Savage Wild Hearts Deleted Scenes

For me, every book goes through a number of iterations, from the inkling of an idea, to completed story. Through that process, things get moved, cut, reworded, reworked, and re-something-ed, either ‘cause they slowed the pacing, didn’t make sense, were part of a cut plot line, and more. In many cases, I cut prologues that take just a little too long to get into the meat of the story.

Below, you’ll find a couple deleted scenes from the first book in my Savage Wilds series, Savage Wild Hearts. One of them is said cut prologue, though it’s from the perspective of Val’s guardian, Peyton. I originally had the prologue in the book from Val’s perspective, but eventually cut that, too. If you’d like to read that prologue, you can grab it by signing up for my newsletter here.

I’d recommend reading Savage Wild Hearts before reading this post, or else you’ll be very confused. You might be confused anyway since these are, after all, deleted scenes, but I hope you enjoy!

Deleted prologue (Peyton’s POV)

Peyton didn’t see the child, not at first.

She wasn’t looking for one, not out here. Not at the edge of the Wilds. Her focus was entirely on picking through the western-most edge of the Washington state town of Brinnon. What remained of it, anyway.

“Find anything?” Chris called. There were ten of the searchers—the brave few who’d volunteered.

Peyton crouched and tried to shift aside a vending machine. Something slithered beneath. Peyton scrambled back in alarm, falling onto her butt. Her hand went to her pistol, then switched to her knife. The pistol might have made her feel better, but everyone on her team knew that it, like most firearms, was nearly useless against the things of the Wild.

The vine wrapped around the vending machine and squeezed tight like a constrictor, as though saying, This is mine now. You humans had your chance.

“You okay, Peyton?” Chris called.

Heart still pounding, Peyton stood. “Fine. It’s already moved over here.”

Chris swore. “Of course it has.” From over the rubble of what had a day ago been a gas station convenience store, Peyton saw him shake his head. “Not sure if they caused the quake or are just using it. Guess it doesn’t matter—”

The ground trembled beneath Peyton’s feet. She froze in place, waiting for the worst. Seattle hadn’t been prepared when the magnitude 7.1 quake hit yesterday. The Wilds were a known. They’d been there as long as anyone alive could remember. Places like Brinnon knew the risk of living at the edge of it. But in recent years the Wilds had remained quiet. You didn’t bother it and it didn’t both you. Except for the brave—or stupid—few who ventured inside looking for heart gems.

The tremors eventually subsided but Peyton’s legs still shook. “Aftershocks,” she called.

“Maybe,” Chris said darkly. “or the other shoe’s about the drop.”

Someone yelled and Chris’ head snapped that way. “Survivors,” he said. “At the school. We’d best get to them before they do.”

Then he was gone, converging that direction along with the rest of the search and rescue team. Peyton watched her footing among the rubble as she started to follow. They’d need to be quick. With no human and Brinnon destroyed, it wouldn’t take long for the Wilds to claim it. Already tiny buds of green and thick leafy blooms of flowers were pushing up through the planks of wood and between the crunched carcasses of cars.

Peyton glared at the edge of the Wilds. Couldn’t it wait a single day? Couldn’t it give them a chance to move?

The thick wall of trees glared back, filled with mist more than what was normal in the pacific northwest. Trees with teeth, that’s what she often thought. Sometimes Peyton imagined one of the beasts staring back from the dark just beyond the tree line. Maybe even one of them…

Peyton blinked. Something was glowing from within.

She scanned the treetops and could just make out the cerulean blue glow emanating above them. Magic? Had to be. Nothing in she’d seen before had quite that same sort of blue. The closest she’d seen were humans with heart gems.

The glow faded and Peyton could almost believe she’d imagined it.

But she wasn’t imagining the child at the edge of the trees. She was suddenly there, as though the Wilds had spit her out.

Peyton looked around, as though grounding herself in the real would make what she was seeing anything but. Yet the child remained. Small, pale, naked, covered in blood.

Then Peyton was scrambling over the shattered glass of a storefront, across the wide swath of empty land that separated the edge of the town from the edge of the trees. The child remained there and for a brief moment Peyton’s heart seized. What if she was a wildling? What if this was a trap? It’d happened before. Leave it to the Wilds to use the cruelest way to coax them.

But no, surely this was just a little girl who’d gotten separated and hurt in all the chaos.

“Hey there.” Peyton crouched and slowly walked the rest of the way to the girl. She didn’t move. Barely blinked. She couldn’t have been more than four, and had the wide, terrified look of an animal that had seen so much it’d gone into shock.

“What’s your name?” Peyton asked.

The girl stared but didn’t answer. Definitely shock. Peyton retrieved one of the rations they’d given the search and rescue team and held it out to her. “You should eat. Go ahead.”

Like everything else, the girl stared at the food, then took it with scratched, bloody fingers, like she’d had to claw her way out of something.

Peyton shrugged off her windbreaker and secured it around the girl’s shoulders while she munched. It was a wonder she hadn’t frozen to death in the chilly mist. No, it was more of a wonder she’d somehow survived being this close, or in, the Wilds.

“Just hold still,” Peyton said. “This’ll just take a sec.”

Her chest warmed as the heart gem nestled beside it came to life. Her body filled with the magic it provided and she brushed her fingers over the girl’s cuts and scrapes. The green glow stitched the lacerations together, scabbed over the worst of the wounds. She wasn’t in great shape, but most of the blood wasn’t hers.

“Where are your—”

Another tremor. The girl fell forward and Peyton clutched her close until it subsided.

