyed. His eyes were blank as they swept over our makeshift group of psychos.

“Fine,” Tommy bit out. With one last blistering glare in my direction, a glare that hurt more than a thousand gunshot wounds, he moved to grab Nik’s hand, whispering something to my younger brother that I couldn’t hear.

I grasped Declan’s hand tightly and allowed him to pull me into the hall. I was relieved to see Ronan and Ryder positioning themselves in front of Tommy and Nik.

The screams were louder now, barreling at us from down the hall.

A moment later, a Rager appeared from around the corner, running at full speed towards us. My heart lurched, nausea making my stomach somersault, when I recognized the man staring back at me.

Well, the man before the parasite disrupted his normal brain waves.

It was the bartender Declan had been talking to yesterday. Only now black lines curved up his face and bare arms, almost like thousands of tiny snakes slithering beneath his translucent skin. His blood red eyes, a product of popped blood vessels, zeroed in on our group. His mouth opened, and indistinguishable words escaped his cracked, bloody lips. The man had bitten off his own tongue.

With a flick of his wrist, Asher’s knife was lodged inside the Rager’s throat. He sputtered, black blood foaming around his mouth, but continued to limp towards us. His head was canted precariously to the side, blood and pus oozing from his opened wound. He opened his mouth, jaw cracking, and something black crawled out of the abyss of blood-soaked teeth and severed tongue.

The parasite.

It left his opened mouth, dropping unceremoniously onto the floor. At the same time, the Rager’s eyes glazed over, and he collapsed, dead. It seemed as if his wounds finally caught up to him now that he didn’t have the parasite propelling him forward.

The worm was...insignificant. Tiny and black, the length of my pinkie finger but thinner. How could something so tiny end the fucking world?

It was the first time any of us had seen the parasite, the worm, out of its host. All we could do was stare with varying expressions of disbelief. We knew where the parasite came from, and we knew it could infect both humans and animals. But we had never seen one in the flesh.

Was it just a mindless creature, latching onto the nearest host and corrupting their mind, or was it a cognizant being?

“Nobody move any closer,” Fallon hissed. He glanced over his shoulder once to make sure we obeyed before the damn hypocrite tentatively ventured a step towards the worm. He raised his boot, preparing to squash it, when the creature uncoiled from the ground like a striking snake.

And like a snake, it lunged forward, too fast for Fallon to contain.

The worm hit my bare leg, sharp incisors breaking skin, before it burrowed inside of me. I dimly heard a cry of anguish, a scream, someone grabbing my waist, another squeezing the life out of my hand.

But all I could focus on was the parasite’s inky black form climbing up my body, visible underneath my pale skin.

Infecting me.

My eyes trained on the dead Rager.

Soon, that dead Rager would be me.

* * *

Fallon

I had never known true fear before. Not when my father and uncle used to beat me. Not when my mom ran away with a man she met online. Not when my bitch of an ex lied and told me she was pregnant.

But seeing that parasite enter Addie?

Icy fear skated down my spine, unlike anything I had ever felt before. It couldn’t even be called terror - that word failed to encapsulate what I felt.

She held her hands out in front of her, staring at her skin as if she expected it to change and contort any moment now. We had never seen a Rager turn before. Would it take days? Hours? Minutes?

Crashing pulled my attention away. It was accompanied by a cacophony of growls, screams, and snarls. A hoard of Ragers were descending on us. Some were slower, the knives in their legs and bodies impeding their gait, while others were running.

“We have to go!” I shouted to be heard over the noise. I sounded strident, in charge, like I knew what the hell I was doing. Inside, I was a fucking mess. I was fumbling through a forest blind, and the one fucking light might be…