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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?”
