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It was as simple as that, yet also far more complicated and he felt she knew it.
“You were never eleven,” she snorted knowingly. “Even Dr. Foster said you were born far older than your years.”
His brows lifted at that information. “He never told me that. But if it was true, then it was no more than he programmed into me. I know while the surrogate carried me, he ordered her to listen to a variety of scientific theories that had been given over many generations in genetic manipulation. He knew what he wanted when he created me, and he ensured he got what he wanted.”
There was no resentment. Far from it. If he saw anyone as a “father” figure, then it was Benjamin Foster.
“He got far more than he bargained for, though, didn’t he?” she guessed. “When did he realize your intelligence was off any scale invented to rate it?”
Graeme almost smiled at that question. He’d always been far more intelligent than Benjamin Foster had guessed.
“I rather doubt he ever knew just how far I’d exceeded even the genetic manipulations he was trying for,” he finally answered her. “Man can manipulate all he wants, but the introduction of animal genetics is far more of a wild card than they ever imagine. Or want to acknowledge. And it will become more so in successive generations. If my suspicions are true, then once the children born of original matings reach maturity, they’ll surpass even the original Breeds.”
She paused for a moment, but evidently decided to allow that speculation to pass.
“So because I was given to you, you used the Bengal genetics in my therapy?” Cat pressed once more. “You chose Honor’s genetics as well—why not use Bengal with her therapies too? Didn’t you consider her worthy? Part of the Pride you claimed in the center?”
Oh yes, his little cat was far too intelligent herself. And she’d obviously been considering these questions for quite some time.
“Honor wasn’t given to me. And the leukemia she suffered from had the potential to become far more deadly with the introduction of any feline genetics. It could have mutated into a form of feline leukemia far stronger than the incurable human leukemia she already suffered from.” He finished his coffee and set the cup on the table before bracing his arms on it and leaning forward. “We were studying wolf genetics at the time she was brought in. Dr. Foster created her therapy himself based on his friendship with her father. I had no such ties where you were concerned, and you were mine.”
He wouldn’t deny that fact. The moment she was placed in his arms his animal instincts had instantly claimed her. Not as a mate, but as belonging solely to him.
“You knew I was your mate then?” Her mind was working, her need to understand her life and the choices made for her finally coming forth. He’d wondered when that would happen.
“I was eleven,” he repeated gently. “I was maddened, nearing insanity and euthanasia. I was only weeks away from being taken to the kill center, despite Dr. Foster’s best efforts to save me, when Phillip Brandenmore gave you to me. No, I didn’t look at you and instantly decide you were my mate. I looked at you, saw the will to live and realized the mistake Brandenmore had made. He’d given me something worth fighting for.”
He barely remembered life before Cat. He knew that, before the moment he’d held her in his arms, his brain had actually hurt from all the information he was trying to process. Headaches that surpassed even the pain from the experiments up to that time. Madness had been a constant companion, so much so that he’d felt himself slipping along a darkened tunnel that led only to a complete loss of any semblance of reality.
“So I was worth fighting for, but your brother wasn’t?” There was an edge of anger to her voice that caught his attention. “Judd is your twin. Why wasn’t he worth fighting for?”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t worth fighting for,” he corrected her. “Both he and Honor were worth fighting for, and I’d hung on through those years for them. But I knew Brandenmore would have me killed soon. My sanity was questionable. I couldn’t always control the animal genetics and the rage was eating me alive. The information amassing in my brain was far more than I could process. Perhaps those animal genetics recognized you as my mate, because those instincts instantly eased, the rage dissipated and I found the calm I needed to survive and to process more information than ever before. Whatever the reason, Cat, it changes nothing.”
“Nothing is ever that simple with you, Graeme,” she bit out, confusion and anger warring inside her. “I knew you then and I know you now. You were born to manipulate and deceive as well as to heal. I have no doubt in my mind your ability to manipulate far surpasses Jonas Wyatt’s abilities. You were my world and you deliberately ensured I felt that way. Then I don’t see you for thirteen years, no matter that, over and over, I did everything but take out an ad with the news agencies to have you contact me. If I belonged to you, then why didn’t you come to me once you were sane enough to realize that something had been taken from you?”
He could see the pain in her face, the haunted need and search for answers. It was a need he couldn’t ease for her. One he refused to ease.
Instead, he leaned closer until his face was only inches from hers.
“I always knew you were mine, Cat. Even when the monster raged unabated I knew and I watched over you as closely as I dared. Trust me, you did not want me to come to you then. Even my instincts refused to come near you. Nothing mattered during that time but blood. And I spilled enough of it that sometimes I feared I could drown in it.”
Her eyes widened as he spoke, surprise gleaming in the golden brown depths for a second before her spine straightened.
He knew the moment she decided she could push him, that she could dare hi
m.
“And you felt that was something you should and would handle alone. Without your mate,” she stated. “Yet now that you’ve decided to claim what you feel is yours you believe you can oversee my every breath?”
There was no anger, no fire. The independence and sheer stubborn will he glimpsed in her were terrifying.
“They nearly took you,” he reminded her icily. “They drugged you, incapacitated you and would have taken you, Cat, had I not been close enough to stop them.”
“And you ensured I can’t be incapacitated in such a way again,” she reminded him, still calm, despite the emotions he could feel roiling beneath the façade. “Perhaps you should have taken care of that sooner, Graeme.” Rising to her feet, she stared down at him, the hurt in her gaze nearly more than he could stand to stare into. “But then, there are a lot of things you should have taken care of sooner, aren’t there?”
He was out of his seat just that fast.
Damn her. She had no idea what she was talking about, no idea the hell he’d endured to ensure she was never found, no matter what. No matter her anger that she didn’t have the answers, he’d be damned if he’d allow her to continue to feel this way.
