by Lora Leigh
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.
She didn’t have to fight for long. Within a heartbeat his arms were around her, his broad chest catching her tears as he held her to him.
“They tortured them,” she sobbed, grief tearing through her as their screams echoed through her memories. “I would beg them to stop. I would scream and threaten and still I had to listen to their screams.”
Fawn wouldn’t be able to talk for days after the treatments.
Gideon would growl like a feral cat while his eyes would glow that eerie, predatory amber.
Judd would stare up at the ceiling, refusing or unable to sleep until his body could function once again.
“What did they do to you?” His broad, warm hand cupped the back of her head, holding her to him as she held on to his shoulders, her nails digging into the material of his shirt as she fought to just hold on to her sanity.
Her memory was so incredibly accurate that any moment she could pull the most minute detail from even the darkest, most agonizing second of those years there.
Shaking her head, her fingers clenching in his shirt, Honor felt as though she was sinking into a pool of pure emotional acid. There was nothing but pain in the past, and she had realized why each day of her life after she became Liza Johnson.
“Tell me.”
The primal creature that helped create him echoed in his voice. Man and animal existed in such harmony inside him that there were times she could actually forget he was a Breed. If she wanted to. But, Honor realized, she wanted always to know exactly who and what he was.
“I would pray to die.”
The growl that vibrated in his throat was so similar to those Gideon and Judd would emit whenever they were forced to care for her and Fawn after the treatments.
“I was the only one they showed any kindness to. Father couldn’t even force them to show Fawn mercy, and he tried. He tried so hard.” She stared back at him, shaking her head as she fought and failed to hold back her sobs. “He did everything he could. He bribed them, he begged them, and still, they didn’t care when she screamed and screamed in pain.”
Her father had raged at the scientists, he had even gone above their heads and petitioned the Council itself for mercy.
And they had refused.
“She was so tiny, Stygian.” Her voice broke as she felt her heart breaking for the child Fawn had been. “She was so delicate that sometimes I wondered how she held her head on her shoulders. Yet she always did. She would turn her back on us and I could see her shoulders shaking as she sobbed silently. As she wrapped her tiny arms across her stomach and rocked, silently begging for comfort. And it was only Gideon that could force the scientists to let him go to her. It was always Gideon that held her, that rocked her, and sometimes, he even sang to her.”
And how envious she had been as she had watched the young man rock her friend. As she watched him lift his head and stare at the bars above the cages they were forced to exist within as the scientists watched the bonds growing between the four of them.
“Once the experiments drew to a close, I thought we were all being released. My parents came for me, took me home, and I tried so hard to acclimate to being free, even though a part of me knew I would never be free. Two years later, someone from the Council arrived, though, and they demanded Father return me to the labs. I was the only one left, they told him. Judd, Gideon and Fawn had died in an escape attempt.”
Honor remembered the agony that had knifed through her when she’d heard her friends were gone, and with them the information that had been amassed over the years.
“But you knew better,” he encouraged her to continue.
Honor shook her head. “Not at first. The Council’s messenger was telling Father how they knew about our photographic memories, and how they needed whatever I had seen to begin the project once again because Gideon and Judd had destroyed the files and data in the escape attempt. That was when I knew that they were alive. Gideon would never have allowed Fawn to die. Just as Fawn wouldn’t have allowed Gideon to die. That night, Father put in place the escape plan he’d already mapped out for me. He managed to find someone he knew could hide me. This man contacted me within hours of Father telling the messenger he needed a few days to arrange everything. My father then made certain I was in a place where his contact could slip me away. A few weeks later I was reunited with Fawn and Judd. We ran continually.” She tried to dry the tears that continued to fall. “We never had any peace. Then, one night, they found us before we could run. They crashed into the room just like they did tonight. And before we could think, Fawn, Judd and I were shooting. We were shooting to kill rather than wound, fighting for our lives because we knew they would kill us with the tests if we had to suffer them again. We managed to get away just as the man that helped me escape arrived with another and drove us to where two girls were dying in the desert.”
“And then you became Liza Johnson,” he whispered.
