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“I nearly left Sanctuary that first year without Seth,” she told him. “I nearly ran, because I couldn’t bear smelling the scent of him each time he came to Sanctuary and believing he didn’t want me enough to so much as seek me out and say hello.” She shook her head painfully. “You and Jonas decided my life for me, and you nearly decided my death. If Seth had married another, if he had impregnated that cow who’d been trying to trap him into marriage, then it would have destroyed me as nothing else. Is that what you wanted for me?”
“I wanted you whole,” he bit out, pushing his hands through his long hair as he glared at Dash again. “That’s all I ever wanted for you, Dawn.”
“I’m whole now,” she assured him flippantly. “You can fly back to Sanctuary with a clear conscience. Been nice seeing you. Tell Merinus hi.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” he growled. “It’s not pleasant.”
“Oh, you think it’s not pleasant?” She rounded her eyes and stared back at him incredulously. “Wow, Callan, should I bow and ask your forgiveness now? I guess you just might have to accept it for the time being, because attacking you isn’t an option. Merinus might hurt me.”
Jonas shifted then. A smooth flow of muscle, not a tensing, but a warning. She turned back to him and smiled coldly.
“I want to be around when you find your mate,” she snarled.
His brow lifted. “I doubt she would give me the trouble it would appear you give those who love you, Dawn.”
“I bet she digs a very deep hole and does all she can to hide from you,” she retorted insultingly. “And I couldn’t blame her. Her life will be nothing but a series of attempts to avoid your calculations. Tell me, Jonas, how did keeping me away from Seth benefit you? It must have, or you would have never done it. Did it keep the money flowing in? Was Seth more charitable when he believed he was protecting his woman than you thought he would have been if he had had her?”
Her fists clenched at her sides as the pain drove spikes of fury into her brain. She knew Jonas. She knew how calculating he could be. One person’s pain wouldn’t be a blip on his radar when it came to the welfare of the Breed society as a whole.
“It was my decision, Dawn. Not Jonas’s,” Callan stated firmly.
She stared back at her brother. She had always admired his strength, his integrity, his determination to see not just the Breeds as a race survive, but each individual Breed survive whole and intact. Until her.
“Why, Callan?” she whispered. “Why would you do that to me?”
Before he could answer, Dawn tensed at the scent of her mate outside the door. A second later the door opened behind her and Seth stepped inside.
“Come to join the party?” She turned to him with a bright smile and a clenching of her stomach. The arousal was there, but so was the pain. “Come on in. It’s just getting fun.”
He didn’t say a word. He moved to her, his broad palms cupping her shoulders as she t
urned, drawing her back against his chest. She felt his heartbeat, his warmth. His scent and his strength wrapped around her, and her breath hitched with the renewed pain that fed into her soul.
“Callan.” She felt Seth nod behind her as Callan glared at Seth, the gold of his eyes flickering with anger.
“You weren’t invited to the meeting, Mr. Lawrence,” Jonas said, his voice dark, controlled.
“My house.” Seth shrugged before Dawn could snarl back at the Breed director. “I didn’t need an invitation.”
Dawn breathed in, her gaze still locked with Callan’s as she moved slowly out of Seth’s embrace. She would face them all on her own terms. She didn’t need a protector, she needed a partner.
“We were discussing old times,” she told him brightly, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched his hands slide into his trouser pockets. “You know, all those nasty little images they used to run you off without telling me about it.” She met his eyes, and it hurt. There was somber acceptance there.
“I had a right to know, Dawn,” he told her. “Callan wasn’t wrong in allowing me to see the hell they put you through. I was wrong to stay away.”
She flinched. Suddenly, for a second, those images were more than just the images of a Breed being tortured. They were her. For a second, the protective shield she had placed between herself and the past slipped, and she was sucked into a rage, a horror, an overriding shame so deep, so agonizing, she had to turn her back on them to hold back a cry.
Just as quickly it was gone, but not before she heard the muttered curse and enraged growl that came from Callan’s throat. In the past, it had been his arms that had sheltered her when she felt broken; now, it was her mate’s arms. They wrapped around her, strengthened the control she was fighting for and returned the strength to her limbs. How had that happened? Those feelings, so intense, slicing away at her entire being? How had they slipped through?
“I’d die for you,” Seth whispered at her ear. “And so would he.”
She shook her head; she knew that. That painful realization was all that had kept her from breaking the day she learned Callan had betrayed her.
She straightened and turned back to Callan.
All the pent-up rage brewing inside her broke free. Years of knowledge, of hatred, of the aching pain that drove her to run until she felt as though she would drop. All the needs, the fears, the pain exploded in her brain until it was all she could do to hold on to the animal clawing at her emotions.
“All these years I thought there was one man’s eyes that I could stare into who hadn’t seen those horrible discs. One man who didn’t know how I begged to a God that didn’t care.” Callan’s eyes widened in shock as the throttled scream tore from her throat. “You let him see. You let him see me become an animal. You let him see how little we mattered in the eyes of the god that didn’t create us and damned sure didn’t adopt us. Damn you to hell, Callan. You had no right.”
