Page 224 of Immune

Kota.

He says it just like he’s said it a thousand times before. Like it’s lived under his tongue all this time, just waiting.

My hand starts to shake then, and the knife touches his skin. A thin red line appears under the edge of the blade, but he doesn’t flinch.

His eyes fill.

I hate him for that.

I hate him because I know those eyes. I had sixteen years with those eyes. I know that scar through his left eyebrow and the story of how it came to be. I know the shape of his mouth before it breaks. I know the pale ash-blonde hair matted to his forehead, darker now only because the blood and rain have tried their best to make him unrecognizable.

But I’d know those eyes that are so similar to Dad’s.

I’d know that hair that’s a mirror color to mine.

I know him, but I don’t know him.

Both of those things are true, and both of them fucking kill me.

“It’s me, Kota,” he says.

His voice cracks down the middle, and the room tilts.

“Maine,” he breathes. “It’s me.”

The knife falls out of my hand suddenly. Not far, but enough that it clatters against the floor next to his shoulder, loud enough that three guards jerk as though I fired a gun instead.

I scramble backward.

Too fast.

Not graceful.

Not tactical.

Not anything other than pure panic that has limbs and a thundering heartbeat that I can’t calm.

My boot slips on wet tile and my bad knee buckles. Someone reaches for me, but I jerk away on pure reflex. The only problem is there’s nowhere to go, no escape route big enough for what is currently happening in the cavern of my ribs.

My back slams into someone’s leg.

Solid.

Warm.

Alpha.

I whip around, half ready to bite chunks out of his skin, only to find Kaito looking down at me with both of his hands lifted. He’s not touching me. He’s never touching, not unless I ask. His face is tight with pain, and not all of it is coming from the wound in his side.

“You’re safe,” he assures quietly.

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’m not safe.

I’m a twenty-two-year-old sitting on a medical room floor with my brother’s blood soaked into my pants and his voiceringing in my ears and six years tearing itself open behind my eyes.