“Peyton!” Chris called. “We have to go, now!”

He was right. The worst wasn’t over, and in hours there wouldn’t be anything left of Brinnon. Worse than that, they couldn’t be here if the wildlings found them.

“Be there in a sec!” she called back. “Where are your parents?” Peyton asked the girl. She brushed aside a stringy strand of her black hair. “Sweetie? I need to know where your parents are.”

“Peyton! Let’s go!”

Peyton was sure the girl couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer. But then she turned and looked into the trees. A sick feeling twisted Peyton’s gut.

“Stay here, sweetie. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

It would be useless if a wildling found her, but Peyton pulled her knife and slipped into the trees, parting the mist-kissed ferns and bright flowers that seemed to turn to follow her as she passed. Chris yelled again but the moment she’d stepped into the Wilds it was as though a veil had dropped between them.

She snuck around towering trees—wide as three people. Her skin was already coated in pollen and sweat. A tangy sweetness filled her nose. Branches rustled overhead. Something skittering past.

Peyton made no sudden movement. Nothing to draw attention to herself.

I am small. I am invisible. I am where I don’t belong. Where I’m not wanted. If I don’t get out soon…

She shut her eyes until that last thought passed, then kept moving, only to stop around the next tree. A new smell filled her nose: fresh blood.

The humans—at least she assumed they were humans, it was hard to tell anymore—lay at the edge of the long grass. Thankfully the worse of whatever had happened to them had already been covered by fungi and gnawed away by critters. Also, small crystals had sprang up from the tips of their fingers she could see. They glowed a similar blue as the light she’d seen earlier. Peyton had never seen anything like them, in Seattle or the Wilds. They almost looked like unrefined heart gems, but outside the body.

Peyton covered her nose and stepped close to triple-check, then she hurried back the way she’d come. The entire time she felt as though something followed her. Like those urban legends of the hide-behind; following her, closing in, but never there when she turned around.

The looming fear grew and grew—

Peyton burst past the edge of the trees, still at a fast walk as though leaving the Wilds would somehow protect her, like covering her head with a blanket would save her from the monsters.

“Come on, sweetie.” She grabbed the girl’s hand and practically dragged her back toward the other searchers. She could hear the airy chop of helicopter blades. They might be leaving soon, with or without her.

“Pey—There you are!”

The green glow of Chris’ magic faded around the rubble he was lifting and it crashed to the ground. “They nearly left without you. Who is that?”

Now that they weren’t so close to the Wilds, Peyton scooped the little girl into her arms. “A survivor. We need to go. Chris?”

Chris was still staring at the little girl. “You found her in Brinnon?”

“At the edge. I thought you said we needed to go.”

“Something’s not right about her. you found her near the Wilds, didn’t you?”

“This whole place will be in the Wilds if we don’t hurry. She’s not a wildlings, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

The helicopter blades were speeding up. Chris wasn’t moving. Then he jerked his head. “You had the same luck as the rest of us. Only two more survivors.” He cast a look back at the little girl, who was staring into the trees. Peyton swore they’d moved closer than even a minute ago.

“We’ll put her in the system like everyone else. Hopefully that’ll find her closest relations.”

His tone said he doubted it. Peyton did, too.

The two of them ducked as they ran into the helicopter and took a seat. The other searchers spared Peyton and the girl a glance but said nothing. Maybe they, like her, were simply glad they’d found anyone alive at all.

Chris pounded the siding and the chopper lifted off. The little girl relaxed, tucking her head beneath Peyton’s chin. Her tiny body was fever-hot. Peyton squeezed her close. She looked out the side of the chopper, into the Wilds. A prickly feeling traveled up her arms. The Wilds were watching her. Chris had a point, something wasn’t quite right about this, but then nothing had been for a while. She’d saved a child, defied the Wilds and reclaimed one of their own.

But she knew the Wilds never forgot. One day it would reclaim what was taken from it, and there was nothing Peyton could do to stop it.

 This next deleted scene was a bit of an expansion on a plot line in the book that Spoiler alert Val’s stepbrother, Joshua, was working with the dangerous Lords of the wildlings. Since humans and wildlings have been in a tense standoff for years, Val had no clue why he’d do that. An iteration of this idea stuck around through the book, but this is the slightly modified scene:

“Jezaline and Mordecai weren’t the only ones here,” Luella said. “There were humans, too, later. In uniforms like soldiers.”

I slowly turned back to Luella. “Black uniforms, with red patches?”

“I believe so? At least the ones I saw outside wore those.”

Rune pulled the echo out of his pocket and tapped the birds beak.

“—if we are to see any sort of progress,” Joshua’s voice said. “Give me your answer, and agree to what I’ve asked, or our discussion is over.”

All three of us stared at the laughing bird as it tucked its wings back into it side and crouched in Rune’s hand.

“I know that voice,” Luella said, and the last vestiges of my flimsy belief tore away.

“So that message we heard was just a follow up,” I said, mind whirling. “The Department of Fringe Affairs was already here. That’s…That’s…”

“Not impossible,” Rune supplied.

“It shoudn’t be possible, Rune.” Our worlds had been in a tense standoff for generations. There were a few official visits for both sides to talk, but those were always big and obvious and announced. I’d been out of touch with the human world the last couple weeks, but I still would have heard if we were speaking with the Lords again. The fact that it was Joshua hurt all the more.

I hope you enjoyed these little tidbits and views inside the at times messy process of a working author. Be sure to check out the much, much longer post about deleted scenes from the second book, Savage Wild Souls.