by Lacey Thorn
He came back out moments later with a warm cloth. She took it from him and cleaned herself before taking it back to the bathroom. He was sitting on the bed waiting for her when she came back out.
“Hungry?” he asked and held up the box of pizza.
“Famished,” she said, grabbing his T-shirt from the floor and dragging it over her nudity before joining him on the bed.
They ate in silence. When she was done, she lay on her side on the bed, head propped up on her arm and watched him polish off the rest of the pizza.
“I don’t want you to go,” she blurted out before she lost her nerve.
He paused to look at her then set the rest of the slice in the box, scooped it up and tossed it to the floor.
“You said you wanted sex,” he reminded her, but his voice was soft, questioning.
“I believe I said we were just about the fucking,” she stated, a small smile tugging at her lips. “And believe me, it’s been the best sex of my life.”
“Is that why you don’t want me to go?” he asked.
“No. I mean the sex is good, but I wouldn’t ask just for that,” she said. She sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees and hugging them to her chest as she faced him. “I didn’t have an ideal childhood. My mother died when I was born, and my father’s spent every day since reminding me of that.”
“You don’t have to tell me this,” Gideon told her.
“I want to. I’ve never wanted to tell anyone, but I do with you.”
“Tell me.”
“I spent my early childhood hiding from him. He had a hard hand, and he didn’t mind using it.”
“Your father hit you?” Gideon said and he practically vibrated with anger.
She shrugged. “I was good at hiding. As I got older, I took up sports. I played everything and anything. Turned out, I was an all-around athlete. Luckily, the school had a scholarship program available for kids who couldn’t afford the fees or equipment. I qualified.”
“I bet you were a knock-out in high school,” Gideon said.
She snorted. “I was all long legs. I was fit but nothing like I am now.”
He reached out and stroked a finger down her shin. “I like your legs.”
“Thank you,” she said. “My junior year, my coach took the track team on a fieldtrip. We went and watched a physical training exercise by Marine recruits. My coach was a retired Marine. I remember being awed as I watched them. That was true athletics. I looked at one of the other girls and told her I was going to join. She laughed.”
“I can’t imagine anyone laughing at you,” he said.
“I began training the next day. I quit sports and started a fierce regimen. My senior year, I talked to a recruiter, started showing up for PT with them once a week. There were a bunch of us that did. I worked my ass off. I turned eighteen in March and officially enlisted. Graduated in May and was gone in June.”
“You liked being a Marine,” he said.
“I loved it,” she told him. “I always thought I had to take care of myself. That’s what my dad taught me. Don’t need anyone. Don’t depend on anyone but myself.”
“And now you have a different family,” Gideon stated.
“I do,” she agreed. “It’s funny. I bitch and grumble and snarl at them. Yell and get in their faces. But I’d do anything for any one of them. I dropped everything I was doing and hauled ass to get here when Reno called and said Tah needed me. They needed me. I thought I was doing them a favor. Coming in to take care of things. But you want to know the truth?”
He nodded, and she saw in his eyes that he already knew.
“I needed them. I came because I was on my own, feeling incredibly lost. And they threw me a fucking lifeline. One call and suddenly everything was okay. I get here and Tah’s shifting into a lion, and I don’t fucking blink. Because he’s family, and I need him. I need them all. I’ve just been too damn stubborn to admit it, as if by saying so I’m opening myself back up to the same type of rejection I got from my dad.”
“They love you, too,” Gideon told her. “I’ve seen it. There’s nothing they wouldn’t do for you.”
“I had a moment when you first arrived, when I thought I was done. I was going to walk away and not look back.”
“Because of me?” he asked, appearing upset.
“Yes and no,” she said. “I was mad as hell at you. God, I wanted to ring your neck.”
He grinned. “You definitely came across as a hellcat when you approached me.”
“I thought you hated humans then I found out it was just me.”
“So you were going to leave because you thought I didn’t like you?” Gideon asked, raising an eyebrow at her.
“No,” she said and smacked at him. “I was going to leave because Tah ordered Murphy and the rest of the guys to keep me away from you. I thought Tah didn’t trust me anymore. That a stranger meant more to him because you’re both shifters, and I’m human.”
Gideon shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s what fired me up and sent me searching you out. It’s what led to this, the two of us in bed.” She took a deep breath. “It’s what led to me asking you not to leave or if you have to, to let me go with you.”
“You want to go with me? You just said this pride was your family,” he reminded her, looking a little shell-shocked.
She moved until she was sitting up on her knees in front of him. “I know I’m not your mate. And someday, you may meet your mate. But until then, I don’t see why this has to end, why we have to end. If you can’t go to Oklahoma with us, then let me go with you.”
He shook his head, and her heart felt as if it were breaking in two. He didn’t want her for any longer than the time they’d had.
“I have to go look for Thomas,” he said.
“I know,” she agreed. “I knew that’s what you were planning to do.”
“I can’t ask you to go with me,” he said. “I have no idea where I’m going, or what I’ll find.”
