Page 2 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

Otto

H e felt lighter in my arms than I remembered—of course, when I knew him before, he was bigger than me.

When I knew him in our past life, I thought he’d always be there to protect me.

From the first second his mother brought me home off the street and said she’d found a new brother for the family, Nikki had been by my side.

He’d been warm and protective from the time we were young, broad and hot when we were older.

He was everything—my brother, my protector, my lover.

My downfall, my betrayer. My killer.

As pretty as he was—as delicate as he seemed—I knew the man in my arms was nothing more than a lie made flesh. I knew the wide eyes were an act, because I could remember them clearly… the same pretty blue, like the sky in winter.

Dead.

Unfeeling.

Staring at me when I drew my last breath.

If it weren’t for the fact that there were plans in place, I might have tightened my fingers around his throat while he was prone and helpless. I might have taken him and kept him for myself, away from Nathaniel West and the facility I called home.

But… that wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t the orders .

I had to bring him back so he could see what was happening to our brothers . I had to bring him back so he’d know what hate could do to a person over the span of a few lifetimes.

It was strange, because I could feel it pulsing through me—a trembling rage that wasn’t mine, the instincts that seemed to be born into the body I’d been brought back in.

This body had been watching the man that I held, even though he had no idea why he’d been watching him. He’d watched a dozen men before who looked just like him.

He’d killed them.

Instinct drove my soul to revenge, even when I wasn’t the one at the wheel.

“I’ve always been destined to kill you, Nikki,” I murmured to the limp body in my arms, and picked him up, surprised at how easily he fit against my chest as I made my way back to my car.

When I dumped him into the back seat, I couldn’t help but take pause—there was a cut above his brow, and his lip was split open. The bruise forming on his cheek looked like someone had backhanded him.

It made images flash behind my eyes from our childhood. For a long time, he’d step in front of me whenever his mother decided she was angry.

For a long time, I thought he was some kind of fucking savior.

I’d seen these cuts on his face before, even if he’d been bigger then, his jaw sharper, his features honed by a lifetime of training and abuse.

This Nicholas was different. He was small. Soft… delicate. Dark brown hair spilled haphazardly across his forehead like he intentionally styled it to hide the damage on his face.

And with the streetlights streaming into the car, I could see the dark circles under his eyes.

Sleepless nights.

Fuck, he looked soft.

My fingers came out, brushing a few strands of hair back, tacky with blood and sticking to his brow.

He was pretty in this lifetime.

I dropped my hand to my side, before the warmth of his skin could penetrate the chill that had consumed me from the second I woke up, and slammed the car door behind me.

It didn’t matter how pretty he was—how soft, how delicate, how broken he looked.

The only thing that mattered was my revenge.

He stirred in my arms as I got to the cell that would be his home for the rest of his life—his prison, his tomb. I’d just finished chaining him to his little corner when his lids slowly fluttered open. The confusion on his face was almost so sweet I believed it.

Then his dark brows snapped together and he pushed back, shifting away from me so quickly he fell against the floor with a loud thud that knocked the breath out of him and left him whimpering.

It didn’t stop him from scrambling away on hands and knees, shoving himself until his back was against his bed. His eyes darted around in panic.

Fuck, he really was a little rabbit, caged and cornered.

I couldn’t help myself. I came down on one knee, kneeling in front of him and tilting my head while I watched him. Fascination poured through me, making my fingertips almost tingle to touch him. In all the memories I had, in all the lives I’d lived… I’d never seen him quite like this.

So vulnerable.

So afraid.

So at my mercy.

“W-what… where am I? What’s going on? I didn’t… I didn’t do anything. I don’t know you. I—”

“It’s not going to help, Nikki,” I murmured, but I didn’t reach out to him. He looked like he’d break if I touched him, and I needed him whole. Intact. We’d just gotten started, and Nathaniel West promised me as long as I wanted with this little experiment of his.

As long as I needed.

Looking into his wide blue eyes, I realized I was going to need a long, long time.

“I’m not Nikki . I don’t know who you think I am, but I promise I’m not .”

I sat back on my heels, looking him over. The words certainly didn’t sound like anything Nikki had ever said. The posture, the broken expression… He looked like him, like a softer, delicate version of him… but he wasn’t acting like him.

Then again, when we found Marco and Warren, they hadn’t acted like themselves either. They’d still been nasty, but they weren’t the same men who’d taken pleasure in torturing me.

Now that he’d been injected with the same serum as me, Marco was his old self. My eyes flicked to the corner of the room—he was still chained to the wall, his body limp from our last little session together.

Like he was drawn on strings, the man in front of me turned his head too. I couldn’t stop myself from watching him when he realized what he was seeing—the blood on Marco’s chest, and Warren cuffed to the other bed, who made a point not to look at either of us.

And the third bed in the room.

His.

“Oh, god. Please… please…” He turned to me, and his eyes were huge, luminous, terrified.

Filled with tears.

“Please, what?”

I’d wanted to hear him beg—I wanted to hear him scream. I wanted him to tell me why . The why was a pulsing question that burned just beneath my skin, ever present, making my blood pump and my heart beat.

But that was for later.

For now, I’d settle on a simple answer.

“I don’t know you,” he whispered. “My name is London Ellis. I don’t know anyone named Nikki.

I just want to go…” His hand came up to his mouth as he spoke, brushing against the cut on his lip.

I watched the word home die on his tongue, but it didn’t stop his brows from coming together, didn’t stop the tears that spilled wetly from his eyes as he looked up at me.

