Turning his head slowly, he looked at Isabelle. He could smell her confusion, her fear and her hurt. The three scents were an affront to the protective instincts that raged inside him for her.
“Malachi, it’s my family,” she said softly. “I won’t turn them away.”
She didn’t say she couldn’t turn them away, she said she wouldn’t. Restraining a sigh, he stepped back and steeled himself. Because he had a very bad feeling that this first test of the world against the union he had dreamed of could very well steal the dream from his desperate, greedy grasp.
Chapter Seven
Then your smile lit my world.
Isabelle couldn’t understand why her family was standing in the middle of Malachi’s room, their too perceptive gazes raking over the barely made bed she and Malachi had just left.
“Dad?” She stared back at her father in confusion. “What’s going on here?”
Terran Martinez was younger than his brother, Ray, the chief of the Navajo Nation. Both men strongly resembled Orin Martinez, though, their father and medicine man of the Nation.
Her father crossed his arms over his broad chest, the dark denim shirt he wore straining over his biceps. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone dark with the anger she could read in his eyes.
“Terran, I warn you.” Her grandfather spoke up. “Don’t allow your anger to cloud your judgment. You can see before you the truth of this situation. Don’t shame her when no shame is needed.”
“No one will be shaming her,” Malachi informed them all, while Isabelle felt like just stalking out and leaving all of them to fight among themselves. All but Malachi. She would have to take him with her, of course.
“Do you know the man you’re consorting with?” Terran snapped at her then, shocking her with the lash of anger in his voice. “Did you even take a moment to pull up what little research exists on him?”
“Why would I?” Cocking her hip and propping her hands on each side, she confronted her father now. “Nothing else we read about the Breeds on the Internet has been the truth. Why would I believe whatever I read on one individual?”
And it was the truth. The propaganda that had been placed on the Internet had been proven false over and over again.
Her father’s lips flattened in disapproval, as if he was disappointed that she hadn’t done it anyway.
“He murdered his own,” Terran snapped furiously. “Ask him which lab he was created in, daughter. Ask him if he wasn’t there when your Aunt Morningstar was murdered.”
Isabelle swung around to Malachi. But it wasn’t he who responded.
“Malachi wasn’t in those labs.” It was Commander Breaker who spoke instead, his tone heavy, almost too soft to make out.
Her father had obviously heard him, though. “And how can you be so certain?” he demanded, disbelief clear in his expression. “You of all people should know how easily those records could be manipulated.”
Rule’s expression only darkened. “I know he wasn’t there, Terran. Malachi was created in Russia, far away from the labs your sister was in.”
The tension that began filling the room was strangling. Isabelle could feel Malachi all but holding his breath, holding in whatever he knew, or whatever he would say.
“And how the hell do you think you can be so sure of that?” Terran sneered. “And why would I believe you over someone I’ve known for most of his life?”
Who?
Isabelle stared at her father in surprise. Who could have told him anything and known what they were talking about?
“I was reported to have been created in that base because there was no one left alive but Breeds to deny it,” Malachi stated softly. “But I wasn’t there. And even if I had been, nothing could have changed the outcome of her fate, Mr. Martinez. Nothing could and no one could have saved her that night.”
The disappearance and death of his sister had haunted her father, she knew. So much so that he made certain he knew where his daughters were, at least their general vicinity, every second of the day.
“Even the dirty Coyote that reported the escape attempt another Breed was initiating to get her out of there?” Terran snapped back at him. “That Breed was you, Malachi Morgan. You were there, and you reported the attempt.”
“And I told you he wasn’t there,” Rule injected again.
“And you’re lying for him.”
Isabelle was shocked to hear her father raise his voice, to lose the calm that was always such a constant and steady part of him.