“Come on, Liza, tell me what’s wrong.” Keeping his voice low, he had to fight back a howl of pure rage at the pain he felt radiating through her.
It wasn’t physical pain.
There were no broken bones, no internal injuries, he would know if there were—the scent of them would have hit him within the first second of rushing back into their room.
Her lips trembled more as she parted them.
“Liza’s dead.”
His heart seemed to still in his chest as a sob tore from her.
As she clapped her hand over her lips, he watched as she fought for control, won it, then swallowed again against the pain building in her soul.
“No, sweetheart.” He shook his head.
“She’s dead,” she whispered again, wrapping her arms across her stomach and bending over, her head touching his shoulder as instinct had him wrapping his arms around her. “Oh God, Stygian. She’s dead. She died twelve years ago and now—” A shudder raced through her. “And now, they’ll find me, and she’ll die again.”
Resignation filled her pain-threaded voice, trembled with it and sliced against the emotions he realized she alone was responsible for awakening.
“Look at me. Look at me, mate.” Hardening his voice, he forced her to lift her head and stare back at him once again. “You brought me to life. You showed me all I have to live for, do you imagine for a second, for even a heartbeat that I would allow anyone to take you from me now?”
“You know who I am,” she whispered, her voice so low he was reading her lips more than hearing her. “You know. They knew—” Her eyes flashed with terror. “I can’t hide anymore. If I can’t hide, they’ll find me.”
“Who will find you? Tell me who will find you?” What enemies did she fear that she could ever imagine he wouldn’t destroy?
Her hand reached out, fragile fingers shaking as she laid them against his cheek. “The Genetics Council,” she whispered. “You know who, and you know why.”
“Why?”
“I have a photographic memory, Stygian. I have had it since birth, and the serum I was given only increased its power. That’s why I had to die. That’s why when Liza Johnson died, I was given her life. I know their weaknesses and they’ll never allow me to live now.”
The animal inside him rose, stretched and smiled in anticipation.
“Oh, baby, I promise you, they won’t touch you. Not now, not ever.”
She shook her head. “You can’t stop them.”
“I can’t, but sweetheart, trust me, you can.” He knew she could and he knew exactly how she would do it.
“How? How, Stygian, can I stop them? I couldn’t even escape them.” She was shaking in his arms and he hated it.
He hated her pain.
He hated the bottled rage.
And God help him, he hated the part he had played in it.
CHAPTER 24
The terror chasing inside her was killing him, it was killing her, and he wouldn’t allow it.
“The same way Callan stopped them,” he promised her, his hands cupping her face, drawing her lips to his for a precious, though far too short kiss. “The same way, Honor. But instead of telling the world, you’ll tell the Breed Cabinet. Who you are. The experiments and the secrets the Council is so desperate to hide. You’ll tell them all of it. And you’ll weaken them as they’ve never been weakened before.”
She shook her head again, slowly, the terror only growing in her eyes. “It’s not that easy.”
“It will be—”
“You don’t understand,” she cried out, her agony searing his senses. “It’s not just me. I don’t have all the information. We were a team, Stygian. Me, Fawn, Judd and Gideon. We were a team and you only have me. Fawn won’t remember until she dies,” she sobbed as Stygian felt his soul freeze, felt fury tear through him. “And I won’t tell you where she is. I won’t, Stygian. I won’t trade her life for my own—or God help me, even for Amber’s. I won’t do it.”
“You can’t know this.” Gripping her shoulders, he gave her a little shake, desperate to make her listen, to make her understand. “Sweetheart, listen to me. If we know who she is, where she is, we can and we will protect her. I swear to you—”
“And Judd, can you find him? What about Gideon?” Anger was building in her now even as the pain kept her tears falling. “He’ll kill her, just as he swore he would kill me and Judd. He’ll see us all dead, Stygian, and trust me, Gideon is strong enough to do it. And he’s crazy enough. He won’t stop until he steals our last breath.”
“Why?” Stygian raged, fury tearing at him and enraging the animal inside him into a feral frenzy. “Why, Honor? Why would he want to see any of you dead?”
“Because Judd and Fawn forced him to live,” she rasped desperately. “They wouldn’t let him escape into death and, without me, they didn’t have the key to take his pain away when they transfused him with Fawn’s blood that night. We’re a team. We made certain of it, believing the Genetics Council couldn’t kill us if they needed all of us. We destroyed ourselves and didn’t even know it.” She stared up at him, tortured, the scent of her pain tearing at his soul. “We never imagined, Stygian, that one of us would ever want to kill another of us. Let alone, all of us.”
Fighting back her tears, Liza fought to hold on to enough control not to collapse into complete, heartrending sobs.
She’d spent twelve years—she’d believed she’d spent her life—with a loving family, far away from the Genetics Council and the danger they represented.
She’d left a loving family, though. A father who risked his and his wife’s life to help her find Orrin Martinez. A mother who had risked forever losing the child she had dreamed of for so many years and the husband she loved with all her heart.
Her parents had been dedicated to each other and to her.
“I was two when I was diagnosed with leukemia.” She couldn’t sit still. “It was a particularly resistant, fatal leukemia.”
Moving quickly to her feet, she pushed her fingers through her hair, wanting to rip the carefully highlighted, medicinally colored strands from her scalp.
Behind her, Stygian moved to his feet, watching her intently.
She could feel his gaze—feel the worry and concern directed toward her, wrapping around her.
Just as his arms would be around her if she allowed it.
She wanted it.
She needed him to hold her with an intensity akin to pure desperation—and she couldn’t allow it.
“You’re still here,” he said behind her.
Yes, she was still here.
“My parents loved me.” Her breathing hitched painfully as she turned back to him. “They loved me so much that when my father was offered a place within the Genetics Council Experimental Genetics Division, he accepted eagerly. You see, he knew about Brandenmore. And he’d heard the rumors of the project he was working on.” She could feel the rage, the pain, streaking through her, threatening to send her screaming into pure madness.
“He knew about the Omega Project?” His voice was carefully level.
Liza could feel the effort it took for him to hold back. A distant part of her realized she was sensing it, and realized why.
The why was tearing her apart.
“I was placed in Brandenmore’s labs two weeks before the doctors predicted my body would be consumed by the leukemia.” She turned back to him, fighting and failing to hold back her tears. “I was there for ten years. Ten years so hellish I prayed to die nearly every night that I existed in that hell. I begged my parents to let me die and I begged every scientist, tech and soldier I could speak to.”
Crossing her arms desperately over her stomach, she bent over with the remembered horror of the hell she’d existed within and fought to remain on her feet.