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 f**king 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.