She licked her dry lips and fought to pull her eyes from Dash’s. She could see it in his eyes: the truth, the knowledge that Seth had seen her, as an animal. A creature snarling, spitting, screaming. Abandoned by the God she had screamed out to.
She shook her head slowly. “Callan wouldn’t do that.” Her brother would never—he couldn’t—do something so vile to her as to allow her mate, the only man whose eyes she could bear looking into for long, to see the horror of what she knew had happened. What she knew, but couldn’t remember.
“I talked to Callan this morning,” he told her. “He’s more worried for you now than he was then, Dawn. He was desperate to give you time to find your confidence, to get past what Dayan had done through the years that you should have been free. He thought he was saving you.”
“No!” Her hands came up as she shook her head, blinked. “No. He didn’t do this to me.” Her cry was a ragged, feral sound.
Oh God, Seth had seen those images. The images the Council had placed in the files that Callan had managed to steal before their escape.
Her lips parted as she forced herself to breathe, forced herself to get control of the pain beating down on her. God, when would it end? When would the pain and the betrayals stop?
Her mate had a lover. Had considered marrying another woman, having children with her. Her brother had betrayed her by showing her mate her worst nightmare, her greatest humiliation, and her mate didn’t want her. Even now. Even after the pleasure they had shared the night before, he wanted her to leave.
“Those days were bad for the Breeds, Dawn,” Dash continued. “For Callan. He was fighting to keep his family safe, his pregnant mate secure, and trying to hold back the supremacist societies rising against him. And you were almost broken by Dayan. Callan had only learned what happened with Dayan’s death the year before. He was grief-stricken, guilty that he hadn’t protected you. He had to protect you. It was his place to do that as your pride leader.”
“Stop!” She pointed her finger back at him, and couldn’t look him in the eye. He knew. He knew what Seth had seen, he had probably seen it himself.
“Did you think I didn’t know what was on those tapes?” she growled furiously. “Did you think Dayan didn’t show them to me? Often?” She sneered at the memory of them. “He had no right. Callan had no right to do that to me.”
“He had every right,” Dash said gently. “As your brother and your protector.”
“I’m sick of his f**king protection and I don’t need yours,” she yelled out at him. She didn’t cry, she didn’t beg. Her voice rose in anger and in determination as her gaze met his. “You have no right to make deals with my mate and you have no right to conspire with Callan to keep me from him.”
“And you have no right to destroy a good man’s life with something you can’t go through with, Dawn. You’ve seen the images. Fine, you know what’s in them. You still wake up Sanctuary with your screams when you dream of it, and you still haven’t remembered the events that those discs are made of. You’ve run from Seth for ten years; now you expect him to fall in with your wishes, despite his belief that the first time he takes you, he’s going to throw you back into that hell. Aren’t you asking too much of him? He’s a strong man, but I don’t think he’s that strong. I couldn’t be that strong.”
Dawn straightened her shoulders and refused to break his gaze. Her soul cringed at the words falling from his lips and she could feel something breaking inside her heart. Because of what others had done to her, her mate couldn’t bear to take her?
“This is none of your business.” She felt as though she would crumble to the ground with the effort it took to force those words past her lips. “You can’t order me from here. If Seth wants me gone, then he can lodge a complaint with the Breed Cabinet and go through the proper channels to get rid of me.”
She forced herself to walk calmly, sedately across the room, past Dash and to the door.
“Dawn, Seth is going to hurt you,” he said behind her, his voice heavy with that knowledge. “Mating heat isn’t controllable. When he takes you, he may not be able to stop if the past rises against you and sends you back to those memories. And then I’ll have to kill him. I won’t be able to stop myself. You’re family. Don’t do this to your entire team. To yourself or to your mate.”
Her lips twisted bitterly as she turned back to him. “What makes you think that I don’t want to remember what they did to me?” she asked him heavily. “That I don’t want to be a mate to Seth? What makes you think that for ten years my heart hasn’t broken a little more every day without him? And what gives you or Callan the right to make these decisions for me?”
She stared back at him, seeing in his eyes the lack of confidence they all had in her. All these years she had fought, strengthened herself, forced herself to fight past her fears of just being in a room with another man, for this? So no one could even give her her due and see that in so many ways she had succeeded.
“I’m not a child. I’m not the daughter that you still bloody Breeds over flirting with, nor am I still the broken little girl Dayan created. And as God is my witness, I don’t know if I can ever forgive either of you for interfering in my life this way. Not you, Callan or Seth. I don’t need any of you to make my life decisions for me.” She snarled, the anger beginning to burn, not flame. It was burning. It was a hot, bitter coal in the pit of her stomach that sent pain tearing through her entire being. “Fuck off, Commander Sinclair,” she gritted out. “And tell Pride Leader Lyons and Director Wyatt they can both do the same. Because if I leave here, I won’t be returning to Sanctuary ever.”
She jerked the door opened and stepped out of the room before slamming it behind her and moving
quickly along the hallways to make her way from the house.
Turning toward the main hall, she saw Caroline’s door open and Seth step out of it. He was pale, sweating, and the woman’s scent hung on the air around him like a stink that sickened her gut. She stopped in front of him, staring back at his harsh face, into his brutally stark gaze.
“You’re a coward,” she whispered. “Even more so than I ever was.”
She didn’t give him time to answer, but brushed past him, making certain she didn’t touch him, that she didn’t tempt the feral fury brewing inside her by allowing that woman’s scent on her own body. She left the house and joined her team to ensure her mate’s protection. The mate that didn’t want her.
Cassie stepped from her bedroom and turned her eyes to her father as he pulled the sat phone from his belt and, she knew, prepared to call Callan.
“Stay out of it.” The words slipped past her lips as she watched him, watched him frown back at her darkly.
She could feel Dawn’s pain like a lash of psychic energy whipping around the island. It was so great, burning so bright, it seared at the edges of her mind.
“Cassie—”
“Dad, Callan can’t protect her any longer. Dawn’s awakening. You can’t make her go back to sleep or you’ll kill her.”