He was dying inside with her. The pain searing her soul was ripping his to shreds as well. The agony of the blood she had been forced to shed that night, the lives she had been forced to take, no matter the reason, would always haunt her now. It would torment her, just as the knowledge that it had been another girl’s death that had been her only escape from certain hell.
Laying her head against his chest, concentrating on the steady beat of his heart, she nodded wearily. “And then I became Liza Johnson.”
“Claire Martinez is Fawn, isn’t she?” he asked her then. “Liza and Fawn both died in that wreck, didn’t they, Honor?”
She shook her head. “They took Fawn away.”
And they had.
She had to be careful. So very, very careful to keep him from sensing the lie she knew she had to tell.
“I’m your mate,” he said then, his lips at her ear, his voice so soft she had to strain to make out the words. “My first loyalty is to you, and let me tell you, you reek of that lie, sweetheart. If you want to hide her, protect her until those memories return, then you’re going to have to let me help you. Without your trust, mate, I can do nothing. I am nothing.”
She pulled back to stare into eyes the color of the darkest blue.
Could she trust him?
Did she dare?
God help her, did she really have a choice?
“It was a ritual,” she whispered. “The medicine chiefs did it. They gave us Liza and Claire’s lives and completely took the memories from us of who and what we were until the time came to remember. One would have their memories returned in a night filled with chaos, the other…” She swallowed tightly. “The other with her death.”
“And you don’t know which is which?”
A strained, mirthless laugh escaped her lips. “I’d pretty much say tonight was chaos. And I know none of the bastards died.” A sob escaped as more tears fell. “That leaves Fawn’s death.” Shaking her head, she tightened her grip on his shoulders, fear and desperation building inside her again. “That leaves her death, Stygian. I swore I’d protect her. I swore—oh God.” Her fingers fisted in his shirt as she shook with the pain and fear tearing through her. “Oh God, Stygian, even as Claire Martinez she’s not known any peace. She’s not had a moment to be happy because Ray can’t forgive her,” she sobbed. “He won’t forgive her because Claire died and she lived, and there’s no way she could make up for it. And I broke all my promises to her, because I promised to protect her.”
He could do nothing but hold her. Hold her. Rock her. All he could do was try to comfort her, because the pain inside her was killing him. To feel her shaking so violently, to feel the pain racking her slender body and to feel her sense of failure as though it were his own, was more a hell than the twenty years he’d spent in those fucking labs.
And he’d be damned if he’d allow her to fail in this, because losing the young woman she’d always fought to help protect would kill her.
“We’ll protect her, Liza—”
The door between the rooms swung open.
Jerking around, Liza stared back at Jonas in terror.
He knew.
She could see it in those liquid silver eyes.
He knew.
Somehow, he’d heard it all.
Stygian snarled in raging fury, his muscles bunching as he moved to tear away from her, to jump for Jonas as the other man lifted the small electronic device she knew had somehow allowed him to hear everything that was said.
“We’ll all protect her.” An animalistic, primal rasp so rough and terrifying it seemed to scrape across her nerve endings came from his throat.
“No.” She tried to jerk from Stygian’s grip, suddenly terrified of what Wyatt would do to gain the answers he needed to protect his daughter.
She couldn’t stop sobbing.
Fighting to be free of Stygian, she only wanted to escape, to get to Fawn, to hide her—
“For God’s sake, the melodramatics are driving me insane.” The door slammed behind him with a crack of steel against steel that reverberated through the room. Rage glittered in his liquid mercury gaze, as did disgust and irritation.
“You’ll destroy her,” she cried.
“Get serious.” Exasperation filled his voice as well as his expression. “No matter the stories mothers tell their children about the bogeyman of the Breeds, I am not a cruel person, Ms.—” He paused, his head tilting to the side before his expression tightened and a savage determination filled his gaze. “Ms. Johnson. And I am well aware of the ritual that overlaid your memories with those of the two girls who died twelve years ago. Forcing those memories was never my goal. I merely hoped mating would instead allow the memories free. I have always known your secrets.”
