Page 79 of Threads of Fate

“You lied to me, Finn. You told me I was better. Is this what you meant? That I was human, and I wasn’t good enough before? So now I’mbetter?”

Finn looks sick, and he’s shaking his head vehemently. “No! Of course not. Fuck. Nix. You were dying. We had to. If we hadn’t, you would have died. We couldn’t let you die.”

Nix drops to the floor and feels the soft carpet under his knees. He had been dying. “Dawson?” Nix has no problem believing that Dawson had hurt him so badly he’d been on death’s doorstep.

Finn crouches beside him, close but not touching. “You were brought into our ER by a Were bus driver. You’d been…hurt. I was working, but I recognized you from the night before. I was…upset…knowing how I felt about you already.”

“How you felt?” What could he even mean? They’d met for a single hour that one time.

“Yes, I knew you were…special to me. I felt it the first night.” And couldn’t Nix say the same? He’d been enchanted with the handsome doctor in his glasses and lab coat; handsome and so hot. He’d been so enamored he’d taken Finn’s sweater, for fuck’s sake.

“There’s more to that, more you’re not saying?”

Finn glances at Jamie, who rubs his face with a shaking hand. “Yes, and I promise we’ll tell you everything,” he begs, “just one big thing at a time.”

“You keep saying that, but no more. I’m tired of not understanding what’s happening to me. I was…hurt? And I was going to d-die. How did I end up a Were?”

“After we got you into surgery, we could tell that your injuries were so severe that you didn’t have long.” Finn’s voice cracks.

“What happened to me?” He looks from face to face. Jamie looks haunted, and Rowan is decidedly green. Finn smells like rotten berries.

“You said you trusted that Jay wouldn’t lie to you. Can you trust me that it was enough that this was the only way? For now?” If the Dr. Merritt he’d met that night was this shaken up, Nix wasn’t sure he’d ever want to know the specifics.

“Is this why I’m not…”scarred. Why he’s not covered in burn marks or bite marks or cuts?He doesn’t say it.

Leo speaks for the first time. “When a human is turned, the venom acts to reset the human’s—ourgenetic code. It makes changes, but it also acts like a…what did Riordan call it?”

Jamie grimaces. “Factory reset. It fixes human illnesses and injuries during the process. We call it a transition.”

“Atransition?Is it like in the movies? Are Weres going aroundbitingrandom people?” Hysteria trickling into his voice causes the others to shift uncomfortably. Nix wants to be grateful, but he hates feeling like this monumental change to his very cells is entirely out of control. Hatred for Dawson burns in his belly, making his teeth ache.

He’s not stupid enough to think that he was in any condition to beconsulted,and he can see that Jamie feels shame.

“Fuck, Nix.No.Were laws are really strict. We had to get special approval from the courts. We–would never do this unless I thought it was the only way to save you. I wanted you to have the chance to hate me, at the very least.”

Put like that, what can he say? He is alive and he can never hate Jamie; he’d spent too long loving and missing him. “How did you find me? How did Finn know I wasyourNix?”

Jamie pulls his wallet out of the back pocket of his black pants and fishes something from the small pocket. Two things: a strip of three photos, faded but oh so familiar, and…Nix’s treasure—the fourth photo, this time stained with blood. His blood. He can still smell the iron tang of it.

He hands Nix both pieces, so he can fit them together again, like pieces of a puzzle finally together after so many years. Justseeing them fit like that brings painful tears to his eyes, and Nix smells that burnt cookie smell again…Wait. “Is thatme?I smell like fucking burnt cookies?”

Rowan gives a small smirk. “Nix, you don’t always smell like burnt cookies. You smell like vanilla sugar—like the best vanilla confection Gideon has ever baked. It might be the best thing I’ve ever smelled.” He’s so sincere, dimples appearing on both sides of his face, that Nix thinks, for a moment, he’ll have to be extra wary of the overly sincere Rowan in the future.

“You’ve always smelled like vanilla to me, even when we were kids. Now it’s just stronger since I’ve presented, and you’re Were. Now it’s just like Ro says, you smell…” Jamie’s ears are red.

“Good enough to eat.” Leo’s blushing and Nix is too, and the room now smells like snickerdoodles. It’s sensory whiplash.

Now that he knows about them, his enhanced senses are feeding him information at record speed: the scent of the roses in the kitchen, the fuzzy pile of the cream throw rug under the large coffee table, and the ticking of the lights overhead. It’s suddenly all too much.

“This is going to take some time to get used to, okay? I’m not saying I’m mad about this—what did you call it? The transition. But I don’t like not knowing about who or what I’m capable of like this. What if I hurt someone? I don’t know anything about what I am. Whoyouare.”

He’s still holding the photos and it hits him how far he’s come and how far he still has to go. “Fuck, I’m tired.” From one minute to the next, he feels like he wants to lie down. He’s got too many questions and not enough answers, and his body has had enough.

“Is there anything you want to ask right now? Then you can take a nap, we can swim and eat later, then we can answer some more questions?”

Finn goes to the bookshelf and finds a dusty blue hardcover book. “Here, this is a common Were history book. I’ve had it since I was in middle school. Never knew why I hung on to it. Guess now I know.” He holds it out with both hands and a tentative smile. “You don’t have to read it, of course; we’ll answer any questions you have to the best of our abilities. But just in case?”

Nix accepts the book with both hands and promptly decides he’s had enough of the vertical life. He suddenly lies down right where he’s sitting on the floor, head in his arms, before he hears someone scramble to pick him up. He smells Christmas.Rowan. It’s nice.

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