“I’m a Marine,” she reminded him.
“I can’t believe you’d give family up for me,” he said.
She opened her mouth and closed it. She’d almost told him she was falling in love with him. But that didn’t happen in the short amount of time they’d been together. So she bit her lip and kept the words to herself.
“I would,” she said instead.
“Until I found my mate,” he added. “Then what? We’d just go our separate ways?”
She bit her lip again, not sure what to say. It didn’t help that her heart ached at his words.
“Stop that,” he ordered and ran his thumb over her lip, freeing it from her teeth. “Why would you agree to something like that? Would you really just step aside and watch me go to another woman?”
He sounded hurt at the idea, but what choice would she have? None.
“Once you find your mate, you won’t want anything more to do with me. We both know that,” she said.
“I think you’re wrong,” he told her.
“We have four mated pairs in this pride,” she reminded him. “I’ve seen how it works. They’re very possessive of each other. No other man or woman would ever stand a chance.”
“Come with me,” he said and held his hand out to her.
“Where?” she asked, standing and watching as he snagged his jeans and jerked them on, though he left them undone.
“I want to show you something.”
He tugged her out of the room and down the hall, back toward the lab where he’d been when she’d first come down. He urged her onto a stool and stood beside her, pulling something up on the computer screen.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to two lines on a graph.
One was toward the middle of the page. The other had huge surges, sending it spiking to the top of the page.
“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”
“This one is the hormone levels I had the first time I took a sample,” he said indica
ting the line in the middle. “This one is the one I took this morning.”
“Is it the fever? Are you going to be okay?” Her heart stopped as she remembered what Clara had said when Zane had the fever. Only a mate could save him. “We need to find your mate,” she whispered.
“I think I already have,” he told her.
And that was it. Her heart was breaking.
Then he cupped her chin and lifted her face to his. “I know you were adamant you aren’t my mate,” he said.
“You agreed,” she reminded him.
“I think we were both wrong.”
“What?” She stopped and gulped as her heart beat frantically in her chest. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, you’re my mate, Vic.”
Chapter Eleven
“I’m… I don’t… What?” Vic said, looking adorably cute and making him wonder how he hadn’t seen it from the beginning.
“I believe you’re my mate,” Gideon said again.
“I’m your mate,” she whispered, and it wasn’t disgust he saw in her eyes. Not yet, at least. But he had things to tell her.
He turned her around to face him and braced his hands beside her hips on the seat. He leaned in and closed his eyes, just breathing her in for a minute. Mine was the thought that flashed through his mind, and he felt the overwhelming urge to lean in the final few inches that were needed for him to sink his teeth deep and claim her. It was even harder to fight when she plunged those long fingers in his hair and tugged him closer. She seemed to have an obsession with his hair, and he loved it.
Their lips met in a kiss full of promise. He was an unworthy man, a killer, undeserving of a woman like Vic. He’d been more than willing to take what she offered, knowing she would move on to someone else after him, someone better. But now the thought of her with another man made his hands ache to kill again.
“Mine.” The claim rumbled from his chest as soon as their lips parted, and she smiled despite the way he made the claim sound.
“Am I?” she asked.
“You’re the only one who ever could be.”
“Why do you make it sound like a curse?”
“Because it is,” he whispered. “I’m not nearly good enough for you, but I’m not sure I can walk away from you like I planned.”
“Don’t,” she urged. “Stay, with me. Or I’ll go with you.”
It still blew him away that she was willing to leave and go with him.
“What I won’t do is let you mate me then walk away. I’ve seen what that does to a woman. I’ll break your legs before I go through that.”
“I’d never mate you then leave. If it happens then we’re together until the end. But there are things we need to discuss,” he said. “Things you need to know about me. I won’t mate you until you know everything, know the man you’ll be taking on.” He looked into her face, so perfect, so beautiful. “I’m not a good man. I’ve done things. Killed people.”
She shook her head. “You think I haven’t? You think any of us have clean hands? You don’t go to war and come home the same way you left. People die. Blood is spilled, and no one walks away unscathed.”
He glanced around the laboratory where anyone could walk in on them.
“Let’s go back to the room to have this talk,” he said and swept her up in his arms.
“You’re the first man who’s ever carried me like this,” she said, looping one arm behind his neck while the palm of her other hand caressed his chest.
“I’ll be the only man to ever carry you like this,” he said with a growl.
He waited until the door was closed and she was sitting on the bed before he began again. “I mentioned the labs to you. I told you they injected us and made us fight each other.” He paused not sure how to finish.
“You fought to the death,” Vic said, and his eyes flew up to hers in surprise. “Did you think we didn’t figure that out?”
“I…” He wasn’t sure what to say. “They all know?” And hadn’t kicked him out, yet?
“Suspect,” she corrected. “None of them will ask you about it. It’s yours to tell or not. More importantly, none of them will blame you for surviving. You were hunted, captured, tortured and forced to do things you didn’t want to in order to survive.”
