He couldn’t be any longer. Without Cat, there was nothing to fight for.
There were a few loose ends to tie up, a call to make to Benjamin Foster to tell him good-bye. The man he’d called father would grieve, but Graeme could find no regret for it. The information he’d amassed since he was a child Graeme would have to pull together and ensure it went to the proper caretaker. Someone who would use it wisely. Jonas was the obvious answer, but Graeme had already chosen another whose strength and ability to see beyond games would serve the Breeds far more where such vast knowledge was concerned.
“Graeme?” Judd stepped to the balcony.
No, he wasn’t Judd any longer. He was Cullen. Graeme hadn’t expected his brother to arrive. The need to maintain the secrecy of his identity had been far too important.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Graeme sighed, wiping a hand across his face, shocked to feel the dampness there.
There was no way to hide who he was while standing at Graeme’s side. They were twins, born of the same mother, split from the same egg, identical in nearly all things.
“Where else would I be?” Cullen asked, his voice weary. “My men are scouring the desert . . .”
“As one of the Unknown, you should know where they are,” Rule snapped, the knowledge he possessed no longer deemed a secret. “Where are they, Cullen?”
“I’m not one of the true Unknown,” Cullen informed the Breed, his voice tight. “I’m a member of their inner circle, called the Unknown, but not privy to their secrets, Rule. Especially this one. If I’d known, I’d have killed every one of them to stop it.”
“Enough.” Graeme turned his gaze back to the desert beyond. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Few things mattered.
Make the calls. Gather the information and make certain Cullen had everything in place to secure it properly. Then he would drift . . .
Something soft dropped into his lap. Looking down, he saw the tattered brown teddy bear he’d asked Khi for. Cat’s teddy bear. He kept it in his workroom sitting at his desk. So many nights that one-eyed piece of stuffed cloth had kept the insanity from ripping his mind to shreds.
“She loved this damned teddy bear,” he whispered as he reached out and touched one threadbare ear. “Cuddled it like it was a baby when she was little.”
There was still the faintest trace of blood on it from when he’d killed a guard who was attempting to take it. He should have died for the transgression, but he’d been far too important to kill. Brandenmore had considered him the key to all the research he’d been conducting. The bastard had never known Graeme had already figured it all out. He’d let Brandenmore die a horrific death for the countless lives the bastard had taken needlessly.
“I shouldn’t have taken it from her.” He sighed, glancing up at Cullen. “I should have found a way to get both of you out when I escaped.”
There had been no way to do it, though. He’d planned for years and hadn’t been able to find a way to take even his Cat with him. And God knew he’d tried. Tried desperately.
“She’s gone,” he said softly, shaking his head as he rose tiredly from the chair. “Leave,” he ordered all of them. “Just fucking leave.”
He needed silence. He needed to lie in the bed he’d shared with her and wrap himself in her scent for just a little while and forget he’d failed her. Forget how he’d failed her.
“Graeme, Cat wouldn’t want this for you,” Khi whispered, her voice strangled, filled with tears. “She loved you. She wouldn’t want you to give up.”
“She’s not here to make that decision,” he snarled. “She’s gone, Khi. They took her. She doesn’t get to give her opinion.”
“At least not until she’s done kicking your ass.”
Graeme swung around, blocking the doorway from the others as he stared into the room, certain he hadn’t heard her. It couldn’t be her.
Standing in the middle of her room, dressed as she’d been the night before in her snug black mission suit. It was dusty, smeared with a hint of mud and smelling of the earth wrapped in smoky secrets.
He could smell her as he never had. The mating scent was like a wildfire burning around her, calling to him, infusing him with such hungry lust he growled at the strength of it. That same dust streaked her face, layered her mussed hair as it strayed from the braid and lingered at the soft curve of her neck.
One hand was propped on her hip as she watched him with narrowed eyes, but, for all her bravado and challenge, the scent of her lust and the emotions roiling through her, he could sense exhaustion as well.