“You couldn’t have known.” There was no way. No one present that night would ever have spoken of it.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared back at her confidently. “My dear, sometimes one has to learn how to maneuver those he cares for into completing their destinies rather than meeting death,” he sighed. “I knew Honor and Fawn were in Window Rock. I knew somehow your father and the president of the Nation were involved. That led me to suspect that, perhaps, the accident their daughters were in at the time of Honor’s and Fawn’s disappearance may have been fatal. That would have allowed the two young girls the ultimate escape if Liza Johnson’s and Claire Martinez’s deaths were never revealed. What was a mere suspicion when this began has, over the weeks, been confirmed. That is beside the fact, as wondrous as such a miracle is, as adept as the earth is at obeying the requests of men such as Orrin Martinez and Joseph Redwolf, still, the scent of the genetics left inside you after those experiments is still there if a Breed knew what he was looking for. And I knew what I was looking for, my dear.”
She was barely aware of the fact that her nails were now biting into Stygian’s arm.
“If you figured it out,” she whispered, “then Gideon will as well.”
Jonas snorted skeptically. “My dear, do not imagine Gideon Cross has yet to figure any of this out. And if he has”—the smile that tugged at his lips was definitely amused this time—“if he does, then trust me, the last thing he’ll do, once I’m finished with him, is want to kill.”
The tears had stopped.
Stygian could almost, almost forgive Jonas his games for the simple fact that Liza—hell, Honor—was no longer crying.
His mate. He couldn’t bear her tears or her pain.
/> It didn’t matter her name, it didn’t matter who she thought she was or who she had been. She was the other half of his soul.
“What do you mean?”
For a second, gentleness flashed in his gaze before it shifted to calculating amusement. “Gideon is a man driven mad by his inability to do as the animal inside him demanded. To protect. To ensure the safety of those he was bound to. The animal is tearing him apart, clawing at the man’s subconscious and creating a madness that only one thing will cure.”
Honor shook her head. “There’s a cure?”
“Of course there is,” he assured her, his lips quirking briefly as he crossed his arms over his chest, tilted his head to the side and watched her with eyes the color of living silver. “All he has to do is listen to the animal inside him. All he has to do is find his mate, and protect her.”
She blinked back at him. “Who is his mate?”
“Fawn,” Stygian said softly behind her. “Son of a bitch, that’s why he’s so enraged. She’s his mate. The bastard isn’t feral, he’s in mating heat.”
“Fawn was a young woman when she forced that transfusion on him without the knowledge or the medication the scientists had been using to control what they believed was the feral fever that came from it. But the animal inside Gideon also knew she was still too young to mate without consequences,” Jonas explained. “That’s why the animal inside him went crazy when it happened. The opposing parts of his psyche were suddenly coming together, doing whatever it would take to force back the mating heat until she was old enough, strong enough to endure mating a Breed. Now, I just have to maneuver him into the right place at the right time, to ensure he realizes it. Once he does, then the animal tearing him apart inside, now that the woman is old enough to handle the mating, will settle and the mate will emerge.”
“Do you know where he’s hiding?” she whispered, feeling Stygian’s arms tightening around her, holding her closer, sheltering her.
“Gideon never hides,” he sighed then. “He’s here, right beneath our noses, somehow. Watching, waiting, hoping to pounce when we lead him to you and Fawn. Just as the Council soldiers are. Which is why we’re not going to let anyone know that you’ve remembered anything. As far as everyone involved is concerned, you’re still Liza Johnson and Claire Martinez is exactly who she seems to be.”
“How?” she whispered. “Any Breed that comes close to me will smell the deception. Every time anyone calls me Liza. Anytime I pretend to be her, that scent will be there.”
He stared back at her for long, thoughtful seconds. Long enough that Stygian finally growled in warning.
“Where’s Judd? Who is he?” he asked with a faint glimmer of amusement in his gaze as he glanced over her shoulder at her mate.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Jonas, and that’s the truth. I haven’t seen him since the night of the ritual, and not because I forgot who he was either. Judd never came around me again.”
But she knew he was close.
