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Her tears were soaking through his T-shirt, burning into his heart. Scars, of such brutality that he had never imagined feeling them, ripped at his being as he rocked her. He fought to hold her.
“He saved you, Dawn,” he whispered. “He brought Callan to you. Callan rescued you. Callan slew Dayan and freed you. Then Callan brought you to me. God brought you strength, Dawn. He saved you.”
“I prayed,” she sobbed. “I prayed like that stupid book I hid told me to pray. I prayed and I begged and I read and He didn’t make it stop. It didn’t stop!”
They had still hurt her. The Bible had promised her God’s protection, and Dawn hadn’t seen the protection God had given her.
“Did Callan hurt you?” He could barely speak for his own tears. “Callan could have been sent to any lab, but he was sent to yours. He defied the safeguards they had in place and he destroyed the monsters, Dawn. God sent him to you. And God sent me to you. And you to me. And God helped you hide those memories. He gave you escape. He heard you, baby. He heard you.”
She collapsed against him. The sobs were tearing from her throat now, shaking her body, and he knew, he knew as certainly as anything in his life, as certainly as he knew that God had indeed watched over her, that those memories were pouring back.
And all he could do was hold her.
The demons were long dead, but for this moment they were as fresh and as clear as yesterday. Right now, as he held her to his chest and fought to shelter her with his strength, Dawn could do nothing but remember. And shed the tears…
CHAPTER 21
He carried her to their bedroom.
Dawn was aware that they were alone. The Breeds that patrolled the house were noticeably absent, and Callan, Jonas, Dash and Elizabeth didn’t follow them.
They held back as she cried. Broken sobs that should have been silenced long before this, and the tears that still soaked Seth’s shirt.
She remembered. The memories were bleak and ugly, filled with pain and hopelessness, just as the images had been. But that wasn’t why she cried. She cried because as the memories flowed over her, so had realization.
She hadn’t been deserted. Not by God, and not by herself. She had hid from them. She had hid from the child she had been because she had sworn, vowed to herself and to God that she would kill the bastard that had tried to destroy her. She had sworn it to every child that died by his hand during their stay there, and she had sworn it to herself.
But she hadn’t killed him. His blood hadn’t soaked her hands. She hadn’t tasted her own vengeance, and that was part of what she couldn’t face. That and the fear that she w
as lost, never a part of the true circle of life. Neither human nor animal in the eyes of a supreme being.
“I’m sorry,” the half sob came as she tried to unclench her hands from his neck, tried to ease the desperate hold she had on him.
“Apologize to me for your pain, Dawn, and I really will spank you,” he snapped. “As God is my witness, if you take another helping of guilt on your slender shoulders then you’ll destroy my heart.”
She could do more than scent his pain now, she could feel it. His pain that she had suffered, his willingness to do anything, no matter the cost, to ease her. His complete, unquestioned dedication to her.
Her true mate.
Something inside her had shattered as he held her down, as he yelled at her, as he forced her to remember, to realize what she didn’t want to remember or to accept. She had smelled his pain, felt it blending with her own, tearing through her, breaking down the walls she had erected so long ago.
Those memories lived inside her. Knowing what had happened hadn’t helped her to know why she hid from it. Now she knew.
She knew, and knowing didn’t change anything. She had no identity to place to her rapist. There was no way to taste vengeance or to fulfill the promise she had made to God as a child.
If he would save her, she would kill. If he would just make the pain go away, she would shed that bastard’s blood and make certain he never raped another child, Breed or human.
She had failed, God hadn’t.
“I didn’t keep my promises,” she told Seth as he stepped past Mercury and into their sitting room.
She scented the other Breed’s compassion, and rather than shaming her, she felt thankfulness. The Breeds as a species, as a race, or however the world defined them, were worthy. God had given them a soul, no matter what the scientists believed. He had adopted them.
“I swore I’d kill him,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”
“Callan did it for you, Dawn.” He carried her into the bedroom, then to the bed. “You were a child. No one could expect you to do it all.”
He sat on the bed, still holding her, his arms so strong. He was so strong, so warm and so important to her very existence.
