*Everit* Max and Dad were waiting at the airport for me, and to my surprise, they had Harley waiting in the car as well. That was why they rushed me along, barely even giving me a hug before trying to get me to the car. The sweet thing started whimpering really loudly as he tried to scratch through the window, so I very quickly climbed into the backseat to sit with him.

And when I held that dog in my arms, I began crying. I hadn’t meant to, but with everything going around in my head, I couldn’t help it. For the first part of my life, I had been trained to feel nothing, to show no weakness. When I learned that crying was okay . . . sometimes, I did it too much.

This was one of those times.

They knew something was really wrong because usually, I could stop my tears by holding Harley, but even Harley wasn’t enough to stop them. Not this time.

“What’s wrong, Ev?” Max asked with wide eyes. “Did you . . . did you not make it through the Battle Round?”

I took a deep breath to try and calm myself, and surprisingly, it worked this time. “I did. There’s a lot I just can’t tell you, though. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone, and then there’s even more I just can’t tell you. I wish I could, but really. You’re better off just not knowing.”

Max frowned at me, but he didn’t question it and instead changed the subject for my dad’s sake. “See, Ev? We knew you could do it! That’s awesome!” He pulled me into a tight hug before turning his frown upside down, and even though I was glad he wasn’t frowning anymore, his smile made my heart hurt. “So did you like LA?”

I couldn’t give a completely truthful answer to that, so I just said yes and tried to move on. We kept up conversation about LA and my performance, though, until Dad asked me how much I enjoyed being on Niall’s team. I started getting really paranoid and began frustrating myself. I actually said, “It’s fine. You don’t have to give me the freaking twelfth degree! I haven’t done anything wrong!”

Thankfully, we got home then, so I was able to get out and distract myself by unloading my stuff.

Now, Max, Harley, and I were in my room listening to music. There was a lot of schoolwork I had to catch up on, so Max was letting me use his. Cheating? Alright, yes, but I was teaching myself as I did it. That was the best way for me to teach myself was to see it done by someone who had learned.

“You know you’re gonna have to tell me what’s wrong,” he murmured out of what seemed like nowhere to me.

I tried to catch his hazel gaze, but his eyes were locked on my computer. I didn’t really know what to say, how to start, so I just refocused on my schoolwork.

What Makes You Beautiful came on right about then, and I groaned far too loudly. It wasn’t loud enough to wake up Harley, however.

Of course Max looked over at me, and he cocked an eyebrow. I knew there was only so long I could stall, but stalling was so much fun. When I tried to find other topics of conversation, it helped me forget what happened.

“Niall sang part of this to me.”

“You still ‘crushing’ on him?” he asked, making air quotes around crushing to emphasize that he didn’t believe I could count it as a crush.

Actually, once, he asked me, “Why do you love One Direction? They’re never gonna love you back.”

My response? “Why do you breathe? You’re gonna die anyways.”

After that response, he just said that he didn’t believe it was a legitimate crush since I didn’t actually know him, and he left it at that.

“Now more than ever before,” I admitted, and my schoolwork that had previously kept my mind off of the guy who occupied it the entire flight home was no longer working.

I could feel my lips tingling as they began to quiver with deep longing to have his on mine again. Soft and warm, his lips fit against mine like they were made to be there, and my entire body burned with a high voltage electric current that left a feeling inside of me that I could never explain with words. All I really even understood about the feeling was that it was nothing like anything I had ever felt before, and I wanted to feel it more—longer and stronger even.

Unlike me, Max had been in a few relationships—not an excessive amount like most of the jerks at our school—so maybe he could explain the sensation to me.

First, though, he turned in the chair so that he could look at me. “So it’s a legitimate crush now? Not the fan girl one from before?”

Despite the frown I gave him, I was glad he gave me something to distract myself from the way my lips felt. “Yes.”

“What happened?” he asked, and I could see the understanding in his eyes.

Max had always been good at reading me, better than most people. I was a hard person to read, but he picked up on even the smallest things I did. A lot of the time anyway.

