Admiral Holloran stared back at him for long seconds before nodding to the doctors and jerking his head to the door. They all filed out quickly. None of them were comfortable in his presence. They never had been. Of course, they'd had to deal with an animal for the first three months that he had been under their care.
Admiral Holloran sighed wearily and stared back at him.
"Last chance, son," he said softly. "Let us call your wife. Send someone for her."
He bared his teeth in fury. "No, sir." The "sir" was habitual, the growling rage in his voice wasn't. It was pumping through him, numbing his mind, filling his senses with the echoed images of his nightmares.
"Enough." Jordan spoke into the silence. "I warned you he wouldn't change his mind."
"Your respect has gone to hell, Jordan," Holloran snapped.
"So has my patience," Jordan bit out. "I was given complete control of this unit, Admiral, and that supersedes even your rank."
"If he changes his mind then he can't go back," the admiral argued. "Is that what you want for your nephew, Jordan?"
"If he changes his mind then that decision is mine to make, not yours or anyone else's." There was a hardness to Jordan, a bleak anger Nathan had never seen in him before. "He'll be transferred to the command center tomorrow and the doctors there will work him with the others."
"You haven't even asked him if he's willing!" The admiral was in Jordan's face now. The two men nose to nose, two incredible wills clashing. It would have been amusing if Nathan had been in the mood for it.
He wasn't.
He rose to his feet and headed to the door.
"Nathan."
Nathan paused before turning back to face his uncle. Jordan had once been not just family, but a superior officer, when they had both been SEALs, when Nathan had been a man rather than the animal he had turned into.
He stared back at Jordan. "Make it quick. I have exercises to finish this evening."
Jordan got to his feet. "There are other options than the SEALs."
"Oh yeah?" Nathan arched his brows. "What's better than the SEALs, Uncle! Hell? Been there, still take trips."
Jordan nodded slowly. His brilliant blue eyes, wild Irish eyes, his grandpop had called them, stared back at him. "There are other options, Nathan."
"Really?" Nathan stared between Jordan and the admiral.
"Yeah." Jordan nodded. "You walk out of here as a SEAL and you walk out as Nathan Malone. You walk out with me, and Nathan Malone ceases to exist."
The admiral moved from his chair with a jerky movement and paced to the other side of the room.
"You leave with him and the SEALs won't exist for you anymore, Nathan. The only men you'll have contact with are those in your old team under Commander Chavez, to retrain. You'll be dead forever. Nathan Malone will no longer exist. Not for you. And not for your wife."
Nathan stared back at him, but it was Bella he saw. She hated a broken nail, she worried about wrinkles. How would she handle a husband who was little more than a monster?
He turned to Jordan. "So where do I sign up?"
Three years later
Jordan Malone stood in his office and stared through the privacy glass at the exercise room. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face as he watched his nephew.
Nathan, now known as Noah Blake to the world, was only five years younger than he was. Jordan had been a surprise to his parents, a shock to his older siblings. And he had been more like a brother to the man pouring with sweat beneath the weights in the other room. The change in Nathan over the past years was nothing short of miraculous. Hell, the first six months, the very fact that he had survived had been miraculous. It had been the first three years that had been the hardest though. The nightmares and effects of the whore's dust in his system had nearly driven Noah insane.
But had he survived? Sometimes, Jordan wondered if the man who had taken that final SEAL assignment was the same one he was staring at now.
His face was different. The plastic surgery had made it leaner, the bone and muscle more denned. Fuentes had done a job on Nathan's face while he was a captive. Bones had been shattered, the repairs had been extensive. The change drastic. No one who knew Nathan Malone before would guess at his identity now. His build was different. His body was leaner but more powerful, rock hard, and his will was steel. He was a cold, icy-eyed killer.
He wasn't Nathan Malone anymore. He was truly Noah Blake, because Noah had made certain nothing of Nathan existed.
Noah's training with Reno Chavez's unit in the past years had worried Jordan. Where once the Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had pulled his punches and killed only when he had to, now… Jordan shook his head. Noah killed with deadly, silent efficiency.
Jordan remembered the night they had rescued the man who had been Nathan from Fuentes's hold. Nearly every bone in his body had been broken at some point. He had been wasted away, nearly starved, and pumped so high on whore's dust his eyes had glowed like a demon's. And he had fought. He had fought not to rape the girl locked in the cell with him, he had fought to protect her. And he had fought to walk out rather than be carried out.
Jordan had been certain his nephew would never survive the withdrawal of the drug and the effects to his brain. He'd never imagined Nathan would come back, stronger than ever rather than broken. Darker than ever, and so different that his identity change rarely blipped Jordan's radar anymore.
"He's never going to be the same, is he?" Lieutenant Ian Richards said somberly, admitting what none of them had dared say aloud over the years. Ian was part of that SEAL team, had stood with the other men who had spent the past years with the man they called Noah.
It had been harder on Ian in some ways, because he had been closer to Nathan than even Jordan had been. Nathan had only been ten when he heard young Ian's screams echoing through the desert landscape of their ranch. He had awakened his father, harassed that mean-assed Grant Malone out of the house, and found the young boy whose mother was dying in his arms.
Grant, in a surprising display of compassion, had helped the young woman and her child. Grant had his moments, Jordan thought, they were just few and far between.
"No, he's never going to be same." He admitted the truth to Ian, as well as to himself. "This man isn't Nathan Malone anymore, Ian. He's truly Noah Blake. We may as well accept that."