“Once upon a time.” I leaned in as I spoke, and he had nowhere to go when I brought my hand up and brushed my thumb across his cheek, catching the tear that cut a line through the blood on his skin. “You told me I was your home. I believed you then.”

And look at where it had gotten us.

“I didn’t…” London—because I had to admit that’s who he was at the moment—pressed as far away from me as he could. “I don’t know you.”

My eyes swept across the tears on his cheeks, to his shaking frame and the hair sticking to the blood and wetness on his face. I brought my thumb to my lips and licked the taste of salt and copper from my skin as I stood.

“You’ll wish you never did before this is all over with. Don’t worry, London .” Saying the name made something just beneath my skin tingle, something in my chest feel odd. “You go last. You’re safe… for now.”

“Last?” He said it faintly, but I was already turning to leave. “What do you mean, last?” He was trying to stand, but the mixture of terror, adrenaline, and the drugs still pulsing through his body seemed to make it impossible. “I don’t even know who you are, I—”

“Otto.” I cut him off as I turned at the door. “Otto Blythe.” I paused to see if there was anything—any recognition, any spark of a memory… but no.

There was nothing.

“I don’t…”

“I’m the man you killed, London .”

His eyes went wide with shock. He sat on the floor and stared at me as I closed the door behind me.

I stopped as soon as I heard the lock click. My eyes flicked back to the glass that looked into the room. I watched him curl into a ball on the floor… watched his shoulders start to shake… and I didn’t feel the satisfaction that I thought I would.

Marco had fought.

Warren had actually landed a few blows when I’d taken him.

But…

Nikki…

London…

It was different with him. He…

“That was faster than you predicted, wasn’t it?

I suppose catching a twenty-one-year-old is easier than the others, of course.

” Nathaniel West’s cool voice came from behind me, and I jerked my attention from the man on the ground so I could look him over.

His was the first face that I’d seen when I woke up—he was the one who’d explained what had happened.

It was impossible, really. A serum to bring people back from the dead—well, not exactly that. A drug that could wake memories from past lives… A drug that, if given in a high enough dose, could completely replace the person in the present with who they’d been before .

An impossible explanation that pulled me straight from the clutches of hell.

“He doesn’t remember me.”

Nathaniel seemed unperturbed. “He’s died multiple times since you knew him, Otto. Of course he doesn’t remember you.”

Multiple times . So impossible .

It had been close to seventy years since the Nicholas I knew was alive, but the memories felt like they were from yesterday. I fought the urge to flick my eyes back to the glass behind me and kept them trained on Nathaniel instead.

“But he will.” There wasn’t a question in my voice.

“Of course, when you give him the drug, he will. Just like the others. We perfected the method with you, Otto. We know what we’re doing.”

Perfected the method . I’d never asked him how many people came before me. From what I’d read, I was the first success when it came to bringing back someone from so long ago. It was… heavy.

It felt like I had so much weight bearing down on me, flashes of memories that weren’t fit to make a whole from so many lives that weren’t mine.

But in every life since the one I recognized as mine , I’d known one thing.

I had to find Nicholas.

I had him now. Trapped in a room—a little rabbit in a cage.

My gaze flicked to the glass wall behind me like I couldn’t help myself, and I had to force my attention back to Nathaniel.

I hated the way he watched me with narrowed eyes and a calculating gaze—as much as he seemed pleased with me, with the progress I’d made, I wasn’t under any illusion that he liked me.

I was an experiment to him.

A successful experiment, but an experiment nonetheless.

“I’m going to shower.” I forced the words out before I let impulse take me back into the room so I could try to taunt the truth out of the man on the ground.

I wrinkled my nose instead and gestured to my scuffed shoes.

“I had to chase him into an alley to catch him.” Unbidden, my vision swept back to the room one more time.

To blood on a soft face and the cut on his brow.

My fingers twitched—it was probably the man he lived with who’d done it. I had to imagine the reason it bothered me was because I wanted to be the one who caused him pain, who caused him to bleed.

Which meant it needed to be patched up so I could have a clean slate.

“Would you like me to send someone in to check him over?” Irritation coursed through me.

Was I letting my thoughts play on my face?

Or maybe it was just because he’d caught me staring.

I opened my mouth to tell him yes, he could send one of his little scientists in to make sure nothing was broken, but somehow the words got lost when I heard London whimper behind me.

“No. I’ll check him out tomorrow if you get me a medical kit.

” When Nathaniel’s brows hiked, I let a smile play across my features that was more natural to the body I was in than the memories that were my own.

Dangerous, deadly. Empty. “I want him to know that everything he feels, everything he experiences, everything he has from here on out is because I let it happen. I want to be the only contact he has, other than our brothers.”

Nathaniel’s eyes sparked in delight, like the answer was everything he’d wanted to hear. Another little part of his experiment, I was sure—what happened when you put a man who felt too much into the mind of a pure psychopath? Which instinct would win?

“You want to break him, of course.”

“I want to own every emotion he feels from now until I kill him.”

It sounded menacing enough. The body I was in had been a pure psychopath from everything I’d read, and the thought process seemed like something he would do.

Isolate a victim. Make them depend on him—make them realize he was the only thing that could grant them breath, grant them life .

Make them realize he was the one person who would take it away before it was all over.

My own emotions felt… dull… under the weight of the memories still flooding my mind.

It was almost ironic that I’d been reborn into a body that was everything I’d been lacking—I was the psychopath my adoptive mother had always wanted me to be. If I could have been this Otto, I never would have gotten killed.

If I could have been this Otto, I never would have loved Nicholas.