So he probably figured something to do with Niall explained my strange behavior.

Now, I knew I was busted. There was no point in stalling or trying to keep it from him. He would get it out of me anyways.

“He kissed me,” I whispered. Even though I said it softly, it was hard to get those three words out, mostly because I had no idea what Max would say or think.

His eyes widened. “What?”

I knew there was no way to say everything and look at him while I did it, so I looked away from him and over to my closet. “I actually kissed his cheek one night after he protected me when my top came off in the pool. Well, I kissed him once we were alone. As I was going to get ready for the Battle Round, he kissed the top of my head. But when they called my flight number . . . he kissed me on my lips. And even though it was so wrong, ‘cause he is my coach, it felt so right. I . . . I wanna kiss him again.” I sat up and closed my math book, and I actually looked to Max now. I needed his honest opinion and advice, and he always loved it when people talked to his face, especially when coming to him for advice. “Maybe you can explain something to me. Why is it that there seemed to be this . . . burning rushing through all parts of my body—some I didn’t even know existed—kinda like an electric current that burned and shocked me . . . but painlessly? It left me tingling, and each time I think about it, I tingle and wanna kiss him again.”

There was silence for a good bit, but the astonishment that danced across his eyes was enough response for me. He wasn’t upset, angry, confused . . . just surprised and happy. He was thinking about something, so I just had to wait until he figured out whatever was on his mind before getting any answers.

He didn’t take as long as I thought. By the way he smiled and leaned towards me, he didn’t seem at all unsure about himself. “Ev . . . I’ve never experienced anything like that before. I think you somehow found the one without even looking.”

I sucked in a quick gush of air. Could that really be? How was that even possible? My mind began spinning again, but instead of thinking too much into it, I decided to press for more details.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember those stories your dad used to tell us?” he asked. “Back when we first started hanging out all the time, when I was over here a lot because my parents were in the middle of their divorce. He told us about when he met your mom. From the moment he saw her, he . . . .” he trailed off and frowned. “He knew he found the one. He saw her in person, though, and they connected—zinged, as they say in Hotel Transylvania. Yours doesn’t count until the Nashville concert. Then it counts as a legitimate crush.”

I laughed a little, but despite Max’s humor bit, I remembered that he was right. “Oh yeah. He mentioned the same thing I experienced as well, but . . . it wasn’t quite like that. He just said he tingled whenever they touched in any way. This is burning, hardcore.”

“So it’s a more intense zing,” Max shrugged. “The point is, without even looking or dating to try, you just found him, which I find highly unfair.”

I sighed. “Okay, well wonderful. So how do I tell him? I mean, we can’t be in a relationship, even when this is all said and done with.”

“Yes you can,” he protested. “Look, they already ruined your childhood. Don’t let them ruin your future, too. Maybe you’ll have to wait until after this competition, but you can be with him.”

“I’m a freak,” I whispered, and for the first time in a long time, I finally just said it. I finally just let the memories come back up, and for the first time ever, I actually found myself tearing up. I couldn’t cry about it, though. They had trained that out of me, trained me to not care about myself or my well-being.

What they didn’t realize was that they couldn’t train me to not care about anyone else either. Since I didn’t care about myself, I cared too much about others.

The “they” I keep referring to would be the people behind my mum’s death. My dad used to work for them in research to help anyone with a disease. He wanted to help save people, but they turned it into human enhancement. They stole babies from their homes, and any time one of the scientists had a kid, they were required to put them in the experimentation program.

My dad realized what was going on and tried to get out. Little did he know that there was no getting out, not since my mum was pregnant. They knew that before he did.

Anyways, he quit, but he didn’t get away from it. My mum’s obstetrician was someone who worked with the company—Prepot, short for prepotent. In case you didn’t know, that means domination.

The doctor injected me with the test serum, the one that they had finally mastered. So many babies died before they figured out the perfect ingredients, but thankfully, no more had to be stripped of their chance to live. Still, I was the first and strongest success.