“Don’t hold information from me, Liza.” Jonas sighed as he prowled closer, his gaze intent. “Tell me, as I stare at you now I can smell the truth of what you’re saying, but I can also smell your lie.”
“Then any Breed can,” she whispered, fighting back the tears gathering again.
“Not in this lifetime,” he growled, turning to Stygian. “Do you smell her lie?”
Liza stared up at her mate, watching as confusion flashed across his face.
He inhaled slowly then narrowed his gaze on her and inhaled again. “All I smell is her truth. She’s never seen him.”
“But her subconscious knows she has,” Jonas all but whispered. “That’s my gift, Stygian. You and your mate now know what no one but my own mate has been given the secret of. Even the scientists who knew died by my hand. I don’t give a damn what you believe. I can sense, and even smell, what only your subconscious knows.”
Liza shook her head. “I have a photographic memory stronger than you can even realize,” she informed him, her voice scratchy, so hoarse from her tears she didn’t sound human herself. “I would know if I had seen him.”
“Only if your subconscious wants you to know,” he stated deliberately. “And the added complication of your Breed genetics makes that part of you much stronger. Stronger even than that extraordinary memory of yours.”
Shock had Stygian tightening his arms around her when Liza would have jerked away from him.
“He’s crazy,” she cried out. “I’m no Breed.”
Stygian shook his head, staring down at her as though he were only just realizing it. “That’s why the mating heat was so different. It’s the reason why your ability to fight is so extraordinary. And why your scent took me aback as I rushed into the room. Breed genetics.”
She was shaking her head as he spoke. “It’s not possible,” she whispered numbly.
“It’s not only possible, it’s a fact,” Jonas assured her. “Now, we just have to figure out how to use it to keep Honor Roberts hidden until we can find the others.” His gaze flashed dangerously then. “I know who Fawn is, Liza. I know Claire Martinez is the girl that escaped those labs with you, but I must know any weakness she has, as well as her strengths. If we’re going to save her and Gideon, then I have to know who and what I’m facing. And I have to know where I can find Judd.”
Liza felt numb inside. Everything she had believed weeks before was a lie. The life she had lived, the parents she cherished, the friends she thought she had grown up with. It was all a farce. A farce that had kept her alive for the past twelve years and one she now had to uphold to save the only sister she had ever known.
She shook her head as she stared back at Jonas.
“Fawn was always so tiny. Judd and Gideon used to call her the little fairy. Every year on Claire’s birthday, a fairy is left where she can find it. And they’re always very, very expensive. She keeps them in a secured storage center in town where she can go look at them whenever she wants to.”
Jonas nodded. “That would suit Fawn.” Then his gaze sharpened on her. “And what about you?”
“I must amuse him somehow, he’s always leaving me knives. And I’ve learned how to use every one he’s sent.” Her breathing hitched painfully. “But I don’t know who leaves them or how they do it.”
He didn’t leave girly little knives either. They were always lethal and always intended for one thing and one thing only: spilling blood.
“Where do we go from here, Jonas?” Stygian asked from behind her. “Don’t play games with me where she’s concerned. The time for your manipulations where Liza and I are concerned is over.”
Liza. She had to stay Liza, not Honor. At least for a little while longer.
“Now, we’re tracking her assailants.” His expression tightened once again. “Once we have them in custody and we learn how much the Genetics Council knows concerning them, I’ll handle that end. Until then, what you do remember of those years and the serum you were given, I must know.” Agony flashed in his gaze. “If I lose my daughter, Ms. Johnson, then it won’t matter the battle we’re fighting or the need to move with caution. I promise you, there won’t be a scientist or an individual associated with that organization that I will allow to continue breathing. That, I promise you.”
That promise Liza felt to the bottom of her soul.
“I still don’t remember everything.” She was holding on to Stygian as though he were a lifeline, terrified she was going to sink into the fears tearing through her now. “But—” She lifted her hands from Stygian to rub at the ache in her temples. “Jonas.” She stared back at him miserably. “There were so many injections, and only Gideon knew what each one was. I was assigned to the scientists that worked with the blood transfusions and who analyzed the data on the blood tests and the different hormones that showed in them. Fawn worked wi