“We weren’t tortured,” he said, thinking of how Michael had died, chained to a wall with stab wounds strategically placed so he wouldn’t survive. Thomas had relayed every detail Lydia had shared. It shouldn’t have happened. Michael shouldn’t have died, not like that. That was torture.
“You were held in fucking cages and injected with God only knows what just so they could make you act out the sick games they thought up,” Vic yelled. “That is the worst kind of torture. Physical wounds heal. The mental ones they inflicted have fucked with your mind for years. When you look at yourself, all you see is a man with blood on his hands, a man who killed those he should have fought to protect.”
“I should have protected them,” Gideon agreed.
“And what? Let them kill you, instead? Would that make it all better?” Vic demanded.
He blinked.
“You didn’t have a choice, Gideon. You were drugged and given two choices. Live or die. No one should blame you for choosing to live.”
“I ripped their throats out,” he confessed. “I used my claws to tear them to shreds. And when they begged me for mercy, I killed them anyway. I killed them.”
“And what would have happened to them if they’d lived?” Vic asked. “What would the people in those labs have done to them? To you? Because I’m betting it would have been far worse than death.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. “How could you possibly know?”
“Because I’m not stupid,” she said. “Because I’m a strategist. Because I grew up with a misogynist who believed whole-heartedly that the end justified the means. And I know there would have been consequences if either of you refused to do what they wanted.”
“Live dissection,” he finally admitted. “There was a man who refused to kill. They killed the other shifter anyway. Then they tied him down, split him open, and did whatever they wanted to him. He screamed and screamed.”
“Jesus,” Vic muttered, looking ill. “Why didn’t you shift? Why didn’t any of you shift?”
“They have an injection they give you. Every hunter has them. It prevents a shift. If we happen to already be in animal form, it forces us to shift back. Thomas and I tried to get our hands on some of that, but we were never able to.”
“So you escaped, managed to get away from them,” she said. “Then you went back. You allowed yourself to be captured again. How many times? How many times did you let them take you, knowing that could be the time you died?”
He shrugged. “I did what I needed to. I owed it to all the shifters I…killed. I owed it to them to make sure I did everything I could to protect others from the same fate. By trying to get my hands on the drugs being used against us and finding a way to block them from working.”
“Then don’t you think your time is better spent in the labs, now? Helping to do just that?” Vic asked
“We have no samples to work with,” he said. “I need live samples to test. Plus, everything Thomas and I had is gone. I managed to save a few notebooks, but the rest was destroyed. I’m pretty sure it was Dillon.”
“Tell me,” she urged.
“Ariel had gone off the rails again. She’s an angry woman. She has a right to be.” He shook his head at her questioning look. “It’s not my story to share. I don’t think she even realizes I know everything that happened. I’ll just say Ariel has seen the dark side of humans as well as shifters, and I think she might hate and distrust shifters more. She’s very selective on who she puts any faith in.”
“She trusts you,” Vic said.
Gideon swallowed and glanced away, blinking his eyes quickly. “She was…broken when Thomas found her. Body, mind, spirit. He brought her back with him. We did what we cou
ld medically to help her.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “She had night terrors for a long time. She’d wake up screaming, fighting anyone who tried to get to her.”
“But you went to her,” Vic guessed, and he liked that she already seemed to know him so well.
“I did. She’d scratch me up a bit, but once I had her wrapped in my arms, she’d slowly come back to the present. She’d beg me not to let them touch her again. Her eyes would be glassy, and she’d beg me. It broke my heart. Eventually, she’d wake up screaming my name. Then she’d just wake up.”
“I didn’t like her,” Vic said. “There was something about her that made me uneasy. Now… I…” She swallowed, and he could see the guilt on her face.
“She’s fierce in a fight,” he said. “Lethal. She asked me to train her, and I did. If she’s angry, there’s a reason for it.”
“So what does she do when she goes off the rails?” Vic asked.
“She hunts,” Gideon replied. “And she’s not always particular on what or who.”
“So you went after her.”
He nodded. “We all needed a break. We’d been working around the clock. Ariel hasn’t said anything, but it wouldn’t surprise me if her leaving had something to do with Dillon. There was animosity between them from the start. I should have paid more attention.”
“You were busy.”
“I’m always busy. There was a lot I missed. I didn’t see what was going on with Lydia. I didn’t see what was going on with Ariel, with Dillon or with Thomas. I was pissed when Ariel left. Mad as hell that I had to stop what I was doing and go after her. Griffin asked if he could come with me.” He snorted and shook his head again. “I think he was afraid I might take my anger out on Ariel.” He looked her in the eyes. “I wouldn’t. Never.”
“I know that,” she assured him. “I may not have known you long, but I think I know you pretty well.”
And she did, she seemed to sense things others never had. He wondered if it was a mate thing.
“So Griffin went with you,” she prompted.
“I told Thomas to take a break. Go for a run. He looked pretty haggard. For some reason, I took the last few journals I’d worked in with me. Just stuffed them in my backpack as if I’d have time to work on them later.”