They altered my genetic makeup. I’m still my parents’ kid, and I’m still a female human being, but I have large black wings growing out of my back. My bones are different on the inside, but I look normal on the outside. I can fly, and I’ve also learned how to make my wings disappear so that I could be in a bikini in public.

Hiding my wings wasn’t as comfortable as letting them loose and free, but over the years, I had gotten so used to it that I sometimes forgot they were there. When I got home, I always remembered because home was the place I could loosen them up a bit and be myself completely.

The doctor made me the way I was with the serum, but they were far from done with me. When I was born, Prepot tried to get me, but my dad told them no. For a year, they tried and tried, but my dad stayed firm. So, when I was a year old, I was riding with my mum to go to the doctor—a friend of hers who knew about my altered state—because I was very sick.

Prepot had a sniper waiting for us, and they shot her. She crashed into a tree, and they barely had time to get me out before the car exploded, burning any evidence that it had been more than an accident.

My dad knew better than to tell the police anything about me. He knew when he got to the scene and saw that I was gone, they had taken me, and telling them anything would put him in prison as well as end a lot of lives. Prepot had no problem killing innocent people. Just look at what they did to my mum.

After that, they continued to experiment on me and test me. I was there for five years before my dad was able to find me. Any time he got close, they moved me. When he did find me, he killed every person in the building that wasn’t an experiment, and he released all the experiments.
They had a GPS tracker in my arm, which I discovered one night when they broke in to our new home, and we barely escaped. Dad didn’t realize that was how they found us, but I knew. So I cut it out.

I almost died, really, but it wasn’t the first near-death experience I had ever had. Actually, on the contrary, I had experienced them more than any person ever should have to experience it. Being on the edge of life and death wasn’t exactly something a little girl could handle in her mind. For a while, I was scarred, and my nightmares were constantly plagued with those near-death experiences ending differently than they did . . . .

Honestly, the reason I lived through most situations was because flying wasn’t my only enhancement. They also made me stronger and faster than normal human beings, as well as lethal with a killer survival instinct. I had insane night vision, and I could control electricity. I could climb up walls and onto ceilings like Night Crawler from X-Men, but the scariest thing of all that I was capable of was the venom. If I bite someone with this venom in my mouth, it takes away most of their senses, leaving them deaf, blind, and unable to smell. I accidentally killed a man once because I bit him too many times.

At night, I can’t control it. That’s the sweet taste I get in my mouth, and if I bite someone, they’ll get desensitized.

Thankfully, though, they don’t know everything I can do. Some things developed as I grew older, so they weren’t aware of a lot that I was capable of.

As I thought about all of this again, my senses and abilities came pouring back into my brain after I had shut them out for so long. I hadn’t used them in years. The last time I used anything was when I ran from my stalker in Ireland, and that was the first time in a long time.

I mean, to say I never used my night vision or strength or fast healing is a lie because I couldn’t just turn it all off, but I was able to try and be normal by staying away from abilities such as the control of electricity or the wall thing.

For now, I didn’t plan to change that while I was under the public eye like I was about to be. I couldn’t use the electricity ability because then, it’d spiral out of control, and we couldn’t be under any radars.

The real reason we moved to America was because they were still following us. Dad spent years creating completely new identities for us, and he even backed them up with documents, records, and things beyond my understanding. He did it so well that we were able to get joint citizenship, and in the past few years, our lives have finally been peaceful.

You may be thinking, “Why on earth are you putting yourself in a position to be well known then?” Simple. Part of getting a new identity was changing the way I look. I’m not talking about dying my hair or getting a haircut. No—we got our faces changed.

Besides, this is the last thing they would ever expect from Audry McMevin. She was too scared to even speak in front of strangers, much less sing. And also, a girl in hiding wouldn’t bring attention to herself like this.

Audry McMevin was actually from Dublin, Ireland. She grew up in a large city, and her last known location was Mullingar six months before she turned seven. That’s when Everit Eberly was born, and that’s why I hated my looks. Before, I looked just like my mum, and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Now, I looked like no one. Just another face.

