“And what the hell will that prove?” Her father threw his hands up in a gesture of fury. “How will your blood prove anything?”
“It will prove I’m the son of Morningstar Martinez,” he snapped back at him. “And as you know, those bastards never, ever separated the male Breeds from their birth mothers. They used them. Tested us for compassion and sympathy with them,” he snarled with animalistic rage now. “My blood will prove it, Mr. Martinez, and then as far as your daughter should be concerned, you should get fucked. Because a man that would turn his back on a daughter is no man. He’s even less than the godforsaken bastards that created the Breeds.”
“Enough.”
Isabelle watched her grandfather through her tears, his lined, weary expression making him appear a decade older than his actual age.
“It is time to speak of this without this most precious child present. The sins and the nightmares of the past are for those of us who have faced the monsters in the world. Not those who we fight to protect from them.”
Her breathing hitched as her grandfather stood staring back at her with all the gentleness and love he had always given her.
Malachi’s arm went around her. As though he couldn’t bear the physical separation between them any longer.
Her grandfather nodded as though in approval of the move.
“Take care of the gift I give you my consent to accept,” her grandfather stated then. “What you have been blessed with, no man can tear from your grasp. Be foolish enough to turn from her love, though, and I will see you as no more than the sniveling child who knows only to blame others for his misfortunes.”
“Thank you, sir,” Malachi stated softly. “And I know well the gift I’ve been given.”
Her grandfather turned away. As he did, her uncle nodded to her gently before following. It was her father who hesitated.
“I love you, no matter your choices or what you do,” he finally said roughly. “But no matter the man or the Breed, ones with honor would never stand by calmly while one more innocent and undeserving died in agony.” He glanced to Malachi as he spoke.
“And I don’t believe that, Dad,” she whispered. “Sometimes, to protect others you love, you have no choice but to put on a brave face and hide your horror or your pain to ensure the protection of others. I watched the documentaries. I watched the Senate hearings that are retelevised year after year, and I heard the stories of the horrors they faced. Every Breed who survived those labs, made it out alive and swore vengeance against their creators and tormentors are worthy of every second chance they can be given. If needed.” She glanced up at Malachi, certainty flowing through her as his gaze met hers. Turning back to her father, she stated, “Malachi doesn’t need forgiveness. He wasn’t there. If he had been, he would have told me before anyone else had a chance.” She was certain of it.
With tears glittering in his eyes, her father raked his fingers through the military short gray and black hair as he turned away.
“Who told you Malachi was there, Dad?”
He paused. Keeping his back to her, he shook his head and Isabelle swore she could feel the weariness that slumped his shoulders.
“I have the right to know. It’s my life they were attempting to destroy along with the negotiations between the Nation and the Breeds.”
“I gave my word, Isabelle.” He sighed, his voice husky. “I won’t break it.”
And he wouldn’t. No matter the cost.
“The next time it happens, if you have to give your word to retain the secrecy of their identity, then don’t bring the suspicions to me where Malachi’s concerned,” she informed him, her heart heavy. “Because I won’t hear them. Whoever is attempting to destroy these negotiations would destroy me, Malachi and my family without a thought. I don’t want to hear anything else they have to say.”
She had made a choice and Isabelle knew it. In that moment she’d chosen Malachi over suspicion, rumor or hints of wrongdoing whether they were real or imagined.
She had chosen him over everyone else in her life.
She may not know every act he had committed or every experience he had ever known, but she knew the soul of the man she had given her heart to. And she knew that soul was one that deserved her love.
That soul was the mate to hers.
Chapter Eight
Your lips touched mine.
He couldn’t bear to feel her pain.
As the room emptied and the door snicked closed quietly behind Rule, Malachi turned his mate to his chest and held her there.
For the first time in his life he didn’t just sense the pain, or scent it. He could feel it with every fiber of his being. It wrapped around his heart, his soul, and squeezed with a merciless grip.
“What’s going on?” she whispered against his chest as she felt his hands smoothing down the silken material of her dress to her hips and back to just below her shoulders. There, his fingers tangled in the long waves of her hair, twisting them around to pull her head back.
“I don’t know what’s going on, baby,” he told her, keeping his voice low, the pain emanating from her still too strong for his comfort.
It made the animal inside him rage, desperate to take the pain away and replace it with something more. Something more intimate. Something that would resonate with pleasure rather than pain.
Lowering his head, he let his lips settle over hers. Gently. The glands beneath his tongue were swelling in response to the emotions rising inside him, just as they had since the moment he had laid eyes on her.
Flicking his tongue against her lips, parting them, he let his lips fuse with hers before parting them farther and finding her tongue with his.
As though the taste of the mating heat was as much an addiction for her as the taste of her kiss was becoming for him, she immediately drew the taste of him into her. For lush, impossibly ecstatic seconds her lips captured his tongue and drew the heat from it.
Pulling back from her, his lips slanted over hers, rubbed against them, parted them with his, and they shared the taste. Mating heat fused them together, but Malachi knew where the heat came from: from the hearts of two souls that had searched the night.
Pulling the dress from her, he could only groan in anticipation and rising hunger as she released his pants.
There were no boots to take off this time—he’d met his visitors in bare feet, just as she had. It took only seconds to strip the pants from his legs and lift her to him, but the bed wasn’t an option. As he palmed her breasts and took her kiss again, his thumbs flicked at her pebble hard nipples, rasping over them as he backed her the few feet to the couch and felt the primal instincts that rose inside him crashing through his control.
She was his mate. The need to take her, to mark her, to indelibly imprint himself on her was tearing through his senses like wildfire.
Though she had stood beside him and defended the accusations brought against him earlier, still, there had been an instinctive hesitation. The need of the daughter to give in to the father, to obey and accept the protection she had known all her life.
That hesitancy had terrified him. For the briefest second Malachi had felt pure, gut-wrenching fear, certain he would have to fight for her and chance destroying them both in the effort.
That streak of pride and independence had held her to him, for the moment. Now, God help him, the animal inside him was tearing loose now and asserting its determination to tie her irrevocably to him.
“Malachi,” she whispered on a desperate sigh, her nails biting into his bare shoulders as he backed her to the couch before allowing his lips to trail to the sensitive column of her neck.
The ripple of response raced up her spine, sending the scent of summer heat to fill his senses. The smell of her passion, her sweet, soft, feminine lust, was the most intoxicating scent. He could live on it. He could survive the rest of his life with no other scent in his head.