Lover Uncloaked (Stealth Guardians #1) - By Unknown Page 0,71

if waiting for her to crack. She wouldn’t. She didn’t want to hear excuses for his behavior.

“You surprise me,” he suddenly said.

“In what way?”

“Your self-control.”

When she gave him a confused look, he continued, “Most women would jump at the chance of getting the inside scoop on a guy they’re into, but you—”

“I’m not into him!” she snapped.

“Well, my bad.”

She huffed and hugged her arms around her torso.

“We grew up together. We’ve been best friends since we broke out of our crib for the first time at age two. If anybody knows him, I do.”

“Fine! Go ahead, tell me what you want to tell me and get it over with. Obviously, he told you to pacify me and make excuses for his behavior.” But she would take it all with a grain of salt.

“Aiden? He would rip my head off if he found out about it. He’s a very private man. He never even tells me anything, but I know what he feels. He can’t hide things from me.”

She had to agree with him on that statement: Aiden didn’t tell her much either. Rather, he liked to omit things, important ones. And he didn’t explain why he made certain decisions either. At least if she knew why certain things had to happen, she could try to come to grips with them. The scientist in her could accept that. But there had to be compelling reasons. Irrational behavior she could not excuse.

Leila settled back into her corner of the couch, and tucked her legs beneath her.

“He has a soft heart,” Hamish started, making her scoff instantly.

He gave her a chiding look. “Which he hides well. His sister and he were very close. Twins. They did everything together, so it was only natural that when Aiden decided to get into the trenches and train for the most dangerous jobs to fight the demons, Julia was right there with him. She was fearless.”

She shuddered, knowing she herself would be too much of a coward to do the same.

“And of course, when we were young, we all thought we were invincible. I was the same; we all thought we could overcome any obstacle, defeat any enemy, save any human.” He paused. “We couldn’t.”

Leila noticed the pain that was suddenly evident in his eyes. “What happened?”

He continued as if he hadn’t even heard her question. “Aiden didn’t hate humans. In fact, he was rather curious about them. He liked watching them go about their lives, oblivious to the dangers around them, and he felt proud to be there to protect them. Every time he saved a human from the clutches of the demons, you could see the pride and satisfaction in his eyes. He loved what he was doing. Julia did too. They were cut of the same cloth: fierce, loyal, and so proud of their achievements. And convinced they could do no wrong.”

He sighed, and Leila held her breath, sensing that something did go wrong after all.

“Aiden had never killed a human before. He’d never had to. And he believed strongly that everyone could be saved, that even if the demons got close to them, he could still pull them back and turn them onto the right path.” Hamish let out a bitter laugh.

“How wrong he was. How wrong we all were. But of course we didn’t listen to our elders, we didn’t listen to experience. Because we were young and invincible, remember?”

“Like we all are when we’re young,” Leila murmured. She had thought the same when she’d started out her career and hoped to conquer the world only to be brought down to reality when her parents had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“Yes, just like humans. But it was worse, because we knew we were immortal. Well, as immortal as you can get: there is only one sort of weapon that can kill us, but we were too full of ourselves to believe it would ever affect us. We’d trained to fight the demons; we fought them on a regular basis; we were good. But we weren’t perfect.”

“Nobody can ever be perfect.”

Hamish looked at her then, his eyes brimming with the pain from his past. “No, but we sure as hell tried. And failed. We all paid the price in the end. Aiden and Julia were on a mission, but things went south. They were protecting a brilliant young physicist, ambitious and driven. He was on the verge of a breakthrough that would have pushed Stephen Hawking’s work into the background. But as it is