I kept my hair the same because dark brown hair is common. My eyes were permanently dyed green, but in the mixture, they accidentally made them glow-in-the-dark.

Even the permanent green dye didn’t stop the red that comes out after sunset, but the dye made my eyes glow red at night. It was really neat but scary.

It was painful, very painful, but it was the only way to get away. For over a month afterwards, Dad cried every time he looked at me and saw that all traces of my mum were gone.

I made it my goal to destroy them. Whatever it took, even if it meant dying in the process, they were going down and would never hurt anyone else again.

“I can’t, Max,” I whispered. “Don’t you get it? There are multiple things holding me back. I could hurt someone when I’m with them. The venom? My strength? It’s dangerous! And, when I take Prepot down, I could die. If I get close to anyone, it’ll hurt them.”

“Ev, you’re not gonna die!” he exclaimed, and the intensity of his anger came on so sudden that I jumped. “You can’t do that to me, but more than me, you can’t do that to your dad! Hasn’t he been through enough?”

“People die every day because of these sick people!” I insisted. “So many lives are ruined every hour! Someone has to stop it!”

“Don’t do it alone,” he said, much calmer now than before as he reached over and placed his hand on mine. “Find your mate. Don’t do this alone.”

This wasn’t something I had thought about, although I thought I had evaluated every option. Dad mentioned a bit about my “mating” process, as he called it. He only really told me to choose wisely because there would only ever be one. As soon as we had sex, basically, we were stuck together.

Or . . . that was the guess anyways.

I stood from my bed and headed downstairs. Harley chased after me, and Max followed me too because I suddenly looked eager—like I had an idea.

Dad’s eyes widened as I practically fell onto the couch beside him. I ran as fast as I could, so Max and Harley were still trying to catch up.

“Tell me everything ya know about my mating process,” I spurted out, eyes wide and eager. “Please?”

“What’s this all about?” he asked, but I could see my drastic and positive change of mood made him happy. “You never really wanted to know, said you weren’t gonna be with anyone anyways.”

I smiled sheepishly, aware my cheeks were slightly rosy. “That was until I found the one. You told me all the things you felt when you first saw Mum, and the same things happened with me, except stronger.”

“You are more enhanced, so you feel more intensely than we do,” he smiled. “We don’t know anything. We only have our hypotheses. One of the reasons they want you back so desperately is because they want you to mate with someone normal to see what happens. Anyways, they believe your mate will become like you, but they don’t think you’ll stick to just one. They think you’ll be done with them as soon as they’re enhanced, that your natural instinct is to make everyone like you. For that to be true, that would mean your only desire would be to enhance everyone around you, but you didn’t wanna find anyone for that exact reason. That’s why I believe my hypothesis is right—only one. I do agree that you’re capable of changing people. I’m not sure sex is the way. Your DNA is what makes you different, so body fluid would carry the different genes and work almost like venom. It could happen before you have sex, really.” Now, he frowned. Clearly, he didn’t like talking about this, and I mean, really. What dad would like talking about his daughter having sex? “Basically, we only have guesses. The few that believe as I do also believe that when you mate with an enhanced human, you’ll be invincible, and your body will stop aging. You’ll never die. Once again, though, I don’t believe sex will work for him. There has to be alternate ways of exchanging fluids—like blood donations, or something.”

This was what I wanted to hear. Of course, Niall would have to be okay with and want this life, and if he did, we could take them down.

Everit, it’s okay to be with someone! Do it for Mum and Audry.

First, though, I had to win the competition for Ella, Dad, and Max.

And Everit.

Notes

The song in the description is Make a Move by Icon For Hire. I really love that band. A lot. :)

Anyways, thank you guys for the ratings, comments, and subscriptions! It's made my day, so thank you. :)

I'm gonna post a couple more chapters tonight. I hope you continue to enjoy this story, and I'll do my best to update at least once a day. :)

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