“Dad, please, don’t do this.” Isabelle stepped forward, shock and pain filling her at the fury in her father’s face. “I don’t know what Malachi did in those labs, but whatever he did, it was to survive. And I don’t believe he would have ever deliberately brought danger to an innocent.”
It didn’t matter that his gaze had swung to her, narrow-eyed and strong, as he stepped to her. She may not know the particulars of the circumstances or the story behind his escape or anyone else’s. What she did know was the man who held her in his arms and the fact that he couldn’t have, wouldn’t have, participated in her aunt’s death. Not in any way.
“Isabelle, if you’ve ever trusted me, come with me now.” Her father turned to her, the eyes she had grown up staring into whenever she’d needed answers, whenever she was frightened or confused, and that gaze was demanding she obey him. That she follow him. That she turn her back on the man she had already begun accepting into her heart.
“I trust you with my life, Dad,” she whispered painfully. “But I need you to trust me. Trust me to know the man I’ve fallen in love with.”
That was all she asked of him. Just for now, for this moment, trust her and allow her to make her own decisions. She couldn’t bear being controlled, being forced, without a choice. Neither Malachi nor Commander Breaker was doing that.
Malachi stood close behind her, not touching her, trying not to influence her. The commander had his back to her, but her father was glaring at her.
“Terran, watch what you say,” her uncle Ray advised him as it became obvious that her father’s anger was only growing.
She stared from her uncle to her grandfather then back to her father. They were obviously there only to ensure her father didn’t make a mistake he couldn’t take back.
“What does he intend to say, Uncle Ray?” she asked softly as she felt her throat tighten with tears. “What do you intend to do, Dad, when I tell you that I won’t walk away from Malachi without proof that he’s done something vile? A mistake I can forgive. Anything he was forced to do in those labs I would have to forgive. It would break my heart that he were forced to be something he wasn’t. That he carried the nightmares of it. But I wouldn’t turn my back on him.”
“Even if he killed your aunt?” her father yelled back at her, causing her to flinch. “You would forgive him for it?”
She was going to cry. Isabelle could feel the tears coming. She could feel her chest tightening, her lips trembling with the need to spill her tears, her pain.
“Even if he were forced to do that,” she whispered. “I’ve never lied to you, Dad. I won’t start now. I’m not saying it wouldn’t break me in half. That I wouldn’t live every day of my life knowing the unbearable weight of it, but what happened in those labs I won’t hold against him.”
“Then I dis—”
“No!” her grandfather yelled behind him as another voice broke over him.
Her father had been only a single word from disowning her.
“I was in that lab.” Commander Breaker stepped forward and spoke as Isabelle’s eyes began to widen in horror of what her father was about to say.
Her father swung around to the Breed. “What did you say?”
“I was there,” Breaker growled. “I was created there. I was trained there. And I knew your sister. I swear to you, Mr. Martinez, on the soul I hold as my dearest possession. I swear to you, Malachi wasn’t there. And I know he wasn’t there, because I was.”
Her father seemed to shrink before her eyes. His shoulders slumped, horrified remorse filling his gaze as he turned to Isabelle. He stepped back slowly, shaking his head in disbelief as his gaze swung back to the commander.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered. “And you have nothing that will prove it.”
To that, the commander growled with primal, deepening anger.
“I have blood.”
“And what the hell will that prove?” Her father threw his hands up in a gesture of fury. “How will your blood prove anything?”
“It will prove I’m the son of Morningstar Martinez,” he snapped back at him. “And as you know, those bastards never, ever separated the male Breeds from their birth mothers. They used them. Tested us for compassion and sympathy with them,” he snarled with animalistic rage now. “My blood will prove it, Mr. Martinez, and then as far as your daughter should be concerned, you should get f**ked. Because a man that would turn his back on a daughter is no man. He’s even less than the godforsaken bastards that created the Breeds.”
“Enough.”
Isabelle watched her grandfather through her tears, his lined, weary expression making him appear a decade older than his actual age.
“It is time to speak of this without this most precious child present. The sins and the nightmares of the past are for those of us who have faced the monsters in the world. Not those who we fight to protect from them.”
Her breathing hitched as her grandfather stood staring back at her with all the gentleness and love he had always given her.
Malachi’s arm went around her. As though he couldn’t bear the physical separation between them any longer.
Her grandfather nodded as though in approval of the move.