Edge of Dawn Page 0,29

consciousness. The next thing I knew, someone was pulling my bloody, broken body ashore.”

Mira swallowed, utterly silent through his explanation. “Someone saved you?”

“Candice did.” He saw her nearly imperceptible flinch at his mention of the human woman’s name. “Candice hauled me out of a certain drowning and took me to her friend, Javier, a former Army sergeant who helped sew me up and heal my wounds. He’s one of the best field medics I’ve ever known.”

“Doc,” she said, her sharp mind easily making the connection. “They had to know who—and what—you were. Why would rebels spare your life?”

“They weren’t rebels then. Except for Vince, none of my crew was involved in any outlaw activity at the time. That came later.” He cleared his throat and pushed on with the rest of what he had to say. “Anyway, it took two months before I was whole again. By then, you and everyone else I had known before assumed I was dead.”

“So, you just let us continue to believe that?” Her expression was incredulous, her voice clipped and climbing toward outrage. “Why would you do that? How could you let everyone carry that pain when you knew it was a lie?”

Kellan shook his head, knowing that he would feel the same way in her place. Hating to see the anguish in her face when it was he who’d put it there. “My reason back then was more important than even my own life.” He looked around at where he was, who he’d become as of this moment, and let out a harsh curse. “Everything’s different. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You’re saying you did this—you left me and everyone else who ever cared about you—all for nothing?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” he told her, as gently as he could. “I’m not going to make you try to understand. Certainly not now, when it’s too late for that anyway.”

Her eyes held him in a stare that shredded him, so full of confusion and anger and hurt. “You have every right to hate me now, Mira. But that was never what I wanted.”

“What about love?” she shot back at him. “You never wanted that from me either, did you?”

He swore under his breath. God, he’d been honored, humbled, by how openly Mira had always given herself to him. She’d loved him when he was at his weakest, angry and withdrawn, a self-pitying idiot who would’ve been happy to wallow in his misery forever. But she’d seen something in him worth saving. She’d pulled him into her light, pushed him until he was able to walk on his own, challenged him to be more. To be a better man than he ever would’ve without Mira as a part of his life.

Her love had been a precious gift. One he didn’t deserve then and couldn’t accept now.

When she started to turn away from him, he did what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t. He reached for her, gently took her furious and wounded, beautiful face in his hands. “This isn’t what I wanted, Mouse.”

“No. Goddamn you, no.” She wrenched away from him, pissed off and seething. Her finger came up in his face. “You don’t call me that. My family called me that a long time ago. You’re not family.”

“No,” he admitted quietly. Not anymore, not even close.

“You’re not a friend either. Not after what you’ve done,” she charged, breathing heavily with every clipped word. “After what you’re doing to me now, I can’t believe that you were ever truly my friend. Was it all a fucking joke to you, Kellan? Was I just a joke in your mind?”

“You were never a joke, Mira.” He fisted his hands at his sides to keep from taking her in them once again. “I think you know better than that.”

“Do I? How many times did you try to push me away when we were growing up?” She gave a brittle laugh. “I should’ve let you push. I should’ve walked away from you and never looked back, any one of the times you gave me the chance. God, I wish I’d never met you!”

“I know.” He couldn’t blame her, after all. “If I could take it all away for you right now, I would.”

Unfortunately for both of them, a Breed mind scrub wasn’t effective on long-term memory. He could erase today, but anything older was outside the bounds of his powers.

“You know this won’t be the end of it,” Mira pointed out. “Scrub my memory if it will make you feel better,