Damn, he was proud of her. However she had managed to escape, she’d done a damned good job of it.
“Where was she abducted from?”
“She was born in Haiti, but raised in the Jamaican rain forests. She was seventeen when she was abducted because of her rumored genetic ties to both an ancient priest and priestess of the religion. But rumors at the labs say she was so powerful herself that she nearly walked out of the labs with me when I was an infant. After that, she was isolated with limited contact while they continued to attempt to impregnate her. It took twenty years before she conceived again. Each time she was impregnated with an embryo that wasn’t from her eggs, her body immediately rejected it. Finally, they once again tried using her ova. She conceived a girl, gave birth and six weeks later just disappeared.”
“Did you ever search for her?” Liza asked then, a hint of forlorn melancholy in her voice now.
“Once,” he admitted. “I spent nearly two months in one of the darkest jungles I swear I ever entered. One night, I awoke to find myself surrounded by six of the biggest, baddest-looking jungle warriors I swear a man or Breed could encounter. The biggest moved to the fire I’d made before sleeping, sat down and proceeded to explain the threat I represented to Nera and her daughter. And despite her fondness for me, and her concern, she couldn’t allow me to venture farther. Then, four dead Coyote soldiers were tossed into the camp from the darkness. Their throats were slit; I hadn’t even known they were following me. I left the next morning and left her in peace.”
“How sad.” Regret for him filled her, and Stygian realized he’d never sensed sympathy or an understanding of his loss from anyone else in his life.
“Not so sad,” he told her, realizing that himself. “I found my own peace. She and my sister are alive and protected. That was what mattered to me.”
“You didn’t feel that her daughter was more important than her son?” She lifted against him, the outrage suddenly pouring from her touching him in ways he had no idea how to express.
“I was a grown man,” he pointed out. “I was twenty when she and my sister left the labs. The child would barely have been ten by then. Her safety was more important.”
“To have to choose to let a child go must have been heartbreaking.” There was the slightest edge of an emotion in her voice that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“I was a grown man,” he repeated. “I understood her choice.”
“And she never contacted you after that?”
He let his gaze rove over her, taking in the sheet that barely covered her br**sts, the long, dark blond hair that fell around her face and shoulders, a few heavy strands falling over her br**sts, before he answered with a small smile. “No. And I didn’t expect her to.”
He could feel her sadness reaching him. It wasn’t pity, something he wouldn’t have tolerated; rather, it was a sincere sorrow that such a choice had been demanded.
“I’ve watched all the documentaries on the Breeds,” she said softly. “The scientists and soldiers were monsters in their treatment. To take something so essential as parents and family and make a crime of wanting or needing them was inhumane.”
“That was the point,” he reminded her. “We were led to believe we weren’t human, Liza. That emotions, family, love, they were all things we had no capacity to feel, let alone ache for or hunger for. As though they could force us to be as unemotional and uncaring as the robots they wanted us to be.”
It was no longer enraging.
At one time, talk of those dark, horrifying years would have led him quickly down a path of rage that would inevitably lead to snarling fury.
To allow such emotions to rip through him now would mean releasing the hold he had on the gentle warmth that filled his arms at the moment. It simply wasn’t worth it. They were now days long gone, and if the Breeds were diligent, if Stygian was extremely careful, then they were days he would never be forced to repeat.
“I remember watching the video cast when Callan Lyons revealed the existence of the Breeds,” Liza said then. “It was as though the world was holding its breath, certain it had to be some horrible farce. That there was no way humans could be so inhuman. That such monsters could exist. Only to learn it was much worse than we had ever imagined.”
“Worse, yes,” he agreed as he let his fingers thread into the heavy length of her hair. “But freedom was much sweeter, the realizations of the gifts that were actually given became more cherished. I would not trade who and what I am, because in doing so, I would have missed this night, and I would have missed loving you.”
She was retreating.
Stygian felt it with a sense of shock.
Her reaction was so swift, so instantaneous he nearly missed that critical point in pulling her back.
A snarl pulled at his lips as his hand wrapped around her neck, jerking her to him with a swiftness that had that internal attempt to disappear from him emotionally pausing.
“You will not,” he snarled, his lips nearly touching hers, his gaze holding hers, shock filling it as her lips parted on a gasp. “You will not go away from me in such a way, Liza. Never again. Do you understand me?”
“Don’t.” Her fingers curled against his chest, as though she could force him to release her with such a paltry resistance. “Let me go.”
“Little coward,” he bit out, feeling the strike of her anger as it began to burn inside her mind. “You run and hide like a child, terrified of the responsibility of being an adult. Have I mated a woman or a child in a woman’s body?”
“You didn’t even warn me of what was coming,” she accused him roughly. “I didn’t accept this.”
“The hell you didn’t.” His laughter was rough, bitter. “You knew, Liza. Deny it all you wish. You watched Isabelle and Malachi for weeks, you knew there was more than just the love you could see in their expressions for each other. Such a deep, fierce emotion is more than humans experience without something paranormal fueling it. Admit it: You knew. And I told you before I brought you to this bed that you were my mate. That mating heat bound us.”
She tried to shake her head, to jerk from the grip of his fingers around the back of her neck.
“Lie to my face,” he growled. “Go ahead, mate. Say the f**king words, I dare you.”