The bullets he’d taken to his chest had created horrifying wounds. Judd had fought to stabilize him, then been forced to inject the weakened Bengal with a small amount of the Council paralytic to still Graeme’s struggles, which the guards carried in the event one of the breeds they were transporting became too violent.
He’d cursed them as Judd attached the crude lines between Cat’s vein and Graeme’s. He’d cursed them, threatened them, then, staring in her eyes, he’d assured her he’d kill her. He’d peel the meat from her bones if she didn’t make it stop.
I love you, G. She’d whispered those words without crying, her twelve-year-old heart breaking at his fury. I can’t lose you.
I never loved you. You were my experiment . . .
He’d sliced her soul open when he’d told her he didn’t love her. Sliced it open and left it bleeding with an agony she hadn’t been able to comprehend.
Yes, he’d proved he didn’t love her, that he’d never loved her. The mark he’d left as her alpha had tormented her, the pain of her disobedience had weighed in her for years. Until she’d managed to convince herself that she’d managed to destroy it. A lie. She’d known all along that mark would linger as long as the breed mutations lived inside her.
When Cat had awakened the next morning and found, once again, G was gone, she’d given Judd her loyalty, but he’d already had that anyway. When he’d held his hand out to her silently, his gaze filled with such regret, she’d taken it and acknowledged to herself that she had no one . . . she couldn’t even allow herself to depend upon Judd. Damned good thing, because months later an attack, the six shadowy warriors who rescued them, and a group of six Navajo spirit men, had changed the course of her life.
At least until now.
“You’re right, you’re not the one I knew as G,” she whispered into the silence. “My G would never have left me so alone and frightened and in such danger. You always were Graeme. You should have told me then who you were. I’d have allowed you to die as you wished.”
Turning out the kitchen light, she moved slowly through the large open room to the staircase, taking each step with such weariness that reaching the top seemed to take forever.
She left the bedroom door open, left the balcony door open and crawled into the bed. Dragging the blankets over her shoulders, she lay, staring into the darkness, dry-eyed, aching and wondering why it still hurt so damned bad.
After all, she hadn’t been under any illusions, hadn’t fooled herself into believing he’d felt any differently than he’d claimed to feel that night. So why did it hurt so damned bad now?
REEVER ESTATE
“My G would never have left me so alone and frightened and in such danger. You always were Graeme. You should have told me then who you were. I’d have allowed you to die as you wished.”
But he wouldn’t have died.
The wounds were bad, he gave them that, some of the worst he’d ever had. But Dr. Foster had created him, and just as they had perfected Cat’s genetics, Foster had perfected his. And his brother’s.
Those genetics, the DNA that created the Breed as a whole, had ensured any wound was immediately isolated and all the body’s strengths and power went to healing it.
He would have healed, it just would have taken longer. And he would have retained his sanity. By giving him Cat’s blood without the serum Dr. Foster created to counteract the newly emerging hormone in her blood, he’d been driven mad. She was a child, still a baby, and far too young for the mating hormone showing up in her system. Far too young to mark a fully adult Bengal Breed that wasn’t quite sane to begin with. Nothing had mattered but stopping the transfusion. When he couldn’t stop it, nothing had mattered but ensuring she never searched for him. He had to keep her away from him until she’d had time to become a woman, to allow both her human and Bengal genetics to mature.
Reviewing the surveillance video of the house as he perched on the steel cot in the middle of a small cavern beneath the Reever estate, Graeme paused in the careful stitching of his thigh to glance at the video.
He could see her face, so stark and pale, her eyes filled with such bitterness, and felt his chest clench at the knowledge of the pain he’d caused her.
She actually believed he’d left her alone and unprotected? That it was possible for him to ever do so? There was still a part of him that was amazed she hadn’t laughed at him when he claimed he didn’t love her. She’d always seemed to know and to understand him so well. Yet, she’d taken his words at face value and believed he’d left her alone.
Shaking his head he finished the old-fashioned stitches, spread a healing cream over the wounds then bandaged it carefully.